Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich today made a stump stop at a Borough Park Matzah factory that at times could have been taken right out of the Marx Brothers Cabin Room scene:
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From the second the Ohio Governor stepped out of his SUV on New Utrecht Avenue and 43rd Street below the elevated subway, a mixed horde of several dozen media members and Hasidic Jews surrounded him like a mob of holiday shoppers trying to get into Macy’s on Black Friday morning.
From there, the horde followed Kasich into the bakery through a hallway so narrow a fat person would have had to walk in sideways. Halfway through the hallway, Kasich decided he had to use the bathroom, which he had just passed. This forced the horde to back-up in the hallway that at this point was a sea of black hats, dangling sideburns, media cameras and tape recorders.
Once out of the bathroom, Kasich made his way to the sink and washed his hands, after which so many people offered their help that the candidate finally exclaimed, “Please, I know how to dry my hands.” Then, while drying his hands, the candidate exalted that his favorite Bible character was Joseph, which prompted this reporter to ask, “Why Joseph?”
A gleam came to Kasich’s face, reminding this seasoned reporter of the old adage to never ask a good Christian a question about religion unless you want a sermon. And from that point on, you could kind of feel it coming.
Then it was back through the hallway and into a tiny bakery table room where a dozen young orthodox Jewish men were busy hand rolling unbaked matzah. Lording over them was a thin woman in a blonde wig who barked out insults like an Orthodox Joan Rivers.
“So nu, you call that rolling, Yakov. Nu, Moishe, who taught you to roll matzah, the blind Rebbe?”
After cramming through a tour of the bakery, Kasich delivered his sermon back on the street to the assembled throng of Hasidic Jews and skeptical media, pausing only twice to let the screeching elevated trains overhead pass. In his street corner preaching, Kasich related a quick Christian version of the Passover complete with the plagues, and finished with a flourish on how the lambs’ blood on the doors saved the Jews in ancient Egypt the same way the blood of Christ saves all Christians.
Following the sermon, the horde followed Kasich into Shema Kolainu, a school for children with special needs, which Kasich called ‘gifted’ as are all of God’s Children Then it was into more narrow stairwells, cramped rooms and people stuffed together so close you couldn’t so much as scratch your nose.
This reporter finally left, when Kasich stopped at a doorway with a roomful of children saying he didn’t want to go in and disturb them, but when somebody nudged him in the “special’ kids started screaming “Kasich for President.”
Through it all, Kasich was able to deliver the message that he believed in the light side of America, and not appealing to the dark side of Americans, alluding to his opponent Donald Trump.
The primary is April 19.
