If You Tickle Us...

Letters (not) published in The Write Lines, the famous letters page that arrives from parts other publications won't acknowledge to exist Dear Editor Like all heimishe yieden everywhere I was overwhelmed by hakoras hatov for the dedicated chosheve askonim who have made available the kosher dictionary . I immediately went out to the Hill to get one so that my children ke"h should no longer cholilo come across posule words when doing their homework. (Mentioning homework reminds me of the letter I wrote last year about the geferleche load of homework the girls are given so that they can't help their mothers in the evening, but now I am writing about something else.) I had barely sat down to browse the new dictionary when I landed on my behind after noticing the word 'bum'. I didn't chas v'sholem go looking for such words but it literally stuck itself in my face. Luckily my children were not yet home so I could stick the pages together because oi lorosh...

We’ve always known the Jewish Tribune to fill its pages with buffoonery, fundamentalism, propaganda, selective facts, myopia, amnesia and even to suffer from the occasional bout of racism if Geoffrey Alderman is to be believed . But at least we read it secure in the knowledge that whatever else they may be, heathens who know not their Scriptures they are not and from the Tribune shall go forth the Torah. Until last week that is when under the photo of the visit of some C-class celebrity to the tomb of the matriarch Rachel the Tribune placed the tomb in Shchem. Although there is some debate over the correct location no one but the Tribune has to date placed it in Shchem. I find it most humbling that it has come to this but let me teach the Tribune a posuk in the chumesh that many a child has shed many a tear over for not knowing anything from the context of the posuk in the chapter to the context of the tomb on the way to Bethlehem and not to mention Rashi’s multiple translation...

As you read in the weekend press the inevitable hyperbole on the passing of Reb Nosson Tzvi Finkel with tales of him knowing shas by the age of 5 and his teachers being unable to teach him shortly after, consider his school card where in his teens his ambition was still ‘Undecided’. Is this ‘child father of the man’? Born and raised in the USA will unfortunately make it slightly more difficult to deal with that nuisance called history but trust our papers to find a way round it. Here though is an inspiring piece concerning Reb Nosson Tzvi by Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks . (Credit: On The Main Line )

We may well be reading the third portion of the Torah this coming Shabbos but since it's the third out of 50 odd sidros it's fair to say we've barely started. We Jews are fortunate for many reasons. Like Paddington Bear we get two birthdays and even two new years: one for getting blasted, the other for getting plastered. In fact it often feels as if we get a third new year when after the celebrations of the first weeks of the new year we roll back the Torah to the beginning at the opening chapter of Genesis and start again In The Beginning… That was two weeks ago yet in that time a world's been created and destroyed, humans have come and gone with alarming frequency, man got his woman and together they sinned (what else?), were cursed and expelled. Naturally enough man 'knew' his woman, for if you're not in the Eden you were given you might as well create one for yourself, and they begot offspring. And this is basically what has been happening ever since. ...

Occasionally one comes across a statement so audaciously outrageous, so leap-from-your-seat politically incorrect, so preposterously preposterous that you simply freeze on your first encounter. You then go back to the beginning of the sentence to make sure you actually read those words. Still reeling from incredulity that such sentiments could be uttered in our prejudice-free era you reread the paragraph, restart the article and even check the cover of the book or masthead of the paper to ensure that the context, the tone, key and pitch of the words which so profane all our sancrosanctities are not only there and carry their usual meaning but were actually intended to mean as they do. Such were the words in Geoffrey Alderman's article in last week's JC which I reproduce here in their full glory. It is, however, well known that charedi men are notorious harassers of the opposite sex. And then when you finally thaw and are sitting comfortably again you are at a loss at...