I was a little anti-Semitic yesterday

Two young haredi boys demandingly knocked on the car's window. They wanted a ride downtown. I signaled "no." I am not headed that way and I don't feel like taking you.

II dubiously thought: "Not taking you. What's wrong with taking a bus? You better go to the army. Why do you disturb the traffic? You want to cause an accident? You scared me, black-hats. Why don't your rabbis forbid hitchhiking?

"Why do I need them in car? They'll make me change the radio station to one playing Hassidic music or a sermon by one of their rabbis. Weren't you exempt from military service to spend your time studying the Torah and not for climbing unto strangers' vehicles?

"They are just trying to save 5 shekels which they'll spend on cigarettes anyway. Not to mention that they're taking the place of the soldiers. No, I do not want to take you. Parasites. Of course they don't have bus money, they don't work. It's not just the bus; it's an entire culture of living on other people's expense."

I was deep in thoughts of the same kind as another haredi overtook me on the road a couple of days earlier.

He was more than a "wild driver," he was "a self-centered hardei," or "one that studies torah all day and has no manners."

Secular teenagers can drink and act violently, but no one (well, almost no one) will lament the condition of the secular youth. Yet, a black-hat wearing hitchhiker, or a wild haredi driver, is a representative of the entire religious community. As seculars are treated as individuals, haredim are always seen as a group.

As I was leaving Jerusalem, after the self-consumed anti-Semitic gush, I cooled down and picked up two yeshiva students en route to Bnei Brak. Last week I sarcastically lashed out asking my secular friends not to visit on Shabbat. Not giving a ride to haredim will leave me with no friends at all…

Uri Orbach is a radio talk show host and columnist