I inherited far too few of my parents’ many admirable traits, but one thing I am very grateful to my father for passing on to me is the Brownstein sleeping gene. If I wanted to add up the number of times in my life I have had to count sheep after failing to fall asleep within a few minutes of laying my head on the pillow, I could count them on the lambs of one litter. (Actually, on the rare occasions when I can’t drift off, I don’t count sheep. Instead, I play through an imaginary England Test cricket innings, which is usually more entertaining, and always more successful, than the real thing.)

However, I seem recently to have encountered a number of stories that threaten to disrupt even my sleep pattern. Since misery loves company, I thought I would, this week, share some of them with you, on the off chance that you’ve been looking around for something to make you feel really depressed.

First, a podcast referred me this week to a Substack article offering an insider’s view of the future of AI that, while being far from sugar-coated, does actually offer some guidelines on how to avoid being totally crushed under the wheels of the AI juggernaut. Rather than borrowing from the article (as I like to think of it) or plagiarising it (to be more accurate), and thereby failing to do it anywhere near justice, let me just give you a link to it. The article is very readable, and while, as I say, it pulls no punches, it does also offer what seems like very sound advice for those who are still (if, conceivably, not for as long as they think) in the workforce. So, pour yourself a stiff drink, and, if you haven’t already encountered it, settle down to read: “Something Big Is Happening”.

Next, the Sports pages of the Times of London. No, this is not going to be a bewailing of the inadequacies of England’s performance in the T20 World Cup. First, I realise this is a niche topic; furthermore, T20 isn’t real cricket anyway. In addition, any disappointment I feel is tempered by the knowledge that Australia, England’s arch rivals in all things cricket, haven’t even qualified for the next round of the competition, the Super 8 stage. This is a huge comfort.

What I really find depressing about the paper’s sports pages is that they are full of not-sport stories. One day it will be Sturla Holm Laegreid, the Norwegian biathlete, exploiting his live television interview shortly after winning a bronze medal at the Winter Olympics to confess that he has been unfaithful to his girlfriend. He had already confessed to the girlfriend, in private, and she had left him. By what journalistic criterion does this qualify as a news story? And even if we are currently living in a universe where the Winter Olympics biathlon bronze medallist’s lovelife is deemed newsworthy, then the story certainly does not belong on the sports pages.

Perhaps even more incomprehensible, because it is not even prurient, was today’s story about Coco Gauff, a black American tennis player ranked fourth in the world, who in a set of less than fluent answers, presumably in a press conference, stated her opposition to Trump’s recent deployment of ICE in Minneapolis. Is this a sports story? No. Is it a news story? Only if you believe that Coco Gauff has something insightful to contribute to the debate. If she has, she appears to be keeping it close to her chest. Her grandmother is apparently a civil rights figure who, in 1961, became the first black student to integrate her Florida high school. However, pedigree alone is not a sufficient qualification for Gauff.

This story followed on the heels of British-American skier Gus Kenworthy who posted an image purporting to show a urine script of ‘f*** ice’ in the Milan snow. I have to say that the neatness of the calligraphy (consider, for example, the perfect flow control required to render the dot above the ‘i’ in the picture below) leads me to suspect that the image was the equivalent of ‘airbrushed’, even before I added my censorship. So, this was not a sports story, not a news story, and almost certainly not a true story.

However, my prize for the week’s most depressing story was the publication of a report in Britain highlighting how increasing numbers of children are entering the education system in a state of unreadiness. Among the areas of unreadiness highlighted were personal hygiene, with one primary school reporting that 50% of children of the pupils in reception and nursery (ages 3–5) are not toilet-trained, and some are unable to state their own full names. An increasing percentage are also unable to interact socially at an appropriate level for their age.

The immediate consequences of these statistics for Britain are dire. Countless thousands of class-contact hours a year have to be devoted by teachers and teaching assistants to toileting, cleaning and dressing children, rather than to the curriculum’s age-appropriate education. These hours are disproportionately lost in schools whose pupils come from disadvantaged homes. Any hope of levelling up is destroyed in such an environment.

Above all, I can’t stop thinking about the home lives these children have been living for the years before they first come into the state system. The opportunities that have been lost to help them develop their innate intellectual, emotional and social abilities; the passivity of their early childhood; the stultifying lack of stimulation they have experienced.

I have been reminded in the last six years in my own family what an amazing time early childhood can be. To see how readily children respond to stimulation and how rich their potential is; to watch the joy in their discovery of the world; to see them explore and test the boundaries of humour, storytelling, music, painting. All of this is to have something of one’s faith in human nature restored, and to manage, somehow, and against all the odds, to sleep easy at night.

Sweet dreams,

I’ve spent the last four days trying to think of a topic for today’s post, and failing completely. Only just now, as I sat facing that blank white rectangle in the centre of the laptop screen, did I realise the reason for the blank white rectangle in the centre of my brain. There is an obvious topic for me to write about; it is one that I have been thinking about a lot in the last few days. However, it’s a bit contentious, and a lot serious, and I don’t quite have the necessary moral courage today to accept the challenge it represents. However, at some point in the near future it will probably loom so large that I will no longer be able to avoid it. Watch this space!

