Toledo Tales

Left: Hashem attacking Rivkin with loaf of bread

(Toledo, OH) Relations between the owners of Rivkin's Deli and Saeed's Snack Shack have "never been exactly good," according to one employee, but the tensions between the two men have now boiled over into what all agree is "full scale war."

Snack Shack owner Saeed Hashem said that Moshe Rivkin is to blame for the outbreak of hostilities.

"He telling my customers that we are terrorists and illegal aliens for months now," he said of his next-door neighbor. "So I decide to get back by telling a few of his sandwich customers that 'kosher' to Rivkin means 'whatever cheap meat I can pass off as good.' It serve the mamhoon right."

Rivkin has a different view of the origin of the conflict.

"That Lebanese shlemiel and his idiot employees take up all of my parking places, and my take-out customers have been complaining," he said. "So I told that shmendrik to be so kind as to move a car or two, and the farkuckt gaunef starts acting like a complete meshuggeneh ."

The disagreement exploded into violence last week, as Hashem hurled a loaf of moldy, day-old bread at the deli owner.

"He wrap this piece of chraa in a box and give it to me, saying my mother left it with him," he said. "After I open it, he come outside and laugh. I show him whose mother is a sharmuta."

Left: A slice of Rivkin's "present" to Hashem

Both sides say that the situation has deteriorated, and that an impartial peacekeeping force - composed of two relatives from each man's extended family - may be the only permanent solution to the escalating violence in the crisis.

In the meantime, said Hashem, "Rivkin better watch his teez."