How come when you say that a person is yeshivish, you mean it as a good thing, but when you say that a car is yeshivish, you mean it as a bad thing? It’s never like, “Great news! Turns out my car is very yeshivish!”
“Oh, baruch Hashem! You should have many happy years together.”
“I doubt it.”
Right now, I have a very yeshivisheh car problem, which is that my minivan -- which already makes this a yeshivish sentence -- my minivan’s driver door does not open from inside the car. It only opens from outside the car.
When I first discovered the problem -- when I got back from Mincha/Maariv one night -- I didn’t know that it only opened from the outside. I pulled into my driveway and tried the door, and I thought, “Oh no! The door doesn’t open at all!” And I’m a little too big these days to just do the kid thing and climb out through a random door without putting my foot through the console, collapsing the armrest, and in general just making my car even more yeshivish.
So I honk, and my wife comes outside and says, “What?” And I say, “Try the door!” because I want her to discover herself that it doesn’t work. (Maybe she’ll think she broke it.) And she tries the door, and it opens right up, because when you try to show someone that something doesn’t work, it always works. And she says, “Okay, what?” And I say, “Oh.” And she says, “What’s the problem?” And I say, “Um, switch places with me. Get in the car for a second.” And she says, “I’m not doing that.”
So we took it to the mechanic, who said it would cost $500 to fix, which sounds crazy, but it’s actually a whole thing, because the piece costs $300, and then he has to open up the door… And we’re like, “Of course you have to open up the door. Actually, the problem is that you can’t open up the door.” And he says, “No, I have to literally open up the door.” He has to open up the door, and then he has to open up… the door. I don’t know how else to say this.
Take apart the door.
But he admitted it was a lot of money. He said, “Maybe you can just live with this. Because the car is of a certain age.”
That’s the idea -- at a certain point in a car’s lifetime, it’s not worth fixing certain things. It’s like how when you get to a certain age, your doctor no longer tries to fix certain things.
“My leg hurts when it rains.”
“Okay, then that’s what it does from now on.”
“Can I do anything about it?”
“Well, if you want, you can just keep taking a pill forever. It helps sometimes.”
“Forever?”
“Don’t worry, it’s not that long.”
“It is for me!”
And it actually is getting up there. We bought the van brand-new almost 16 years ago, and I know this for a fact because it’s slightly older than one of our kids. He’s the reason we bought it.
Also, we already have a few yeshivish problems with our cars that we haven’t fixed:
- The rear left door doesn’t open on mornings that it’s cold. In fact, my son and I have spent several carpool mornings with him climbing in from the driver’s door, leaving icy footprints on my seat, and then coming around and pushing the door while I pulled the handle right off. We’re actually on our third door handle. On the bright side, at least both of these problems are not affecting the same door.
- In our other car, the back right door doesn’t register as closed in the winter, so the ceiling light keeps coming on whenever we turn left.
It’s always doors. Well, that or air conditioning.
- For a while, I had a car in which the air conditioner blew cold air only when the car wasn’t moving. Otherwise it blew hot air. Stop-and-go traffic was a nightmare.
- We had a car once of which the rear-view mirror came off in or hands. On the bright side, you could see out the entire front window, unobstructed. It almost made up for the fact that you had no idea what was going on behind you.
So we’re fixing this one. I think. As I’m writing this, it’s right before a major non-Jewish holiday, which is always when our car things happen, so now we’re waiting for the mechanic to find out if he can order the piece. This is another hallmark of a yeshivisheh car problem – when it happens right before a non-Jewish holiday.
So for now I have a situation wherein every time I want to park the car, I have to roll down the window, reach out into the freezing cold, pull the door handle from the outside, and then, with the door still open, roll the window up. It makes getting out of the car take forever. Especially since I always always forget. Every time I get to where I’m going, I pull the key out of the ignition, and say, “Wait.” And then I have to find the key again.
In fact, when I got to the mechanic to get it checked out, and I still forgot to let myself out of the car.
But what are my other options? I suppose I can lean my seat all the way back and do a backward somersault out the rear passenger door, and then open the driver’s door from the outside and collect the stuff that fell out of my pockets. But this is the door that sometimes gets stuck when it’s cold. It’s probably not much easier to open it when I’m upside down.
At least if someone else is in the car, they can come around and open the door for me, like it’s a discount car service where you have to open the door for the driver. I don’t have to climb over anyone or somersault onto their lap.
When my wife drives, she climbs out the passenger door, I think. I have no idea. She has wrist issues, so she’s not reaching out and pulling the outer handle for herself. Nor is she somersaulting. When she gets home from shopping, she sits in the driveway and honks, since we’re coming out to help bring in groceries anyway. I have no idea what she does when she gets to the store. Does she try flagging down strangers to let her out? I’m afraid to ask.
What do non-Jews call it when they have a yeshivisheh car?
“I have a religious-private-school car.”
It’s not the same.
But what’s interesting to me about the concept of yeshivisheh cars in general is that seemingly, yeshivish means one of two things. When you talk about a person and you say he’s yeshivish, you mean he has certain hashkafos that are in line with the yeshiva world. You don’t mean that he has certain problems that the doctors aren’t fixing because they don’t think it’s worth it.
For example, my bad back is yeshivish.
So why are certain cars called yeshivish?
I think it probably comes from our days in yeshiva, where we all have fond memories of certain things that were just always falling apart and that we just knew were never ever going to get fixed in our lifetimes because they did not technically affect the overall running of the yeshiva, and we just had to learn to live with them.
And the number of things in your yeshiva that are like this is the measurement of how “yeshivish” the place is.
That’s my theory on the term. Then someone else told me that he thinks it’s because people who work in yeshivas don’t make a lot of money, so their stuff is falling apart. I don’t really like that answer, even though I technically do work in a yeshiva, so this tracks.
Ha! People who work in chinuch make so little money that we can joke about it! That’s hilarious. Good times.
The third possibility for this term is that it’s the kind of car you buy yourself if you’re in yeshiva and finally got your license and your parents don’t want you to tie up their car for fifteen hours a day in yeshiva’s parking lot. The car doesn’t need to be great, because you’re either driving a short distance every day or you’re driving a longer distance but only once a month.
On a Friday afternoon.
Or they have a car that basically looks like it runs fine, but the driver’s door no longer opens. I think this is when some people – though probably not people who work in chinuch – decide to just give their old cars to their kids.
“You’re a teenager; you climb over the seats.”
Ever see a teenager who leaves the window open when he’s not in the car and then gets into the car through said window? He’s not just trying to look cool. He’s trying to look cool so you won’t realize that his door doesn’t open.
That said, I hope we can get this car fixed at some point before our kids start dating.
OUR SON: “Um, can you please get out of the car and open the door for me?”
GIRL: “That’s a new one.”
SHADCHAN: “So was guy yeshivish?”
GIRL: “His car was yeshivish.”
SHADCHAN: “Good enough!”
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