Well, if that doesn’t guarantee decent reading stats for the next week or two, I don’t know what will. Meanwhile, I’m forced to dredge up and recycle something I first mentioned in a blog post four weeks ago. You will doubtless remember that, when writing about our new lounge suite, I said:

“We confirmed the choice of fabric from the swatch book (Note to self: research the etymology of ‘swatch’ – such a wonderful-sounding word)”

I did, indeed, the very same week, research the etymology of ‘swatch’, and now, as a public service, I’m going to save you the trouble of doing the same.

Our journey begins in 16^th Century Northumberland (not an obvious tourist destination), where ‘swatch’ was a dialect word meaning: ‘a countercheck of a tally’. Now, if only we knew what a tally is, and what, indeed, a countercheck is, in this context, we’d be sitting pretty. As it is, we have traded one obscure word for two, in what doesn’t convincingly feel like progress.

So, let’s tackle ‘tally’ first. We all know, from our mastery of medieval Latin, that ‘’talea’ means: ‘a cutting from a plant, a, rod, stick or twig’. (Interestingly, in Greek. ‘talis’ means ‘a marriageable girl’, with, perhaps, the same associations as ‘Twiggy’ in English.)

In medieval times, it was common practice to record debts by a system of notches cut into a stick (the size and spacing of the notches indicating the size of the debt). This stick was known as the tally. In time, the sum indicated by the notches also came to be known as the ‘tally’. After the notches were cut, the tally would then be split lengthwise in two, so that each half retained the notch marks. One half, the master, would be kept by the creditor and the other half, the countercheck, would be given to the debtor, as a record of the debt. At any time, and particularly when the debt was to be settled, the debtor and creditor could lay their sticks side by side, to check that the two halves matched, thus avoiding any argument about the size of the debt. If one of the two parties tampered with his stick, in an attempt to cheat the other, then, obviously, the two halves would not match, or, as we say, they wouldn’t tally.

By the 1610s, in Yorkshire, the word ‘swatch’ had been borrowed and applied to ‘a tally attached to cloth sent to be dyed’. Presumably, this tally was simply a copy, on paper, of the original retained by the customer ordering the dyeing. This adaptation is an indication of the advance of literacy.

By the mid-1600s, a further meaning had developed: ‘sample piece or strip of cloth cut off for a pattern or sample’, which is, of course, more or less the normal modern meaning.

In a later development, the size and shape of swatches led to the term being borrowed by knitters, with a rather different meaning. In knitting, a swatch is a sample piece of knitted fabric used to determine the gauge of a project. It helps ensure that the finished garment fits correctly and is of the desired size. To create a swatch, you typically knit a small square (often 4×4 inches) using the same yarn and needle size as your project. This allows you to compare the gauge of your swatch with the pattern gauge, ensuring that your finished piece will match the designer’s specifications.  

One of the sources I looked up online including a graphical representation of the frequency of usage of the word ‘swatch’ over time. When I first looked at this graph, I was puzzled as to the astonishing increase in use of the term starting around 1988.

However, a few moments’ reflection were all that was needed for me to realise the explanation. In the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese companies such as Seiko and Citizen used quartz technology to threaten Swiss dominance of the watchmaking industry. In response, in 1983, Ernst Thomke, Elmar Mock, and Jacques Müller established a new company to produce trendy, Swiss, quartz watches to appeal to the younger market, and called the company Swatch. It is this company’s success that is responsible for the uptick in the graph above.

It is amusing that a name that was doubtless intended to sound modern and trendy should also be a word with such a long pedigree. The moneylenders of early-16^th-Century Northumberland could have no idea that their neologism would enjoy a new lease of life 475 years later. Such are the vagaries of vocabulary.

It takes the moon approximately 29.531 days to orbit the earth once. It takes the earth approximately 365.256 days to orbit the sun once. This means that it takes the moon 6,939.7703125 days to orbit the earth 235 times. And it takes the earth 6,939.864 days to orbit the sun 19 times.

If you could devise a calendar that measured time in lunar months, then adjusted the calendar to allow 235 months in 19 solar years, then, every 19 years, that calendar would be synchronised with the solar calendar.

The Hebrew calendar is just such a solar-lunar calendar. The length of the month is determined by the orbit of the moon. Some months are always 29 days long, some are always 30 days long, and some are sometimes 29 and sometimes 30 days. In addition, every so often (in 7 years of every 19-year cycle) an extra month is added to the year. In this way, the calendar ensures that the festivals fall at the same approximate time of year every year, and, using the fine-tuning described in the last sentences, the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian solar calendar are synchronised.

Last week I celebrated my 76^th birthday, and, since 76 is 4×19, last Thursday was both my English and my Hebrew birthday. Sometimes the synchronicity is a day out, because of the effect of the irregular Gregorian solar leap-years (every 4 years, but not when the year is divisible by 100, unless it is divisible by 400). However, this year the synchronicity was exact: 29 January fell on 11 Shevat, just as it did in 1950. (For the purpose of this argument, I am assuming that I was born before sunset on January 29. There’s nobody left alive to ask and my brother only remembers that he was playing toy soldiers with his big cousin on the landing of our aunt’s home at the time. He can’t remember whether it was light out.)

To cut a long (76 years and 5 days, at the time of writing) story short, this year I completed four cycles, and that feels like some kind of milestone. I can already almost glimpse 2045, and my 95^th birthday, through the haze on the horizon of the next 19 years.

As if this were not enough to lead to some reflection on the transience of life, these last few weeks have brought a heavy burden of loss.

