With all Jew respect

To the delight of my Facebook friends, every time I score a goal in the office 5-a-side soccer league I post a video of the event to my timeline. They and I are deeply grateful to YouTube and the entire software and hardware infrastructure that makes this all possible, not to mention the referee who clicks his remote at the pivotal moment. Now my football feats can be recorded for posterity and analysis by those who will be studying my life in the future. If you are worried about these videos cluttering up my Facebook page, I can reassure you that I keep them to a minimum, say about two a season. No, I don’t cull the boring ones – I post them all. I love soccer. I wouldn’t be playing otherwise, no matter how career-advancing my line manager hints it is. But I’m more of a quantity over quality type of player. I run around frantically after the ball like a madman, to little effect, until I am completely spent (current records: 9.4 min). Thereafter I collapse into the waiting arms of ...

Long ago when I was just a kid, when my chin was as smooth as my head is now, the way we categorised someone's level of religiousness was by how often he went to shul. If he’d never seen the inside of a shul, he was a nogoodnik, to be marvelled at and pitied. If he only came when forced in an armlock by his mother to attend his cousins’ barmitzvahs, he was considered estranged. If he went three times a year, he was average. If he went every Friday night he was old school traditional. If he went Friday nights and Saturday mornings he was a pillar of the community. And if he went to shul on Yontifs too, he was as frum as the Rabbi’s children, please G-d Amen. Going to shul was the celebrity spokesman for the mitzvahs; the public face of our mysterious heritage. It was common knowledge that there were people out there who went to shul every day, but what they did there was never made clear. There’s no brocha during the week. Shul was a place you attended. You went to shul.  Y...

I have this... friend, see? And my friend has this... problem. But he can't ask for help. I know what you're thinking. "Well, if he has an embarrassing problem, he should just pretend to ask for help on behalf of someone else. That way no one will know it's actually his problem." Very funny. No, this isn't my problem. I'm not saying I don't have any problems, just that this isn't one of them. (For an up-to-date list of my problems I can forward you the latest spreadsheet/ powerpoint presentation, put together by my wife and what I have always assumed to be a high-powered consortium of judges, spiritual-leaders and in-laws. Additional bandwidth charges may apply. Not for sensitive viewers.) But no, this isn't one of my problems. I'm talking about someone else, a good friend of mine, whom I love dearly, who is either blissfully ignorant or sadly oblivious of his... shortcoming. He can't ask for help because he doesn't eve...

There are many sayings in the Talmud about the coming of Moshiach. They speak of the upheaval and change in the natural order which will occur as history approaches its climax. The Rabbis of the Talmud took this seriously, as they do all of our tradition, and were so afraid of the difficult times ahead that they publicly wished they would not have to go through the pain of the world ‘giving birth’ to Moshiach. The sayings are short and cryptic, but like all of the Torah laden with meaning. We would recognise very well the allusions to runaway inflation, state atheism and disrespect for the elderly. Others are not so clear. There is an explanation for one of the sayings which has always stuck with me. More than just a description of the descent of society, it seems to me to have a very practical application in our daily life. בעקבות משיחא חוצפא יסגא ויוקר יאמיר הגפן תתן פריה והיין ביוקר ומלכות תהפך למינות ואין תוכחת בית וועד יהיה לזנות ותגליל יחרב ותגבלן ישום ואנשי תגבול י...