JFS Between Ourselves

Britain's United Synagogue has determinedly struggled to portray Judaism as an alternative version of Christianity for as long as I can remember. The clergy look the same as the same as their Christian counterparts and usually sound roughly the same. Most are equally apologetic for any inconvenience their beliefs and customs might cause and equally eager to bend over backwards to accommodate any difference of opinion even at the expense of watering down their own quasi-beliefs.

True, our star does not look quite like the cross, and the crucifixion and resurrection are only remotely mirrored in secular Judaism's holocaust and independence worship, still to the week-end adherent the two religions are differentiated only by superficial minutiae.

I attended a lavish Bat-Mitzva party recently. It was in a popular, very upmarket venue and the menu was kosher style. I, the lone kosher guest was honoured with a specially ordered, enthusiastically cling wrapped and doubly sealed kosher meal. The theme was High School Musical and a talented troupe of 'high school' dancers entertained the guests between the elegant courses.

I had just remarked to my wife how 'normal' it must seem to the goyim who had probably come with a little trepidation to a Jewish religious party, when one of them leaned across the table to me. “I love your Jewish parties,” he screamed above the blaring rendition of Start of Something New. “They are so much more meaningful than ours.”

Israel's Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is unapologetic in his views. His declaration last week that the innocent victims of the holocaust were probably reincarnates who had sinned in previous lives raised a ruckus when it was reported in the media. This apparently is what he believes, based on his vast, intimate and probably unique perception of His workings. The great unlearned in the media, who in their utter ignorance chose to portray it as criticism of the departed are just as entitled to make their point as he was. Rabbi Yosef remains unperturbed and unrepentant.

Unfortunately, our Great British leaders have none of this decisive finality.We can only choose between the U.S. politically correct approach, which teaches us to think we are probably right but also to accept that the others might be right too; So we are the chosen people but if that offends anyone we can negotiate it away. Or, on the other side of the spectrum, the local Charedi leadership, teaching that we are the chosen people and if anybody says different they are fascists and antisemites.

It has not always been so. England's former Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jacobowitz was never one to mince his words. Among other controversial remarks, he risked the ire of his own community to publicly opine that eventually Israel would have to make peace with the Arabs. In a time when that view was considered almost blasphemous in his community, he suffered for his frankness but refused to qualify it. As one paper wrote when he passed away, “He is the one prelate whose preaching did not, in the views of Mrs Thatcher, give God a bad name.”

London's late Rav Padwa was not one to be pushed around either. He once spectacularly agreed to remove his rabbinate's revered stamp of approval from a kosher hotel in Bournmouth, after some pious wankers in his rabbinate complained there were TVs (gasp!) in the bedrooms. After promptly giving in to them he went on to declare that henceforth his hechsher would apply only to the food served there. As his supervision had always been limited to the kitchen and dining room anyway (to the best of my knowledge there were never any hidden video cameras under the eiderdowns) nothing actually changed.

The JFS policy of enrolling only orthodox certified Jews is a cynical attempt at maintaining as Orthodox a Jewish school where most children's exposure to yiddishkeit is practically limited to the school's 'Love of Israel' program and the occasional Bat Mitva bash.

The school will not maintain a Jewish character by refusing admittance to those it does not consider Jewish enough. Empirical evidence has shown that Jewish values are nurtured in the home, not school, and they are rarely eroded by exposure to non-Jews. Conversely the school Purim and Tu Bishvat celebrations so beloved by the secular parents for being universal, normal and inoffensive will not on their own nurture a new generation of committed Jews however goyrein the class.

Oh My Goy

The word goy, in our community, has none of the connotations some of my readers suppose it to have. For the native Yiddish speakers on our Hill the word masks none of the hidden longing and jealous admiration that the secular Jews are accused of. The definition of goy, for us, is non-Jewish. The definition of Jewish is less simply defined on the other hand. Far too many Hillers define Jewish as anybody with a level of judaic religious observance above whatever standard they arbitrarily decide, but that is another matter.

Goy means gentile like boy means male human child. So when someone says to you “Listen here boy,” it means, listen to me male infant. If you happen to be overweight, fifty-seven years old, black and lesbian you might take umbrage but that does not make boy a rude word.

When a Chassidic property dealer with a messy beard and an accent thicker than his waist says, “My goy vill deal viz it.” with utter finality he is not denigrating his ‘man’ rather he is asserting his manhood. His ‘having manhood’ that is. You see everybody on the Hill can deal a few properties here and there but it is having your own goy that really makes you the man. ‘I’ll tell my goy to take care of it’ is a sentence you practice before the mirror before skipping to brush your teeth.

Each industry has it own set of goyim. When I was younger each of the property-dealing families used to have an Irish man. A Paddy or an O’Riley they could call upon any time of the night or day to deal with whatever needed to be dealt with, from a dripping tap in a bathroom, to a front room to chassidified with three fluorescent tubes or a grandmother that has to be picked up from the airport. It was an Afro-Caribbean in the eighties and Columbian in the nineties. Today it is most often a Polish guy with lots of drive, a big toolbox (with tools in) and the mistaken idea that hitching his star to a Jew will shoot him off into the stratosphere- moneywise.

The car salesmen all have a mechanic they like to call My Goy and even my washing machine repairman proudly proclaims his goy’s virtues above rubies. These batmen are invariably very well treated by their Chassidic benefactors who are more often than not completely baffled by the mentality of the gentiles they are dealing with. It is these goyim whose task it is to serve as interpreter and cultural attaché, translating English for their bosses and their bosses to the English. They understand fully well that while their bosses might dress like the Jewish version of a priest that is a sartorial mirage and in fact, behind the exotic exterior often lies a Londoner (pun intended). Forewarned and forearmed by the information provided by his goy the Chassidic businessmen’s associates can come to table with no unreasonable expectations and thus can business commence.

Come Pesach, the Rabbis too have to produce their very own uncircumcised member. Like the businessmen whose lives they covet all year and who lead and advise them in all matters, when it comes to Pesach each Rabbi worth his salt has to have his own goy. Originally the idea of selling Chametz (leavened foods forbidden over Passover) was instituted to allow businesses, that would suffer financial hardship if they had to liquidate all their stock every year, to circumvent this law. The ceremony involves a symbolic selling of the goods, which are stored in a carefully marked place, to a certified goy for the duration of the week after which the goods are returned to their original owners automatically.

Today in our ever growing frummity we all dutifully traipse down to our local Rav and sell him a whole pile of stuff that is not chometz anyway, like headache pills and washing-up liquid, but which we earnestly put aside as questionable because they don’t have the kosher stamp. The Rav does so out of genuine concern and also because each of us leaves him a generous gratuity. The Rabbi then performs the same transaction with the goy in a ceremony I am dying to see; Especially the part where the Rabbi verifies the credentials of the goy.

Happily, the goy is an awfully understanding and generous chap so he does not mind at all that half the town borrows from his stuff without asking, like when suddenly someone falls ill and remembers the Aspirin are in his box. As I said we might look like Rabbis but that is a deception and far from being goy haters, this particular Yomtov we positively love ‘em.