First, we heard of the death, in a freak work accident, of someone who was a couple of years older than Bernice and myself when we were all teenagers in Hanoar Hatzioni. Even though we had not seen him for many decades, the news of his tragic death came as something of a shock.

Far more painful were the next two deaths, in our closer circle. The first was that of the husband in a couple we became friendly with when they arrived in Maale Adumim from America about a decade ago. Although we had not been in close touch since they moved to Ramat Bet Shemesh a couple of years ago, we, in common with almost all their friends, felt close to them, mainly because of the incredible warmth in which they both bathed everyone they met. The husband suffered painfully with ill health for decades, but you never heard him complaining. Indeed, you never saw him without a smile on his face, and, typically, a joke on his lips. He died far too young, defeated eventually by the disease that he had refused to let define him for so long.

Also last week, my cousin’s wife was taken by a cruel cancer that made her last months a constant struggle to maintain her wonderful spirit. ‘My cousin’s wife’ fails to convey how much a part of the Brownstein family she became almost immediately and remained, over the 52 years since she ‘married in’. Her humour, her warmth, her generosity were always her signature, and she leaves a great emptiness.

Between these two deaths, I learnt that someone I was in Israel with on a year programme 58 years ago had died. We had met again at our programme’s 50^th reunion, and, in fact, Bernice and I shared breakfast with him on the day after the reunion ended, when almost everyone else had already left for home. He was a gentle, quiet-spoken and delightful man.

The sequence of these four deaths, one seemingly leading to another, and all leading up to my birthday, perhaps inevitably led me to reflect on my mortality. It is difficult to escape the sobering fact that, going forward, I can only expect to hear more and more of the same sad news, until the moment when I become the news item. The trick of fooling myself that I am still 18 years old is proving more and more difficult to accomplish.

And yet, at the same time…

I sat in shul a week and a half ago, watching the rows in front of me fill with the sons, sons-in-law and grandchildren of our dear neighbours, marking the Shabbat Chatan of their middle son. To see four generations of the family praying together, to wonder at how tall some of those grandsons are, while remembering their mother as a 9-year-old; to see a granddaughter whose father’s brit I can clearly remember; to remind myself that this family was celebrating not only a wedding, but also the birth of three new grandchildren in the preceding couple of weeks; all of this was to be reminded that just as there are always some stepping off the escalator, there are always, always, others stepping on at the bottom and beginning the long ascent.

And, if I need a reminder even closer to home, I only need to travel up to Zichron, as we did yesterday, and to hold in my arms a stirring, snuffling, warm, smiling (I swear he was, honestly) bundle of vibrantly actual and infinitely potential life. Still feeling his heft in my arms, I am today anchoring myself to the knowledge that, while mortality is individual, immortality is familial, communal, and thereby the stronger force. I can sense the haze lifting just a little on the horizon. I’m feeling ready to take on this fifth cycle!

844 days and no longer counting. And, as if that were not enough of a fact to wrap your head around, 4209 days and no longer counting. Yesterday, the last of the 250 hostages snatched by Hamas on October 7 was returned to the bosom of his family. Today is the first day since July 20, 2014 that there has not been an Israeli hostage in Gaza.

On July 20, 2014, during the Battle of Shuja’iyya, Hamas fired an anti-tank missile at an armoured personnel carrier, killing all seven Israeli soldiers inside. Hamas then abducted the body of one of them, Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul z”l. He was returned to Israel on 19 January last year.

On January 25, 2026, Israeli forces located, identified and brought home the body of Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili z”l of the Special Patrol Unit Yasam.

For the 4208 days between those two dates, and especially for the 843 days between October 7, 2023 and yesterday, Israel has held its breath. A fundamental tenet in the morality of the IDF is that it leaves nobody behind. It sees itself as having a sacred obligation (secular, but no less sacred for that) to return to their parents every single child entrusted to it by those parents.

That the country sees this as a sacred obligation regarding any living child (or spouse, or parent, or sibling) probably seems natural to any civilized person. That this is equally true regarding a soldier who has been killed is, perhaps, less obviously natural. It seems to me a reflection of what is perceived as a compelling need to offer the bereaved family their best opportunity of achieving closure.

The Jewish way, which has become the Israeli way, is to embrace life and reject death. The period of mourning for a first-degree relative is carefully calibrated: the period of limbo before the funeral; the funeral; the first week after the burial; the remainder of the first year after the burial; the rest of the bereaved’s life. Each period has its rules, its traditions, its strictures; its requirements to mourn or to turn from mourning. The effect (and, I suspect, the purpose) of this calibration is to ease the mourner back into the world of the living.

Many, many families commemorate their departed loved one not by mourning but by acting: often by setting up a charity in the name, the memory and the spirit of their loved one. This act has undoubtedly played a major part in restoring meaning to the lives of thousands of bereaved Israelis. However, for such a process to start, letting go of the all-consuming grief is a pre-requisite. Few people can achieve this if they have no body to bury, no ceremony of parting, no gradation of moving on. The IDF’s sacred obligation pledges to afford them that opportunity.

I also think the IDF, and the country as a whole, feels an equal obligation to the one who has been killed. To be forever separated from the country for which they gave their life is a terrible injustice. The nation feels the need to do everything in its power to repay the debt of gratitude it owes to its citizens who sacrifice their lives for the nation.

