From Raleigh C to Petach T: Musings on Shul

The theory of Primary Return-to-Womb Craving describes the infant’s resentment at his extrusion from the womb, and his longing to return to it. And while this infant has, thankfully, got over the loss of that particular sanctuary, he has experienced greater difficulty in overcoming that of another: his former home town shul. I just haven’t found anywhere to replace Raleigh Close (see When Kol Nidrei really was Kol Nidrei).

I can no longer, since making Aliyah, describe myself as a shul-goer. Indeed, the synagogue attendance line of my JDate profile reads “Sometimes” only because “For Kaddish” is not an option in the drop-down list (see A queer kaddish at the Melchett minyan). I suppose it might be different if I had kids, though definitely if the strength of my belief in “The Big G” (and I am not talking Gooch, Gatting or Gascoigne) – or, at least, in the Orthodox Jewish conception of Him (see Orthodox to Reform: Losing my neshama?) – could not fairly be compared (though by someone less reverent than me) to a middle-aged erection.

As a result, prayer, for me, has only ever really been about superstition, bet-hedging, and football: I admit, with no little shame, to having recited a particularly kavanadik Shemoneh Esrei in the car park of a South Yorkshire service station on the way to a Leeds v Glasgow Rangers Champions League tie. Needless to say, it didn’t help. And, a few months later, towards the conclusion of an FA Cup marathon against Arsenal – and having learned nothing from my earlier heresy – I vowed to the friend standing next to me, as Gary McAllister was lining up his free-kick, that I would attend shul more regularly if he scored. He did. But so, too, subsequently, did Ian Wright. Twice. And I felt justified to renege.

Otherwise, I recite the first paragraph of the Shema on take-off, during turbulence – at the point it starts inducing mutually empathetic looks between passengers (who, previously, hadn’t even noticed one another) – and when awaiting the results of medical tests. Indeed, when observing folk deep in prayer these days, they appear to me to be faintly ridiculous, and even, on extreme occasion, mentally ill. Anyway, repeating that He is the main man/real deal/bee’s knees in scores of different ways just doesn’t do it for me (and, more to the point, neither, I suspect, does it do it for Him).

But none of that seemed to matter in Hendon (see Hendon: Just Nostalgic Illusion?) And Raleigh Close still is, for me, Shul, both in terms of community and its many, quite indelible characters . . .

• legendary shammes Moshe Steinhart and his blundering, malapropism-littered announcements, awaited considerably more eagerly than the rabbi’s sermon [convey my apologies, please, Dan Gins];
• the gangling, mustachioed choirmaster – imagine the love child of Freddie Mercury and Russ Abbot – with equally deliberate, exaggerated (and ridiculous) conducting and leining styles;
• the young shockler who would sway so violently during prayer that one almost expected his head to fly off his shoulders, and who was once catalyst for a communal debate on Derech Eretz when the minister, wanting to commence his sermon, was ‘forced’ to wait for him to finish Shemoneh Esrei;
• the little man who would storm out in mid-sermon (“He’s off!” would be the excited whisper) if – or, more accurately, when – he disapproved of any of its contents;
• the large one who perceived it as a personal slight – and so many shul-goers (Jews?) love nothing more than to imagine these – whenever a hat or tallis bag was innocently placed on a sill of the stained glass windows endowed in memory of his parents: “Do you mind,” would come the familiar bellow, “that window belongs to my parents!”;
• the even larger one still who, for some reason known only to him, took it upon himself to be sole guardian of the Simchas Torah whisky supply;
• the pensioner who would openly fill her coat pockets from the Community Centre kiddush tables, as well as the various others who you just knew wouldn’t budge an inch to let you get at a piece of that herring;
• Angelo the caretaker, whose physique and bone-breaking handshakes made Goldfinger’s Oddjob look like a pansy in a bowler; and
• the seemingly permanently irate member whose tirades, raising awkward (and important) issues that no one else dared to, would get more bums on seats at AGMs than the right to vote for another tit in a topper.

With Yahrzeit for my late father falling on a recent Shabbos – not the quick, painless, weekday tefillah for me, this year – I ‘enjoyed’ two contrasting experiences that proved to me that there is nowhere quite like shul to study the excesses, idiosyncrasies and neuroses of my fellow Yeed . . .

On the Friday evening, before dinner at a friend’s in the area, I attend Mekor Chaim, a ‘Germanic’ establishment on Petach Tikva’s Rechov Frankfurter. Now, Yekkes are renowned for their near-obsessive timekeeping and attention to detail. And it is no myth: I arrive, five minutes early, to an empty synagogue; but, by the opening words of Ashrei, it is virtually full.

Standing at the back (always my favourite spot in shul), minding my own business, awaiting the arrival of my friend Henry, it becomes increasingly apparent that I am unsettling the shul’s gabbeh. He asks me to take a seat on at least three occasions, with increasing levels of assertiveness. I do so, but am then told to vacate the one I have chosen because it doesn’t have a little green sticker. These, I discover, have been painstakingly positioned on (the identical spot of carpentry of) every seat in the shul not belonging to someone. When I inform the gabbeh that I am waiting for Henry, he leads me to his seat and tells me to sit in it.

The problem when Henry arrives, however, is that the free seat next to his also doesn’t have a little green sticker. Henry directs a glance at the octogenarian on the other side of it as if to say “He is my guest, do you think it would be okay . . . ?”, but, met with a look of “Rules are rules”, thinks better of it and plants himself in the row in front.

In view of Mekor Chaim’s obvious puritanism, I am rather uncomfortable at being introduced to complete strangers, even ex-Hasmos, after the service as “melchett mike”. The last time I had been in a shul this strict – the Golders Green Beth Hamedrash, better known as Munk’s (Mekor Chaim, I later discover, is known to its expat members as “Munk’s Lite”) – was 32 years ago, for Johny Finn’s bar mitzvah. On that occasion, I received an unceremonious whack to the back of the head from a complete stranger – for talking during leining – so savage that my cousin still delights at the mere recollection.

Anyway, it is not Raleigh Close.

The unbending strictures of more Orthodox shuls can, when combined with the rather more flexible business ethics of certain of their members, result in seemingly glaring moral contradictions. At Brent Street’s Hendon Adass (consisting largely of refugees from central and eastern Europe), for example, a husband and wife partial to a post-service peck on the cheek were said to have received a letter from shul management warning them to refrain from such lewd acts. Several other congregants, on the other hand, returning from prison terms for offences of fraud and deception, were in receipt of no more than a “Boruch haboh!”

