simultaneously symbolic and the opposite of symbolic

[cremains]

On the very crowded bus yesterday on my way to my last day of work, an Ashkenazi hareidi man managed to take up ALL the room at the front, gesticulating wildly as he shouted into his cell phone "Vus?! Vus?!!" For non-Israelis to get a sense of how this was, imagine a white guy doing the same thing on one of your buses, but shouting (in a way that is somehow legit in the conversation) "HONKEY! HONKEY!"