If You Tickle Us...

Courtesy of Hirshel Tzig To the Hebraically challenged: the above is a greeting in a charity brochure. Since charity receptions and the occasional dinner are the best we have for going out in the evening, for men that is, the charity brochure is the equivalent of the society pages in Tatler. Not unfortunately who’s going out with whom as it happens so quickly round here that you’ve barely kissed the mezuze to go out and it’s time to come back in for the l’chaim announcing the engagement. Besides being the only distraction from drawn-out speeches by speakers internationally renown from their lectern-thumping histrionics, the brochure is also an indicator of who’s going places. ‘He? Last year he had a silver page and this year a diamond! Not bad. What’s he into?’ And ‘Where’s he, didn’t he have a platinum last year? Nebech , men hot im baganvet. I hear his wife’s started a playgroup.’ It is customary in such instances for pages to be donated for the elevation of dead souls. Or ra

Guys, I feel like a diva at La Scala on the final curtain call. I bow before you all, tilt my head slightly back and thrust it forward propelling my hair, sorry my sheitel , into the air and over my face so that my head looks like a willow in the storm of applause. What should I tell you? I’m overwhelmed. Hits have shot up as if my site overdosed on Viagra, with a hechsher of course, (I now know what they mean by stats porn, you know that feeling a rebbe gets at a sell-out tish ), laudatory emails have been raining in from the chareidi blogosphere kings of yesteryear and the Hill is alive with the sound of comments. In the middle of it all stand I shaking like receiving my first Oscar and feeling, like the real winner, as if my career has peaked. Of my Warholian 15 minutes I can only say may they last for 120. But as my father always told me, 'don't let these things get to your head'. And as we were taught at the age of 9 in the ethical primer The Paths of the Righteous

We’re in the news again and this time not for the wrong reasons. The Daily Telegraph has a long article in tomorrow’s magazine on chareidi Stamford Hill which they have put online. A nice and fair write up overall. The usual suspects, the buffoon, the ‘rabbi’, make an appearance and there is the oft recycled canard of Pinter senior establishing YH schools. As if. More like he climbed to the top and once there shoved everyone out of the way bar his children of course. But that’s for another day. There are however other voices too and the writer has taken the time and effort to visit Dunsmure Road and Egerton Road. I mean how many journalists do that, though Oldhill Street may be too much to ask. You can’t fault a journalist who tries to gain entry to a kolel either and I suspect many will be relieved that his request was declined. Yours truly is also allowed a few words edgeways though not quite enough to rain on anyone’s parade. But I’m not complaining because the article is far m

Stamford Hill has got itself into a lather once again. We're barely out of the last lather whatever that may have been, skirts have been lengthened by an eighth of an inch, Shabbos candles are being kindled 5 minutes earlier to atone for whatever it was that got us into that lather and to appease God to get us out of it, malicious talk is being avoided with ever greater intensity, psalms are being recited fervently everywhere from the doctors' surgery to the benefits advisor's waiting room, horses are being kept even further at bay and women have taken it upon themselves to recite the Song of Songs on the Sabbath eve. Not, heaven forefend, to get them going for the conjugal relations of the evening; that's what they wear their long flowing robes for. And it is precisely for this reason that Rebetzen Padwa has banned wearing them outdoors lest it incite in others what it's intended to arouse in its wearer's basherte . The Song of Songs rotas may however have b

News arrives of yet another ban. This time it's not the internet, DVDs, tight blouses, short skirts, walking on one or other side of the road but on walking out altogether. For the rabbis in their eternal wisdom have banned yeshive groups from hiring buses or other forms of transportation on Purim. They have cited the excuse of killjoys up and down the country, 'health and safety' and so killed the modicum of fun that is allowed once a year to penetrate our sacred square of the holy mile and have accomplished what even Haman was not capable of. Since they don't follow the news, except insofar as it concerns cuts to housing benefit, it appears that they have yet to hear that the Labour government has been out of power for almost a year and health and safety has been declared by the new government a 'music hall joke' . But then what’s a music hall? It is however hoped that having jumped onto the 'elf and saifty' bus more concern may now be shown for the