A bright, young, fresh-out-of-school auditor just joined the
IRS, excited to begin tracking down high-powered offenders;
like the Enron or WorldCom guys. Anxious for his first high-
powered audit, he was a bit dismayed when his assignment was
to audit a Rabbi. Looking over the books and taxes were
pretty straight forward and the Rabbi clearly very frugal,
so he thought he'd make his day interesting by having a
little fun with the Rabbi.
"Rabbi," he said, "I noticed that you buy a lot of candles."
"Yes," answered the Rabbi. "Well, Rabbi, what do you do with
the candle drippings?" he asked. "A good question," noted the
Rabbi. "We actually save them up and when we have enough, we
send them back to the candle maker. And every now and then,
they send us a free box of candles." "Oh," replied the auditor
somewhat disappointed that his unusual question actually had
a practical answer. So he thought he'd go on in his obnoxious
way...
"Rabbi, what about all these matzo purchases? What do you do
with the crumbs from the matzo?" "Ah, yes," replied the Rabbi
calmly, "we actually collect up all the crumbs from the matzo
and when we have enough, we send them in a box back to the
manufacturer and every now and then, they send a box of matzo
balls." "Oh," replied the auditor, thinking hard how to
fluster the Rabbi. "Well, Rabbi," he went on, "what do you do
with all the foreskins from the circumcisions?" "Yes, here too,
we do not waste," answered the Rabbi. "What we do is save up
all the foreskins, and when we have enough we actually send
them to the I.R.S."
"The I.R.S.?," questioned the auditor in disbelief. "Ahh, yes,"
replied the Rabbi," the I.R.S." ...and about once a year, they
send us a little prick like you.