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...

Mutiny in the Ranks

-------- Original message -------- Subject: NHAYS: Beis Din Tsedek From: NHAYS Webmaster < webmaster@northhendon.co.uk > To: mailinglist@northhendon.co.uk CC: Sent on behalf of the Executive: This is a statement to confirm that the Executive and Board of Management are most surprised that our Rov has been appointed to represent a 'Beis Din Tsedek' in the local case (see here ). This has been done without our knowledge and is therefore totally independent of our shul. Yours sincerely, The Executive of NHAYS

These are thy gods, O Israel

Channel 4’s news item on the programme

Call to Arms

Helpline of Least Resistance

Guest post by “Pen Tivakesh” The so-called “unfortunate” Channel 4 Dispatches programme is about to hit the airwaves, and the UOHC has done it again. It has laid bare its wares and showcased its blatant disregard for anything but the safeguarding of its own precarious existence. Nothing is more indicative of this than Rav Padwa’s characteristically myopic and blinkered response which is bound to spread further the rot decaying the UOHC’s rickety construction. Rav Padwa: if it is indeed so important to you that our children are protected from harm, where on God’s earth have you been hitherto? Why have you to date cared so little for the pain and suffering of children and of victims of child abuse? Why have you shown them the door on numerous occasions citing their inadmissibility as witnesses owing to your own dark-age interpretation of Halacha ? If child protection is indeed so important to you, why do you still allow school teachers to beat their charges black and blue at the schoo...

Union smells the coffee (or cordite)

13 Shvat 5773 [24 January 2013] To Rabbis, Educators and Heads of Educational Institutions here [in London] UOHC and Child Protection Parents and educational institutions in our community dedicate themselves to bringing up and educating pure souls and to raise them and watch over them with sanctity and purity, and with the help of God have much success. Guarding our precious children and protecting them from all harm and abuse is of course essential. It is therefore incumbent on us to treat every complaint of abuse, God forbid, very seriously. We need to understand how to deal with this appropriately, [how] to institute safeguards to prevent such possibilities and to provide appropriate support to those who have been abused. There exists a special committee appointed by the Union to deal with cases of abuse, God forbid, of children in our community. Members of the committee are rabbis, educators and community members some of whom have have been trained in how to deal appropria...

A Grave Situation

In the furore that has recently gripped us all a small news item in the JC back in October of last year may have been overlooked. Nothing ground breaking, if that's not a metaphor too far, since we're only talking about a tiny little baby of a few days old, born prematurely and which is dead anyway. It's not even relevant to its manner of dying but rather its burial and the inconsequential matter of a mother wishing to discover her baby's burial place. But still I think it's important enough not to have the story buried, if you'll excuse the pun, during this bad news period. It was the caring and feeling Adath that took charge of the cadaver and interred it out of sight hoping it would remain out of mind. Along comes mum several years later asking the outlandish question of where the dead body is bestowed. Trust our Adath to come up with a humane answer to this apparently insoluble query which may have taxed even the brains of Solomon. And true to character t...

Cri de Cur