WEST LAFAYETTE, IN — When local student Ezra Adler was asked by a bearded man, presumably of Chabad affiliation, if he had put on tefillin that day, it was the lie heard ‘round the world.
Though laying phylacteries is traditional for Jewish men over the age of 13 to do every morning, Ezra had not – contrary to what he responded to the Chabad man that accosted him while on his way to his political science lecture class early Wednesday morning.
“I was late to class, so I was speed walking,” Adler said, “when this dude jumped in front of me. I tried to ignore him, but he wouldn’t stop staring at me with his piercing, pale blue eyes. I just said what I had to say.”
The man, who was reportedly sweating profusely through the ill-fitting white button down he wears every day, has been seen setting up a table right in the center of Purdue’s most trafficked thoroughfare every week for months.
“I don’t even know how he knew I was Jewish. I wasn’t wearing a kippah or anything,” Adler recounted. “Pretty impressive, honestly.” As of yet, Adler has not seen any legal or metaphysical consequences for his lie.
theschmear.com 