Rabbi Claude's Scribbles

"It's on the list". I remember the first time I heard that statement.   It was in the mid to late 1970s and I was standing in the playground of my Jewish primary school in the heart of Golders Green.   One of the children had uttered this cryptic message to another child.   At the time, I had no idea what this 'list' was.   Occasionally, my friends would claim that some item of food was either 'on the list' or off it. I was brought up in a traditional home where we ate kosher and observed Shabbat.   My mother didn't cover her hair but neither did the majority of her friends whose kids also attended the same school.   One of the ways we could tell how 'frum' a classmate was by observing the mothers in their sheitls (or not for that matter) coming to pick them up at the end of school. These were the days before the glossy ‘Really Jewish Food Guide’ and its companion ‘Is it Kosher?’ app existed.   In my childhood era, the 'list' was

In loving memory of Yitta bat Mordechai Leib (our Hilary) I have to admit that it's been a slow burn. I'm not one of those people who looks at a current global situation and thinks that Gd's hand is so prevalent that the Moshiach is not only here, but he's caught the 09.15 to Euston from Terminal 5.   This is not to say that I'm about to join the Northern Line at Edgware to greet him (and besides, there are no trains at the time of writing due to the Tube strike). However, the spectacle of the world's most powerful leader (Biden gave up his throne a while back) who is armed with 5,977 nuclear warheads going to war against a country that has zero warheads is jaw-dropping.   That its leader would not stand a chance to defend himself, were the capital in which he is residing to fall to Russian forces, is heart-breaking.   That this same leader is an assimilated Jew and former actor and comedian to boot, whose great-grandfather and three great-uncles were murd