From the times of Adam and Chava we learned of the lure of the apple. Chava could not resist taking a bite of the fruit that she was warned not to taste. Her inquisitiveness, as we know, had repercussions that have probably affected us all. What is it about “no-nos” that make them that more attractive to us?
We watch as children are told that they may not do something, and instantly you will notice from the corner of your eye that the child will test us by making a dive for whatever he or she was not supposed to do. We as adults are not that much better. We remember in our teen years as beginning drivers we had specific markers of where we could and could not drive. Nina was allowed at the ripe old age of 16 to only drive her parents’ car around Jericho (where she lived). Those markers basically gave her a scope of traveling to pretty much nowhere other than the supermarket and post office. She remembers well, taking the car out for a drive when her parents were not at home, driving quite a bit past where she was allowed to travel, all the way into Manhattan to visit her beloved Mordechai. She was 17 and he was 18 and a student at Yeshiva University. What rebels we were, and much had to do with the fact that it was an absolute rule that needed to be broken (at least just once).
Today the apple still haunts us, but in a totally different vein. We have spent the past few days searching for Mordechai’s iPhone, which everyone knows is produced by Apple. We are still confused as to why a major company manufacturing one of the world’s best-known brands insisted on calling it after a fruit. If we continue in this trend, the world’s best racing bikes will probably one day be called Grape, and imagine getting the latest in modern kitchens, with all appliances made by Pear. Back to our missing Apple phone, it has basically caused havoc in our life. How sad is that? Without it Mordechai basically cannot call anyone, because every number that he needs is in his contacts. Today we are in the age of memory loss from the time we are 20. Who needs to remember anything? We just press a button, and there the person is whom we wish to speak with.
Under the beds, throughout every pillow on our living room couches, on our backs and our knees several times in two days, looking inside and all around the floor of our car. Perhaps it is in the trunk—no luck there. We even tried the freezer, the washing machine, every coat, every jacket, every pair of pants pockets and we are still Apple-less. Assuming that a logical place to look for Mordechai’s phone would be in the fruit store, which is where we remember him last using it, we hoped that they would affirm to us that they had found the Apple amongst the apples. Lo and behold, it is nowhere to be found. How pathetic that we have become so dependent upon these annoying devices that everyone including us so depends on. Ironically, we can remember the home phone numbers that we had when we were growing up. 516 433 9018—why would we remember Nina’s home number in Jericho when we cannot even remember our grandchildrens’ numbers unless we look them up in our contacts?
In case anyone finds a dead Apple hanging around—please call us on your live phone. We think that perhaps this does all stem back to the days of Adam and Chava. Why do the repercussions of their actions have to continue to haunt us? We knew that we should never have succumbed to that Apple phone.
By Rabbi Mordechai and Nina Glick
