A queer kaddish at the Melchett minyan

“Club Tropicana, drinks are free,
Fun and sunshine, there’s enough for everyone.
All that’s missing is the sea,
But don’t worry, you can suntan!”

With maximum respect to the co-writers of these fine lyrics, when I attended shul on Friday evening to recite kaddish in memory of my late brother Jonathan, I was not expecting to have to compete with George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley blaring from an adjacent apartment.

The Melchett minyan, however, situated in the grounds of a kindergarten, is surrounded by residential buildings, the typical inhabitant of which is an Ashkenazi young professional who is quite likely to “bat for the other side” . . . hence my having to recite my initial “Yisgadal veyiskadash” to the accompaniment of two eighties gay icons who never appeared to dress in anything but beachwear. Try to maintain kavanah (the mindset for prayer) – not my strong point to start with – having to do that.

Anyway, while he might have preferred Jimi or the Dead (I would have gone for a Lenny dirge myself), Jonny – whose music blared through my entire childhood – would not have disapproved of the concept.

I had thought, earlier in the day, of attending a minyan where I would be anonymous because, whenever I visit the Melchett one, the gabbeh (the bloke who runs the show) always makes me feel guilty that they only ever see me twice a year. And, sure enough, as I walked in, the puritanical Shmuel – an accountant, appropriately enough, during the week – gave me that look, before walking over and shaking my hand with a distinctly patronising “Welcome,” which I always interpret (correctly) as “What? Yahrzeit again?!”

I have disappointed Shmuel. He had high hopes for me once – at the turn of the millennium – when, during my year of mourning for my father, I was a minyan regular. But, while I had the best of intentions during those twelve months – of continuing my shul-going even after they were up – they all came to nothing with the abruptness of my final “ve’imru amen.”

The Melchett minyan – a whimsical collection of locals whipped into line by Shmuel and a learned, prominent Tel Aviv court judge – has always struggled for numbers. With promises of the World to Come and/or, on occasion, herring, it regularly has to drag in reluctant locals to make up a quorum (of ten men), no enviable or straightforward task in Tel Aviv . . . never mind off Sheinkin, Israel’s secular heartland. But the minyan has also been guilty of the kind of crass stupidity in which synagogues so often seem to specialise, most ludicrously by allowing the formation of a breakaway service – also struggling to obtain a quorum – which competes against it from the adjacent classroom.

Kaddish, anyway, just doesn’t do it for me. Neither does yizkor for that matter, or even visiting graves. Not being able to cast off my religious upbringing, I of course do them all, though they just – if you will excuse the expression – leave me cold . . .

And, while I was reciting my second and final kaddish of the evening – accompanied, this time, by Radio Ga Ga (all I heard was “radio ga ga, radio goo goo”) by Queen (further evidence of the Shabbos desecrator’s sexual bent) – it occurred to me that the very best way of remembering Jonny would be to ask you lot to read (or reread) my e-memorial to him, and the many touching comments that follow it.

God bless, Jonny.

Operation Grandma: Sharp practice, or merely a mensch?

“Oh, I am so sorry,” I comforted my friend on the telephone on Sunday evening, after she informed me that her nonagenarian grandmother had recently passed away.

“Was it sudden?” I enquire, with sensitivity and interest (they say women like those).

“What? Your family had only just bought her a brand new 42 inch LCD TV?”

Grandma’s passing had, clearly, not been anticipated.

“They paid over 4,000 shekels for it, but only want two and a half?”

I sit up.

“When can I come and see it?”

My very own Mivtza Savta (Operation Grandma) was underway . . .

And Savta’s Sharp LC-42SH7E – or, to be completely accurate, LC-42SH7EBK (it is the black model) – is already enjoying pride of place in my living room (with the trusted Sony CRT [see I love my old TV] which accompanied me on aliya way back in January 1996 having been semi-retired to my bedroom).

Do I feel bad? No.

Was it wrong of me to have negotiated the price down even further, to 2,000 shekels? Perhaps.

Then again, I had been thinking in terms of a 50 inch and, thoughtfully, chose not to trouble the bereaving family with the fact – gleaned from hastily conducted Internet research – that the LC-42SH7EBK doesn’t exactly distinguish itself on AV review forums.

Moreover, I had both the respect and decency not to enquire whether Savta was one of those old dears who would have the telly on in the background from dawn till teeth-out time without so much as five minutes on standby (and what could that do to a Liquid Crystal Display?!)