Such shuls can also be a vehicle for wonderful comedy. My favourite Hendon Adass story is of the brothers who, one Yom Kippur, informed their younger sibling, who wished to go home and eat, that the rabbi held the keys to congregants’ homes. They then watched the five-year old walk up the hushed aisle and repeatedly tug on the tallis covering the head of Rabbi Pinchos Roberts – severe at the best of times, never mind on the Day of Atonement – who, when he eventually peered down, was met with the now legendary words: “Goldberg. 1 Shirehall Lane.”

Shabbos morning at the Central Synagogue in Jaffa (yes, a long walk from Petach Tikva) is a different proposition altogether. Founded by Romanian olim, but now attended by a hotchpotch of 17 (I counted) males of predominantly Sephardic origin, its kaddish – unlike that in Petach Tikva, recited in mutually considerate unison from around the bimah – is an exercise in who can bawl the loudest.

Later in the day, attempting to slip off sharpish after Havdalah (to beautify myself for a date), I am accosted by the shul nutter – there is always one – who, refusing to accept my pleas that I am not an American, insists on getting my telephone number.

“I don’t know it by heart,” I reply, congratulating myself on my ingenuity, until Nutter insists, after locating a pen, on giving me every one of his four numbers, each of which he inscribes with the numeric dexterity of a 3-year old.

Most definitely not Raleigh Close. And I am relieved to get back to Stuey and Dexxy.

A week and a half ago, however, imbibing the spirit of Jerusalem and (with no kaddish commitment) just looking for a nice Friday evening shul experience, I receive a tip-off about HaNassi, an Anglo minyan on Rechov Ussishkin, a mere seven minutes’ walk from my new home. And, while hardly identifying with the overtly political nature of the rabbi’s Purim handout – not to mention his contention that one’s choice of fancy dress is “an expression of the real person . . . illustrat[ing] the innermost desire to really be what the costume represents” (I had dressed up, the previous evening, as a camp sailor) – it is lovely to be surrounded by familiar, ex-Raleigh Close faces.

“This is not for you,” opines another Henry, who, while seemingly pleased to see me, is certain that I am looking for a younger crowd.

But he is quite mistaken. This is exactly for me. See you on Friday!

Some Don’t Like It HOT

After years of hair-tearing frustration with the crap cable, and even crapper customer, ‘service’ provided by HOT – see HOT . . . in the bedroom and under the collar and Nimas Lee: An open letter to HOT – I am finally, following numerous broken promises (to myself), doing something to disengage from the bastards: I am connecting my newly renovated apartment with HOT’s satellite competitor, yes.

I had, originally, again ordered HOT – a technician was due at the apartment last Tuesday – because, as well as being reactionary (I still use a paper diary), it offers a convenient television/internet/telephony “triple”, I am used to navigating its TV channels, and can rarely pass up on a deal (it is currently running a Samsung Tablet promotion).

But after receiving, in the days following the order, half a dozen calls from HOT customer service incompetents enquiring why I hadn’t yet ordered, and then a chance, elated call from a friend, Hanna, who had just switched to yes, I decided to follow her lead . . .

I called HOT on two separate occasions to cancel the order, but neither “Linoy” nor “Mohammed” could locate it against my name, address, telephone or ID numbers. And, entirely true to form, on Tuesday afternoon – the day on which the technician would have been due – I received an sms informing me that one would be visiting the following (i.e., Wednesday) afternoon! I called once more to cancel . . . but “Oshrit”, too, could not find any record of the order in HOT’s ‘system’.

There is clearly, however, some communication at HOT – at least when they are about to lose another 300-plus-shekel-a-month customer – because, early on Wednesday morning, Natanel, the sales rep who had closed the original order, called to enquire why I didn’t wish to proceed with it.

“If you are asking,” I said, “I will tell you.” And I proceeded to recite my HOT list . . .

• HOT’s automated system still, after six years, doesn’t recognise my telephone number (and I don’t even mention Robert Lee);
• HOT’s customer service reps are still convinced that I live on Melchett, even though I sold my apartment there six months ago;
• I live at number 4, not at number 10 (in the same way that, on Melchett, I lived at 31, not 3);
• Natanel had not disclosed, in his original call to me, the 300 shekel connection fee;
• I became thoroughly pissed off by the multiple, misinformed calls after the order had already been closed;
• none of HOT’s customer service reps could find evidence of the order; and
• even the day agreed for it was wrongly recorded.

Natanel’s response? To tell me that my complaints were nekudatiyot me’od (highly specific), that I shouldn’t be so quick to anger, and, wait for it . . . to ask: “Aren’t you grateful to HOT when watching television programmes that you enjoy?”

I replied that I did very much enjoy the English football, but that I could also watch that on yes. And, ignoring his second point (which may actually have some validity), I once again went through my HOT list.

“It is one hundred percent impossible,” said Natanel, “that a rep could not find the new order.”

“Well, it is one hundred percent something,” I replied, “because three out of three couldn’t!”

And, while I could not disagree with Natanel’s contention that no customer service is perfect, I informed him that HOT’s was by far and away the worst that I have ever had the misfortune to experience, even in Israel, with not a single call passing without some degree – usually a high one – of irritation, aggravation and/or annoyance.

With a sigh of resignation, the admirably persistent (and intelligent, for a HOT employee) salesman enquired, “Is there anything I can say that will make you change your mind?”

“No,” I replied – knowing that HOT would never agree to the free month/s that sprang to mind – with no little satisfaction . . . and, with which, Natanel abruptly terminated the call.

And while not kidding myself that there won’t also be “issues” with yes, deserting HOT has accorded me, after the many frustrating years of having to deal with it, both much-needed therapy and sweetish revenge.

Dating Israeli Women (Part II): Freeing the Dirty Dog Within

Well, it wasn’t really The End (see Dating Israeli Women: A Guide by the Perplexed). J . . . oh, f*ck it, Jennifer forgave that e-mail, and granted me a stay of execution. A brief one. We saw each other twice more, before that dreaded pregnant pause on the telephone, on the evening before our fifth date . . .

“Mike, you are a great guy, but you feel more like a friend.”

I consider proposing friendship with “extras” – Jennifer is an almost indisputable “9”, and I haven’t had too many of those – but refrain.

So, where am I going wrong?

"Could I score with a zoynoh?"

As I explained to a friend, last week, I think I have lost that predator’s instinct. When I was less serious about settling down – and preoccupied not with the future but, largely (if not merely), on gaining access to the Kodesh Kedoshim (Holey of Holeys) – I had a far lower goal:attempts ratio. Now, however, I am like Fernando Torres (right), a forlorn centre-forward who can no longer rely on his nose for goal, but who has started to think too much . . . rather than just poking, sliding or slamming the ball into the back of the net.