One of the most remarkable features of the weekly Torah portion is that every year, every week, the portion resonates with current events. This week is no exception.

In the very first verses of Beshalach, this week’s portion, we are told that Moshe took the bones of Yosef with him as he left Egypt, because Yosef had made his brothers swear that, when God remembers them and brings them up out of Egypt, they will take his bones with them. This, we understand, is a vow that his brothers passed to their children and, ultimately, Levi’s great-grandson Moshe fulfilled his ancestor’s vow. Rashi infers from the phrasing of the Hebrew that the remains of all of the brothers were brought up from Egypt in the Exodus. This would mean that all of the founders of the nation, from Avraham and Sarah to Yosef and his brothers, were buried in Eretz Yisrael. We leave nobody behind.

It is hard to convey the extent to which yesterday’s return to Israel of Ran Gvili is seen and felt, throughout the country, as a huge release, as a final fulfilment of the IDF’s, and the nation’s, pledge. As people throughout Israel take off their yellow ribbon lapel pins and bracelets, as the clock in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv is stopped (as seen in the photo above), as shuls stop saying psalms for the return of all hostages, Israel faces a new and a better dawn.

Over the last two years, and especially over the last few weeks, I have heard Ran Gvili’s name more than I have read it, and I have read it in English far more frequently than in Hebrew. It was only today that I noticed the spelling of his name in Hebrew. In my ignorance, I would have expected his surname to be spelt גוילי, but I realise now it is actually spelt גואילי with a silent aleph between the vav and the first yud. It is easy to overlook that aleph, as I had done; it is not immediately obvious to a non-native Hebrew speaker, or to someone who is not an expert in the origins of family names, what the purpose of the aleph is. However, if you forget to include the aleph, you end up with a word that is no longer Ran’s name. An essential part of what made him what he was is that aleph. Omit the aleph and you change the essence.

Every single Israeli is like that aleph. Leave one of them out, leave one of them behind, and you diminish the meaning of the entire nation.

Our children have returned to within their borders. Today is the first day of the rest of our national life. Today is Day 844 and not counting. Today’s date is, finally, no longer October 7.

My weekly schedule changed a few weeks ago. and now not only has our day in Zichron moved from Tuesday to Monday, but, in addition, Sunday has become a bridge day (as in the card game, not the day off school or work between two existing days off).

Consequent attempts to wind myself up to write a post on the previous Friday, or the Saturday evening, have failed; I feel none of the inspiration only deadline panic can induce. Likewise, attempts to dash off a post in the journey home on Monday evening (with Bernice driving) have failed; there is not enough light and the road surface often leaves too much to be desired. As a result, I have written my last couple of posts on Monday late evening, after we return home.

I’m not sure for how long my (soon-to-be-no-longer-75-year-old) constitution – physical or mental – can take that regimen, and so I have decided to post, from now on, on Wednesday mornings rather than Tuesdays.

I can hear your sharp intake of breath from here, but, believe me, together we can handle this.

Bottom line: please look for another message linking to a post in a little under 24 hours.

Until then, have a good Monday Tuesday.

Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’

If Lewis Carroll’s Alice were alive today, she could get lots of practice. The subtle difference, however, is that many of today’s impossible things are real. Here, for example, are four, all originating in Gaza and Britain. I drew them from the headlines of the last few days; I am sure they are real, but I’m still struggling to believe them, because they are still, in a sane world, impossible.

By the way, if you, like me, are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between Gaza and Britain these days, here’s a handy tip. Gaza is the place where they are apparently trying to replace the government of Islamist extremists, whereas Britain is the place where they are apparently trying to replace the government with Islamist extremists,

Impossible Thing Number One: The Make-up of the Executive Board

The White House announced two days ago the make-up of the bodies that will be responsible for overseeing the transition period in Gaza and Phase 2 of the Peace agreement. One of the major bodies is the Executive Board supporting governance and services. If its brief includes overseeing the disarming and demilitarisation of Hamas, then it will certainly be able to draw on the expertise of some of its members.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan;

Turkey hosts senior Hamas figures, some of whom have received Turkish citizenship, and provides political, diplomatic and propaganda support, as well as economic and humanitarian assistance. Hamas has established one of its most important overseas centres in Turkey, primarily operated by prisoners released in the Gilad Shalit exchange deal of 2011. It uses Turkey to plan terrorist attacks and transfer funds to finance terrorist activities inside Israel, in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, and to raise and launder money in support of its terrorist operations, including the October 7, 2023, attack and massacre.

Veteran Qatari diplomat Ali Al-Thawadi,

Qatar has, over two decades, been Hamas’s primary external enabler, providing political sanctuary, legitimacy, funding channels, and diplomatic cover, hosting its leadership and enabling strategic planning. Qatar-hosted and Qatar-supported clerical networks linked to the Muslim Brotherhood framed jihad against Israel as a religious obligation, endorsed mass violence against Jewish civilians, and later issued charters justifying October 7 and calling for global mobilization. Qatari-funded charities, cash assistance, and support for UNRWA in Gaza simultaneously providing humanitarian aid while reinforcing Hamas’s governance, military infrastructure, and control over civilian institutions. Intelligence claims Hamas leadership based in Qatar directed or facilitated terrorist infrastructure beyond Gaza, including in Europe, underscoring Qatar’s role in enabling Hamas’s regional and international reach rather than acting as a neutral mediator.