So, far from being a shameless opportunist – like those so-and-sos who could hardly wait until the end of my grandfather’s shiva to enquire about his house – I have done the grieving family a real favour, and might even be a genuine contender for my very own Mensch of the Month award.

The Ashes series “Down Under” gets underway in a couple of weeks’ time, and I am having a private satellite dish installed just to enable me to watch that greatest of sporting rivalries from the comfort of my Melchett couch (while also using the opportunity to finally rid myself of the curse that is HOT). And when Andrew Strauss takes guard for the first ball, or Jimmy Anderson (pictured) charges across my living room wall to deliver it, I will spare a loving, appreciative thought for Savta . . . zichrona livracha.

Ashes to Ashes . . .

A Shabbos afternoon tale

On my Shabbos afternoon stroll with The Beasts, earlier, I popped into the Dizengoff Center to discover what films its Lev Cinema would be serving up this evening.

And having asked a friend, Sylvie, whether she would like to see Inception before it comes off general release – but not having received a definite reply – I enquire of the girl at the VIP Club desk whether, as a member, if I book two tickets, I can get my money back on one if I cancel ahead of the screening.

“Why would you want two tickets?” comes the knee-jerk response.

Following several seconds of the eyebrows raised, lips clenched, wide-eyed gaze – communicating an unambiguous “That’s a f*cking stupid question, isn’t it?” – which I have rehearsed and perfected specifically for occasions (and nincompoops) such as this, the penny finally drops: “Oh, you mean somebody might be coming with you?”

Though really wanting to reply, “No, I always like to keep a seat free for Elijah,” I – said gaze unaltered, to drive home my message – nod.

“Don’t worry,” says the girl, “I am here this evening, too.”

As if that would be of comfort.

The Israeli consumer industry seems to specialise in dimwitted young females – Frozen Yogurt Girl and Post Office Nasty are just two who spring to mind – though there is something quintessentially Jewish, of course, about (not) answering one question with another.

(And, yes, I love writing little blogs about nothing . . . )

I’m forever blogging on bubbles . . .

So detached is life in Tel Aviv from that in the rest of Israel and the Middle East that this city is often (most famously in the 2006 film of the same name) referred to as “the bubble.”

For much of last month, however, I exchanged this bubble for my former Anglo-Jewish one – a bubble no less – giving me the opportunity to redirect my blogging eye and (more so) ear from the Israeli to the British Jew (Jews in general being such a wonderful source of material for observational bloggers), and to consider in which bubble I best now fit . . .

The couple (who had been visiting Israel for a wedding) seated next to me on the easyJet flight to Luton provide the perfect reacquaintance with the harsh daily realities of Anglo-Jewish life: After sharing with me their disappointment that their fancy Stanmore development didn’t work out quite as they might have hoped – “Our entire floor is Asian,” declares the wife in unapologetic disgust, not caring how many other passengers can hear – they rejoice in the savings afforded by easyJet over El Al. “It was three hundred more pounds to spend in Israel,” cackles the husband, as I ponder, cynically, where the cuts might have had to come had they flown instead with Israel’s national carrier. And I afford myself a wry smile an hour or so later as the wife kvetches, Beattie-like, about the paucity of easyJet’s leg room: “Sitting’s no good. Standing’s no good . . .”

I spend that Saturday night at an old friend’s house in London, and – before catching my lunchtime flight to Inverness – join him and his kids for their Sunday morning outing to Tesco. And just when I am thinking how well-mannered English children are compared to their Israeli counterparts, my friend’s seven-year old yells at him from the back of the brat carrier, “You’re going the wrong way, you shmock!”

I haven’t yet decided which part of the Highlands I will be exploring over the next four days. Reading in my Rough Guide, on the flight, that Ullapool was “founded at the height of the herring boom,” I am happily reminded of my late grandfather – who would return from shul with his opinion not of the Rabbi’s sermon . . . but of the herring – and of my all-time favourite quote, “A kind word is no substitute for a piece of herring” (Shalom Aleichem). On this fishy whim, I resolve, on this trip (I try to visit the Highlands once a year), to cover the north-west and north coasts. And, whilst not a patch on the west coast, I enjoy four serene (the reason I tend not to take women) days, before returning to London to join my 39 fellow Norwood cyclists (there were eighty on the first ride, the week before) for the Thursday night flight to Nairobi.

