Last night I visited Mosad Harav Kook, the famed research institution and publishing house, for their annual sale. It runs until next week, and I highly recommend it. A huge selection of great books, almost all from them, of course, at huge discounts. I managed to restrain myself and limited myself to what I came for. (OK, maybe just a bit more. But that was it.) There was a big and very diverse crowd browsing and buying.

In the lobby was someone selling the Bar Ilan Responsa Project, now on "disk on key." I think if you bought enough at the sale you got a discount. He had some monitors set up to demonstrate and greeted everyone coming in with an "Erev Tov" ("Good evening"), a flyer, and, presumably, a sales pitch if you stuck around. On my way out, he was still at it. A man in a black hat and suit came in:

Salesman: "Erev to..."

Customer, cutting him off and hurrying on: "Ain li mechashev." ("I don't own a computer.")

He was so abrupt I just had to laugh out loud, although a few seconds later I realized that, the Haredi world being what it is, he might well have been telling the truth. Still, it made me smile. And I got a few good books out of it too, which is never a bad thing.