Dutch politician Sigrid Kaag.

For six years until 2004, Kaag was Senior Programme Manager with the External Relations Office of UNRWA in Jerusalem. (Israel recently outlawed UNRWA for its complicity in terrorism.) In June 2025, Kaag resigned from her position as U.N. envoy to Gaza and Israeli-Palestinian peace process point person, complaining that Israelis have too little empathy for Gazans after Oct. 7, 2023. She had earlier defended the U.N.’s refusal to offer aid to Palestinians through the Gaza Humanitarian Fund—an aid operation sanctioned by Israel and the United States to help the civilian population in a manner that removed Hamas from the process.

With these individuals among its members, how can the Executive Board possibly fail to disarm and demilitarise Hamas in Gaza?

Impossible Thing Number Two: The Retirement of Craig Guildford

I’m not sure to what extent the scandal surrounding Britain’s third-largest police force has filtered down to non-Brits, so let me attempt a brief summary.

In early November, 2024, Maccabi Tel Aviv football (soccer) club played Dutch team Ajax in a major European competition match in Amsterdam. There were considerable clashes between rival fans before and after the match, which Dutch police investigation revealed to be largely a result of a coordinated and carefully planned assault on Maccabi fans.

Exactly a year later, Maccabi Tel Aviv were scheduled to play another major European competition match. this time against Aston Villa, a leading English soccer club based in Birmingham, a city over 30% of whose population is Muslim. There were, understandably, concerns about the possibility of crowd violence and the police force responsible eventually advised Birmingham Safety Advisory Group that Maccabi fans were too dangerous to be allowed to attend the game.

Subsequent investigation has revealed that, in documenting and defending this decision, the police force relied on ‘evidence’ ostensibly extracted from the internet by AI Copilot, including a report of Maccabi fan violence at a match that never even took place. They further cited Amsterdam police accounts of Maccabi fan violence: Amsterdam police have disputed this claim, stating that they reported that the cause of the trouble in Holland was much more mixed, with Israeli fans and pro-Palestinians provoking each other. The West Midlands police also claimed their decision was taken after consultation with Jewish bodies in Birmingham, who deny that any such consultation took place. The police also uncovered evidence of apparent plans by Muslim militants to attack Maccabi fans, and failed to further investigate that evidence, or present it to the Safety Advisory Group.

There’s more, but the above is probably enough to make the point.

Amid calls for the sacking of Craig Guildford, West Midlands Chief Constable (the head of the force), the Police Commissioner, who is the only official legally empowered to fire him, insisted that he would wait for the publication of a further report. Meanwhile, Guildford chose to hastily retire, thereby safeguarding his substantial pension and quite possibly forestalling any further investigation.

Impossible Thing Number Three: NHS Guidance to Midwives about Cousin Marriage

In certain Muslim communities in Britain, as elsewhere, marriage between first cousins is very common. The statistical likelihood of the child of such a couple having a congenital disease or birth defect is 10-15%, compared to the British national average rate of 2%.

Despite these stark figures, official midwifery guidance, used for teaching midwives in Britain’s National Health Service, branded concerns about the risks of congenital diseases, or birth defects, “exaggerated” and “unwarranted” The guidance did admit there were some “risks to child health associated with close relative marriage” but claimed they should be “balanced against the potential benefits”, advising that marrying a relative can offer “economic benefits” as well as “emotional and social connections” and “social capital”,

It added that staff should not stigmatise predominantly south Asian or Muslim patients who have a baby with their cousin, because the practice is “perfectly normal” in some cultures.

Britain’s shadow health secretary has pointed out that Britain’s midwives “should be focused on protecting women and babies, not normalising practices that carry well-documented risks. Cousin marriage is not safe and healthcare professionals should never be encouraged to downplay or normalise it.”

Impossible Thing Number Four: Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain’s Schools

The number of schools commemorating the Holocaust has more than halved since the October 7 attacks on Israel. As a direct consequence of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the number of secondary schools around the UK that signed up to events commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day fell from 2000 in 2023 to fewer than 1,200 in 2024 and 854 in 2025 — a reduction of nearly 60 per cent.

Commenting on the figures, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, said he feared for the country’s education system as teachers were following “the path of least resistance” by choosing to not mark Holocaust Memorial Day in the face of opposition from parents and pupils.

Bernice read this far and pointed out that I needed to provide a conclusion. I’m confident that my readership will be able to provide their own.

As I sit at the keyboard wondering what patterns to weave today (Sunday), I immediately recognise that the world’s stories and Israel’s stories are forming two fairly orderly, but long, queues outside my office door, impatiently waiting to be tackled. I just checked outside the door, and recognised, on the one side, Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, and, on the other, the Arab sector, the Haredim, the Government.

However, it’s Sunday, and you won’t be reading this until Tuesday, and even Trump (or, conceivably, especially Trump) has no idea where the world will be by then, so I embrace the coward’s way out.

Which I feel justified in doing, since, for us, the main event of last week was none of the above, but, rather, the brit of our latest grandson, Adam. The immediate family in Israel – Esther and Maayan’s parents and Maayan’s siblings – gathered for what was a very meaningful ceremony. As many of you know, Maayan was present at the Nova festival on October 7, 2023, and her pregnancy, and the beautiful son she is now blessed with, represent her very conscious decision to embrace life.

