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Showing posts from July, 2011

Of Making Many Books

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12) A pdf version of this essay  can be downloaded here [*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now — IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022 A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to

Divisions Divisions

Sorry no time to comment at length but the letter speaks for itself. My favourite is engaging the concept of ze nehene v’ze loi chosar - one enjoys and another is not put at loss- for this purpose. Which side of the mechitze will be enjoying themselves? Surely the inability of husbands to ‘signal and gesture to their wives’ Go- forbid, must be a loss of some kind. One can just imagine the scene. He gets warmed up at Anim Zemiroth singing about locks, black and wavy and winks skywards, she nods in dissent and he continues shockling into his siddur, ‘Shith hamon shirai no olecho…’ You must however commend the writer for his honesty. Rather than try on rely on pseudo-halachic arguments as with the eiruv , to which this rabbi is opposed, he gives it to you as it is. Those half goyim in Beis Yisroel and Or Chodosh with ‘United Synagogue Rabbis’, well you know what that implies, have ‘superior’ divides and how can we be seen to be inferior. So to the barricades, members, or in this case m

Tragic omissions

There are times when our beloved Buffoon outdoes even himself and last week was just such an occasion. After the fiasco of Kedassia beef’s fellow travellers he tries to set the record straight that this was not the norm and that it will not happen again. Strangely, none of this was included in Kedassia’s statement on the matter which implied that the practice was very much the norm. He then accuses ‘another Shechita board’ of behaving in the same way without providing a source. Facts however are never allowed to get in the way of the Chareidi papers where C.P. Scott’s famous maxim is reversed: comment is sacred but facts are free. Not content with this he then proceeds with his trademark wit to even the score. Under the heading 'Four unreported tragedies' he lists four elderly rabbis who recently passed away and complains that none of the deaths was reported by the JC with the implication that the JC cares only for the pigs and not for the rabbis. Score: 5-1 to the pigs.

We only say goodbye

Am I the only one who’s noticed the marked similarity in the opening beat and cords of Back to Black and bein kach u’bein kach by Avraham Fried? Listen to the first 10 seconds. I suppose it’s unlikely Amy took it from Avraham… Well, tsi azoi tsi azoi she had an amazing voice and it’s sad that such talent was destroyed so young. She had a local connection too: the Back to Black video was shot in the Abney Park cemetery and in Stoke Newington streets .

Kedassia and the porkies

What are we to make of these new bedfellows, Kedassia meat, world famous for its excellence in kashrus and with a price to match, and some lowly piggies slaughtered presumably for the non-kedassia market? After Peppa Pig is this Rebbe Pig? Before you bother huffing and puffing with your brilliant erudition that halachically there is nothing wrong in kedassia beef catching a free ride with some piggies and that they have been travel companions ever since the chazeirim have been ripping us off with their prices, let me remind you that there are other matters at stake when the ‘Seal of Quality’ gets into bed with the bacon. For a start can we be sure that the pigs don’t carry in the eiruv? What if a piggy noshed a strawberry which then splashed onto the beef? What then,eh? Are you prepared to take the achrayis of strawberry juice without a hechsher contaminating your chulent ? Let me pre-empt what the buffoon with a bout of mad-cow disease is bound to raise: can we be sure that the