Let’s face it, when it comes to matters sexual, we are animals. And I could certainly learn a thing or two from Stuey and Dexxy in that regard: When they come across a hitherto unknown canine, they don’t agonize for weeks on end about a little excess facial hair or slightly imperfect hind symmetry, but rather head, without hesitation, straight for the “box”, where they have a jolly good sniff, often a bit of a lick, and decide, purely on the basis of that, whether or not to take it on from there. (The object of this attention does, on occasion, not take too kindly to it, though – very unlike their owner – neither Stuey nor Dexxy have ever been accused of going too fast, or of being interested only in one thing.)

Therefore – while incumbent upon humans to add a moral dimension to their behaviour (take note, most recent “dirty dog”) – the great scorers, both footballing and otherwise, will be in maximum sync with their animal sides (hence the sobriquet of my childhood hero, Allan “Sniffer” Clarke).

Human blind dates, however, are – to my shagrin – considerably more fraught than their canine equivalents. And, while it is perhaps inadvisable to follow the example of the romantic JDater (of Persian origin) who, twenty minutes into his first meeting with my friend in Manhattan, announced “I want to be inside you now” (she ran out), we are guilty of complicating the natural and straightforward . . . when we should, instead, be finding and releasing that hidden dog (or, at least, centre-forward) within.

I have come to see dates in terms of the motor vehicle . . .

The blind date car

And – unlike the meeting/clash of eyes across a crowded room, of trolleys in the supermarket aisle (the SuperSol on Tel Aviv’s Ben Yehuda Street is even said to stage a weekly, unofficial p’nuyim/p’nuyot [unattached] evening), or (for the benefit of Daniel Marks) of body parts in a nightclub lavatory, where the wheels of love/lust are at once in motion – the blind date car is entirely stationary . . . and facing an extremely steep hill.

As the driver, I consider what is in front of me and decide, (rightly or wrongly) more or less instinctively, what gear to put my brain in.

On occasions, the battery is completely dead, and all attempts to start the vehicle are futile. You both want to say (though neither of you has the courage): “Listen, there is no point. Let’s just go.”

On others – a recent Saturday morning, for example, when I met a lovely woman for breakfast in Modi’in, but just couldn’t imagine filling up – I go straight into cruise control. We spent a very pleasant couple of hours, before I sent her a text message, that evening, stating that “something, I don’t know what [a white lie], was missing.”

I suffered no such shortage of imagination with Jennifer. But after screeching off in first, and moving swiftly and smoothly into second, I hit trouble in third . . . and never reached fourth. In the old days, I would have been in fifth before I (and certainly she) knew it. My changes, however, have got a little rusty, and women, I think, sense that hesitancy.

Well, the gear box is definitely due some attention. A thorough service and oiling should do it, followed by a few spins around the block (prompting me to wonder whether I should be amending the “languages spoken” field in my JDate searches to Russian).

And, as Fernando Torres must also be reminding himself – it is comforting to know that I am not alone – it only takes a second to score a goal.

An Invitation to Trouble (The Pussy Poll)

For the second time in a couple of months, I have been asked by a cousin for my mother’s address. Not for my mine. But for my mother’s. And, with a family bar mitzvah coming hot on the heels of the recent wedding, I know only too well why.

“Do you want my address, too?” I add mischievously – via facebook, on Thursday evening – after forwarding my mother’s details. “Or do I have to get married to get my own invitation?”

“Didn’t think it would matter to you,” comes the reply, “but I could always send you one too.”

Too?! I decline (though not before providing the names of other, married relatives, and asking whether their invitations will also be sent to their parents).

“And they say women are complicated” comes the reasonable response, though, on this occasion, the guilt/point-making are more Polish (as, perhaps, is the rationing of invitations) than effeminate (and I swear the thought “No separate invite, no separate gift!” never entered my mind).

“Don’t worry,” I end off, hammering home the guilt and point even further, “I will ask my mummy where it is taking place . . . though maybe she’ll get a babysitter and not let me come at all.”

I have already ranted at length – see Discrimination of a Singular Kind – about how we unmarrieds are often singled out for special treatment. Am I being a pussy (again)? Or am I entitled, at 44, to expect my own invitation to family do’s?

Please cast your vote . . .

Dating Israeli Women: A Guide by the Perplexed

“You have to find an English speaker,” opined John over lunch on Hashmona’im Street last week, as I whinged about my latest debacle with Israel’s finest.

And John may well have a point. But it takes a strong-willed man to settle for fish and chips or a Big Mac and fries, when he could, instead, feast on a Me’urav Yerushalmi (Jerusalem mixed grill).

J, Israeli, 40 and divorced (plus none) – whom I had met through JDate (I am, depressingly, back . . . again) – was that perfect Ashkenazi father/Sephardi mother combo: tall, willowy, olive skin, and taltalim (those unmistakably Israeli curls). And clever to boot. A Me’urevet Tel Avivit (Tel Aviv mix), if you like. And we had been on two extremely encouraging dates before the start of the fun and games . . .

Our third meeting – preceded by a discernible tailing-off in our flirtatious, daily text messaging – is cancelled by J, by sms, on the very same evening, with more excuses than a Hasmo boy: “pressure at work . . . not feeling well . . . Will call you.” But no call.

Just to be one hundred percent that my intuition is correct – I know that I will not be able to cope with the teasing thought that that body, skin and hair (and, of course, mind) might, just might . . . – I text J to tell her that I have got the message (that she is “not particularly interested in pursuing this”).

“Wrong again,” she texts back. “Will call the second I leave work.” But, again, nada.

The following morning, I receive an e-mail from J containing the exact same excuses. Petulant and keyboard happy as ever, I cannot resist the knee-jerk response: “Not looking for great dates at this stage. Or excuses. Or promises of phone calls.”

The End.

As usual, I search for possible reasons for this latest failure. I ponder, for example, whether having been bolder, more forthright, more Israeli, and having made a move in the second date tapas bar might, just might, have paid dividends. Most Israeli guys would have in the first date pub. (I take with a pinch of salt, these days, the Israeli woman’s oft-heard assertion that she likes English manners. They most like what they are used to.)

There is little, however, to be gained from idle speculation or self-flagellation. But why is it so damn difficult to meet a nice, genuine, uncomplicated woman in this city? Yes, yes (you slaves to your therapists), I know: I must take my share of the responsibility. It must be my fault, too. And sometimes it is. But more often, like this time, it just isn’t.

