The Case of the Jew-y Getaway Car

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If I was going to rob a bank on and steal a rabbi’s car to use as a getaway vehicle, I would probably avoid an “old Dodge Caravan decorated with Stars of David and sporting a rooftop ad for a synagogue.”  But that’s just me, I guess.  Check out this story from the Washington Post: 

The bank robber was looking to steal a getaway car and had a choice of two minivans, parked next to each other outside Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld‘s house in Northwest Washington. One was a nondescript silver Toyota Sienna. The other was an old Dodge Caravan decorated with Stars of David and sporting a rooftop ad for a synagogue.
Guess which one the robber took.
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” said a mystified Herzfeld, rabbi of Ohev Sholom synagogue in Northwest. “He thought he would blend right in?”
Police say the robber used the synagogue’s van when he held up a Commerce Bank in Clinton on Sept. 2, just hours after Herzfeld discovered it missing. The 15-year-old vehicle, a former taxi donated to the Orthodox synagogue by the owner of a cab company, had been used as a cruising advertisement for the house of worship by its energetic young rabbi, known for his offbeat promotion ideas.
Aside from the Stars of David and contact information for the synagogue on the doors, the former taxi’s giant rooftop cruising light had been draped with an ad for the synagogue along with a photo of a shofar, a ram’s horn that Jews have used since biblical times. On the rear of the vehicle was the invitation “Join Us on the High Way.”

Full story
It’s actually kind of an awesome ruse.  Who would guess that the guy in the Jew-y minivan just robbed a bank?  Certainly not me…

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