ALL BIKER PHOTOS BY RAVIV COHEN The Mazel Tuffs on their monthly Sunday cruise down the highway in search of good food and good times.
F
rom a very young age, whether we realize it or not at the time, we learn that Judaism requires “community.” We gather 10 people for a minyan. We study and pray together in Hebrew school, play together at summer camps and in youth groups, and meet at Hillels on college campuses. As a religious group, we are commanded to gather together, and at so many times in our history, we have had only each other. Maybe this explains why some Jews enjoy sharing hobbies and interests with their fellow Jews, like the Northern California chaverim of Jewish ham radio operators or the Potomac Yacht Club of Jewish sailors. Pittsburgh Jews do it, too— finding Jewish harmony in places you wouldn’t think to look… like on a yoga mat or a Harley Davidson.
PHOTO BY RAVIV COHEN
Eat to Ride and Ride to Eat Six years ago, when the Chai Riders of Chicago and other members of the Jewish Motorcycle Alliance were on their way to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC for the first “Ride to Remember,” they appealed to Jewish motorcycle riders in Pittsburgh to join them. Coincidentally, a steady group of about 10 men and women was already riding together once a month. The group “Jews Who Cruise” (now known as the “Mazel Tuff Motorcycle Club”) joined in and, along with 900 of their fellow riders, received a police escort from Virginia into D.C. and to the museum. A rabbi from Florida had a special carrier on the front of his three-wheel motor trike to cradle a kosher Torah for the occasion—a meaningful event the Mazel Tuffs would not soon forget. They have since participated in the Israel Day Parade in New York City and in Hadassah’s Ride for Research to benefit breast cancer research, but according to Ed Weisberg, a regular rider, most of their rides are of the “ride for brisket” variety. They meet one Sunday a month (April to October weather permitting), and as they like to say, they “eat to ride and ride to eat.” This is a group of Jewish bikers after all. And to that end, helmets are mandatory and they must be home by dusk…all raised under the influence of Jewish mothers, obviously.
Participants in the Yoga and Jewish Spirituality Teacher Training Institute led by Diane Bloomfield (Torah Yoga) and Rabbi Myriam Klotz (Institute for Jewish Spirituality) at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Connecticut last August.
ISSUE 4
7