On hearing that I have come from Tel Aviv, I am greeted by the Norwood representative – on my arrival at Heathrow Terminal 4 – in eerily similar fashion to the way that I had been in Saigon on my last bike ride for the charity, three years ago: “I’ve got a flat in Herzliya Pituach.” Unfortunately, I have left my medals at home, but it becomes apparent – during the course of the next week and a half – that a number of the riders have purchased holiday homes in Israel (South Netanya and Poleg appear to be the current “in” locations), with many of them blaming their other halves (“If it was up to me . . .”) for their continuing sojourn in the UK. But even after witnessing our group spontaneously respond to a rendition, by local schoolchildren, of the Kenyan national anthem with one of Hatikva (as opposed to God Save the Queen) – extremely weird, and interesting, I thought – I still don’t buy it.

There is mutual delight a few minutes into the flight when my neighbour, an ex-Hasmo (who had left the school before I joined), discovers that I am melchett mike (my delight, however, turns to under-my-breath muttering when Peter states that he “prefers the Hasmo stuff”). Overhearing our conversation, another rider then declares himself the nephew of Mitch Taylor, no less (whom, he informs me, passed away in 2000). This results, quite naturally, in Paul being hounded for the next week and a half for any snippet of inside information on the Legend (some memorabilia, he says, may be forthcoming). And when, on the Friday evening, Masai warriors enter the lounge of our safari lodge to perform their tribal dance – pogoing and yelping may be a more accurate description – I cannot help but recollect another fine Holders Hill Road pedagogue, Joe Paley, who, on displaying a photograph of African tribesman to our 2AB geography class, announced, “These, my boys, are schwarzes.”

Norwooders are a fine bunch who, for their generosity and selflessness, can be forgiven their occasional preoccupation with boxes at football, home swimming pools and private yachts – the irony being, of course, that, when they really need them, their 4x4s are parked outside Waitrose Brent Cross – and for their dependence on their iPhones: After passing a herd of elephants, one afternoon, one incredulous rider exclaimed to me, “Here we are, on safari in Africa, and they’re checking share prices and the results from Chepstow!” There is also more, and pricier, cycling paraphernalia on show than at your average Tour de France, with some riders – and I jest thee not – even providing Kenyan game parks with their first exposure to “sat nav.”

The ride, however, is a huge success, and – for anyone contemplating a Norwood Challenge – it really is a fantastic way to get/stay fit and to experience a new country, both while raising money for a wonderful cause. And witnessing the joy that participants with learning difficulties, riding on the back of tandems, get from these rides is always extremely special.

Observing every type of Anglo-Jew enter Luton Airport Departures on Tuesday morning, I am given more pause to consider where (if at all) I now fit in: From the family of pasty, young Stamford Hill hassidim – with the wife who might as well be a travelling childminder for all the attention her husband gives her – to the Bushey (formerly Edgware) 2010 Edition becks, chewing gum as if their jaws are on a spring, and everything in-between, I watch them all as if on a safari of the British Diaspora. And I am only drawn out of my study by the unforgettable sight of the NW11 (at an educated guess) twenty-something who, in attempting to persuade the check-in commandant that her hand luggage really is within the maximum size, forces it into the easyJet test-frame by bringing down to bear upon it her not inconsiderable toches.

While there are flights to numerous destinations, a mere two to Tel Aviv (there is also an El Al one) is enough to guarantee that the Luton Duty Free might just as easily be Golders Green Road on a Friday morning . . .

In WHSmith, a middle-aged gentleman – clearly overcome with naches that a fellow Anglo-Jew has made it onto the front shelf – feels it incumbent upon him to announce to the entire store that Howard Jacobson’s new novel has “just won the Booker Prize.” My panic, however, that he is about to recite aloud the full list of Jewish Nobel Prize winners since 1901, proves unfounded as his wife whisks him off to find the latest Elton John CD.

Taking a break from Anglo-Jew Watch, I inquisitively, though furtively, on my haunches, explore the nether shelves of Boots’ disingenuously-named Family Planning section – fruit-flavoured condoms, lubes and vibrating rings (“to stimulate both partners”) – before glancing up in horror to find a black-hatted, bearded sixty-something (above) standing over me. For a second, I expect to be pulled up by my ear lobes or sideburns and dragged off to see Rabbi Roberg. In spite of my relief that this doesn’t happen, I refrain from asking him what the vibrating rings are for, or whether – under certain circumstances – one would have to say a bracha on the fruity prophylactics.