Maayan and Esther have chosen to pronounce the name in Hebrew with the stress, unusually, on the first syllable. This emphasis plays on the name’s connections to adama – earth, ground – and avoids overly close aural association with dam – -blood.

Every new life is special. Indeed, every new life is special in its unique way. Adam is certainly no exception. His name reflects a beginning that certainly feels very special indeed.

This is, I know, an unusually short post, but I can’t top the last couple of paragraphs, so I will just wish you all a good week and leave it there.

The England that I grew up in was, if my memory serves me correctly, a fairly free and easy place. If I look back at my late teenage years, I have to admit that I did not suffer unduly from social constraints. My parents, although fairly strict, were strictly fair, and I indulged in a lot of cigarettes, a bit of whisky, but none of the wild, wild women that the song quote in today’s title goes on to speak about. I got away with some things my parents didn’t know about, although I subsequently learnt that it was not as much as I had thought at the time.

However, my real addiction, beside cigarettes, was bridge, and my only real embracing of the mood of the 60s lay in playing very, very bad folk guitar. I kept up both of these hobbies into my married life, although I would be the first to admit that my skill at the bridge table far outshone my ability on the guitar. Or, to be more accurate, I played guitar even worse than bridge. For all of my years in Hanoar Hatzioni, the youth movement I belonged to, six chords, a basic sense of rhythm, and a halfway decent singing voice, served to allow me to steer a careful path through the Israeli and American folk repertoire, occasionally fooling people who were either much younger than me or who did not play the guitar (or, preferably both) that I knew what I was doing.

And then, at age 36, I came on aliya. I put my guitar aside, and then, later, passed it on to Micha’el, and, apart from reading an occasional bridge column in the Hebrew press, I forswore the game, until…

I really don’t know how to account for what happened next. ‘Next’, I should explain, was seven months ago, when a friend from shul, who had recently learnt the game and was playing regularly in a relative beginners’ school hosted by the couple who had taught him, discovered that I used to play and started nagging me to come along. His persistence paid off, and I eventually succumbed. I was initially very wary. Let me rephrase that. The first week I turned up, I was petrified. Not only had I forgotten a significant amount of what was second nature 55 years ago, but I was also acutely aware that my razor-sharp intellect had arguably blunted somewhat over the intervening decades.

To make matters worse, and here I’m afraid things get a little technical, the advice I was given was that I should learn a new (for me) bidding system. Basically, this is a set of rules and conventions for describing your hand to your partner. To make this description as accurate and efficient as possible, systems are, perforce, fairly elaborate. Learning a new system was (Who am I kidding? Not ‘was’;’is’!) a bit like learning a new language.

Needless to say, my friends around the table (both those I knew well and those I had only just met) made me very welcome, and I realised in the first week that I was not going to make an absolute fool of myself. As I started playing every week, I found that gradually I regained more of the ability to remember the cards that had been played, to count cards, to visualise opponent’s hands, to remember what the contract was, to hold two separate bridge thoughts in my head simultaneously, not to drop my cards on the floor. It’s difficult for me to judge, but I feel that I have regained 60% or so of my playing ability when I was at my best.

As a result, when a good friend phoned me a couple of weeks ago to say that her regular partner for the weekly duplicate competition in Jerusalem was unavailable, and to ask whether I was available, I agreed. I went through the usual agonies of insecurity in the days before we were to play, and spent the evenings cramming as if for an exam.

Once again, the reality was completely unintimidating. I soon realised that the players were all pupils at the bridge classes at the community centre where the competition was held, and many had only been playing for a few months. Others had been playing considerably longer, but had not started playing until they retired, and their progress up the mountain range that is competitive bridge was slow. By the end of the morning, I was enjoying myself, and finding that I was able to maintain a level of intense concentration over the three hours of competition, which flew by.

The cherry on top of the cake was that my partner messaged me later that day with the results. We had come top.

There is always a moment, in films about alcoholism or gambling, when you realise that what was a social habit has become an addiction, and the protagonist is in the grip of something that he is unable to fight.

My name is David, and I am a bridgeaholic.

The following week (last week) found me at a newly opened seniors’ residence in the Jerusalem Hills, with a new partner (and old friend), playing in a more serious competition. Once again, my initial trepidation melted away as I realised that, although the players represented a range of abilities and experience that stretched far higher than the previous week, there were also a number of pairs of much less experience and ability. My partner and I came second. This is probably the worst outcome for someone sliding into addiction. The heady delight of doing well paired with the niggling conviction that next week you will do even better.

In the intervening week I have joined the Israel Bridge Federation and paid my annual membership. This morning we played again, and I am waiting to hear how we did this week. We are a curious pair: my partner couldn’t care less about winning or losing, and I couldn’t care more. However, so far we seem to be working as a partnership, and my insecurity is somewhat allayed by the knowledge that, however appalling or egregious an error I make, my partner will laugh it off.

As if this readoption of a teenage passion were not enough, a few weeks ago I confessed to Bernice that I thought I might like a guitar for a birthday present. She was very encouraging, and so I have devised a minimum-risk plan. I have signed up for a free online tuition program, and my musical daughter-in-law Maayan has kindly lent me her spare guitar to start playing. The idea is that if, after six weeks of starting to relearn, I am still interested, I will get a guitar for my birthday.

