Rabbi Claude's Scribbles

I don't think anyone would argue that in the future, when we remember the year 2020, two nightmarish words will come to mind, namely ‘Coronavirus’ and ‘Covid19’.   One shudders to consider what could greet us from August onwards. The year that began on 1st January should have been recalled for so many other reasons.    ·        Was it not going to be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of the Second World War? ·        Was it not going to signal the start of brand new and exciting decade? ·        Was it not going to introduce this country into a new experiment ‘sans Europe’? After a brief start, our calendars ground to a halt on 23rd March and 'Groundhog Day' became a reality [1] , to the extent that many of us forgot the date of the month, let alone which day of the week it happened to be.   Was it Monday or Wednesday, Sunday or Tuesday and did it really matter, when many of our friends were winning their respective battles to cling onto life whilst thousan

It had begun seven years earlier in 1955 in the Saint-Maurice studios in Joinville, a picturesque town in North-Eastern France. The interviewer was a young man in his early twenties, who was about to embark on a directorial career that would eventually crown him as arguably the finest exponent of his craft from amongst his peers. The man he was meeting was a world-famous film director whose very name now represents a classic genre in its own right. So was born the professional and productive relationship between François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock and it would last until the death of ‘The Master’ a quarter-of-a-century later. In 1962, following 'To Catch a Thief', 'Vertigo', 'North by Northwest' and Psycho, not forgetting his iconic television series, Alfred Hitchcock was putting the final touches to his upcoming film, 'The Birds'. Loved by the public, mocked by the critics, and ignored by the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, Hitchcoc

I don't think it would be a generalization to say that many Jews have an abiding interest in history.   This is not to suggest that people who aren't of the faith don't share this interest, but due to the rhythm of the Jewish year and its focus on history, we find ourselves delving into our past more frequently than we probably realise. From dipping our greens into the saltwater of the Passover tears and breaking our teeth on matzah, to remembering the Maccabees' victory through munching our way through too many donuts, to remembering to forget to remember the evil Haman via his Hamantaschen (which symbolise his ears/hat/pockets - delete as per your own understanding).   Judaism does history in a grand style and, even if you don't partake of the above too often, we don't need to journey too far to bring us to the delicious weekly Challah which reminds us of the extra portion of Manna that our ancestors received because of Shabbat. In short, we 'get'