While feeling further alienated from the Anglo-Jew with each passing visit to Blighty, my continuing interest in him would suggest that we still have a lot more in common than I may sometimes care to admit. Nonetheless, I am relieved, eventually, to make small talk – in the queue for boarding – with a religious Israeli kibbutznik.

The uncomfortable truth for me, and, I suspect, other olim, is that we no longer neatly fit into any one bubble, finding ourselves somewhere in that narrow corridor between bubbles that – like those blown by children – are separating . . . but have not quite, yet, split.

Bitch, her 4×4, and other irritants

There is this woman in the neighbourhood – for argument’s (and accuracy’s) sake, let’s call her “Bitch” – who, every morning, parks her 4×4 on the pedestrian crossing next to the kiosk (‘our’ café on Rothschild).

Bitch is in her mid-thirties, has a body to die for (and knows it), and couldn’t care less how many old folk, mothers and babies, schoolchildren, or people like me, walking their dogs, can’t safely negotiate the road while she sips on her hafuch (latte).

And ever since, a couple of months ago, Bitch hooted me from behind – essentially, for having the temerity to be on the same road as her – I have fantasized about rubbing something long and hard against that body while she sleeps. A key.

Hallelujah!

Size and status are everything to these terrorists of the road. And, whilst I am loath to agree with anything that emanates from the poisonous gob of Ken Livingstone, the very fact of owning a “Chelsea Tractor” tells us everything that we need to know about that person, making him or her fully deserving of our unbridled contempt.

Strolling home with Stuey and Dexxy, the other morning, after suffering Bitch at the kiosk, I thought about all those folk who I allow to aggravate me these days (and shouldn’t). Even excluding matters religious or political, against the law (for example, littering), or out of people’s control (most unfortunately, being French), I still managed – on the short walk back to Melchett – to come up with the following list . . .

1.  Tel Aviv cyclists: Both the menaces who harass you with their poxy bells – I swear that, some day soon, a surgeon at Ichilov is going to have his oddest retrieval yet from an Israeli rectum – and those on their ridiculously expensive bikes, in equally ridiculous designer cycling gear, for the 10 km round trip to Holon.

2.  Anyone – not using the site for commercial or publicity purposes – with more than 400 (ballpark) “friends” on facebook. To be deeply distrusted.

3.  Males, essentially new immigrants with tiny todgers, who post photos of themselves in IDF uniform – and holding their only weapon of any potency – to facebook. Tossers.

4.  Females who market themselves on Internet dating sites in their bikinis . . . and who then moan that all men ever seem to want is to get their “kit” off.

5.  Israeli women – again, often provocatively clad – who talk inconsiderately loudly in cafés as a result of feeling deprived of attention to anything that might be going on above their shoulders. Shut the f*ck up.

6.  Wannabe actors and, especially, actresses who are in complete denial of what everyone knows: that they are talentless f*ckwits. Tel Aviv is crawling with them. They shamelessly post videos of themselves on facebook in performances that they could only persuade their grandmothers to attend (and, then, only until the interval). There are also those attention-seekers who film nothing very much on Tel Aviv’s streets and boulevards in the hope that passers-by will think that they are actually doing something with their lives. We won’t. Get a job.

7.  Overuse of vacuous expressions such as “sound” (as in cool), or – in Hebrew, and I won’t bother translating . . . there is no point – “ke’eeloo,” “walla” and, most infuriating of all, “sababa.” F*ck off. You are not a student anymore.

8.  Anyone who smokes a cigar with a diameter of more than half an inch outside of a cigar lounge. A middle-aged guy walked past the kiosk with one, last Saturday morning. It was so thick, we thought it would split the webbing of the fingers it was wedged between. He was wearing a look of “See, I’ve made it.” We were saying “Look, what a prick.”

9.  Wearing cowboy boots without actually being a cowboy. Dexxy chewed the trouser leg of one such pillock at the kiosk, last year. It is amazing what dogs know.

10.  Non-Arabs who wear the keffiyeh (okay, that one is a little political . . . then again, they are twats).

11.  Anyone who listens to Coldplay outside of an elevator or a supermarket.

"Anyone know the way to Old Trafford?"

12.  “Glory boy” supporters of Manchester United, Chelsea and, now, Manchester City, who have never visited their team’s home ground . . . or, at least, never did when they were shit (City still are) and poor. These ‘fans’ deny their former lack of interest in football – pre-1993, 2005 and 2008, respectively – with a dishonesty that would make David Irving blush.

