If You Tickle Us...

I have a non-Jewish friend. Wow! I hear you say. Where did you get her from? What, it's a her!? Does your wife know about it? Shikses have Jewish friends!? How did you do it? What did you say the first time? You know how many times I've tried, but whatever I say doesn't seem to impress them. Antisemites . Sometimes they don't even smile. There's a counterpoint too. Whom are you trying to impress, you shaigetz ? You think that by having a goy for a friend you'll save your skin when Hitler, the sequel rolls into town? You think goyim look up at you because you have one of theirs for a friend? And who is she already? Your Polish cleaning lady probably. A classy English girl like the ones on aeroplanes won't even look at you. So we're not jealous and you can stick her in your mikveh bag. Anyway, what do you think she thinks of you? That you're cheap and you're selling out and just wait till you fall out with her and she'll call you a b...

The time of week when I most think of this non-entity of a blog is Friday night. It starts in shul , me sitting hidden away in the alcove that is my place, assuming no one has pinched it or there is no simche with brothers, uncles, nephews and cousins far removed from all over the globe taking up the spare and not so spare seats. It is always my seat, chair is more like it, and a rather wobbly one at that, that goes first as I have a revered minhag passed down to me from previous generation to tuck in kugel and salad after the candles have been kindled and if I turn up to shul late, well, unlike a plate of kugel , whatever is missed is shul can always be made up. The only downside of course being that my seat gets pinched and unfortunately I'm not one of those who shove people off MY seat. First because I don't really have a seat as that was nicked ages ago and second the place I do have to rest my posterior is in reality no more than a tiny space improvised once a week...

So much has been written and said about the near collapse of our banks but still I can't resist my two Krugerrands worth, the liquidity of my bank having put paid to tuppences, so here goes: 1. Poor poor Scotland. If Alex Salmond and the SNP had their way Scotland, with its 2 main banks glengarries in hands at the door of the Treasury , would by now probably have been an Iceland no. 2. We may have had to freeze their bagpipes and whiskey vats using anti-terrorist legislation. And what really makes you shiver is imagining those Scottish balls covered with no more than a kilt frozen by the nefarious English. Some sobering thoughts for go-it-alone nationalists having downed a Glenmorangie too many. 2. It was this government and this prime minister as chancellor that took away the regulation of banks from the Bank of England and transferred it to the FSA . But it would be too much to expect some remorse from a gloating prime minister triumphant for 'rescuing...

Firstly thanks to the many nice people who've left comments. Thanks too to those established writers who've written to me privately not wanting to damage their reputation by publicly associating themselves with this blog. I share your concerns and will respect your privacy. Secondly, or, this being Stamford Hill, second of all, thanks to the millions who've yet to discover this site and so the pressure to continue has been manageable whereas if pleas were coming in by fax, email, post and phone not to mention a demonstration on my doorstep as if this were a threatened cemetery in Eastern Europe I would have barely been able to cope.   As things are it feels more like a neglected cemetery in North London which it being one of our own we can tolerate foxes devouring corpses so as to prove that we have nothing against the welfare of animals and all the fuss about circling poor chickens above our heads is no more than fabrication by those who seek nothing less than our tot...

Like every blogger I too promised to myself when opening the blog that I would keep it regularly updated but now notice that it is over a month since I last wrote. And it's not as if not much has happened in that time. So I shall try and keep up the momentum.   I was struck by a piece in the latest issue of Hackney Today titled 'Park that nearly wasn't' about the history of the opening of Springfield Park. The entire area of Springfield Park had been put up for sale for development (plus ca change...)

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 ...

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...