Rabbi Claude's Scribbles

https://curiousrambler.com/the-upside-down-angels-of-bath-abbey/ ‘And he dreamed: He saw a ladder set upon the ground, whose top reached the heavens.  On it, angels of Gd went up and came down. The L-rd stood over him there and said, “I am the L-rd, the Gd of Avraham your father and the Gd of Yitzchak.  The land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.  Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west, the east, the north and the south.  Through you and your descendants, all the families of the earth will be blessed.  I am with you.  I will protect you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken of to you”.  (Rabbi Sacks’ translation, The Koren Tanach, Magerman Ed.) In August, I had the pleasure of spending a day with some very dear cousins who were visiting briefly from America.  They kindly invited me to join them on a tour of Stonehenge and Bath.  I

 I have a strong affiliation with this week’s Parasha of Toldot as it is my Bar Mitzvah Sedra. My Hebrew birthday was last Monday, 13 th November which tallies with 29 th (Mar)Cheshvan in the Hebrew calendar.  It is also known as Erev Rosh Chodesh Kislev. This year, the commemoration of my birthday has been somewhat muted as it is the first one in my life that I haven’t had my father by my side, physically or metaphorically, to mark the day.  I used to tease my parents by telephoning them and asking them to wish me a ‘Happy Birthday’.  As an only child, you’d expect them to remember the date of their son’s birthday!  We always laughed about this. In 2023, neither my mother nor father were there to join me in marking the anniversary of my entering the world. I regard Parashat Toldot (which is always recited in the week of my birthday) as being ‘my Sedra’.  It has always had a significant impact on my thought process; all the more so this year. From an early age, Mum and Dad

 Let’s play a game. I will list a few famous people who have been known by a different name and see how many of them you can recognise.  1.     Katheryn Hudson………………………….. Katy Perry 2.     Bernard Webb……………………………... Paul McCartney’s pseudonym 3.     Emanuel Goldenberg……………………. Edward G. Robinson 4.     Robert Galbraith…………………………... J.K Rowling 5.     John Carter………………………………… Charlton Heston (aka Moses) 6.     Margarita Cansino………………………... Rita Hayworth How many did you answer correctly?! The people I have listed changed their names for several reasons.  Some, because they wished to adopt a pseudonym for their writing career, a case in point being JK Rowling whose alter ego was created so that she could write crime novels for a ‘neutral audience’ without having to live up to the expectation, hype and pressure associated wit