If You Tickle Us...

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...

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. ...

Walking the street enjoying the sights of the flowers and the smell of dairy delicacies it occurs to me that while the other festivals are offshoots and commandments of the Torah, only Shavouth is the festival of the Torah itself. It is when we celebrate the Torah given to us on Mount Sinai though the Torah does not make the link and, like most things, comes to us by rabbinic deduction perpetuated by culture and custom. Perhaps like a birthday boy or girl who do not organise their own party, the Torah kept silent on the issue and left it to others to throw the bash. And what a bash it is! Other Holidays go on for what seems a lifetime and come with truck loads of rules restricting what we can eat, when we can eat, where we can eat and sometimes whether we can eat at all. Pesach supposedly celebrates freedom but enslaves us weeks in advance in preparation and weeks after in paying the bills. Succoth celebrates the shade in the wilderness so we Jews decided to commemorate it by erectin...