So far, I am thoroughly enjoying the process. It is not without its humiliations. I always knew that I was a rubbish player, but I never realised the multiplicity of layers of rubbishness of my playing, and just how many dreadful habits I baked into my left and right hand over a decade or more of ‘playing’ the guitar. However, I am enjoying the real pleasure of the stimulation of unlearning some bad habits, learning some new good ones, being introduced unthreateningly to a range of techniques, and having the opportunity to play a guitar whose rich, mellow tone is a world apart from the couple of instruments I played in my youth.

I can only play one tune so far: Happy Birthday to You. (At least, I could play it when I last tried, before Shabbat. I shall discover later whether I have retained it over the intervening 48 hours.) However, the joy of playing that enchanting tune, with all of the right fingering, is precious.

There are moments in the dead of night, when, with only a tentative grip on reality, I dream of becoming a top competitive bridge player. I harbour no such fantasies about the guitar. However, if I reach the point where I can pick out tunes, play the right chords to Turn, Turn, Turn (Who knew there was an F# in there?! Who even knew what an F# was?), and maybe even improvise a little on a pentatonic scale, then I will feel vindicated in making the purchase.

Meanwhile, while the scalp feels fully 75 years old, the fingers, fanning a bridge hand or strumming an Am chord, feel 21 again. No laughing at the back there!

Asked what the topic of this week’s post was likely to be, very few of you would probably have opted for ‘microwaves’…and you would, to be honest, have been right. However, microwaves do make a cameo appearance later, so be sure to watch out for them.

This past week has been dominated by one event: the build-up to, the moment of, and the ripple effect triggered by, the arrival of our newest grandson, who Raphael is calling ‘Zazu’ (which is the rough equivalent of ‘Jiggly’, and is the name the nuclear family gave him in utero, because of his activity there). The rest of us will have to wait until the brit to discover what his name will be, going forward.

When Maayan’s contractions started last Tuesday, Bernice and I picked up our pre-packed overnight bag and drove up to stay in the flat with Raphael. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that the labour was a protracted affair, and Maayan and the baby did not have a very easy time. The first time Esther took her to the hospital on Tuesday at midnight, Maayan was not quite sufficiently dilated to be admitted. They decided to return home, and, after a very long and hard Wednesday for Maayan (and Esther, and, no doubt, the baby), they eventually went back to hospital on Wednesday evening. After a long night and day of further complications, and only after the senior doctor managed to flip the baby to be face down, was he born, on Thursday evening, with Maayan heroically summoning the last of her strength to help him on his way.

I have to say that, for the long day between their return from the hospital for the first time and their return to the hospital, I felt more surplus to requirements than I can ever remember feeling. I consider myself well qualified to state that there is a difference between a biological man and a biological woman, and at no time is that difference more obvious, more undeniable, than at the end of a pregnancy. I am, I know, not the first man to observe that, if men carried babies and went through labour, there would be far more one-child families, and far more childless families, than there are. In childbirth, women are Amazons and men are wimps.

At least, this man is. I know that there has been a huge cultural revolution in the West since my child-not-bearing days, and I know that there are fathers-to-be and fathers who are unimaginably hands-on, but, when push comes to shove, there’s only one gender doing the pushing and the shoving. There I was, in a flat where the mother-to-be was on all fours, the two other women both had first-hand experience of the pain and exhaustion she was going through, and all I could do was stack the dishwasher. It was a chastening experience.

Frustratingly, in attempting to describe how this whole experience could not have been less about me, I seem to have made it sound as though it was all about me. It was, of course, actually all about everyone else, and, especially, ultimately and supremely all about the baby who eventually emerged in all his glory, to make everything instantly worthwhile. I know that’s easy for me to say, but there is, within the family, unanimity on this.

There is something about the warmth, the stillness, the delicacy, the trust, the aroma, the softness, the continuing dependence, the immediate independence, the infinite potential of a newborn child that makes holding him in your arms one of the most special experiences life can offer. Every time it is just as special, if only because every child is a unique and complete new world.

So, we are now blessed with two opening batsmen and two opening bowlers. Make of that what you will.

Raphael was, as always, a champion throughout the week. He actually chose the day his parents were in the hospital to run a slight temperature and feel rotten. On Thursday, he went off happily to gan, and seemed fine when we collected him in the afternoon and took him to the park, but when he took only one bite from his ice-cream before handing it over to be saved for later, and then said he wanted to go home rather than play in the park, it was obvious that he was coming down with something.

Once home, he put himself to bed and slept for 13 hours, only waking a few times for a drink. Fortunately, when he did wake he seemed to have slept off whatever it had been, and his temperature was normal. He woke, of course, to the news that he was now, finally, a big brother, a role that I suspect he will relish and excel at.

Executive decisions were duly made, and all three of us set off for the hospital after breakfast on Friday. Raphael knew that he had to keep his distance from the baby, in whom he displayed less interest than I had expected. Of course, newborns don’t come with much in the way of bells and whistles, and, at the age of three, your ability to see the potential adult in the newborn child is not very developed, so his lack of interest was, I suppose, very understandable.

Bernice and I, on the other hand, got our generous quota of cuddles, until, all too soon, we had to head back for Maale Adumim, still needing to make some preparations for Shabbat. Meanwhile, Raphael and baby’s other grandparents were on their way to take Raphael home with them for a Shabbat that, I believe, included the safari, and, no doubt, other treats.

