The Scribbler

What happened to the fresh face that beamed from the cassette cover? I'm of the generation that remembers the impact of the release of Thriller. I remember going into Oliver Crombie in Golders Green Road and buying the tape. I had to. I just had to get it for myself. Everyone else I knew was listening to it. It was all over the news. I still remember sticking it my first Walkman, a metallic red cage, probably one of the first models which still works today. I recall hearing the songs, this being before I had got into The Beatles and wondering when I would hear the Thriller song, not realising that Michael Jackson was not singing "Driller" but indeed "Thriller" - hey I was 14, I was allowed to be stupid at that age. I instantly fell in love with Billy Jean , I mean, how could you not get taken in by that entrancing beat? I loved Beat It and PYT and yes, even Human Nature. This was the first real album that I'd bought into, my virginal album experience. S...

The following will be totally lost on anyone who doesn't know the way people in Essex talk. If you do, prepare to smile... alma chizzit - A request to find the cost of an item amant - Quantity; sum total ("Thez a yuge amant of mud in Saffend") assband - Unable to leave the house because of illness, disability etc awss - A four legged animal, on which money is won, or more likely lost ("That awss ya tipped cost me a fiver t'day") branna - More brown than on a previous occasion ("Ere, Trace, ya look branna today, ave you been on sunbed?") cort a panda - A rather large hamburger Dan in the maff - Unhappy ("Wossmatta, Trace, ya look a bit Dan in the maff") eye-eels - Women's shoes Furrock - The location of Lakeside Shopping Centre garrij - A building where a car is kept or repaired(Trace: "Oi, Darren, I fink the motah needs at go in the garrij cos it aint working proper") Ibeefa - Balaeric holiday island lafarjik - Lacking in en...

Machon Ohr Aaron and Betsy Spijer Thoughts to Ponder 240 Nathan Lopes Cardozo To President Barack Obama I am a Jew. I stand at the Western Wall. How long do I stand here? Nearly 4000 years, since the days of my grandfather Abraham when he nearly sacrificed his son at Mount Moriah . I see the Wall with its frozen tears, and passing clouds with many sighs. I read millions of names: Born in Egypt , Babylon , Rome , Poland , Spain , Hungary , America and South Africa . But that was only in a dream. In reality we Jews were all born in Israel , and then exiled by Titus. Although most of us began our childhoods in foreign countries, we merely camped in these places, but never dwelled in them. And at the end of our lives, Though our tombstones may stand in Exile, our bodies are buried in the dust of Israel . *** The return to Zion is unprecedented. It is sui generis . The State of Israel is a surprise, a shock, for it is the story of a nation in exile which never had...

I don't envy Bibi. After Obama's speech, there was very little he could say that would invite the kind of platitudes that his erstwhile but exceedingly naive predecessor garnered on his Cairo outing. That said, I don't think the man did half as badly as many thought he would. I believe that he stepped up to the microphone and delivered a speech that we as a Jewish nation can be justly proud of. Bibi knows that whatever he says, he's going to put himself in the line of the fire. The rightists will never concede an inch of land and ideally speaking, they really shouldn't need to.The real world though says that we don't have much choice, not as long as the occupant of the White House is breathing down our necks waiting for our move. The Palestinians of course rejected his offer of a demilitarized state and came up with the frankly ridiculous argument that we would be sticking them inside a ghetto. If anyone has the slightest knowledge of what constituted a ghetto ...

It breaks my heart. It truly breaks my heart. Yesterday, in Washington DC, an 88 year old pathetic excuse for a human being walked into a museum and shot a guard dead. Let's rephrase that. A white man walked into a building owned by Jews and shot a black man dead. The building housed the Holocaust Museum. The Holocaust is by far the most shocking example of man's inhumanity towards his fellow creature. It represents everything that is reprehensible about human-kind and yet, the ultimate irony is that a white supremacist used this location -this very location, to demonstrate exactly what was so inconceivable, but seventy years ago. Where do we go from here? What have we learned? How, in G- d's name (or lack thereof), can so little have been learned in so much time? The only thing to say, I suppose is that for every piece of homosapien waste that walks the earth, there are (hopefully) many many others humans who use their lives for a more positive purpose. I hope that the e...

Last Monday, my body went past the forty-first and-a-half anniversary of it's first encounter with the external world (why is it that only kids can get away with adding fractions to their age?). I can't say that I noticed much change from the day before. I was too busy teaching kids, preparing lessons, trying to keep my excitable wife and kids calm and so forth. It came and went, pretty much like the previous data, six months afore. Then again, I have marked it because I'm sitting here at 05:39, writing about it nine days later. I was musing (as I often do) about reaching this venerable - or maybe not - age. When I was a kid, I didn't know what I wanted to either do or be. Being Jewish, there is a lot of peer pressure to be successful. All the kids in my class were going to be either very rich, very educated and very rich or simply failures. I suppose that I always knew I wouldn't be rich. For one thing, I didn't come from a wealthy family (which obviously helps...