The Scribbler

Jewish skull caps - 'Made in Palestine' - Haaretz - Israel News Shared via AddThis

Dassi, Tali and I returned from Scotland last night. I'm not going to write much here, because I'm too exhausted....but I will say how strong an impression the country and its people have had on me. In short, I absolutely loved the place. I have seldom met genuinely friendly people who went out of their way to help us, from the people in the street, to the lady we stayed with. It didn't matter that the weather was awful because the welcome was so warm. Do yourself a favour and visit Scotland - I know I shall!

PARENT - Job Description POSITION : Mum, Mummy, Mama, Ma Dad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop JOB DESCRIPTION : Long term, team players needed, for challenging, permanent work in an often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours,which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities! Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required. RESPONSIBILITIES : The rest of your life. Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf. Must be willing to face stimulating t...

G-d has a peculiar sense of humour. I can only think this as yet another of my teenage memories is brought out of the laundry basket that is my memory, washed at a high speed and then unceremoniously thrown back into the basket of long forgotten memories, only to be re-buried into my subconscious. First it was the death of Michael Jackson and my reminiscing about hearing Thriller for the first time back in '82 and now I hear that John Hughes, director of a number of films that really spoke to my generation, dies at the criminally young age of 59. What's going on here? I am a child of the '80s, of Thatcher, Reagen, AIDS, Yuppies, Duran Duran and Dallas. I was also a teenager who remembers seeing films like The Breakfast Club , Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Weird Science . These were our films, our years, our memories. These were also movies that talked to us as the '80s generation, in particular The Breakfast Club . I would love to say that Weird Science was more me...

Anyone who has come out of the last three weeks, taking the (Jewish) religious element to heart will know how I feel right now. In the past, I haven't really treated the Three Week period of mourning for the destruction of the Temples that seriously. Yes, I did the basics, such as not cutting my hair or attending a wedding (not that there were any of those to go to), but I still went out to the cinema and even attended some concerts (I was not going to miss Simon and Garfunkel's unique concert in Hyde Park for anything !). What makes this year different is that I made a conscious effort to get into the spirit of the thing. Admittedly, I didn't stop listening to music until Rosh Chodesh Av , but that's because to me, music is so much more than just simple entertainment - it is the oxygen for my soul. I did however make a point of not going out to the cinema or buying new clothes (not that I do this much anyway). Still, it was a question of internalising the period and...

I can see that quite a big deal is being made of the fact that Israel's Education Minister has decided to finally act in a responsible manner! OK, that's a little unfair. As you might have heard, Gidon Sa'ar has decided that Israeli Arab school kids should not be using textbooks that refer to the birth of Israel as a Nakba or "catastrophe". My question is why this term was ever used in the first place, granted that we are talking about the Israeli school system, not the shameful excuse for education as practiced by our lovely cousins in Gaza and its environs. Sa'ar says that the majority of Israeli Arabs do not consider the events to be "catastrophic" in nature. That might be a moot point, although not as far from reality as one would imagine, granted that they have lived a better life in Israel than they could ever hope to under Arab sovereignty. Is Israel finally starting to wake up to the fact that we have to push the Jewish angle here? If Arab s...

by HERB KEINON Israel finally won one last week in an international human rights court. On Thursday, the Council of Europe's European Court of Human Rights upheld a French ruling that it was illegal and discriminatory to boycott Israeli goods, and that making it illegal to call for a boycott of Israeli goods did not constitute a violation of one's freedom of expression. The Council of Europe is based in Strasbourg, has some 47 member states and is independent of the European Union. The court is made up of one judge from each member state, and the rulings of the court carry moral weight throughout Europe. On Thursday the court ruled by a vote of 6-1 that the French court did not violate the freedom of expression of the Communist mayor of the small French town of Seclin, Jean-Claude Fernand Willem, who in October 2002 announced at a town hall meeting that he intended to call on the municipality to boycott Israeli products. Jews in the region filed a complaint with the public pros...

