Wednesday 21 November 2012

Eight days before the Eight Days [of Hanukkah]

I had meant to post during the latest round of violence in Israel/Palestine, but didn't get the chance. (It is a measure of the massive media bias against Israel that I almost wrote "assault on Gaza" in that last sentence). The total death toll, thanks to the Iron Dome defence system, was 5 Israelis and (according to Al Jazeera) 162 Gazans. How Hamas can continue to countenance such a huge death toll on the part of Palestinians (not to mention claiming victory), only they can answer. But since 9pm local time (7pm GMT), there has been a truce between Israel and Hamas. It's important to emphasize that the strikes by the Israeli Defence Force (Tzahal - Tzvi HaHagana LeYisrael) only took place in response to months of rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas - a point conveniently forgotten by the Hamas spokesman who announced the victory, er ceasefire. This conflict saw the following worrying developments:

  • The new Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi, who was recently caught on camera praying to Allah to "deal with the Jews", immediately visited Gaza to lend moral support to Hamas.
  • It took UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon *6* days to saunter over to the Middle East to suggest that, you know, the parties might want to stop fighting. It took the Pope one more day.
  • Egypt threatened to abrogate the peace treaty with Israel. This would leave Israel at peace with only one of 21 Arab states (usually defined as the members of the Arab League, and not including Palestine, which has representation at the League but is not yet a state), namely Jordan.
  • The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist in a traditionally moderate Muslim state and ally of Israel, accused Israel of "terrorism".
We don't yet know how the future of Israel will pan out given the new, even more hostile environment Israel now finds itself in. We can only hope that it doesn't get any worse.

Sunday 11 November 2012

Taking the plunge

I finally did it. My day job has a relaxed dress code, and all but two of the male managers follow it, with those who don't wearing suits except on "dress-down Friday". (Lots of the women seem to dress smartly anyway.) This year, on Rosh Hashana, for the first time in about two years I wore a suit to shul; this catapulted me into also wearing them at work. I was apprehensive about wearing them there at first, but so far any comments I have gotten have been positive (I haven't yet inspired anyone else to do so, but then that's not the idea). I'm also finding it fits in with my increasing level of observance (I seem to have independently invented the term "Reformodox"). I now wear a suit to work every day of the week, and a better one on Shabbos, though as I still have plenty of casual clothing in good condition, some of which is only recently bought, I tend to wear casual on Sundays and am thinking of adopting dress-down Fridays.

Ironically - and yes I'm using the word in the Alanis Morissette sense - I will be wearing a suit this Sunday as I'm working (and more importantly, wish to have somewhere - i.e. a hole in my blazer lapel stitched in for the purpose, at least, it seems, in suits sold in Britain - to wear a poppy for Remembrance Day), and so Friday will be the first day I wear casual clothes this week. Anyway, semi-independently of that I've also started wearing the tallit katan, an undershirt worn by observant, usually Orthodox, Jews, with the tzitziyot tucked in to avoid looking ridiculous in public. This is a Sephardi, or Southern European Jewish, custom, many of which, incidentally, (such as eating rice on Passover), I have adopted, as they seem to lessen the "burden" of observing traditional Judaism in comparison with Ashkenazi customs (those of Central and Eastern European Jews and their descendants, in the UK, US, Israel and elsewhere). After all, our shul has already adopted the Sephardi/Israeli mode of pronouncing Hebrew, with all but a few members (who are quite welcome to do things their way) doing likewise.

However, the real point of this post is that, again by coincidence, after seeing them in a department store and seeing a couple of people wearing them, I've been wanting to buy a fedora for a while. It took quite a few trips to different clothes shops to get one - including trying out a one-size (and therefore, for a 5'6" midget like me, oversized) one from Primark and being offered one with a white bow on it which reminded me for all the world of 1920's Chicago gangsters (which I've really only seen, appropriately perhaps, in that episode of Star Trek).

I'm a little bit worried that this all makes me look, to an outsider, like a Hasidic Jew, (or, as I joked with my friend Allie today, Amish) and there is certainly a rule in Orthodoxy that one shouldn't mislead other Jews by, for example, walking into a non-kosher restaurant wearing a kippah, as that might give Jewish passers-by the impression that the establishment is kosher. To that I counter that I'm not trying to deceive anyone, and that for example if I were to dress in casual clothes and lose the kippah, I would equally well be giving the impression that I'm not Jewish - and furthermore, that the fact that I "look Jewish" anyway is something I can't really change - nor, frankly, would I want to. I'm frankly much more worried by attitudes like this one. There are Jews who are (natural) blond(e)s - as William Shatner was in his youth - and those who dye their hair - but what Jew in his or her right mind would do it to look "Aryan"? Never mind the fact that the term "Aryan" properly describes the Indo-Iranian (Aryan -> Iran) peoples, who (at least in the main), are definitely not flaxen-haired.

To round off this (rather rambling) post, I probably will keep the look. Jews (and Chicago gangsters) certainly aren't the only people who wear fedoras these days. One regular at our shul wears one, somehow without managing to look Hasidic. I really must study how he does it - maybe it's the lack of beard? Where does that leave the guy who looks Jewish, has a beard but isn't Orthodox? Although I tend to wear the traditional white or blue shirt on the Sabbath, I have all manner of colourful shirts and ties - including red, which is apparently a definite no-no in the Orthodox community - so that should hopefully ward off any unsuspecting Haredim who see me doing anything the Orthodox shouldn't do. To anyone who asks, I will be quite honest and clear - I'm not Orthodox. Ultimately, though, there's no reason to suspect that seeing me going into a non-kosher restaurant (to use my earlier example) would lead the Orthodox to go into that one, any more than seeing them would lead me to being (the Orthodox definition of) shomer Shabbos. What do you think about it?

Tuesday 6 November 2012

If Romney wins tomorrow...

...will the last person to leave the Galaxy please turn out the lights?

Sunday 4 November 2012

A note on tefillin

"Phylacteries" is a singularly unhelpful translation of the word tefillin. That is all.