Skip to main content

Posts

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...
82 comments
Read more

Religious Logic

Thursday night, the one before last, I was putting my little one to bed and I said, 'Tomorrow, we can listen to music with our breakfast'. The reason why tomorrow and not today or yesterday is that we were just coming out of the mourning period of the 'Sefirah', meaning the counting days. Counting what? you may want to ask. To which the reply is, 'counting the sheaf', which is not a Jewish version of counting sheep though the rules and regulations governing the Sefirah are of no less a soporific effect. The period of counting starts on the 2nd day of Passover despite that what is actually written in Leviticus is 'from the morrow of the Sabbath'. This being Judaism an argument broke out and Sabbath was taken to mean the 1st day of Passover though not without some dissenters. Anyhow, the counting culminates on day 49 which was last Sunday, a day before the festival of Shevuos (aka Pentecost). Shevuos translates as 'weeks' which kind of makes ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Paradise Gained

To the newly refurbished Stamford Hill library. First impressions are good: airy, light, spacious, new wooden shelving, increase of computer terminals and fresh carpet. The new bank of computer terminals is away from the prying windows of the Portland Avenue side of the library as are the poetry, history and other non-fiction collections. In their place is the children's section which appeared, from a distance, to be much more colourful and playful. I visited the library at lunch time and it was awash with young chasidic men surfing the web. Allow me a digression. If you are a regular reader of frum newspapers you will know that frum men don't exist. They are yungeleit (their italics) in the Tribune, Avereichim in the Hamodia, Bochurim if they are single and always have been, and balei batim if they are married and holding down a job or running a business. Anything else these days, if it dresses in black and white and wears two covers for its head is a rabbi. Teachers ar...
3 comments
Read more

JC Power List

Spare a thought for the JC in their list of most powerful Jews in the UK . (How best to describe it? Knackers nominating kackers , vice versa or remove the 'n' from the nominators as well as the nominees?) Last year they almost totally ignored the frum community so this year they had to make even greater fools of themselves by going over the top. Please don't patronise us by putting Pinter at 8 and that oaf Lobenstein in the top 30 and in future don't omit us either. Before getting into the details, what was Michoel Posen doing on the panel with reform and liberal Jews? Did he ask a sha'ale ? And may we know whom he asked? Anyhow nice to know that hypocrisy is alive and kicking and while reform is treif in the Ben Yitzchok column, one need only mention power or money (cf. Holocaust restitution committees) and they become bedfellow Jews for even the holiest. Now to the funny bit which got me tickled. Uncle Joe bless him may be an...
Post a Comment
Read more