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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

Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody

stamford hill cycle superhighway

Actually the opposition to the local section of the London Cycle Superhighway (currently in construction) is more malodorous than melodious though unchained and unhinged this lot of killjoys certainly are. Mind you, they're not much different to their forbears who saw in the arrival of the railway tracks the advent of degeneracy and no doubt had they been around in Edison's days they would have ordered him to switch off the light. So immersed are they in awaiting the redemption that they cannot contemplate other improvements in their sorry lives and so they worry that a cycle route through 'our' area may herald the arrival of something clean and fresh to replace the old and staid they are so fond of. And as to where it might lead, that is one route they would rather not go down, but to them it's quite enough that it takes you beyond the confines of Stamford Hill, Go- forbid.

There's not much point trying to persuade such kind of the advantages of a cleaner, healthier, quieter and safer mode of transport. God created cars on Erev Shabbos bein hashmoshes and who are we to reduce their use? As for the environment, stop worrying already and it will be alright. The eibihster wouldn't have made an XC90 if He thought it might destroy His universe and stop believing everything that scientists tell you. And anyway it's only 0.4 of a mile in our area so what's the big deal, let them go elsewhere.

uohc anti cycle route, shop locations

Don't think we're alone in this either because we're not. There are 3,300 'local' people who oppose the route. Now local is a hip and modern word which can be stretched and contracted according to its needs. In this case, of the 9 shops where a petition, supported by the loony if not sinister UOHC Modesty Squad, was available to be signed, fewer than half are anywhere near the route and 2 are outside Hackney altogether. Of course, we're not into borough and ward boundaries unless we're trying to throw an election and what matters here is the line of the hypothetical local eiruv were it not banned by this same lot. Similarly, not one of the 3 councillors who selflessly made their homes available for the same purpose represent or reside in the ward where the cycle route will run through. And if you look at the one available page of signatories (below) many live in E5 and N15. But, like kedushe, 'local' has no geographical limits and perhaps, on a quiet night with the right type of wind, the sound of a loud bicycle bell on Heathland Road can be heard even as far as Theydon Road.

cycling petitionThis generosity is not limited to geography and aims to be as inclusive as one might hope. The Petitioners, like the Tribune, want you to know that there is a Black, Polish and Muslim Community living here too. How strange I've never noticed it before. It must be thanks to the irresponsible landlords who are regularly admonished for admitting 'inappropriate tenants' to the area but now we are to embrace the rainbow stuff in order to oppose the most rainbowy pastime of all, cycling. Interfaith is wonderful when a camera is pointing at you but it's in-yer-face for the rest of the time. They even called a 'local' meeting which they made sure no one knew about just in case someone with an opposing view turned up. Debate, as we well know, can be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Someone might even have pointed out the real heimish-but-dead cyclist who may have been alive if he was on a route segregated from those wonderful metal boxes on wheels.

But this isn't just any dumb ban like the ones we've come to love to hate, this one is dead serious. There are no less than four reasons for banning the bikes. Traffic. Parking. Safety. Kids. Do you have no heart even towards our precious kinderlech? Ok, amongst ourselves maybe we don't mamesh give a damn for safety and barely one for kids but what's that their business? Anyway they don't need to know about it unless that meshigene blogger opens his mouth again. But shoin we're not like that all the time. We do after all have 3 ambulances on permanent standby to care for our safety though still the accidents keep on happening, but that's because our skirts are not long enough.

cycle, Tribune[4]

And so if safety is your concern naturally ban the bikes. They might soon be banning goldfish in case they bite the hand that feeds them but ribono shel olom we're talking about kiddies not fish. Hang on, we've even got a statistic. According to the Tribune, we probably have the largest child to adult ratio in Western Europe. Don't you just love that 'probably'. I mean, why stop at Western Europe? Why not the Western hemisphere, or north of the equator, or the entire universe bar Bnei Brak, Karachi and Marrakesh? The fact is that we have loads more kids than we can ever dream of looking after and still we're going strong. And so ban the bikes. Ban them today, ban them tomorrow and ban them forever because we have a ratio, don't you understand?

Come on, let's be honest, our care for kids is really legendary and so they should not be occupying West Bank with bikes. True at shaleshides at a corner shul near you kids run amok on the streets unsupervised because dad's head is in the herring and mummy's fussing over her latest salad recipe to match the colour scheme of the tablecloth runners, doilies and napkins. Fine, that is excusable. But we do encourage them to walk to school, don't we. Is that the honking of a white van I hear? Must be my ears because you cannot but marvel at the skill and dexterity with which they beg, borrow and steal just any terminology they can lay their fingers on in order to turn it on its head.

If there is a single local cheder or school that has a walk to school policy, or, worse still, a walk to school day, it must have bypassed me but then we're kenainehore a sizeable oilem these days and I can't know everything. He has to go to shachris, her cordless is stuffed in her turban and little Chaim's school's walking policy takes him from the front garden to the rusting van door for an overcrowded quarter-of-a-mile ride to school. Is that not a policy? Only white, beer-bellied tattooed UKIP voters may drive white vans but we mustn't? What kind of discrimination is that, you irredeemable antisemite? Just stand on Stamford Hill or Amhurst Park any morning and watch the manoeuvres of the safety-conscious fathers criss-crossing lanes of traffic, cutting up buses so that their kids aren't at the mercy of psychopathic cyclists and that'll give you an idea of what safety is all about.

