When my late stepfather passed away in 2005, he left behind a giant collection of swords and spears and other such bizarre weaponry. Oh, and he was also a rabbi. Anyway, my mother, the industrious weirdo that she is, decided that it was time to start bestowing weapons upon folks.
We lived in the rabbi’s house (the house owned by the synagogue for housing the rabbi and his family) and would need to vacate it in order to give house to the new, as-yet-not-selected rabbi to come. Which meant that a committee from the synagogue was sent to talk to my mother.
Ah, thought she, a perfect time to begin my dissemination of the weaponry. So she went into the basement and selected five spears, one for each of the people coming to our house to talk to her. She placed them behind her seat at the dining room table.
She conducted the meeting seated in front of these eight-foot-tall weapons, which surely added to her consequence and lent an Iron Throne-like air to her demeanor. At the close of the meeting, she distributed the weapons to the men, who were visibly relieved.
One of them commented, “I was hoping those weren’t in case the meeting went poorly, I’m not suited for target practice.”

She sent the men off into the sunset-drenched streets of Queens, walking home carrying their newly earned spears.
That’s the only time I want to see Jews patrolling the streets of my Jewish neighborhood carrying weapons.

The end.
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