The Kosher Compass (dot com)

A new spin on novelty gifts for Hanukah? (Left: The kosher compass; Right: Limoges dreidle)



Readers of the Jerusalem Post and other Jewish web content have recently been bombarded with the following advertising hype:

The compass that defies Nature! Just open the cover and find your way home to Jerusalem!

The Incredible Jerusalem Compass will show you the proper direction for your daily prayers, anywhere in the world. No Computer chips, no circuitry - this non-electric device spins and stops in the direction of Jerusalem from any place you are in the world [emphasis mine]. It's an incredible device that defies nature as it shows you the direction of your prayers and dreams... Recommended by leading Rabbis.

The question is: How true can this be? If it's non-electric, surely the only posibilities we are left with are magnets, mirrors and... miracles?

According to Parshablog it would seem I'm not the first to ask this question, and not the first either to be reluctant to shell out $24 to buy one and test it. (One would feel so silly buying one...) The patent having been located by the above blogger, it seems likely that the incredible kosher compass that defies nature is probably not more than a cute novelty item, based on the following two principles:

1) A non magnetized needle is attached to a regular, magnetized compass needle that is hidden beneath the compass face.

2) The angle between the two needles can be adjusted for different locations using a knob on the outside of the compass (visible in the picture but not mentioned in the hype).

If this is the case, you actually have to carry the "adjustment leaflet" with you when you travel, not just the compass, and using the thing in Jerusalem - with the exact direction for prayers changing at every block - might be a nightmare rather than "a dream".

Business is obviously swift, with some webstores already being "Sold Out" of the wonder item; but I suspect that before long interest will wane and the "the compass that defies nature," will do a vanishing act.

Disclaimer: I have not seen the compass itself and am merely speculating based on a basic knowledge of physics and an Internet Search.

Gaza synagogues the day after

Gaza synagogues before the Disengagement

Smashing, Positively Dashing...

Royal Ascot is well underway, and betting closed early for guessing the colour of the Queen's hat at Ladies' Day (yesterday). The bookies are down thousands of pounds due to a palace insider having snitched that HM would wear brown. (See the Times article on the ten-year old tradition of betting on this essential detail.) One feels so sorry for them. Absolutely not cricket.

Mrs Edward Claridge (above right) is an Ascot Ladies' Day regular who's usually good for a laugh, while Ms Getty (left) favours unrestrained elegance. But my dear, something simply must be done about tradesmen advertising their wares (below left)... so dreadfully "non-U"...



To see more hats, take a butchers at the BBC website, or visit the Official Ascot Image Store, or alternatively listen to a midi recording of the evocative Ascot Gavotte from My Fair Lady.

"Can I help you?" [Not]

Ever feel frustrated by inane and time-wasting offers of help from modern shop assistants who know less about their products than you do?

"To the man who tried to help me find the right computer cable at Future Shop: Thank you for taking the time to carefully read the packaging of all the cables on display right there in front of me... It was nice of you to make yourself available, but guess what? I, too, can read the information on the packages. In fact, I am an accomplished reader of the English language. And if you have no idea what cables you have in your store and what each one is for, then what exactly can you help me with?

"To everybody who works in stores, restaurants, banks -- anywhere in customer service: Clearly you have been instructed to be helpful, but please stop offering to help when you have no idea what that is."

Read Karen Hahn's beautifully expressed article at The Globe and Mail: HELPLESS

Is it raining or spitting?

The Israeli-in-the-street is still trying to understand whom he is disengaging from, and whether "disengagement" in any useful sense is actually possible.

On 13 May, Palestinian Authority TV broadcast a religious sermon that blamed antisemitism throughout history on the Jews themselves. Delivered by a bearded Palestinian mullah (on the payroll of the PA), dressed in white robes, it was broadcast on the Palestinian Authority's official television station. It has to be seen to be believed, so click here, you need to see this for yourself.

I can't help feeling sorry for any intelligent men in the audience there, having to sit cross-legged at this mullah's feet and listen to his diatribe - supposedly as the fulfilment of a religious duty.

Can one "engage" with this? Can one "disengage" from it?

The comment of the proverbial Jew upon being spat in the face at is: "It seems to be raining". Well... isn't it?

But heavens this is all so gauche. For real spitting, I mean really elegant spitting the way only the upper classes can do it, read this interesting article by Shlomo Avner, former Israel ambassador to the Court of St. James, describing a royal dinner party at Hampton Court. I don't find the events he describes as quite as surprising and shocking as he did, and I do think he may have over-reacted, but the inside information is fascinating none-the-less.

Beautiful Bookbindings

Talmudic tradition tells us not to look at the vessel but at what it contains, and that is certainly sound advice on one level. However, I have always been fascinated by beautiful vessels of all kinds - not least bookbindings, which are perhaps more closely bound up with their contents than other types of vessel.

