The timing of the Genesis chapter, along with reading the discoveries of the Jewish genius Albert Einstein about the relativity of space and time, met me at the exact moment I visited a furniture store in one of the Haredi concentrations.
During those long hours when I stared at the curls on the shop owner's broad neck, deep thoughts crossed my mind, because maybe Einstein hadn't discovered everything yet, maybe he still had some work left to do, for example researching and examining the dimension of time in an ultra-Orthodox shop.
I entered the store full of hope with the goal of purchasing a bed for the girls and also mattresses for us - the parents.
I plan to take our mattresses from the wedding out in the middle of the night, around 3:00 AM, to the bins on the nearby street, so that they cannot be attributed to us in any way.
A childhood friend of mine didn't do this and dragged his old mattresses to the bins in the early evening, in front of his astonished neighbors. Since then, he's been receiving harassing phone calls from law enforcement and welfare agencies, as well as food baskets and vouchers in the dead of night from the local charity.
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Upon entering the Haredi furniture store, I noticed a small gathering around a thin, red-haired Jew with a large neck.
While I was still watching the wonderful spectacle, a young, gentle-looking man approached me, who for some reason reminded me of the "Tam" paintings in the Passover Haggadah, and asked what I wanted.
Fortunately, my wife had done her homework. More precisely, over the past week, she had scanned with her eyes every text written in recent years about children's beds and teenage rooms. So I could tell him, without making an effort, that I would be happy to hear about the Provence bed, the leather dumo, and also the maxi circles.
As soon as I said Maxi Circles, he smiled happily as if I were reminding him of a scene from his childhood, and said: I knew you would go for Maxi Circles. It's my favorite.
Only then did my wife rush to correct me, not gently, and remind me that the 'Maxi Circles' went down in the first round.
'"'True,' I lied, having no idea what round she was talking about, and I asked the young man to focus on his skin color, and the glaring gap between him and Provence.".
The naive guy wasn't scared, and began to explain the differences to me. If at first I thought these were trivial matters, the explanations appeared and made it clear to me that these were real nonsense.
He got into a long conversation with the woman who insisted on understanding whether there was a difference in cleaning ability between the gray-beige Sky cover and the natural-colored faux-leather cover made from a special material called Sky.
At the end of the fascinating conversation between the two furniture experts, I also asked to contribute my part, and my interest in the subject of the two beds that reached, thank God, the finish line, and I raised one that had been bothering me all day: which is cheaper?
And also, I asked gently, 'Do you think, as a professional, that we can leave the store in the next hour and a half?'
The man smiled awkwardly and explained that such questions should be directed to the landlord. He is the one authorized to give prices and discounts to the guests.
Where is the owner of the house? He didn't have to answer. The red-haired man who stood in the center of the group of people and lectured passionately about springs, the Aminoach company, and 'it's all about the brand,' was the most important man in the universe to me at that time.
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We decided to wait patiently for the man to clear up a bit, and we went to the mattress section. There, a more experienced, veteran, and knowledgeable saleswoman was already waiting for us, who explained to us in a series of beautiful and clear words that when it came to prices, we had to talk to the owner.
Do you know who the landlord is? She asked.
We didn't answer. We silently joined the circle that was growing by the minute around the red-haired man.
At this time, standing closest to the Rebbe were a young couple of Hasidic origin, who were holding a small, crumpled piece of paper in front of their faces with drawings of their bedroom.
""The cupboard will be here," said the red-haired man, but the Hasidic woman demanded in a harsh voice: But how will his dresser fit in? And will there be room for the drawer to open?
The stork's husband stood still, realizing that his work was being done by others. He just pushed the little baby, who had apparently been born three days earlier, with a pacifier, and didn't understand why it wouldn't stop screaming.
The Hasidic woman said something to him in Yiddish, and went back to talking to the salesperson, who finally invited her to sit across from him. To my great dismay, I saw that her husband also took a chair for himself and even took the baby out of the stroller, joining him in the round table discussions. The three began an exhausting negotiation during which the red-haired woman was interrupted every 30 seconds by a question from one of the saleswomen and the cheeky buyers who just wanted to find out about inventory, dimensions, colors, sizes, scales, table designs, and differences between the levels of firmness in the mattress.
The negotiations were going well, although from time to time the woman had to stop them, as the child screamed incessantly, as if he were about to be slaughtered on one of the Formica tables including 6 chairs at 30 percent off, here in the store. But after 25 minutes, the owner of the house pulled out an order sheet from the desk drawer, and began writing down numbers on it.
At that very moment, one of the saleswomen asked him where the duct tape was, and the naive saleswoman asked where the scissors were.
I had already been there for several hours and knew where everything was. I rushed over to the redhead's desk, who was a little startled by my outburst, and located both the scissors and the glue. I also smiled at the devout baby, and tried to explain to him through eye contact that our common interest was less crying and a quick escape from the structure.
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How do we pay you? The woman asked, in checks, or by credit card?
I knew what the first option meant. I also knew that this was what the man would choose.
Why? To this day, I struggle with the meaning of that prophecy that came to me and whether it has any message for the rest of my life. A strong feeling struck me that the man would prefer checks.
'"I prefer checks," said the cruel redhead, and the woman's husband, who had suddenly gained dominance in the arena, took out his checkbook and began tearing pieces of paper from it.
At the same time, he reached deep into his inside suit pocket, revealing a stack of documents in different colors, with checks in various amounts sticking out among them.
Another 27 minutes passed in a fascinating discussion about dates, pickpocketing, pickpockets operating in the city, in the entrances of synagogues, and fees of various heights, until finally a small calculator was taken out that summed up the 17 checks the man presented, and the amount collected indeed reached 3,330 shekels.
I felt a little disappointed. My feeling was that I had waited two and three-quarters of an hour for a deal estimated at tens of thousands of shekels, and here it was, just a few thousand.
""You're 20 shekels short," said the salesman.
The Hasid took out a ten-shekel coin from his pocket, and other coins from many countries. "Do you have a euro to exchange for four and a half shekels?" he turned to me.
'"'It's a shame,'' I told him, ''that you'll give up the euro, who knows where it will end up. You don't exchange foreign currency. It's AB.".
Fortunately, he didn't argue and left the place within minutes.
I sat down with a sigh of relief on the comfortable chair across from the seller, and the redhead, who saw me sighing, suggested: Would you like to buy the chair? Everything here is for sale.
I didn't have time to answer, because the Hasidic woman stormed back into the store and said to the salesperson: "And what about the bottom drawer? Won't it get in the way of the linen box?""
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