Finding attractive women in Tel Aviv is, of course, not a problem. Walking its streets and boulevards, or whiling away the hours in its cafés and bars, most male visitors (of a heterosexual bent, at least) come to believe that they have found themselves in some kind of female wonderland. Indeed, so high is the general standard of totty here that many people (or, at least, those who don’t know me that well!) cannot understand why I am still single, or not, at the very least, having a lot more fun than I am (but it’s sex with someone I love!) And I can understand their bemusement: stick your very average Tel Avivit– one whom an Israeli guy would not look at twice – in a London “Jew do,” and the males will think that all their Hanukkahs have come at once.

The empirical evidence, however, can be more than a little misleading. And dating Israeli women, while often enjoyable, even memorable, rarely comes – for the non-native, at least – without substantial challenges, stresses and aggravation. Indeed, the lure of more attractive, hotter blooded females – accompanied, as it usually is, with better, more frequent, and certainly swifter (as in earlier, rather than shorter) rumpy-pumpy – is offset by behaviour that can range from the puzzling to the downright objectionable.

So, for the uninitiated, here are a few tips – of a “do as I say,” rather than “as I do,” nature – gleaned from my experiences dating Israeli women and, especially, Tel Aviviot (who, as with Jews, are “just like everybody else, only more so”) . . .

Don’t even attempt to understand them. It isn’t possible. This is even truer of Israeli women than of the fairer [snort!] sex in general. You will have great dates after which they won’t answer/return your calls, and dire ones following which they will demand to know why you haven’t called.

Don’t be shocked by anything. From inappropriate, even outrageous, remarks and conversation on the date, to last minute (and I mean minute!) cancellations before it (see previous posts: T.A. Woman: Feeling a Lemon in the Big Orange, Suicide is Painless: Dating Etiquette in the Holy Land, and The Tel Avivit’s Subtle Art of Seduction). First date sex is also far from unusual here: if you are a nice Jewish boy from a nice Jewish community – like North-West London, for instance, where “getting to know” a Jewish girl on a first date would be far more newsworthy than anything on the front page of the JC – but that is what you are after, Aliyah may be the best move you ever make!

Take any criticism levelled at you, but (unless you are planning to dump them anyway) avoid the temptation to give any back. Most Israeli women can’t take it. I recently went out with a Rebecca, who, on our second date, and without warning, saw fit to pat the (negligible) protuberance from my t-shirt. “Yesh lecha keress!” (you have a pot belly), she exclaimed, clearly delighted with herself, as if having discovered a new planet. When she brought up the subject again, on the fourth date – evidently, neither my ‘corpulence’ nor Rebecca’s ‘frankness’ were deal breakers (40-something beggars, especially, can’t be choosers) – I was better prepared: I informed her that I like my breasts large (not true, incidentally), and enquired whether she might be willing to go under the knife for me. Her face! What a picture! She looked like she had just swallowed a Beit Hashita hot pepper whole. (Neither did Rebecca care for me asking her not to throw every scrap of food that she wanted to bin to Stuey and Dexxy instead, thus reducing her sorties to the garbage . . . though she had absolutely no problem telling me that it was inappropriate to joke with her 5-year old daughter about locking her in the fridge (was it?))

If you feel that you are being used, that is because you probably are. I also recently dated a Maya, who demanded a detailed date plan (verbal) ahead of each of our meetings. And she vetoed many of my suggestions (especially of dining options), leaving me with the distinct impression that she saw me as a kind of Time Out Tel Aviv with a MasterCard . . . or, more accurately, she was the Time Out, I was the MasterCard.

Multiple date. It is almost an unwritten rule that simultaneous/multiple dating is fine until you have been on three or four dates with the same person (and, sometimes, even after you have had sex). Nearly everyone here – or in Tel Aviv, at least – does so, so put your chutz la’aretz (out of Israel) values to one side and get on the same playing field! And as a corollary . . .

Keep notes. I once simultaneously dated a woman with an Afghani mother, and another with an Afghani ex-mother-in-law. I got my wires crossed, and mentioned the wrong one to the wrong woman. This might not seem a particularly big deal when dealing with Afghani matriarchs (and I extricated myself easily), but it would have been a huge one if I had referred to the wrong date about ­– and this is not an invented scenario – the inspection, by JFK security on ‘her’ departure from the US, of the other’s collection of dildos. I would even recommend keeping a brief, identifying note following each name in your mobile phone: an age thing perhaps, but I find it harder and harder to remember, and to differentiate between, Hebrew names. Not so long ago, I called the wrong woman, informing her that I was on my way to pick her up. “What are you talking about?!” she squealed. Realising my mistake, I panicked and hung up, and, there being no way back from that, deleted her details from my phone.

You may well, by this stage, be asking yourself why you would possibly want to heed the dating advice of a single 44-year old who lives with his two dogs . . . and you’d be quite right!

Good luck.

Spitters and splitters: what have the charedim ever done for us?

Everyone’s been talking charedim here, this past week, after ultra-Orthodox Jews spat on a 7-year old girl as she walked home from school in Bet Shemesh (The Independent). And I am not going to hide behind the journo’s favoured “allegedly” because, even if this child has been telling tales, such incidents have been regular occurrences in the city – 15 miles west of Jerusalem, and with a large, modern Orthodox, Anglo expat community – over recent years.

And, the thing is, I just don’t buy the spurious, disingenuous even, “It’s not all of them” defence employed usually by more moderate, but still observant, Jews – for whom such extremism perhaps poses uncomfortable questions – as a smoke screen to conceal the fact that it is most of them. While having little time for the arrogance of so many of Israel’s chilonim (see Doss vs. Chiloni, Parts I and II), I couldn’t help but ask myself this past week: What have the charedim (unlike the Romans) ever done for us? (Suggestions by comment, please, below.)

As a (peculiar perhaps) child, I owned more black-hatted, long-bearded and sidelocked figures – collected on frequent family holidays to Israel – than Action Men. In fact, I was enchanted by chassidim, and – attending Orthodox schools, and possessing a precocious fascination with the “Old Country” (as well as grandparents who would relay the more juicy details, unfit for a child’s ears, in Yiddish) – they seemed the closest link to my matrilineal Galician forebears (to whom I was more drawn than the rather more clinical Litvak misnagdim on my father’s side).