With a tip of the hat to Mirabilis (a consistently fascinating Blog) for the reference, here is a link to an online exhibition of beautiful Hand Bookbindings from the Special Collections in the Princeton University Library. The display is large and varied, including leather bindings of many kinds, marbled end-papers, gold tooling, and much more.

Just to give you a small taste of the riches on view there, here is an example of "gauffered edge-work":



However, my personal favorite category in this field has long been "fore-edge painting", a secret art in the following sense. When you see the book it looks as though it is merely gilt-edged. Only when you fan out the pages slightly - not too much now - does the painting appear. Here is an example of a fore-edge painting of an English village scene.

Tsunami: terrifying magnificence

Tsunami by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)


Tsunami by the Almighty (2005)

And here is a Hebrew prayer written in the wake of the disaster.

On January 2, in the Daily Telegraph, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, is quoted as saying of the disaster: "This has made me question God's existence." Jonathan Rosenblum came down on him like a ton of bricks in the London Jewish Tribune.

"One presumes that some time before reaching the pinnacle of the Anglican Church, with 70 million members world wide, the learned Archbishop knew of natural disasters, and had wrestled with the questions of theodicy that they raise."

Or, in other words: That the idea of an omnipotent, benevolent God poses logical problems given the shape the world is in is nothing new, and Job discussed it 2500 years ago (and it was already an old story then). But a world without God also poses insuperable problems, like: how did we get here, how can we think, how can we know right from wrong,and how come every single culture believes in God?

On the other extreme, some Christian and Muslim clerics have been ascribing the disaster to Divine wrath. This is not the Jewish approach to disasters of this kind. As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach puts it in Don't call tsunami divine punishment:

" I do not know why God allows the murder of innocents, but I do know that it takes tsunami-sized hutzpa to claim to know the mind of God, and to claim that 150,000 people whom they never met were so sinful and evil that they merited extermination by drowning. The specter of Islamic and Christian clerics coming to the faithful in their greatest moment of sorrow and robbing them even of the dignity of victimhood is deeply troubling."

In an aside, and at the risk of appearing trite on a subject that certainly requires our most sober consideration: it does seem poignant that water, the source of all life upon our planet, can become such a terrible weapon against the beings whose lives depend upon it. There may be a lesson in that *.

(*) Please note that whenever I refer to a lesson learnt from a tragedy, I certainly do not mean it as an explanation of why the tragedy occured, but merely of what we can possibly learn from it now that it has occured.

Vulgar cigarette ads okay in Israel

Based on a Jerusalem Post article

The Zarmon-Goldman advertising agency has created an advertising campaign for Kiss cigarettes - in Israeli tabloids - with human figures cut out of cigarette packets and posed to look as though they are engaged in fellatio and copulation. During the last month the ads have appeared over a dozen times in Maariv, Yediot Aharonot and various local magazines.

The Health Ministry's legal department has filed a formal complaint against the agency for... [wait for it...] "for breaking the law that bars the use of human (or animal) figures to advertise tobacco products".

The Health Ministry's legal representative said that the fine for placing a single advertisement that violates the human-figure rule is NIS 400,000. She added that she is also "looking into the fact that the cigarette packets displayed in the ads lack the health warnings that must cover one-third of the packets' surface area". However she admitted that no-one can be held liable for what she called the ad's "bad taste."

Asked to comment, Eilon Zarmon, the nonsmoking owner of the agency said of the cardboard sculpture: "Actually, it is a work of Art" - and judging by some of the government subsidized filth that is put on display in national museums and art galleries, he certainly has a point.

Zarmon-Goldman previously produced ads for Dutch-imported Max cigarettes using the image of a jet about to strike two upright cigarettes (with the top third of one of them bent and about to collapse).

"We are not afraid of slaughtering holy cows," Zarmon said at the time - when asked about profiting from the Twin Towers terror attack.

I suppose this is "In your face" advertising, um... whichever way you look at it.

I saw three ships...

The invigorating and absorbing maritime scene below, with echoes of Dutch artist M C Escher, was forwarded to me by a friend. It was presumably done with the aid of a computer graphics program, which would have given the artist (unknown) a lot more power and control than Escher would have had working (as he did) with a hand-drawn grid. The result is therefore (IMHO) - though perhaps less inspired than many Escher engravings - more immediately striking and aesthetically pleasing.

Fiction...

...and fact.

Spot the difference. This picture - which is totally unrelated (and to the best of my knowledge unretouched in any way) - is the spanking new Millau Bridge over the River Tarn in France, which opened to traffic two days ago.

