1-877-OO-RAH

Thou Shalt Not Take My Volvo in Vain

I have seen the 1-877-Kars4Kids ads for decades. Watching young children pretend to sing and play toy instruments is both annoying and creepy. We never see the adults behind the camera, but it isn’t a stretch to imagine they are working for the Epstein Class. But trading cars for musically talentless children might be a good idea, and people with many cars could afford to give these kids good homes and maybe even music lessons. So I kept my concerns to myself.

Today I learned that people weren’t trading cars for kids at all. They were donating their cars to Kars4Kids, which sells the cars and gives 60% of the proceeds (about $45 million a year) to its sister organization, Oorah, which operates from the same New Jersey building.

When I first learned this, I felt better about Kars4Kids.

I had never heard of Oorah and assumed it was a support group for Marine Corps veterans. Marines are always yelling “oo-rah” on television. They’ve been doing this since the 1950s, when they trained with Navy submariners and began imitating the submarine’s dive alarm. No one else does this, so Oorah must be for Marines.

Turns out I was wrong. Oorah has no connection to the United States Marine Corps.

Oorah is an Orthodox Jewish organization that provides matchmaking services for Jewish adults, camps and after-school programs for Jewish kids, and trips to Israel for Jewish teens. Kars4Kids funds Oorah’s programs and its $16.5 million HQ in Israel. Oorah means “wake up” in Hebrew.

Esti Landau, Kars4Kids’ chief operating officer, explained that although children from many backgrounds benefit from Kars4Kids, the organization’s mission is to “help Jewish children and their families and provide them with the support they need throughout their lives.”

Throughout their lives? This is like when I adopted a baby elephant for about $50 a year and then discovered that baby elephants grow into adult elephants, which cost $30,000 a year just to feed! Oorah! Wake up!

All this came out in a lawsuit brought against Kars4Kids by Bruce Puterbaugh, who donated a Volvo to the organization and received neither a kid nor an elderly Jew nor a Marine in return.

Judge Apkarian, who is presiding over the case, said the Kars4Kids ads were misleading because they failed to disclose that Kars4Kids is a Jewish charity that works with Oorah.

The judge banned Kars4Kids from running its ads in California and ordered the charity to refund Mr. Puterbaugh $250, the fair market value of his nonworking Volvo.

Wow. The real crime here is that even a non-running Volvo is worth only $250. That doesn’t seem right. However, it is enough to feed an adult elephant for a day, and I urge Mr. Puterbaugh to put his refund to that use.

Banning the Kars4Kids ads from running in California doesn’t seem like a strong enough punishment. If it were up to me, I would have demanded that the charity rewrite its ad nationwide. From now on, those kids should dress as Orthodox Jews and sing a more honest version of the jingle:

1-877-Kars-4-Yids
K-A-R-S, Kars for Yids!
1-877-Kars-4-Yids,
Donate your car today L’chayyim!