Easily the most memorable aspect of our fourth year Hasmo Israel Trip (see fifth bullet point here) was the Friday night tishen in Mea Shearim and Bnei Brak, at which I had been mesmerized by the spectacle of thousands of chassidim gathered around the table of their Rebbe. And immediately upon making aliyah, I trained as a tour guide at Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial Museum), largely because – as well as allowing me to look the Teuton in the eye as I presented him with a less palatable account of his recent history than that fed him by Germany’s postwar educational system – it enabled me to really ‘touch’ this past. And, in 2000, I visited the south-eastern Polish city of Ropczyce, and its satellite towns of Radomyśl Wielki and Sędziszów Małopolski, which at least some of the Reiss Dzikówer chassidim had the vision and/or good fortune to abandon in time.

To you, too, mate!

Something, however, has changed in me – perhaps I have lived here for too long – because I just don’t see charedim in the same light anymore: I no longer see warm, charismatic, spiritual guardians of our wonderful religion. What I do see are ridiculously anachronistic, lazy, chutzpadik, and in many cases (as in Bet Shemesh) violent, spongers and parasites, who threaten our democratic, tolerant values differently, but no less meaningfully, than our Islamofascist cousins in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran (see The Good, the Sad and the Ugly).

Following a Friday night dinner, last year, at my cousin’s home in the ‘normal’, Anglo part of Bet Shemesh, we took a late night wander up the hill into the charedi area on the other side of the valley. Stuey and Dexxy were on their leashes, and I didn’t let them get close to any of the ‘penguins’ whom we passed on the road. But the intimidation to which we were subjected – one particular nutter following us and muttering “noshim ve’yelodim” (women and children) as if he had never seen a dog – made us beat a hasty retreat. And how I resented that: these leeches, the overwhelming majority of whom, neither paying taxes (can someone please explain why they are allowed to vote) nor serving in the army, contribute nothing to this country, telling us – like the skinheads and “yobs” of our boyhood in England – on which of its streets we could and could not walk.

One lad who'll never have a problem with indecent girls

Sikrikim, a splinter group of Neturei Karta – the scum whose distinguished roll of honour includes kissing up to the little brown Hitler in Tehran (can any Jew ever have witnessed anything as sickening as this?) – are believed to be behind recent events in Bet Shemesh (see the darlings in action here). But they, to my mind, are just the worst of a generally bad lot. Charedi discrimination against women (it goes without saying that they are also viciously homophobic) – closing roads to them, forcing them to the back of buses, and even defacing female faces on advertising hoardings – has become commonplace in Jerusalem. And why would a secular Israeli choose to visit his capital on Saturdays when ultra-Orthodox pressure has succeeded in virtually closing it down (it is well-nigh impossible to even grab a cup of coffee in most areas of the city)?

Chassidic sects are also, on the whole, extremely exclusive – with the notable exception of Chabad Lubavitch (one of the main reasons that it is viewed so suspiciously by the others) – with frequent outbreaks of violence between them (the most recent just a month ago). While the rest of us may joke about our tendency to factionalism – “splitters!” – we also cherish our common brotherhood. Seemingly not so, however, charedim. A chassid of the Gerrer sect (considered amongst the more moderate), living in Tel Aviv, informed me that he considers secular Israelis “goyim”. And after helping constitute his struggling minyan – even dragging in reluctant “goyim” from the street – during my year of kaddish for my father, I was only once invited to any of their homes . . . and then only on the morning of Pesach for that evening’s seder (sure enough, though, at the end of the 12 months, I was asked for a donation!)

Ayatollah Ovadia

I exclude the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox from much of the above, though their Shas party is a toxic mix of religion, political patronage and social welfare, led by a small-minded twerp, and formerly by corrupt demagogues such as Shlomo Benizri (in jail) and Aryeh Deri (out of jail), all backed by a loose-tongued, rabble-rousing lunatic posing as a spiritual leader (should be in jail). Hamas without the virgins, if you ask me.

If charedim wish to live in the past, rather than in a modern, democratic Jewish state, I suggest that we ship them – or, at the very least, those amongst them who refuse to abide by the law of the land (and I would make all of them pay taxes and serve in the IDF) – back to eastern Europe. Let them see how their shenanigans are tolerated there.

One thing is for sure, though: we would be better off without them.

Happy (Goyishe) New Year!

Meidlech Power: Women protest against discrimination in Jerusalem, last week

Big Boys, Little Boys and Ladyboys

Friday, October 28, 2011. The departure lounge for AeroSvit flight VV238 to Kiev. The atmosphere couldn’t be more different from that of an El Al flight. Rather, there is no atmosphere. It could be pre-Gorby Russia. Pasty-faced Slavs, the odd one with a hint of Semite, kitted out in Allenby’s finest: poor, nondescript t-shirts and denim, and more fake leopard skin and cheap leather than an ’80s Romford hen night.

It is all my own fault and I know it, having opted to save $400 by flying this dodgy Ukrainian airline to Bangkok – for my annual Norwood charity bike ride (see I’m forever blogging on bubbles . . .) – via Kiev, rather than direct with El Al. And I have been dreading this moment from the second I finished reading out my Isracard number to my travel agent, Sasi. I even went through a spell of seeking reassurance from the Ukrainian immigrants in our office mailroom: Surely there was no reason to be concerned? AeroSvit is, after all, an international airline? “Hishtagata (have you gone mad)?!” was not, however, the response I had been counting on.

Oddly, though, the thought most distracting me now is not of my decapitated torso lying on any one of the three runways, but how, if one of the planes does go down, my poor mother will be able to grieve with my fellow torsi’s Russian-only-speaking relatives. Having all those North-West London Jews, none more than one or two degrees of separation away, on London-Tel Aviv flights was always a huge source of comfort as I contemplated the horrible.

NOT the new Sveta

To take my mind off such macabre thoughts, and to give me something to look forward to on my return to the Zionist entity, I look out for my new Sveta. None of the gold gnashers (right) on display, however, really do it for me.

“Inflate se jacket by blowing in se tube. Sank you.”

I recite the Shema. And, for once, with real kavana (intent). To my great relief, however, the three hour flight – like the following three – passes without alarm. Indeed, the complete absence of charedim (ultra-Orthodox Jews), together with the only few dozen Israelis, make AeroSvit a considerably less vexing alternative to El Al.

On arrival a full day later (but one before the group from London) at the Imperial Mae Ping Hotel, Chiang Mai, I spend Shabbos morning – there being no shul in the vicinity – in silent contemplation of what I would like to do with either, though preferably both, of the stunning Thai totties adorning its pool. They turn out to be ‘guests’ of some tattooed young Americans who look like they have been given an all-expenses-paid break from I-raq. I am surprised that the girls can still walk.