And the message of all of this? Don’t be an intolerant, grumpy old sod? Get a life? God knows. Perhaps there isn’t one, and I just wrote it to vent my spleen . . . though it would be interesting to hear (via comments below) what – otherwise legal – behaviours cause readers of melchett mike to spit out their dummies.

[I am off to Kenya for a charity bike ride – it is not too late to sponsor me (many thanks, once again, to all of you who already have) – and, should you experience (understandable) withdrawal symptoms in my absence, I can heartily recommend the following websites to occupy yourselves until my return: boys/girls. To whet your appetites, there is a new sub-series of Hasmo Legends in the melchett mike “oven”, which I guarantee will offer a unique insight into the madhouse.]



Stanley Reiss z”l, 1934-1996

This evening, remarkably, marks the fourteenth yahrzeit (anniversary of death) of my late uncle, Stanley Reiss.

Remarkably, I say, because so unfailingly is Stanley’s memory kept alive by all those who knew and loved him – with recollections, especially, of his generosity of spirit and unique sense of humour – that we can never quite believe that he has not been with us for so long. That his legacy and spirit still are, however, is, in Stanley’s case, no mere cliché.

Stanley, my mother’s younger brother, was that rarity amongst older relatives in that, far from unavoidable obligation, time spent in his company was hugely and genuinely enjoyed. I would love to join him on his evening walks, with family dog Cookie, around Hendon Park – to discuss his, often radical, views on British politics and current affairs (about which he was extremely well-read) and sport (much of which, with his uncanny ability to see the true nature of things, he was persuaded was “fixed”) – and recall jumping at the opportunity to accompany him on the trek to a family bar mitzvah in some distant community (which no one else particularly fancied) because it meant a valuable hour and a half in his presence.

Entertaining guests at the bar mitzvah of my brother Jonathan (pictured with my father), 1971.

Stanley’s repartee and one-liners, delivered with wonderful comic timing, were invariably followed by his trademark boyish guffaw and – for good measure, as if to guarantee a winner – a hearty slap on the back of the nearest listener.

And Stanley had his regular comic routines. Some of these, such as mock chases and fights with his four sons, involved traditional slapstick, while others bordered on pure pantomime: While one of said sons would be on the upstairs phone, in the middle of a sensitive teenage talk, Stanley would carefully – but always with an eye on his eager morning room audience – pick up the downstairs receiver. Covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he would await the perfect moment in the conversation (i.e., the most delicate) before interjecting: “Oh, come on . . . this is boring!”

In the family tradition (of which I am most proud), Stanley had no time for humbug or status. On one occasion, as the two of us attempted to beat the crowds to the buffet at a wedding (on my, Isaacson, side of the family) in the Royal Albert Hall, Stanley barged past Sir Keith Joseph – the brains behind Thatcherism – as if he wasn’t there. Sir Keith’s face, unsmiling at the best of times, was an absolute picture, and – even if he might not have – I enjoyed the moment immensely.

Such irreverence may have stemmed, to some extent, from Stanley’s knowledge (shared by all) that, without his admirable, unstinting observance of the Fifth Commandment, he would have achieved far more, both creatively and professionally. His father (my grandfather) Sam, however, wanted his only son in “the shop” and, so, Stanley’s most original artistic talent (he produced the work below aged just fifteen) was left to hobby . . . with guests returning from weddings and bar mitzvahs with his hilarious caricatures – often of them – sketched on the rear of their Grace After Meals booklets.

One decision, fortunately, that Stanley did not leave to his parents was his choice of life partner. And in his Egyptian wife, Gigi, Stanley found a soul mate with shared values of empathy, kindness, openness and frankness.

Stanley was a genuinely religious (in the real sense of the word) man, perhaps even – while not bearing all of the meaningless trimmings – in the true, chassidic Galicianer tradition: He loved nothing more than hearing his sons sing zemiros; while his and Gigi’s home operated a strict open door policy (a rarity in England), with the Reiss Shabbos table usually seating an assortment of characters who considered 5 Queens Road their second – and, in some cases, even primary – home.

The centrepiece of our family Seder was usually a Galicianer-Litvak dialogue between Stanley and my father regarding the role of God during the Holocaust. Where Stanley saw Him, especially in the subsequent creation of the State of Israel, my sceptic father did not. And when I eventually started to question, too, Stanley was quick to give me – and to make sure that I read – a copy of This Is My God, Herman Wouk’s classic introduction to Orthodox Judaism.