Because if you come to think of it, true Toiredike safety is in as smooth a car ride as you can get. This is why we put a spanner in the spokes of the notion of speed humps on Jessam Avenue (where a child was recently run over) and neighbouring streets with the able assistance of our elected councillors. Who cares what logic they employed on that occasion? Safety means Perek Shira 40 days in a row and let everyone else die in a pile-up. As one of the opposing councillors said to me, the issue here is the erosion of the rights of motorists. Give him at least credit for his honesty.

It's not all safety though, they're also worried about congestion, again notoriously caused by bikes. Visit the Dunsmure Road strip of the bike route on any morning and watch the mayhem. Actually, having cycled past there on many occasions a large part of the congestion is caused by the lollipop lady crossing kids walking to school and so we should campaign to ban her too. Besides the tznius issues of a lady telling men when to stop their cars, if only she weren't constantly stopping all those cars then the traffic would flow. Ban the cyclists, ban the pedestrians, close that silly school to which parents walk their kids and just join the car revolution. Amen.

Look, while no one's around let's face it, it was the UOHC that was honest about it and who would expect anything less from them. We just don't want them commuters passing through 'our' streets. As a friend said to me, no self-respecting chasidic community will allow cyclists traversing 'their' area without a fight. We haven't imbued our streets with all that kedushe for some young, fit, attractive, liberally minded and often so dressed cyclists with tight lycra bottoms to pollute our refined spiritual environment. If you haven't watched Queen's Bicycle Race you should chas vesholem not do so because the pritzus is simply mind boggling, but we shan't take lessons from anyone on cycling being a 'clean' alternative. It is filthy for the fingers especially if your tyres are as flat as your brain and even dirtier for the neshome, Go- forbid.

Yes, this area belongs to US. We can use our cars for minche/mariv and clog up every local street because we care about parking, and as for a bike, well, es past nisht. We can close the streets for funerals and rebbes, hachnosas sefer torahs and tashlich, we can burn chometz on the streets minutes after the council has cleaned them and we can burn our schach at 12am and sod the neighbours. A simche hall is where we decide to put it and if your neighbour is Jewish even better. Let them grit their teeth and block their ears because it's still preferable to making a complaint and being labelled a moosser. If we have cyclists of our own they're more like the Real McGoy rather than a heimishe specimen in a clapped out Previa or shiny SUV and so can safely be ignored. As for the women, well minicabs aren't cyclists so what does it matter to them? And the kids, they’re in cheider most of the day anyway so it hardly make a difference.

But if we still don't win the argument we can always resort to drugs: we don't do drugs, we don't mug old ladies (and you know who does those) ergo the streets, the airspace, the very air we breathe all belong to us. And if you're still not convinced we might even have a statistic to prove it.

Comments

  1. a ticklisher chosid, (a chosid of reb tickle)24 July, 2015 13:57

    Lovely article Mr tickle

    Keep up the good work,

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well written.

    The joke is that in Antwerp Ir HaKoidesh all manner of Yiden including chassidish 60 year old men and 15 year old girls will merrily ride around town with impunity.

    Time to ban going to Antwerp I suspect

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anyone who bans going to Antwerp is OK in my books.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Not sure what your beef with Antwerp is, Dovid, but I can't help being jealous of those living in a town where the kind of shenanigans and lunacy that we see here simply doesn't exist.

    This is a predominantly Chasidish town yet they've had an Eruv for over a hundred years, men, women, boys and girls happily ride around on bikes without being labelled as modern, the drop out rate is ridiculously low, and there are so far no allegations of abuse from even lay people let alone Rabbonim.

    And they barely even know what a Machlokes is until they discuss other communities.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Morris – you write as if being predominantly chassidish is an impediment to having an eruv. The exact opposite is the case. London is almost unique in being a city where so-called chassidim lead the opposition to the eruv. As a matter of fact, chasssidim have always been pro-eruv. Just look at America: in both Manhattan and Brooklyn, it was predominantly chassidishe rabbonim who led the efforts to build eruvin while the opposition was mostly comprised of Litvaks.

    Just as an interesting historical anecdote, Warsaw (which had a population of 1.3 million in 1939, and large, bustling main roads) had an eruv up until WWII. The late Rav Aharon Lichtenstein (the son in law of Rav JB Soloveitchik) recounted that Rav Hutner told him that Rav Lichtenstein’s father in law, who lived in Warsaw in 1925, when the population was already 1 million, was a “sheim dovor” because he did not carry – i.e. everyone else used the eruv:

    http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/735242/Rabbi_Dr_Aharon_Lichtenstein/Q_and_A_576
    (49:40)

    Apparently we’re much holier than our pre-war ancestors.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Antwerp is beautiful.... From the outside.

    ReplyDelete
  7. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11775014/School-skirts-the-long-and-short-of-it.html

    “The fact is that whichever way you go as a head, you will never win. You are always on the back foot once you start issuing bans.”

    ReplyDelete
  8. I do not live in england
    I have heard of the Chaim Halpern's case.
    I obviously do not have all the elements that would allow the truth to be revealed about this case.
    However I recall the Torah obligation to always listen to the 2 sides of a story.
    Even according to human logic it is not conceivable for one to make up his opinion (whatever it is ) before having heard all the arguments of the 2 protagonists in a case.
    I wish to inform that i have heard the name of a Rov from Golders Green who is known to have researched on the case.
    I have personally been in touch with this Rov about a research on a totally different subject and I have realised how much this Rov went wrong and was mistaken in his analysis of the situation.
    I speak here in all sincerity
    It is important to be very very meticulous before accepting one side of a case or another.
    Those who are not technically able to do so are obligated not to express their opinions.
    We need a lot of Siyata Dishmaya to know the truth about something.

    10 September 2015 at 18:17

    ReplyDelete

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