{"id":7330,"date":"2013-05-24T16:25:58","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T22:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=7330"},"modified":"2013-05-24T16:25:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T22:25:58","slug":"beged-kaas-his-coat-of-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/beged-kaas-his-coat-of-anger\/","title":{"rendered":"Beged Ka’as: His Coat of Anger"},"content":{"rendered":"

By TED ROBERTS, the Scribbler on the Roof<\/em><\/p>\n

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I clearly answered, \u201cOh yeah, Beged Ka\u2019as\u201d.\u00a0 Sure Beged Ka\u2019as, which wasn\u2019t a lie, was it, since I had no idea what Beged Ka\u2019as meant, except it could be Hebrew.\u00a0 \u201cWell,\u201d said the anonymous editor, \u201cwhy don\u2019t you write a story about it?\u201d\u00a0 Definitely a challenge to my aging imagination.<\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t I write a story about Esau\u2019s marriage to Ishmael\u2019s daughter?\u00a0 Because I wasn\u2019t there and knew nothing about it \u2013 and usually misspelled Ishmael.\u00a0 But aided by my super computer, I Googled it.\u00a0 Turns out that it means \u201cCoat of Anger,” invented by a famous Chasid who thought anger was bad for your soul and blood pressure.\u00a0 The idea being that when your wife undercooked the chicken so badly that it cackled when you tried to cut it \u2013 you ran for your Beged Ka\u2019as and by the time you found it, buttoned it up, and adjusted the belt, your anger had cooled.\u00a0 \u201cDear, this bloody raw chicken is delicious.\u201d\u00a0 (\u201cCock-a-doodle-doo,\u201d said the slightly warm bird.)<\/p>\n

It reminds me of the famous Chasid (all Chasids are famous) who dearly loved the fig tree by his door and his lovely wife.\u00a0 He regularly, every morning, stood at his front door and said the blessing: \u00a0“Blessed art thou, Lord of the Universe, who bestowed upon us fig trees.” \u00a0He would pop a few honeyed figs in his mouth and look forward to a fig dessert for lunch.\u00a0 Suffice it to say he loved that fig tree.\u00a0 Those jealous of his learning said \u2013 yeah, almost as much as his wife.\u00a0 UNTIL one dark, gloomy day his wife had a Hadassah meeting.\u00a0 What to serve as cocktail snacks?\u00a0 Oh, she thought, how about those plum-sized, purple figs that adorned her husband\u2019s second love, that magnificent fig tree by the door.\u00a0 And so she did.\u00a0 Picked it clean, she did.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t three figs left, hidden among those big, green leaves.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s 5:30 \u2013 our Chasid comes home from his studies at the synagogue.\u00a0 As he approaches his front door he hears the musical chatter of female voices.\u00a0 He also notices that the plump, purple fruit no longer is sprinkled among the green leaves of his second love.\u00a0 Being a Chasid, a student of Torah and Talmud, he was no fool.\u00a0 He immediately understood the combination of NO FIGS and female voices.<\/p>\n

His wife \u2013 she was the one \u2013 his blood boiled.\u00a0 But being a man of heart as well as intellect he rushed through the door to find his Beged Ka\u2019as.\u00a0 He must muffle this terrible rage to squeeze his beloved wife\u2019s neck till her eyes looked like two near ripe figs.\u00a0\u00a0 But where was it?\u00a0 It was not in its usual spot.<\/p>\n

As he rushed around the house, from closet to closet, his rage grew.\u00a0 He must find his mystical coat.\u00a0 He tried on three other coats, buttoned to the chin.\u00a0 But the desire to throttle his greedy fig-eating wife, who also misfiled coats, did not decline.\u00a0 As he tried on the forth coat, his Chasidic face flushed with irritation and temper.\u00a0 He thought, I should have married plain Miriam, the Rebbe\u2019s daughter who probably hated figs and who was renowned as a housekeeper and . . . but then his wife entered the room bearing a bowl of figs so beautiful that Cezzane would have leapt from his grave to paint them in subtle shades of purple and crimson.\u00a0 Yeakor the Chasid stopped buttoning his fifth coat of the evening.<\/p>\n

How lucky he was to have such a wife and a fig tree that would replenish itself in a few weeks.\u00a0 When he finally found his Beged Ka\u2019as he would give it to a fellow Chasid with an ugly, stingy wife who lacked a fig tree.\u00a0 He<\/em> would need it.<\/p>\n

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