Stanley was a staunch supporter of Israel, which he backed up by encouraging – and, for once, standing up to his father’s objections to – the decisions of his sons to make aliyah. This love of Israel extended to Israelis, too, who, on chancing upon “the shop” on Sunday mornings (usually following a visit to nearby Petticoat Lane), walked out with clothing at near cost price and often a Shabbos invitation to 5 Queens Road!

The mischievous Hasmo boy, paintbrush in pocket, circa 1947.

As a consequence, in all probability, of a difficult (even somewhat neglected) wartime childhood – spent in a Welsh boarding school, far from his parents’ Letchworth sojourn – Stanley was, by all accounts, a rather mischievous boy. On one occasion, a municipal meeting was interrupted by the announcement, “Mr. Reiss, please go home: Your chickens have escaped.” Stanley had thought that he would let them stretch their wings!

Such humanity earned Stanley the sobriquet, “Shirt”: he would give the shirt off his back to someone in need. And it was a quality that he never lost: in later years, Stanley would leave cash for a down-and-out old school friend – they were the first pupils at Hasmonean Grammar – with doormen of Tel Aviv beachfront hotels, requesting that they hand him a little each time he pass by.

A wonderful son, husband and father, Stanley was also so many people’s best friend. And his sudden passing, at the tragically premature age of 62, was a deep and terrible shock to all of them. My father, not always the most sentimental of men, was quite broken about it for the rest of his days.

Stanley always saw the light side of life, and – while little comfort to those he left behind – there was something in his unfussy departure from this world (though he would dearly have loved a lot longer in it) about which he would have approved. Indeed, there was much about Stanley’s simplicity and lack of ego to which we can all aspire.

Heading straight to Bushey Cemetery from my hastily arranged flight from Tel Aviv, on that dark morning in October 1996, the first words that Gigi said to me were “You had such a lovely uncle.”

That said it all. Here was a man who had made a real difference. And life since, for lots of us, has never been quite the same.

http://www.justgiving.com/melchettmike/

Eli Yishai: Cometh the Sabbath, cometh the man

Shkoyach, Eli Yishai! Finally, someone with the principles to stop those immoral chilonim from paying their bills online on Shabbat and chagim (full story). Whatever next with those godless bounders?!  

Following the inspired decision to end Daylight Saving Time a week and a half into September – over a month and a half before Europe and two before the US – so that charedim can have a psychologically easier fast on Yom Kippur (who cares that it now gets dark at half past five?!), I look forward to further ingenious measures from Mr. Yishai to curtail the liberty of secular Israelis, especially in their own homes . . .   

When will he table, for instance, a new law prohibiting the IBA, HOT and Yes from broadcasting on Shabbat and chagim? Or, better still, one forcing Israel Electric to cut off power supply for 24 hours to people who are proved (by a Beit Din, of course) not to be shomer Shabbat? That’ll stop the heathens desecrating Hashem’s Day of Rest by pouring boiling water onto their tea bags!  

Get 'em out! Children protesting deportation, Tel Aviv, June 2010.

I also commend Mr. Yishai’s efforts to deport those four hundred children. After all, who cares that they were born in Israel, are Hebrew speakers, and consider this their home? And what “lessons from the Holocaust”? Many of their parents are even from Africa and a different colour (no offence, Mr. Yishai).  

Seeing as Mr. Yishai is seemingly so intent on turning Israel into a religious state – I can hardly wait! – aren’t the logical next steps to refuse citizenship to Jews who don’t keep mitzvot, and to strip it from sinners already holding it?

And why shouldn’t Mr. Yishai tell chilonim what to do in the privacy of their own homes? After all, apart from building it . . .  oh yeah, and actually working and paying taxes to feed it . . . and, admittedly, sacrificing their sons to defend it . . . apart from all those things, what have the chilonim ever done for this country?   

Kol hakavod, Mr. Yishai! You are surely your teacher’s pupil. And it is people like you who have made Israel what it is . . . or, at least, what it is becoming.  

http://www.justgiving.com/melchettmike

When Kol Nidrei really was Kol Nidrei

September the something, nineteen seventy-something. Early evening. The Main Shul, Hendon United Synagogue, Raleigh Close.

Males are streaming in through all six double oak doors. Warm handshakes and “Happy New Years” (none of that pretentious “Gmar, etc” business in them days) are liberally exchanged as they make their way down the carpeted aisles. The din is uniquely Jewish.

