If You Tickle Us...

Aaron Biber, 89, assesses the damage to his hairdressing salon after the riots on Tottenham High Road. Apparently the rioters were seeking justice. ( Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe)

After returning on a high from the Gala Dinner, which I reviewed here , I got slightly carried away and wrote the following in honour of my alma mater the one and only Gateshead Yeshiva. Gateshead! In your midst is the seat of one of the most prominent citadels of study in the Torah world. Most European yeshivoth that were in existence at your birth have perished and are no more and you alone stand proud and indomitable. Yeshivoth have in recent decades proliferated around the globe yet you remain still unique and distinct thriving in a corner of England that shall forever be associated with Torah and Orthodoxy. You are the cradle of Torah civilisation in this country as we know it today and you should trumpet it with pride and grace. Yours is a Yeshiva that encompasses many shades of Orthodoxy. From the Hasmo boy who wishes to soak up an authentic yeshiva atmosphere before going to university to the chasidic bochur who wants imbibe genuine litvisher lomdus , they all converge ...

Last week Tuesday evening I attended a dinner that was without doubt the greatest show of force of Anglo-Chareidi Jewry for the last 25 years. Phew! With an opening like that I could almost become a staff writer on a Chareidi newspaper. That though may have been too plausible, so let's try again. The greatest Chareidi event on our isles since the last Agudah Convention at the Normandie Hotel. That sounds more like it. A touch hyperbolic, I know, but where in the world would we be without the heavenly gift of hyperbole. There would be no tragedies every time a geriatric pops off, no cause for national mourning when some kabbalistic shaman is dispatched by his partner in crime and our very existence wouldn't be jeopardised each time Hackney tries to introduce resident parking zones or, Go- forbid, spit, spit, speed humps. As the accredited reporter for Kehiloh Kedoishe B'nei Shylock (Shaylock for non-Chasidim) I took my place in the press gallery to report on the thrice in...

Some weeks ago in his column Ben Yitzchok referred to a number of schools and praised them for not relying on 'Government finance and educational control'. As to some new state-aided Jewish school in Golders Green he had this to say: '...So why go with a begging bowl to the Government for new schools where the admission policies involve uncertainties, to put it mildly.' He then cited the examples of Dr Schonfeld and Rabbi S Pinter and the schools they started and led respectively -Pinter didn't start any schools- for which they did not rely on outside help. He ends, 'Emulating their example is bound to pay dividends.' This is a perfectly legitimate stance and not so long ago Menorah in North West London was offered voluntary aided status and turned it down, reportedly because they did not want government interference in the running of their school. Indeed Ben Yitzchok expressed similar reservations some 7 years ago when YHS became voluntary aided. There ...

Sorry no time to comment at length but the letter speaks for itself. My favourite is engaging the concept of ze nehene v’ze loi chosar - one enjoys and another is not put at loss- for this purpose. Which side of the mechitze will be enjoying themselves? Surely the inability of husbands to ‘signal and gesture to their wives’ Go- forbid, must be a loss of some kind. One can just imagine the scene. He gets warmed up at Anim Zemiroth singing about locks, black and wavy and winks skywards, she nods in dissent and he continues shockling into his siddur, ‘Shith hamon shirai no olecho…’ You must however commend the writer for his honesty. Rather than try on rely on pseudo-halachic arguments as with the eiruv , to which this rabbi is opposed, he gives it to you as it is. Those half goyim in Beis Yisroel and Or Chodosh with ‘United Synagogue Rabbis’, well you know what that implies, have ‘superior’ divides and how can we be seen to be inferior. So to the barricades, members, or in this case m...

There are times when our beloved Buffoon outdoes even himself and last week was just such an occasion. After the fiasco of Kedassia beef’s fellow travellers he tries to set the record straight that this was not the norm and that it will not happen again. Strangely, none of this was included in Kedassia’s statement on the matter which implied that the practice was very much the norm. He then accuses ‘another Shechita board’ of behaving in the same way without providing a source. Facts however are never allowed to get in the way of the Chareidi papers where C.P. Scott’s famous maxim is reversed: comment is sacred but facts are free. Not content with this he then proceeds with his trademark wit to even the score. Under the heading 'Four unreported tragedies' he lists four elderly rabbis who recently passed away and complains that none of the deaths was reported by the JC with the implication that the JC cares only for the pigs and not for the rabbis. Score: 5-1 to the pigs. ...

Am I the only one who’s noticed the marked similarity in the opening beat and cords of Back to Black and bein kach u’bein kach by Avraham Fried? Listen to the first 10 seconds. I suppose it’s unlikely Amy took it from Avraham… Well, tsi azoi tsi azoi she had an amazing voice and it’s sad that such talent was destroyed so young. She had a local connection too: the Back to Black video was shot in the Abney Park cemetery and in Stoke Newington streets .