A Hannukah phone message

Haaretz article on resisting determinism

Last week a group of ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authorities issued a ban on unmarried yeshiva students possessing 3G cellular phones, and married students bringing them onto yeshiva premises, because of the Internet content they deliver.

As a result of this directive, haredi newspapers will probably stop carrying ads for 3G phones. This carries positive messages for all consumers, regardless of their level of religious observance:

"There are some very unprogressive aspects [to]... "progress" [of which we need to be more concious]...and it is possible to [examine the effects of "progress" and sometimes decide to] resist them.

"The truly noble value of freedom of expression, which was originally aimed at enriching man and his society, is being used by cynical people with vested interests to legitimize the basest urges.

"[The problem] also exists in [economics, in] the clear preference for economic efficiency over the dignity of man, a preference in whose name workers are required to labor seven days a week, often in harmful working conditions, all for the sake of someone's bank account.

"One need not accept the exact boundaries laid down by the ultra-Orthodox to adopt the principle that "man's superiority to the beast" means, among other things, the ability to live not only according to instincts and urges. Rejection of determinism is vital not only for the current battles but also for the battles to come, in particular confronting the ability to exploit science and technology for the destruction of man.

Perhaps this is a contemporary Hannukah message: that a determined fight can defeat the negative aspects of a dominant culture.

And on a more basic level, of course, there is the simple message that it is possible to live and breath perfectly well without a portable, 24/7, umbilical connection to an IP network.

The problem facing young haredim

Jerusalem Post article

If you read between the overzealous hype of the reporters, this interview with Dudi Zilbershlag, head of Meir Panim, states the problem very well. Here are some highlights [text in square brackets is my addition or comment].

"You've got [this sad situation of many young] Yeshiva and Kollel students passing through Torah institutions without really identifying or wanting to belong to them. [This doesn't mean they don't want to be religious, but that they don't want to devote themselves exclusively to Torah study. Currently the only alternative open to them is to leave the ranks of the haredim. Unwilling to do that] they live a life of idleness [and self deception]."

"We need to rebuild the model of great Torah scholars like Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch... that knew how to live in the material world while strictly adhering to Halacha."

"Working people who set aside time for learning Torah, [must feel they] also have a place in haredi society."

"There is a need [for] army courses suitable for haredim." [This is not merely an issue of kosher food, time to pray, Shabat observance, or even exposure to immodest behaviour - though all these are important. Above all it is a question of providing a framework that is ideologically compatible with the haredi worldview.]

"A secular kid knows at a very early age that he has a variety of options open to him. He can go to the Technion, [...] there are various training courses, there are the universities. But the haredi youth has nothing like [that]. People ask me about all sorts of strange courses... run unprofessionally. You don't know if the certificate is worth anything. People need more information."

Apparently Zilbershlag "is a political advisor to several secular MKs, including, including Yosef Paritzky." [Hmmm... ]

We are told that "In conjunction with the Joint he will establish a chain of employment centers for the haredi community. In [the] coming weeks a director general will be chosen to head the project." Let's hope it won't just be one more cushy Israeli government job simply lining the pocket of another elite beaurocrat while essentially doing little or nothing of substance for the people it's supposed to help.

[BTW, if you click the link don't waste oo much time trying to understand the last two paragraphs of the article. They are a perfect example of the sloppy editing I wrote about a few posts ago, and are total gobbledegook.]

When it's okay to hate

Jerusalem Post article by Shmuley Boteach

The UN decision last week not to condemn the Sudanese government for genocide against its black Christian population, as well as the European hatred of George Bush more than Saddam Hussein, were the catalysts for this analysis of the positive power of hate.

...hatred of evil has gone out of fashion because it implies both the right to make judgments, as well as a belief in absolutes, both of which are anathema in a secular age.

...only because Churchill hated Hitler, was he able to inspire a nation to oppose him. Those French who did not hate Hitler collaborated with him instead.

...many Christians believe that it is wrong to hate murderers. They quote Jesus teaching to turn the other cheek and his admonishment to love your enemies as proof that we dare never hate. But Jesus advocated turning the other cheek to petty slights and affronts to personal honor, not to mass graves and torture chambers.

...Loving victims might generate compassion for their suffering; but only hating their persecutors can generate action to stop mass murder.

We often hear that the problem with the world today is that there isn't enough love? In a way, perhaps the opposite is true?

Buy Nothing Day

International "Buy Nothing Day", celebrated worldwide last weekend, has grown with the years. There are a number of levels here:

• The simple reduction of consumerism (this seems to be the main motive for the creator of BND)
• Breaking the strangle-hold of the conglomerates ("buy a lesser known brand")
• Creative consumerism ("give your own handmade Xmas presents")
• The intellectualisation of consumerism ("think about what you need/buy, and appreciate what you have")

In the last sense at least, the Torah gives us our own BND once a week. But last weekend, Azrieli shopping malls across Israel had a bumper Sale as the Israeli "inverse spin" on BND.