The shul is so full that my father has to take his proper seat (not, as every Shabbos morning, next to my grandfather on the other side of the synagogue). I squeeze between him and the portly, almost Dickensian, Mr. Baker, who is again (like last year) not best pleased. I smile up at him angelically. For some odd reason, this side of the shul feels distinctly less religious than the other.

Moshe Steinhart, Raleigh Close’s legendary shammes, is even more excitable than usual. Chazan Korn on the bimah – cool as an Israeli (if German born) cucumber, Gower to Steinhart’s Randall – is making final adjustments to his tallis and page markings with the minimum of fuss with which England’s number three takes his guard.

The atmosphere is electric. The air of expectation palpable. Twice-a-Year (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) Brigade members get that at QPR or Spurs every other Saturday, but I half expect the roof to open, the sound of heavenly trumpets, and a booming “Welcome My Hendon Children!”

Chazan Korn looks up at Reverend Hardman, waiting for our umpire’s nod.

“Kol Ni-der-ei-ei . . .”

Even if you didn’t spot them park up (round the corner of course), members of the Twice-a-Year Brigade are easily distinguishable from shul regulars as a result of one or more of the following:

• They are markedly more dapper in appearance, sporting smarter suits, pocket square handkerchiefs, louder ties, leather shoes, and more poncey-looking sons.
• Their kappels are larger and shinier, with year-long folds across their radii, while their talleisim are made from cheap cotton rather than wool. They are clearly comfortable in neither, and they pat the former non-stop with a nervous up-and-down motion.
• With one hand on said kappel, and without even a hint of self-consciousness, they continually gaze up at the Ladies Gallery and make demonstrative gestures to their other halves.
• A sizeable minority (those with neighbours who believe they are being kinder by not saying anything) hold their machzorim upside down throughout the entire three hours.

But, like Stan Bowles at Loftus Road (though no one at White Hart Lane in the seventies), Twice-a-Year Brigade members bring a certain glamour to proceedings. We are, indeed, glad to have them back in our bosom.

And, talking of bosom, the Ladies Gallery is a lot more appealing from this side than the other. Am I just bored with the usual Shabbos morning fare? Or is the Twice-a-Year Brigade’s Female Regiment really more exotic than the more religious and modestly attired regulars? I am not even ten years old.

Some 45 minutes in, Reverend Hardman makes his Kol Nidrei Appeal, during which we kids excitedly insert the plastic tags of cards of congregants who haven’t turned up into the £1,000 hole.

Miming (again unabashed) of “Meet you by the car” increases exponentially as the service draws closer to Adon Olam, at which point seemingly every Hebrew in Hendon – including poor cousins from the adjacent, scandalously named, “Overflow” service – is gathered in the synagogue’s front courtyard, which witnesses more hugging, kissing and gossip than your average Saturday night at Busby’s (discotheque).

The Twice-a-Year Brigade has long since ridden out of Raleigh Close (“the Overflow” is now a luxury rather than a necessity, catering – ironically, as it was once heavily Twice-a-Year – to the more particular requirements of more fundamentalist regulars). Whether its members have gone Reform, or just gone, I don’t know. But, having (like all United Synagogues?) crept to the right over the past three decades, it would, most likely, no longer be to their taste. And that is sad, because, once, Raleigh Close was Hendon Jewry.

The United Synagogue, however, was always a rather schizophrenic institution: on the one hand, by definition, Orthodox; on the other, having to cater to the peculiar, changing habits and demands of England’s Jews, as they became rather too used to the good life and everything that it has to offer (including at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon).

The paradoxes that the United Synagogue has always been forced to accommodate expressed themselves most clearly to me, some years ago, following the appointment of a new Rabbi – and a wonderful one at that – at Raleigh Close . . .

“What do you think of him?” I enquired of my neighbour, an old style, stick-in-the-mud United Synagogue member if ever there was one. I should have known better. It was like asking W.G. Grace what he makes of Twenty20.

“Too frum,” he kvetched, with a disapproving grimace and shake of the head.

“Too frum?!” I mimicked, unable to stifle my mirth. “That’s like saying a lawyer is too law-abiding! He’s a Rabbi!”

Far more Israelis ride their bicycles on Yom Kippur than attend synagogue. The custom has taken hold, ironically, because not even the most secular of them would dream of taking out his car. Even parked round the corner, however, Twice-a-Year Brigade Anglo-Jews had a far better idea about, and feel for, Yom Kippur.

