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Showing posts from March, 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

Happy Purim

If anyone has a sense of mischief how about this? Hire a horse drawn funeral hearse with flowers spelling out E I R U V and a large banner wishing our dear rabbi Happy Purim and have it ride up and down the Hill and the Common all of Sunday. After all even Mordechai of the Purim story defied him to ride a horse.

Disjointed Union

Many of you have probably seen this but here it is anyway for those who haven’t. I won’t have time to do anything humorous for Purim but who needs humour when the head of the poultry division chickens out of a public meeting?  

Prepare to meet thy machers

If you live in Golders Green where you are wont to honour the ethos of the Union in its breach you will have ‘another opportunity’ to meet your masters. If however you are unfortunate enough to live in Stamford Hill please stay there and do not even dream of gatecrashing as by the size of your beard and length of your jacket shall ye be known and many have of late been expelled. Unless you are one of the panellists in which case it appears you are not welcome unless you are from Stamford Hill as it is only we who know what's right and wrong for you. Your role in Yiddishkeit is to turn up, pay up and shut up while we ‘are you moitse’ in the more pesky areas. Perhaps shutting up should be qualified since questions may be put a couple of light years ahead of the meeting or 'via the chairman' so as to ensure what not to address. It is not for this blog which generally limits itself to the holy square mile to comment on a meeting to which we weren’t invited even first time r

Maid in Heaven

Courtesy of Hirshel Tzig To the Hebraically challenged: the above is a greeting in a charity brochure. Since charity receptions and the occasional dinner are the best we have for going out in the evening, for men that is, the charity brochure is the equivalent of the society pages in Tatler. Not unfortunately who’s going out with whom as it happens so quickly round here that you’ve barely kissed the mezuze to go out and it’s time to come back in for the l’chaim announcing the engagement. Besides being the only distraction from drawn-out speeches by speakers internationally renown from their lectern-thumping histrionics, the brochure is also an indicator of who’s going places. ‘He? Last year he had a silver page and this year a diamond! Not bad. What’s he into?’ And ‘Where’s he, didn’t he have a platinum last year? Nebech , men hot im baganvet. I hear his wife’s started a playgroup.’ It is customary in such instances for pages to be donated for the elevation of dead souls. Or ra

Publish and be lauded

Guys, I feel like a diva at La Scala on the final curtain call. I bow before you all, tilt my head slightly back and thrust it forward propelling my hair, sorry my sheitel , into the air and over my face so that my head looks like a willow in the storm of applause. What should I tell you? I’m overwhelmed. Hits have shot up as if my site overdosed on Viagra, with a hechsher of course, (I now know what they mean by stats porn, you know that feeling a rebbe gets at a sell-out tish ), laudatory emails have been raining in from the chareidi blogosphere kings of yesteryear and the Hill is alive with the sound of comments. In the middle of it all stand I shaking like receiving my first Oscar and feeling, like the real winner, as if my career has peaked. Of my Warholian 15 minutes I can only say may they last for 120. But as my father always told me, 'don't let these things get to your head'. And as we were taught at the age of 9 in the ethical primer The Paths of the Righteous