Aid for first aid

If you live in Stamford Hill please turn away now. You are not supposed to know what I'm about to tell you and please don't quote this site when passing the message on because I don't want to get myself into trouble. I've written once before how some news items are not meant for us proles whose role in this world is to do as we're told, pay up when ordered to and shut up at all other times.

Which is why what I'm about to tell you did not appear in the new look Jewish Tribune (more facelifts than Michael Jackson; more padding than a wonderbra) or in that other organ of hallowed trivia, the Hamodia. It did though appear in the goyishe, anti-semitic, chareidi-bashing JC so beloved of the 'rabbi' and our other noble institutions when they have an announcement to make to the Jew-ish community but prefer to leave the paying and kvetching community in blissful ignorance.

Well, 2 weeks ago the communal life saver Hatzole held its annual reception. In case they need an introduction it is thanks to them that we can pop round the corner to post a letter and not have our parents, wife, siblings, kids, 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins and not to mention the neighbours worry that we may drop dead on the way. For if you're going to collapse with cardiac arrest courtesy of the tsholent and kugel we're now fed at every other reception, Hatzole's included, you'd be well advised to do so in Stamford Hill. True you may have half the town towering over each other to catch a glimpse but that I'm afraid is the result of not having a kosher equivalent of Doctors or Casualty. While such programs may tell us something about how our bodies are cured they could and would destroy our souls in the process. And round here if it's a competition between body and soul it is always the soul which ends up grinning all the way to paradise.

How oh how I digress. Hatzole held a reception in order to raise much needed funds. In the course of the reception they welcomed as many police officers as could be fit into the reception hall without turning it into the annual conference of the Police Federation. You may wonder what precisely police officers have in common with a local emergency first-aid organisation and I'm afraid I cannot be of much help. However since we as a community believe in dictatorial, autocratic hard power, and civil liberties and individual freedom are something we demand from others but give little of to ourselves, it is conceivable that police officers will command awe, fear and respect. And so it is only natural that we should try and cosy up to earthly powers that appear to mimic the celestial powers that enslave us.

That in itself is still of little use if not for every communal bully desperate to squeeze his beard, grizzly or unkempt as the case may be, into the same frame as an adorned epaulette. It is all the more so when many of us are under the impression that the constabulary wield indiscriminate power and but for the grace of the ‘rabbi’, the buffoon and the new idiot on the block we’d all by now be two stops from Majdanek. The 'rabbi' is all for it as it gives him the opportunity to exhibit his connections with the top brass of Scotland Yard which translated into Yiddish means real hard power. And to the new kid on the block it allows him to turn up at every accident or crime scene where our brethren are shoving and pushing to get a view and he gets to sail through the cordon with impunity while shooing the unwashed away under the pretext of assisting the old bill.

For their part, the police would have been familiar with the premises as a visit to YH Secondary School, where the reception was held, appears to have become a compulsory stop on the route of every local copper's induction.  The police must love being lauded and showered with awards and, courtesy of their hosts, never having to meet the hoi polloi. And of course for the price of a plate of kugel they can tick off several boxes on their multi-cultural check lists.

But still I'm not at my point. The purpose of the reception was to raise some funds. In fact a considerable amount was raised which is testimony to the generosity and philanthropy of our community that so much can be raised in a single evening with relatively little effort. The question however on everyone's lips is how much exactly was raised? To which the answer is: Shh, be happy we're there when you need us and mind your own business.

The klaxons may announce an ambulance rushing on yet another mission, the radios may beep on the Sabbath day, the notices may cajole and threaten us to turn up and fill their coffers, the speeches may warn us that not all criticism is welcome, the police may be paraded like tanks at a Soviet May Day parade but as to how much was actually raised? Shh. Have another plate of kugel and stop asking such silly questions. What do you think? They're doing it for themselves? Do you know what it means to be a Hatzole volunteer? Let's see what you do when you need them, big mouth. So just eat up and shut up.

Intriguingly though there appears no such reticence in that goyishe ragsheet, the JC. There we were told - and this is the point where if your postcode is N15, N16 or E5 you really should click elsewhere - that they raised the princely sum of £100,000 in a single evening. That ladies and gentleman is some achievement for which we may hold our heads high. A lot higher than those on the stage talking down to us, even higher than those privileged to cavort with the old bill, and higher still than those who are happy to take our money but will not deign to tell us how much we contributed despite that anyone but ourselves may be privy to the information.