On Friday evening, I will attend the Kol Nidrei service at Allenby Street’s Great Synagogue (in the 1930s choir of which a teenage refugee from Germany became lead soloist: that teenager was the aforementioned Moshe Korn, Raleigh Close’s future Chazan). I will sit alongside another former United Synagoguer (Cockfosters & North Southgate), and – clutching our tan, crocodile skin Routledge machzorim – we will reminisce about when Kol Nidrei really was Kol Nidrei . . .

Wishing all readers of melchett mike a very happy and healthy New Year, and “well over the fast.”

[For further rose-tinted reminiscence about our childhood home, see Hendon: Just Nostalgic Illusion? and Only the Shammes: Moshe Steinhart z”l, 1925-2013.]

The lesson of 9/11: Don’t dare upset the Muslims

I keep finding myself, as of late, trying to imagine table talk about world goings-on at an average Muslim family living in Britain. For some reason, the imagined table always seems to be in West Bromwich, in the West Midlands. And I always picture the family members laughing like hell into their mango lassis.   

Following the major television news networks these past few days as they fretted over the burning “Will he or won’t he (burn the Korans)?” question, it became patently obvious that the headmaster is now terrified of the school bully, who – on this ninth anniversary of 9/11, when he should be begging the world’s forgiveness – now understands that “might makes right.”  

Of interest to me is not the attention-seeking nut in Florida, but rather the seeming desperation of the Western world – as reflected in its ridiculously exaggerated media coverage of this non-story – to fall over itself to appease Muslims and their possible reaction to International Burn a Koran Day.    

Hardly a day goes by without us witnessing appalling atrocities and provocations in the supposed name of Islam: suicide bombings, fatwas, stonings, burnings of effigies and flags, Holocaust denial, and other crude forms of anti-Semitism. Women in Gaza and Muslim countries daren’t even have an orgasm without first obtaining permission from their Islamofascist rulers. 

And who in the West dares to utter a word in protest?      

A loony pastor in Florida, however, with no more than fifty followers, threatens to burn a few Korans and the Western media descends into a state of frenzy, the story leading all the major news networks for days.      

Such disproportionate oversensitivity to and appeasement of Muslims constitutes a worrying sign that the West may already have given up the fight against the evil of Islamofascism. And when a former British prime minister is forced to cancel book signings in London because of fears of violent protests by wrongheaded scum, and no one says or does a thing, it is very depressing indeed.      

I am under no illusion about individuals such as Pastor Jones or, for example, elements of the English Defence League. What I do admire, however, is their refusal to lie down while their world and way of life – and in their own countries – is being transformed in front of their very eyes.   

Coming to West Bromwich soon?

Anyone who is more concerned about a few books being burned by some deranged pastor – and we are not talking state-sponsored, 1933-style destruction here – than about the creeping Islamization of our planet is no less irrational than the mook with the handlebar moustache.      

The spirit that got Britain through the last threat to its way of life, seventy years ago, would appear to have gone walkies. The British had better wake up soon and find it . . . before it is too late.   

http://www.justgiving.com/melchettmike

Rosh Hashanah Caption Competition

Forget the Mossad: The tentacles of melchett mike spread far and wide. And its operatives don’t get caught by CCTV cameras in bad-fitting tennis gear and piss-poor stick-on moustaches.

On Friday afternoon, as I was preparing to welcome in the Shabbos bride (or, more truthfully, whatever bint the evening’s activities might throw up), I received an e-mail from a melchett mike operative working in London NW11 under the code name “Whistle Blower”, containing the photograph below.

The e-mail, titled “A week before Rosh Hashono, noch!”, read as follows:

“What kind of man would spend ten minutes in the Corner Shop leafing through the newspapers, and then leave without buying one? Woe to the Sons of Jacob!”

The most humorous caption submitted by comment below will – and I am feeling extremely generous today – win its author half a Goldstar in the Tel Aviv drinking establishment of his/her choice, together with a free lifetime subscription to melchett mike. And I have it on good authority that, in this particular case, it would not negate one’s Selichot!

I have no idea who you are, “Whistle Blower”, but sterling work!

Wishing all readers of melchett mike a happy, healthy, peaceful, and thoroughly irreverent New Year.

melchett mike,
Rosh Hashanah 5771

http://www.justgiving.com/melchettmike/