YouTube videos feature Sondik on the street singing Chassidic style tunes, then, taking out a picture, he says “See this good looking man? This is my father.” Then he takes out a picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and says, “He agrees with this good looking man’s teachings that we can save the world.” He then promises the man he was talking to that he would get married in a month if he went to Chassidic gatherings and that he should put on tefillin, “because God puts on tefillin.” Aside from breaking out in “Oy-ya-yoys” now and again, Sondik seems to be doing what many Lubavitcher chassidim do, passing out leaflets, explaining the commandments and encouraging people to become more observant. Kimmel’s routine did not include the outreach aspect, but focused only on the “oy-ya-yoy” shtick, which seems reasonable for a comedian to do, but did make Sondik seem crazier than the conversational sections of the clip convey. At the end of the talk, Sondik requests the person he’s been speaking at to put the video on YouTube under the heading “13th Avenue Rabbi” or “The Flying Rabbi,” and says repeatedly, “It is what I say, not you say,” demonstrating that Sondik wants to carefully control the way he is presented to the public, which makes the fact that he later filed a lawsuit not so surprising.
Tolchin said Sondik was just “goofing around,” and the fact the video was used caused distress to Sondik, who said, according to the New York Post, “It has caused me difficulty and pain. Now they think I’m a joke. A comedian.” William J. Gorta of the Post said, “Jimmy Kimmel is no mentsch.” One wonders whether Jimmy Kimmel benefited from his celebrity status in winning the suit and if he would have been so successful if he were a regular guy. However, much of the case hinged on the fact that Kimmel’s show is watched by millions of viewers. Comedy can sometimes be unkind, and since the case was following New York Law, the fact that there wasn’t a clear cut attempt to exploit Sondik financially made the suit unlikely to succeed from the start.
Incidentally, there was a historic figure nicknamed “flying rabbi,” Louis Werfel, the only Orthodox rabbi known to have been killed in action during the Second World War. He traveled by plane to Jewish airmen in various locations in North Africa and dealt with issues of Shabbat, kashrut and other aspects of Jewish observance. While returning from a Chanukah observance, Rabbi Werfel’s plane crashed into the Algerian mountains due to poor visibility. He was eulogized by Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin, who said that he “sacrificed himself voluntarily at the altar of his God. He lived with a purpose—and died for an even greater purpose.”