While I was in Jerusalem, I had dinner with reform cantorial and rabbinical students from HUC. At one point I heard the conversation at the end of the table turn to a story about someone’s GPS taking them on a dangerous route on the way back from Tel Aviv one Saturday. They said that as soon as they entered a town close to the West Bank the GPS went out. Suddenly a mob surrounded them and they started to shout, “Shabbas! Shabbas!” This wasn’t what I was expecting after the student had mentioned mob. I had been thinking that Arabs had appeared and were starting to harass them. But instead it was a crowd of ‘black hats,’ Haredian Jews that take Shabbat very seriously. The student driving said he was lucky. He said that a friend the week before had hurt his ankle and had been unable to walk for long distances and so needed to take a cab, even on Shabbat. At one point they passed a group of children who threw rocks at the cab yelling “Shabbas!” The driver got out and yelled angrily in Hebrew, “Why not Shabbat?” After climbing back in he smiled at the student and said in Hebrew, “Kids!” I asked how could throwing rocks not be considered ‘work’ and one of the rabbinical students said that they heard if you set the rock aside for a specific purpose before Shabbat, and not spend time collecting it on Shabbat, it can be used. The most extreme example of the Haredian violence, was the mob that had occurred within the last year. An Ambulance went through a Haredian neighborhood and the people crowded around it and flipped it over with the people inside. “You’re dead already if you break Shabbat,” one student said expressing the Haredian ideology. “No more harm can be done.” Again I wondered, isn’t flipping an ambulance breaking the Shabbat? I also asked about ‘life rule’ which is, if a life is in danger the Shabbat can be broken, so that many more Shabbatot can be spent unbroken. Everyone agreed nodding, life should be more important than Shabbat, but no one could answer why the Haredian think otherwise.