“You’ve been calling me almost daily for months from hotels. You’re blowing all your money on hotels. What if I give you the $115? When are you going to call me again for more?”<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll call to say thank you.”<\/p>\n
“When I gave you money the last time, I said it was tzedakah,<\/em> and that was that. Yom Kippur — today, I get it. I’ll give you 115 more but I\u2019m not answering any more calls. Where are your relatives in all this? Hit them up, hit them up, and hit them up again.”<\/p>\n “Honest to God, you were not my first call.”<\/p>\n “If I give you the money, you\u2019re going to call me tomorrow and say, ‘I\u2019m desperate.’ And I\u2019ll say, ‘Call the Jewish Family Service. Get the hell out of the hotel.'”<\/p>\n “I did call the Jewish Family Service.”<\/p>\n “They are not going to put an old Jew, like you, out on the street. I don\u2019t think so.”<\/p>\n “Well, so far they certainly haven\u2019t offered anything. I am not here to debate you. I’m just asking.”<\/p>\n “You’re asking after I told you not to ask again. I hope you get your shit together.”<\/p>\n “I do too. Thank you.”<\/p>\n I gave Sam the $115, and he didn’t call again. Until last week. He said, “I need $80 quickly!” (He left that message on my ancient answering machine. I’ve blocked Sam on my cell phone, but my answering machine\/landline doesn’t have a block feature.)<\/p>\n I’m forwarding Sam’s next call to you. You<\/em> deal with it.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n (Sam and I\u00a0 grew up together but went our separate ways decades ago. “Sam” is a pseudonym.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sam — an old friend, or more accurately an old “ex-friend” — called\u00a0 me on Yom Kippur in September. He said, “I need $115 for one more night in this hotel. I don\u2019t know who else to call. That\u2019s why I’m reaching out.” “Where are you?” I said. “At a Comfort Inn in Pennsylvania.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34783"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34864,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34783\/revisions\/34864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/motel-dennis-trauben-296x300.png\")
<\/p>\n