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Last Night Hatzolah Was On “The Simpsons”

Last Night Hatzolah Was On “The Simpsons”

I cannot believe The Simpsons are STILL on television, since I was watching them back when I had braces and now have four children, two of whom are old enough to have braces! Being that it’s season TWENTY-EIGHT, you can imagine that the writers have needed lots of ideas over the years to fill up so many episodes. During choir practice in ninth grade, my best friend Sara and I came up with an episode where the Simpsons would visit Itchy and Scratchy Land. A year later, such an episode aired. In 2000, The Simpsons had an episode where Donald Trump became president, in 2016, the U.S. followed suit!

With all the twists and turns this series has taken (it’s been decades since I watched it!) I was delighted to hear that on last night’s episode, “The Night After Krustmas,” as Rabbi Eliyahu Fink pointed out on Facebook, Hatzolah the Orthodox Jewish ambulance corps, came to Springfield.

I did not watch the episode and the short blurb I found online did not give too much insight into how and why this band of religious Jews came to town, but my takeaway is that it’s nice to see that this is something the Orthodox Jewish community has become known for. When I was making my transition from Conservative to Orthodox back in high school, an observant Jewish family from my synagogue essentially staged an intervention where they tried to stop me from crossing that line.

“We’re kosher,” they told me, “We observe Shabbat,” they continued. “If you become Orthodox, you’ll become a rock thrower.” What a busha, that extremists within the Orthodox community did this awful thing enough times to make people from without think that throwing rocks is somehow a normative part of Orthodox Judaism. At the same time, what nachas we should feel to have such dedicated members of Hatzolah in our community, who are often first on the scene and happily serve anyone in need, and have also become a thing we are known for.

Since The Simpsons may outlast us all at this rate, may we merit to only have positive representations there and in all of TVLand.

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Allison Josephs

Allison Josephs is the founder and executive director of Jew in the City has been involved in the field of Jewish Outreach for over twenty years and is the Partner in Torah mentor to actress Mayim Bialik. She was named one of NJOP’s Top Ten Jewish Influencers and one of the Jewish Week’s 36 under 36. Allison has been quoted or written about in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, People Magazine, NYPost, Daily News, TMZ, The Daily Beast, and Hollywood Reporter. She has appeared on numerous television and radio networks including CBS, ABC, Fox5, TLC, Associate Press TV, and NPR; her articles have appeared in publications including The Washington Post, JTA, Jewish Week, Jerusalem Post, The Forward, and Kveller. Pearson Education, the largest textbook company in the world, produced a video segment on Allison’s life for the Judaism chapter of their textbook. She is a sought-after international lecturer whose corporate clients include Con-Edison and NYU Langone and hosts a weekly podcast on the Nachum Segal Network. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in Philosophy and lives with her husband and four children minutes from the George Washington Bridge.