And taking a stroll with a fellow Norwooder up a bar-lined street the following evening, and ignoring the continual entreaties of “Massaaage?”, I suddenly announce to Martin that “I have to talk to that one.” Of course I won’t actually do anything – hypochondria, not moral fibre, you understand – but we mere mortals can’t just pass up the opportunity to get so close to a near “ten”. And the apparition turns out to be drop dead gorgeous and honest in equal measure: “You know I ladyboy . . .” I scuttle off back to Martin, tail between my legs . . . or, at least, on its way back down.

In spite of its most appealing purveyors, I am not enticed by the instant gratification on offer in Thailand. While I wouldn’t disagree with Boris Grushenko that “as empty experiences go, [sex without love] is one of the best,” rumpy-pumpy without even the hint of a chase really doesn’t do it for me (and the all-too-common sight of sixty- and seventy-something westerners – British especially – ‘enjoying’ silent meals with girls young enough to be their granddaughters is a study in mutual degradation).

Many Jewish males, however, do appear to have a real fascination with the prostitute. So it was, during my student days, that Orthodox boys from north Manchester would spend the early hours of Saturday nights/Sunday mornings driving around Chorlton Street Bus Station – which they had renamed “Rechov Bonoys” (girlie street) – observing them, and even engaging them in idle chat. And many more actually utilise their services. There was even a black kippa’d (velvet, noch) ex-Hasmo who, while still frequenting the classrooms and corridors of Holders Hill Road, was said to have repeatedly indulged a penchant for S&M with an Asian “zoynoh”.

None of this should really raise eyebrows (raze sideburns?!), however, in view of the Israel Diamond Exchange, Ramat Gan – and similar “Rochvei Bonoys” in Israel and abroad – teeming with charedi males six nights a week. The practice is muter (permitted), I understand, on the basis that the relief provided assists the dirty bastards in observing the laws of family purity.

But it is not only Orthodox Jews who enjoy such activities, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, and ex-football managers David Pleat (right) and Avram Grant – he of the “It’s his body, he can f*ck as many hookers as he likes” missus (source) – were merely unfortunate, high-profile brethren who were caught. And perhaps there is even a certain logic to this seeming affinity:

• prostitution is a profession (the “oldest one” even);
• its practitioners display a certain entrepreneurial spirit in operating a cash business;
• relations with them come with a large dose of guilt (we all need a bit of that); and
• perhaps most critically of all, Jewish females – of the Ashkenazi variety, at least – are said (I wouldn’t know) not to believe in sex after marriage.

My vices are chocolate and croissants rather than a predilection for such ladies –  I didn’t so much as indulge in a massage (“happy ending” or otherwise) on the recent trip – though I swear it had nothing to do with any inhibition resulting from the Thai experience of two friends from Liverpool, who were greeted some years ago, on removing their boxers, with: “You big boy. You little boy.” Little Boy never lived it down.

And I, of course, bear no culpability for the regrettable occasion on which I found myself in a midtown Manhattan ‘massage parlour’ after being duped by a friend – whom I first met at Yeshivat Ohr Somayach of all places – who informed me merely that he was treating me to his favourite Korean masseuse. (Interestingly, the same friend relates how Tel Aviv’s knocking shops were once – just before the ’90s Russian aliyah, following his less than successful stint at Ohr Somayach – staffed by teenage Israeli chayalot [soldiers] requiring assistance with their rents.)

Tandem team: Nigel Trumper (left) & Lawrence Black

The bike ride, oh yes . . . it was great! And listening to Michael, a beneficiary of Norwood services, relate how the charity has changed his life hardly left a dry eye at the closing Friday night dinner. (Thank you, once again, to all those of you who supported my participation.)

Following a few days’ recuperation for my aching thigh muscles back in Chiang Mai, I spend the last evening – though not, regrettably, night – in the company of Giulia, 31, from Sicily, whom I meet at the Loi Krathong (Festival of Light) street parade.

“Iza dizguzting,” Giulia opines about Thailand’s sex tourism industry. I nod in vigorous, though somewhat disingenuous, agreement, when all I have been thinking about since bumping into her is biting on those meaty Sicilian lips. At dinner, however, the conversation inevitably comes round to the Middle East . . .

“Whya donta youa givea dema backa deira land?”

While every syllable of Giulia’s thickly accented – though excellent, enormously sexy – English should cause me to care less and less about the Arab-Israeli conflict, I finally reach for the serviette dispenser and draw a rather impressive sketch of the region, providing her with a ten-minute potted history from 1917. Though odd, I consider, that I should feel compelled to defend Israel to Giulia now, when I have recoiled whenever hearing Hebrew over the past fortnight (invariably in local markets from “monkeys” dragging around huge suitcases and arguing over grushim [pennies]).

My prayer to be seated between a pair of Ukrainian lovelies on the return AeroSvit flight from Bangkok goes unanswered, and I instead find myself across the aisle from three Israeli frechot of the most ghastly variety.

“What?!” one of them barks at the perfectly polite Ukrainian stewardess on being informed that she will have to put her backpack in the overhead locker. “I don’t want to.”

“If there is a pogrom now,” I resolve to myself, “I am Ukrainian.” And Giulia, and those lovely totties by the pool, are a distant dream.

On yer bike: The myth of the caring Israeli society?

I have not made the most auspicious of starts to the New Year.

Perhaps I am in some way to blame, having taken my bike out on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah . . . though I don’t really believe that He would have sent those brothers – one aged 14, the other around 10 – to crash their large korkinet (electric scooter) into me, head-on, on the bicycle path near the Mandarin Hotel on the Tel Aviv/Herzliya border.

The boys were riding the korkinet (resembling the one pictured, though with larger, fatter tires) together – little brother standing in front of big one, both without helmets – on the wrong half of the path (their left), heading north; while I was on the right (in both senses) side, cycling in the opposite direction. My front wheel (photographed below) totally buckled under the impact with theirs.

Following a knee-jerk “Atem meshuga’im?!” (Are you crazy?!), I surprised even myself with the speed of my composure-recovery time: “You are just kids,” I comforted the boys, who, while unhurt, were in visible shock from the instantaneous haematoma protruding like a golf ball from my right shin.

A long walk back to Jaffa – or, indeed, to anywhere – was clearly not an option. “Just call your father, and ask him to drop me home . . . oh yes, and tell him to bring some ice!” I was thoroughly enjoying my new found civility.

“I’ll take you part of the way,” said the boys’ father, Amir, on arrival on the scene – my bike still sprawled across the path – some seven or eight minutes later, “we’ve got guests coming in an hour.”

