When You Don't Know the Difference Between a Jacuzzi and a Mikveh

Under-Dos is the name of an Israeli Orthodox comedy group which specializes in irreverent sketches on aspects of Jewish life that are hilariously and immediately recognizable to "insiders", that is, religious Jews.  "Dos" is an Israeli slang term for someone who is religiously observant. 

As Elad Benari and Yoni Kempinski reported in Arutz Sheva,

“Our sketches are religiously oriented,” group member Yair Ya’akobi told Arutz Sheva. “This means we take every day situations from the typical religious milieu, we try to take them to extremes and see what happens.”

Ya’akobi emphasized that while many comedy groups essentially make fun of religion, Under-Dos makes sure not to push the limit and not to make fun of the values in which its members and religious viewers believe, but just of the situations that can arise in their lives.

“What we try to do is to be 100% kosher, because it’s easy to push the limits and then you find yourself making fun of the values that you stand for, and we really don’t want that,” he said. “We just look at things from different angles and with a wink.”

Most of the sketches are in Hebrew, spoken so fast that they have Hebrew subtitles. 

We posted one of their sketches in October 2013. Here's another one that needs a little explanation, so please bear with us. 

The scene takes place in a Jacuzzi next to an indoor swimming pool where one guy is enjoying the bubbling warm waters. Along comes an Orthodox Jew with a bunch of kitchen utensils that he wants to immerse in the Jacuzzi, never having seen a Jacuzzi and thinking that it's a mikveh for dishes. (Orthodox practice calls for immersion of new dishes before their first use.) A brief dialogue ensues in which the guy in the Jacuzzi explains it to the guy with the dishes, who asks why the bather would want to bathe in a mikveh for dishes. The bather explains that the Jacuzzi is for pleasure, something the guy with the dishes doesn't seem to have a clue about. But he gets it pretty fast and very quickly jumps into the bubbling waters. 

So now he's an expert on Jacuzzis and when a black-hatted Haredi Jew arrives to dunk his pots in the water, he gets a quick education from the newcomer to the Jacuzzi, whereupon the Haredi joins the other two and exclaims: "Ah Jacuzzi, where have you been all my life?"

That sets the stage for yet another dish dunker who is told by the black-hatter to go away because there's no more room for him in the Jacuzzi. Frustrated, he throws his dish into the big pool.

Enjoy! 

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