I was emailed this... "If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have shrugged it off? Had George W. Bush given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, in exchange for a thoughtful and historic gift from Mr. Brown, would you have approved? If George W. Bush had gifted the Queen of England with an iPod containing videos of his own speeches, would you not have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky? If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have been incensed? Were George W. Bush to have visited Austria and made an inane reference to the non-existent "Austrian language", would you have brushed it off as an insignificant slip? If George W. Bush had staffed his cabinet and circle of top advisers with persons who cannot or do not keep current on their income taxes, would you have been OK with that? If George W. Bush had been so unbelievably ignorant of...

It looks like an ordinary bouquet of flowers, but it is anything but. "M" was a student for whom I had high hopes. She came to the school in the middle of Year 10 and had a lot of work to catch up with. She toiled away solidly and pretty soon, demonstrated an ability to produce work of high quality, the type that stood out from the rest of the pack. Fast forward a year and she was slacking somewhat. With deadlines approaching, she wasn't making the mark and I was concerned, as were others in the school that she wouldn't make it (it should however be noted that she told me she had spent the last week battling the flu, so I can't be too harsh in my judgement of her). With the final external moderation imminent (it took place yesterday), I spent the better part of the last week bombarding her with emails, voice messages and suchlike, cajoling her into her getting herself into school to finish off the work ASAP. To my immense relief, she manged to fight off the bug an...

Last week, my multi-talented eldest daughter, Hadassah performed magnificently in the school production of Fiddler On The Roof . She stole every scene that she was in, playing Yenta as though the part had been written for her. You don't need to take only my word for it. Just ask anyone else who witnessed her extraordinary performance. She was simply - and I don't care if I'm biased - magnificent. She had the voice, the moves, the whole caboodle down to a tee. We laughed and sang along with the familiar music. It was a lovely evening. Then tonight, we had the Siyum, otherwise known as the Primary School prom. This was her leaving ceremony and the last time she will appear on stage, in front of parents, with the children she has spent her life with since the age of four. It was a very special and prestigious moment for all concerned. And yes, I was emotional and sad. It was as though, through my daughter, another part of my life was coming to a close. It makes no sense reall...

Oral Testimony of Noam Shalit, Father of Kidnapped Israeli Soldier Gilad Shalit Delivered to UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Geneva, 6 July 2009 My name is Noam Schalit and I am the father of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. Honorable members of the Mission – I thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today. I thank you, also, for allowing me to make my testimony public. I know that this Mission is determined to give the victims of the recent conflict in Gaza an opportunity to make their voice heard. So - with your kind permission - I would like to use this distinguished forum – the United Nations – first to address you and then to address the people of Gaza and, in particular, the people holding my son Gilad. Honorable Members of the Mission, a few weeks ago you were in Gaza. You met the Hamas hierarchy. According to the Ma’an news agency – Mr. Ismail Haniyya welcomed your mission deploring what he viewed as Israel’s grave violat...

"On a more serious front, I sincerely hope that when the President goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran ." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

I was sitting in Synagogue ( Shul ) yesterday morning listening to the weekly recital from the Torah. On this occasion, as on many others, we read about the continuing wanderings (and indeed " wonderings ") of our forefathers as they trundled their way around the desert for four long decades. As you may or may not be aware, at one point, they came across a rather nasty character called Bilaam (or Balaam as he is strangely referred to) who despite his best efforts to curse the nation, ended up blessing them and in the process, realising that he'd bitten more than he could chew by not exactly making himself a mate of the good Lord above. One of the utterances he mouthed gave me food for thought. Looking over the encamped tribes, he stated majestically : "I see them as mountain peaks, and I behold them as hills; it is a nation that will dwell alone, and is not reckoned (or counted) with the other nations" (Hebrew- Hen Am levadad yishkon uva - goyim lo yitcha...

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...