As it was, the 40-something couldn’t fit my bike into the boot of his snazzy BMW – just when I could have done with a 4×4! – and refused to risk scratching the cream leather seats in its rear; and he eventually drove us, boot open, the few hundred metres to his plush apartment complex (the boys returning on their unscathed korkinet), where he instructed the concierge to phone for a cab.

The aftermath

As we sat and awaited the taxi’s arrival, and still revelling in my bonhomie, I reassured Amir – who seemed like a decent enough chap – that I wouldn’t make a big deal of the incident, or of my injury, but “If [he] could just replace the wheel” (I own an expensive-ish bike, and feared that a new rim could set me back 500 shekels plus).

“We’ll settle it next week,” Amir reassured me. And, after debating the chag (holiday) fare with the cabby, he handed over the reduced one – of 100 shekels – for me to be driven home. Saving my number – he preferred this to giving me his – on his phone as I got in, Amir’s parting words were: “I assure you, I will make sure this never happens again.” I repeated to him that I had done far worse as a boy, and that he shouldn’t be too harsh on either of his.

Googling his full name – which he had provided, when asked, in the course of our conversation – I discovered Amir, who had said he was “in property,” to be a senior executive and shareholder at a leading Israeli investment house.

All that was on the Thursday afternoon. I didn’t go straight to A&E because, with my mother expecting me for Yom Tov dinner, I feared that it would be seriously understaffed. I had also once suffered a similar-looking injury playing football. So, I satisfied myself with a phone call to a doctor-colleague, who informed me that there was nothing that could be done anyway, and that I should just keep the haematoma well iced (the shin is still bruised and sore, some three weeks later, and I have been sent for an X-ray and ultrasound).

I was still somewhat surprised, disappointed even, that it took Amir until the Sunday morning – three days after the incident – to call and check on the injury caused by his children, though also by his lack of adequate supervision of them (I knew that, if the boot had been on the other foot, I would have called that very evening). I was in a meeting with my boss at the time, and whispered to Amir that I would call him back, which I did every day until the Wednesday, when the clearly overworked executive finally found the time to call again. He enquired about the state of my leg, but was extremely careful to offer no apology, just assuring me that he would no longer allow the boys to ride on the korkinet together.

Seeing as the phone call was clearly going nowhere, I decided to bring up the subject of the wheel. “I walked up and down Hashmonaim [Tel Aviv’s bicycle shop street] for an hour on Monday [not wishing to cause Amir too much expense, I had] and found the cheapest possible replacement, the odd wheel from a set. It cost 250 shekels [just under £45]. Where should I send the receipt?”

There followed a long, awkwardish silence . . . and then, “We should each pay half.”

Even amongst the rich tapestry of Israeli chutzpah, with which I have become all too familiar, I thought I was hearing things.

“Atah loh mitbayesh?!” (Aren’t you ashamed?!)

“You have to take your share of responsibility, too, for what happened.”

Naturally, if I had known that two boys were riding a motorized vehicle towards me in the wrong lane, and with little control, I would have got off the bicycle path altogether. But to equate our relative culpability was outrageous. Either Amir’s sons had fed him a load of porkies, or – more likely, to my mind – knowing that there were no witnesses, he just knew that he could get away with it. And I could only imagine the shtook Amir would have seen to it that I would have been in had the roles been reversed, with me being the one on the korkinet.

I told Amir to keep his 250 shekels, but that I would now be going to the police. And following a thinly-veiled threat – that “I shouldn’t misinterpret [his] [wait for it . . . ] softness”!  – I terminated the call.

Always one to feel guilty, however (even when I am far from), I still wished to resolve the matter civilly, and I sent Amir a text message, that evening, suggesting that he, instead, sponsor my upcoming charity bike ride (for which I had informed him that I was in training). Numerous folk, on hearing the sorry tale, have opined that Israelis, however wrong they might be in any given situation, never want to be – or, perhaps more to the point, to be seen to be – the freier. So I had given Amir a way out. Needless to say, he hasn’t taken it.

Perhaps I am too sensitive (and naive?) a soul, but the whole incident, to my surprise, has filled me with real sadness, saying so much, for me, about the current state of Israeli society and all too many of its citizens.

Of course it is “not everybody,” but what I can say with some degree of confidence is that the bollocks that we are often fed – that Israelis may be rude and arrogant, but that, when push comes to shove (how appropriate the idiom!), they will be there for you – is now at least, in the main, exactly that (i.e., bollocks): Whether in business, professional relationships, ‘queues,’ on the roads, in restaurants, shops or hotels, or with their children or dogs, my sad experience and conclusion – and that of most people (natives included) to whom I have related the unfortunate tale (some even expressed their surprise that I had expected anything more) – is that too many Israelis these days just couldn’t give a flying felafel about anybody or anything but themselves and theirs. It was once, I am told, very different.

Several days following the incident, I happened to be walking up my former happy hunting ground, Rothschild, as the individuals dressed up here as police officers were evicting the last tent dwellers from the Boulevard. And, after months of not taking the protest too seriously (see here), I now kind of recognized the attitude that has driven so many other Israelis – perhaps the ‘weaker,’ less ambitious and/or aggressive of the species – to despair.

My guess (and it is just a guess) is that Amir was an above-average soldier, who served in an IDF combat unit, perhaps even reaching the rank of officer. And as with a former friend – who, on the basis of such a CV (and all the while considering himself a noble human being), believes that it is just fine for him to screw other men’s wives – this (like the big-paying job he landed on military record, rather than intellectual/academic ability) gives Amir the arrogance to believe that he can do whatever he wishes in civil life, shitting on any poor bugger unfortunate enough to cross his path. (And, if this was how Amir saw fit to act in this situation, one can only imagine what he must be doing with client money!)

Naming and shaming  Amir – surname, position, company – has, of course, been hugely tempting. But this post is not the tool of my revenge. Perhaps, however, Amir will read it – I will forward him the link – and at least attempt to comprehend why I felt compelled to write it.

Perhaps, too, he will try to bring up those nice – and they were – boys into adults that this country can be proud of . . . rather than individuals, like their father, seemingly without moral compass.

Chag sameyach!

[http://www.justgiving.com/mike-isaacson/ . . . only 88 quid to go!]

Watering the beasts: a lesson in comparative religion

Striding down Shderot Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Boulevard) last week, running late for an appointment in south Jaffa, Stuey and Dexxy, starting to wilt under the midday sun, were desperately trying to pull me off the tarmacked sidewalk and under the shade of each and every tree.

