The cozy heimish living conditions in many frum neighborhoods in Eretz Yisrael lead to some pretty funny jokes—jokes which aren’t far from the reality, as you’ll see below.
One joke goes like this:
A man in his apartment in Bnei Brak opens his mouth to enjoy a dairy meal when he hears a neighbor’s voice calling out: “Stop! You ate a hot dog only a couple of hours ago—you’re still fleishig!”
Then another neighbor’s voice rings out: “No, it’s okay—it was a pareve hot dog!”
Other jokes feature a neighbor who corrects your bracha or says “Gezundheit!” after you sneeze.
Our real-life scenario occurred in our sukkah this year on Shabbat chol hamo’ed, the Sabbath during the intermediate days of Sukkot, between the festival/chag/yantiv days.
We build our sukkah on our porch, which sits across from the sukkah our next-door neighbors & diagonally under the staggered sukkahs of all the neighbors above us, and borders on the schach of our downstairs neighbors.
A bedroom window sits next to our porch where our under-the-weather teenager lay in bed.
So we all thought Shabbat Kiddush should be said really loud so he could hear it through the sukkah walls via his open bedroom window.
And so, the beginning of Kiddush was cheerfully bellowed out, with the Sefardi “Savri maranan” prior to the bracha (to which everyone answers “L’chaim!”)—except we heard not even a faint “L’chaim” from the mildly ill child’s direction.
So “Savri maranan” was repeated louder & louder, until we all figured he heard, but we just couldn’t hear him.
As the bracha was being said, a voice rang out from above: “You’re saying Kiddush for Shabbat-Yom Tov! You need to say Kiddush for Shabbat-chol hamo’ed!”
Because we were in the middle of hearing Kiddush, we didn’t catch everything he said, so the Kiddush stopped and there was total silence before our side uttered the traditional “Ah-ah-ah?” that Orthodox Jews do when you can’t talk, like between netilat yadayim & hamotzi.