Rabbi Claude's Scribbles

Dedicated to my father R’Yitzchak Asher ben Yechezkel Shraga zl The Sheloshim or first thirty days of mourning for my father will be completed on Wednesday.   Since his passing, I’ve had a great deal of time to reflect on his life which spanned nearly a century. You learn a great deal from your parents and try to emulate their positive attributes in your own life.   My father was a polymath, who was blessed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Torah in addition to politics, the arts and classical music.   He taught me many lessons, one of which I would like to share with you in his honour. As Jews, we have a rich treasury of texts which start with the Torah and span the four thousand years of our existence.   For many years, when I attended Synagogue on a Shabbat afternoon during the summer months, I was puzzled as to the texts the congregants recited after the end of the Amida.   Of course, I discovered that they were learning Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers.   As a chi

 His identity is shrouded in mystery as no-one is really sure who he was. We do know that, according to the Talmud, he did something terrible which has left a long-lasting legacy.   His actions cast a shadow that chillingly re-appeared in the news last week.   Let me explain. The Mishna in Taanit (4.6) states: Five calamitous matters occurred to our forefathers on the seventeenth of Tammuz, and five other disasters happened on the Ninth of Av. On the seventeenth of Tammuz: ·          the tablets were broken by Moses when he saw that the Jews had made the golden calf; ·          the daily offering was nullified by the Roman authorities and was never sacrificed again; ·          the city walls of Jerusalem were breached; ·          the general Apostomos publicly burned a Torah scroll; ·          and Manasseh placed an idol in the Sanctuary. This is the one and only mention of a person called Apostomus (or alternatively Postemus) in the entire Talmud and according