The sight of Stuey (always so full of beans), in particular, actually tiring is a rare one. So, passing a plant/flower centre, I popped in to request some H2O for my hairy flatmates. A nursery employee was instructed to pour some brownish water out of a large black flower bucket into a tan plant-pot tray.

Then, as I was enjoying the  sound of the canines quenching their thirst (always so strangely enjoyable), the centre’s Arab owner volunteered:

“Our religion tells us to give water to dogs, but not to rear them.”

My first thought: “Why the hell is he telling me this?” After all, I hadn’t asked him about the place of dogs in Islam.

My second – a reaction, perhaps, to all the shit that has gone down since 9/11 – was to inform him that I couldn’t give a f*ck about what his religion does or doesn’t “tell” him.

But, while I often fantasize about a Monty Brogan-style outburst, I, yet again, settled just for thinking:

“And my religion tells me: to build buildings, not to fly passenger planes into them; that women, though different, are equal, and certainly not some subspecies that should be forced to wander around like cloth-covered Daleks; to teach our children the right way; to treat animals humanely; to respect the environment; and to obey the laws of the land.”

Mr. Flower Man’s one sentence had summed up for me the huge gulf that exists between us.

Not that I haven’t, since moving to Jaffa (a month and a half ago), already been made fully aware of that: Cries of “Allahu Akbar!” emanate from the loudspeakers of local mosques five times a day, including at 5 in the morning (though to his credit, and my relief, the ‘chazan’ at my local is surprisingly melodic).

All this with Jaffa now estimated to be three-quarters Jewish. And, while you can argue the toss about inequalities of bargaining power, those Jews have purchased their homes, not – according to the much-loved narrative of the Israel-only basher – driven out the former owners, forced to flee only with that iconic key.

So, Mr. Flower Man, if you wish to win me over to your religion, it won’t be through its approach to our furry friends (much less to humans).

No. Apart from those 72 virgins (I would settle for just two, these days . . . though twins, please, if poss!), far more likely to Islamize me in these troubling times would be the old proverb:

“If you can’t beat us, join us.”

To all readers of melchett mike, a happy, healthy, and always humane, 5772. (And, if you haven’t done so yet, kindly visit http://www.justgiving.com/mike-isaacson/ . . . only 200 quid to go!)

Better a manyak than a sheep: some historical perspective re the “situation”

Can things possibly get any worse?

Viciously turned on by our only true friend in the region. The Palestinians on the verge of the unilateral declaration of statehood. Our own country divided and seemingly rudderless. And all of this under the spectre of the growing nuclear threat from Iran, with – perhaps most gallingly of all – not a word from the Israel-only bashers about the continuing human rights violations there, in Syria, and across the Arab and Muslim world . . .

Which might go some way to explaining why, as thousands streamed up Tel Aviv’s Ben Zion Boulevard towards the social justice rally, a fortnight ago, I – not untypically (I have always been a little davka) – walked alone in the opposite direction, to (the Dizengoff Centre and) the latest Woody Allen movie. After all, only an idiot, it seemed to me, would care about the rising cost of cottage cheese when we are in such an existential mess. (Joining the protest also seemed rather incongruous at a time that I was patting myself furiously on the back – you see, there are other things I do furiously! – for selling my Melchett home of 12 years, two blocks from Rothschild, just days before the tents went up.)

Then, Friday week ago, our Ambassador was forced to flee the new benevolent democracy next door (confirming my fears, expressed here just a week earlier), followed – on the Sunday, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 – by a Sky News studio guest summing up the decade since with “And there still isn’t a Palestinian state”: It was the Jews, of course, not Islamofascist knuckle draggers, who were really responsible for the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people on that horrible day.

Rather than allow the matzav (situation) to get me down, however, I have tried to view it as I always have: in the light of a history that has never been much better than miserable (though, to quote Alvy Singer, “life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable . . . so, when you go through life, you should be thankful that you’re miserable”).

By way of illustration (with the aid of a quick Google search), the following occurred on September 11, 1941, 70 years to the day before last Sunday:

• The Jüdischer  Kulturbund (Cultural Federation of German Jews) was dissolved “for the protection of people and state.” (source)
• All 91 Jewish patients at the Babinski Hospital in Kobierzyn (near Krakow) were moved to the Zofiowka Sanatorium in Otwock (near Warsaw), where some were shot and buried in the garden, with the remainder gassed in Treblinka. (source)
• The following report (presented at the Eichmann trial) was written: “In Kamenets-Podolski [Ukraine], 23,400 Jews were killed by shooting within three days by the Group of the Senior Commander of the SS and the Police.” (source)

Complacent (primarily Diaspora, I believe) Jews who say that such things can never happen again have either never picked up a Jewish history book, or are too egotistical to see themselves as a mere dot in them. The calls from the radio of the Mavi Marmara, I would remind them, were “Go back to Auschwitz” and “Don’t forget 9/11.” They (and you fool yourself if you interpret the word narrowly) just don’t like us. That is the only feasible explanation for the obsession of the Israel-only bashers with Jews to the exclusion of all else.

70 years on from Auschwitz, however, we Jews are believed to be in possession of up to 400 nuclear weapons (source). And, kid yourselves not, the only reason that our Allah-loving enemies don’t attempt to finish off the Germans’ work is not any code of ethics, but the belief that the Jews really may have “second-strike” nuclear submarines.

As Ehud Barak spelt out last week, we Jews just can’t be f*cked with anymore: “They know very well why it’s not worth it for them to use chemical weapons . . . why it doesn’t pay for them to even think of using such weaponry against Israel.” (Haaretz)

Having moved to within three minutes’ walk of Bloomfield Stadium, home to all three Tel Aviv football clubs, I recently purchased a season ticket for Maccabi (who play in yellow; no self-respecting Leeds fan would dare be seen in red). And, at my first game, the guy seated behind me gave a crass course in Hebrew abuse: “Shofet, ya manyak ben zona (Referee, you crazy son of a whore)!” he yelled repeatedly, seemingly oblivious to the young son by his side.

At Israel’s subsequent Euro 2012 qualifier against Greece (also at Bloomfield), there were regular cries of “Milchama (war)!” And while I could understand why my friend, Nick, found them objectionable, I also thought: “How incredible that we Jews, not long ago history’s perennial victims, can finally shout stuff like that!”

If the Arabs are as stupid as some fear, or Ahmadinejad as reckless, there might still be another slaughter (heaven forbid). There will, however, this time, be no sheep. And we will take great numbers of the pathologically Jew-hating bastards down with us.

And that makes me, for one, through all of this bad news, feel a lot, lot better: Yes, it is great, for once, to be the manyak ben zona!

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