Take a look at "The Pig Advertisment" promoting BND - aired during a CNN interview with the guy who started it all. Interestingly the ad itself was not accepted for airing as an ad on most American channels, because of their vested interest in promoting inflated consumerism during the holiday season.

The Sages said: “The more possessions, the more worry” (Avot 2:7); and the book of Proverbs states: “A meal of vegetables where love is found is better than a fattened ox and hatred withall” (Proverbs 15:17)

Merry Christmukkah?

Jerusalem Post article



No more vague non-sectarian cards with "Season's Greetings" and generic winter scenes. US card companies are marketing cards that proclaim "Merry Christmukkah".

Images include a christmas tree decorated with dreidels, a transparent plastic menorah filled with candy canes, a snowman wearing a tallit. Captions include Oy Joy, and Merry Mazeltov. One card features a list of Hanukka songs that never caught on, including "Shlepping Through a Winter Wonderland," "Bubbie Got Run Over by a Reindeer" and "Come On, Light My Menorah."

Equality in meaninglessness.

Note: The illustration is not from the article, but from an Ebay auction page.

Jews have lost moral voice

Article by Shmuley Boteach in The Jewish Week

Once again Shmuley says it like it is.

"With the Democratic Party scrambling to discover how to reconnect with mainstream America, members of the Jewish community better ask themselves the same question...
"...for the Jewish community, religion is primarily about preserving a tradition and maintaining an ethnic heritage. Our issues are building synagogues rather than strengthening the family, and building Jewish day schools rather than promoting prayer in public schools."

UN resolution condemns anti-semitism

See the full Jerusalem Post article

Am I dreaming?

In a break with tradition, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution Monday condemning anti-Semitism as part of a broader resolution against religious intolerance... The resolution passed despite efforts by Arab countries to omit any references to anti-Jewish bigotry amid references to Islamophobia and Christianophobia.

In past years the annual U.N. resolution on religious intolerance has made no mention of anti-Semitism.

Orthodox Jewish singles issues

KOL - A Project of the Orthodox Caucus

This is a must read magazine supplement entirely devoted to the subject of orthodox Jewish singles, and containing many fascinating facts, opinions and insights.

Orthodox Jewish society is very marriage/family oriented - and rightly so. This 16-page collection deals with how this fact impacts on those who by chance or by choice are not members of the marrieds club. Are older singles really made as welcome in our homes and at our tables as they need to be?

One single writer describes the pain of going home for yomtov, when everyone else her age is discussing birth and diapers. She suggests: "Personally, having another single around for the holidays would make me feel less alone..." Now that doesn't sound too difficult to organise.

As regards the benefits of appropriate mixed socialising (OTTs beware) we are informed that "No less a Torah scholar than Rav Aharon Soloveichik met his future spouse at a wedding with mixed seating."

You can read the articles one by one online, but if you have a fast connection and Adobe Reader, the best thing is to download the whole PDF (click on the Download KOL in full link), print it out, and read it over Shabbos.

Chope for Chabad?

Jerusalem Post - Editor's Notes

Is Chabad outgrowing the belief that the dead Rebbe is the Messiah? This article claims that it is. I would like to believe this as I have many Chabad friends whom I greatly admire - and their Mashiach thing frankly bothers me.

An interesting comment by a Chabadnick quoted in the article is:

Unlike the modern Orthodox, "who seek to integrate with Western culture," and the haredim, "who seek to insulate themselves from it," Chabad "wants to engage."

I like that.

Poor editing/proofeading

Something that I have found increasingly irritating in modern journalism is the careless use of nearly-but-not-quite appropriate words by journalists, that are left uncorrected by copy editors.

Here are just a few immediately accessible examples cut-and-pasted quickly from today's Online Jerusalem Post:

Matthew Gutman, a senior journalist with the paper, writes: "Although Arafat did not have absolute support from the Palestinians during his lifetime, all criticisms were laid aside as the Palestinians paid ardent and tearful tribute to their deceased leader, raising him near legendary status." [J - Can legendary status be achieved in one day?]

Another, admittedly less well known journalist, writing about Arafat's brother, wote: "He quit his position as chairman of the Palestinian Red Crescent three years ago, but has served as honorable [J - honorary] chairman since [J - since then]."

In an article about El Al, the Israeli national airline, we were toldl: "Responding to the Post's request, El Al said Sunday that there is no nonkosher food on all [J - any] of its flights."

These were just examples quickly and effortlessly culled from today's online edition. Is anyone editing this stuff? Does anyone care?