If You Tickle Us...

Progress yet again and kudos to Rabbi Shimon Winegarten for the new ShemaKoli abuse helpline . It of course gives you an idea how much confidence he has in the UOHC 'help' line. It also shows a sensitivity to men and women victims which hadn't occurred to our locals when launching their unisex line. Gender separation is just for the photographers,it seems. And you can bet that the person at the other end of this line will be marginally more sensitive than the one who was answering the UOHC line with his glorious track record in 'admissions' to 'his' schools. Should we assume that the hours allotted to men and women point to the ratio of abuse victims amongst them? Or is it simply easier to find suitable female volunteers than men?

You know the score on the wretched lids. Kedassia say they're sodden with starch and hence forbidden. But that is not quite enough. In their quest to ensure that no Jew inadvertently bumps into some chometz, they have gone one further by sending their star enforcer deep into enemy territory to declare that those who claim tinfoil lids to be kosher for Pesach are guilty of 'mis-of-information'.  To those who don't know the local parlance, the words addressed to an English speaking audience in North West London are the polite way of saying what would translate round here as something along the lines of, any sheigetz who eats kugel out of a tin covered with one of those lids might as well  fress a hamburger for koireich. And as to caterers contemplating making use of those lids, just dare and we  may not allow you again into the hall we 'licence' off that school. But Kedassia may have some cracks of their own that require papering over, assuming they can ...

Lids and covers, foils and tins, wraps and towels. There is not a tired old trick that hasn't been tried and it's high time to move on. The basics are simple enough. As most readers of this blog will know, our variety of Judaism - sorry, I must interrupt myself to apologise to those readers hopping mad that I dare impute different versions to our faith - but our particular version of Judaism has of late been preoccupied by the weighty issue of the kosherness or otherwise of lids of tinfoil containers. For the purpose of this post I need not trouble you with anything more because if you are one of those genuinely troubled by this burning question and desperately seeking a resolution then I am afraid you have hit on the wrong site and you should contact your local TAG volunteer to attend urgently to your filter. One characteristic of our Jewish strain very much connected to the shale of the day is an addiction to anything disposable. I'm not talking about disposable...

  At his Sunday shiur, 25 March 2012

At the risk of boring you again, you will know that this site is under legal attack from those who wish to silence all of us through this country's draconian libel laws. If you think it doesn't affect you, think again. Literally thousands of comments, the vast majority of which were not in any way even potentially defamatory, had to be removed due to the threat of legal action. The debate affects all members of our many communities and none more so than the vulnerable and powerless. This debate has now been muted by the fear of our oppressive libel laws. The chilling effects of those laws make us all shiver. It is mainly the likes of those who remain at the helm of our community who benefit from these laws. Impervious to criticism, contemptuous of public opinion and immune from shame, they did nothing despite years of allegations and rumour and would continue to do nothing if only they could. Our supine press remains silent and our leaders conspire to keep us all in the da...