The Egged public bus company ran an ad last week in haredi newspapers with a challah depicted as a bus. It says that riding the bus is like taking a challah from the corner grocery store. Just like
you pay for the challah, you must pay for the bus ride. In other words, in Egged's perception, so many haredim are stealing rides that it needed to spend money to publish this ad in haredi papers to explain to haredim that stealing rides is wrong.
Late last week, Egged's CEO argued that Egged is a "haredi company" in Jerusalem because it picks up, drops off and travels through haredi neighborhoods, and that justifies making all advertising on every Egged bus in the city haredi-safe, meaning no pictures of women or little girls, no cartoon pictures of women or little girls, no pictures of non-kosher animals or cartoons or drawings of those animals or of extinct animals like dinosaurs – and no cartoons of space aliens. (Egged has extended this ban to all depictions of human or human-like figures and all depictions of all animals to get around a High Court of Justice ban on censoring women's images.)
While he was making this claim, Egged – a public bus company operating like a public utility – published this ad in haredi newspapers to explain to haredim that just like you pay for the challah from the corner store, you must also pay for riding the bus.
In other words, in Egged's perception, so many haredim are stealing rides that it needed to spend money to publish this ad in haredi papers to explain to haredim that stealing rides is wrong:
[Hat Tip: Jewish Worker.]