NEVER, EVER PARK THERE
From a speech by Rabbi Paysach Krohn at the Agudah Convention
Courtesy of Hamodia Magazine
The topic I want to speak about is very sensitive. This is the first time in all my years of public speaking that people called me and said,” Please don’t speak about it.” I usually try to please others, but here I feel that this is simply too important.
I want to talk about helping people who are disabled by not parking in a spot reserved specifically for the handicapped.
I’m begging every one of you, please, for your own benefit, don’t ever, ever park in a handicapped spot.
Why?
Just listen to this mishnah. This isn’t me speaking now; it’s a mishnah in Peah (8:9):
Kol mi she’eino chigger v’lo suma, anyone who is not crippled and is not blind, v’oseh atzmo k’echad meihem, but makes it seem as if he is handicapped—and the example we’re discussing now is those who illegally park in a spot reserved for the handicapped—eino mes min haziknah ad she’yihiyeh k’echad meihem, he (or she) will not die of old age until he becomes exactly like a handicapped person!
When you see a spot reserved for the handicapped, keep away. It’s poison! Because if you act like a handicapped person, chas v’shalom, the mishnah says that’s exactly what’s going to happen to you.
Do you know what happened at the office of a pediatrician in one of our frum communities the other day? You won’t believe it. A man saw ten empty parking spots in the far end of the parking lot and one spot for the handicapped right in front of the door—and he parked in the reserved spot.
A few minutes later a woman pulled up in her car with her teenage daughter who couldn’t walk. She needed to pull into the handicapped spot, but a car was already there. What could she do? Her daughter had to see the doctor. So this poor woman was forced to carry her teenaged daughter across the parking lot—because somebody had taken the handicapped spot.
“I had to schlep her like a sack of potatoes,” the woman told me when she shared her story.
So don’t do it, I beg you—for your own sake, if not for theirs!
I know some people who got tickets because they were parked in handicapped spots. They should dance for joy that they got them!
If that was you, let me tell you why you should dance for joy. Rabbi Jay Marcus, who was a Rav in the Young Israel of Staten Island, once told me a great story. He said that he used to drive Reb Moshe (Harav Moshe Feinstein) zt”l from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to his Yeshiva in Staten Island. He would pick up Reb Moshe every Wednesday, and all of the way from the Lower East Side to the Yeshiva of Staten Island he would ask Reb Moshe she’eilos. Perfect.
Once while doing this, he was speeding on the Staten Island Expressway and he got a ticket. He was so humiliated—to get a speeding ticket in front of Reb Moshe. Red-faced, he said to Reb Moshe, “I thought sheluchei mitzvah ein nizakin, someone who is performing a mitzvah doesn’t get harmed.”
Reb Moshe replied, “That ‘s why the officer stopped you!”
What a great answer. What Reb Moshe meant was, “That’s why you got the ticket—so that you should not be harmed. So you should never even dream of speeding again.” It’s the same with the fellow who gets a ticket for parking in a spot reserved for the handicapped. In reality he should be grateful because it’s a warning and a lesson that he should never do that again.
Therefore, I beg you: Don’t even think of parking in such a spot. Keep away from it! Not because I’m telling you but because the heilige mishnah is telling you. And if you get ticketed for it, dance! Because then you’ll never do it again.
Just look at these pictures I’m showing you (Rabbi Krohn displayed pictures during his speech that was not printed to protect the honor of the community in which they were taken)—snow dumped in a handicapped spot in front of Jewish-owned store! If you or your child were handicapped chas v’shalom, would you want to have to deal with this?
Look at the photo of a shul—a shul!—that built a sukkah on the space reserved for the handicapped. In my opinion, that belongs in the same category as a lulav hagazul (a lulav that was stolen and can then never be used to fulfill the mitzvah).
You know what Rav Chaim Kanievsky, shlita, said? I saw the letter. He said, “A person comes to shul and parks in a handicapped spot is doing a mitzvah haba ba’aveirah.” It would seem then, that every word that person davens is another aveirah.
So in the spirit of achdus and ahavas Yisroel let’s be concerned for those in K’lal Yisroel who might be challenged.