Once home, Bernice needed to defrost the salmon steaks she planned to cook for Shabbat. When I realised she planned to ‘defrost’ them by using the cooking function of the microwave, I pointed out that the microwave had multiple functions, including rapid defrost. Bernice protested that this was all much too complicated. I then pointed out that, printed along the top rim of the oven opening, and therefore visible whenever the door is opened, is a ridiculously simple set of instructions for the various functions. Five minutes later, the salmon was defrosted and ready to cook.

During the previous couple of days, I had discovered that, similarly, Esther only uses one function of her multi-function microwave. So, this week’s takeaway seems to be: If you want to use a microwave to melt butter, or defrost a chicken, or sensor cook a potato, or, indeed, heat up a takeaway, you’re better off being a man. If, on the other hand, you want to give birth to a perfect baby, you’re better off being a woman. I’ll leave it to you to decide which of these two is the more challenging. I’m just very pleased that I got to cuddle the delectable grandson and to eat the delicious salmon, both on the same day.

How blessed am I!

Blogger’s Apologies. This is the post I should have published last week, when it would have been immediately relevant to you, and when it would have reflected the news story of the day. I can only remind you that I’m still the 17-year-old who handed in his homework a day late every week for the last two years of his schooldays, and plead that I needed a week of thought, and the invaluable contribution of the National Library of Israel blog, to formulate this week’s reflections.

“Shocked, but not surprised.” Those four words, I would suggest, best sum up the reaction of the Jewish world to the pogrom on Bondi beach a week ago (as I write). How can we be anything but shocked at the unhurried and casual calm of the two terrorists, as they strolled along the bridge, picking off victims. At the same time, how can anyone be surprised that such a massacre occurred in Australia, whose iconic Sydney opera house was the scene of a mass pro-Palestinian demonstration on October 9, 2023, 18 days before Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza, and whose prime minister has failed, since then, to unequivocally condemn and forcefully act against the inflammatory rhetoric and escalating violence of Palestinians and pro-Palestinians against Jewish Australians, choosing instead to ‘recognise’ the ‘state’ of ‘Palestine’.

Bondi feels like something of a watershed. Part of our shock may stem from the fact that we tend to think of Australians as more laid back, less polarised, than Europeans and Americans. Knowing that Sydney is over 14,000 km from Jerusalem, we may also have believed that Australia had no reason to be unduly interested in events in the Middle East. After Bondi, we know that the intifada has indeed been globalised. In addition, of course, fifteen innocent victims is thirteen complete worlds more than the two victims of the Heaton Park Synagogue  attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur, and those thirteen additional martyrs do represent a substantive difference, I feel.

If we want to digest, and to explore the deep significance of, the Bondi attack, we have had, over this past week, literally in our hands and minds, the perfect source text. (Jews, by definition, cannot explore the significance of anything without a source text.) In this case, the text is one written in the blood of Jews through the millennia. It is written in Hebrew, which means that many of the millions who sing it do not connect deeply with its meaning, because they do not understand Hebrew, but rather connect with it viscerally, as a part of their cultural-historical-familial heritage that has always been there. I invite you to explore it this week with me.

Most of us probably grew up with five verses of Maoz Tzur. The first is an appeal to God to rebuild the Temple. This restoration will occur when Israel’s enemies will be finally defeated. Then the dedication of the Temple will be completed.

This is a very appropriate sentiment for Hannukah, since the vanquishing of our enemies and the rededication of the Temple so that we can offer thanks to God reflects precisely the story of Hannukah.

The following four verses walk us through Jewish history, which, in the memorable summary, is a repeated story of “They tried to kill us; we beat them; let’s eat.” Or is it? Let’s take a closer look.

Initially, Pharaoh, fearing that “this people” would grow so numerous that they would side with Egypt’s enemies and overwhelm the Egyptians, enslaved the Children of Israel. It was only when Moses demanded the right to lead the people into the desert to worship God (something they had been less than dedicated to in Egypt), that matters escalated to the point where Pharaoh sought to slaughter the entire nation.

Here, at the period when the family of Abraham became the nation of Israel, the dual nature of that nation, its peoplehood and its religion, is immediately central to the story.

This verse describes the Babylonian exile, which was a result of Israel abandoning its religion. However, the people were exiled as a unit, and, when Babylon fell to the Persians, the people were granted permission, after only 70 years of exile, to return to their land, the Land of Israel.

Next is the Purim story, where the focus is not on Jewish religion. (The story begins with the Jews revelling in Ahasuerus’ feast, which was definitely not kosher-catered.) Haman is a classic antisemite who sees the Jews as a seditious people, who can never be a part of the Persian and Medean empire, because they will always insist on keeping themselves separate, however much they appear to assimiliate.

The Greeks, on the other hand, had no issue with the Jews as people, but only as practising religious Jews. The Greeks’ defilement of the Temple was designed to speed up the Hellenization of the Jews and their successful absorption into the Greek empire. This is, of course, the story of Hannukah, and, in one sense, it seems a logical ending point for the song.

Speaking for myself, growing up with the above five verses, I never consciously thought about the fact that they do not tell the complete story. However, you can argue that there should be a sixth verse, retelling the story of a fourth inimical empire – Rome – the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile.

And, of course, there is.

Admon – the red one – is associated with Edom (Yishmael) and, by extension, with Rome and, by extension, with the Holy Roman Empire and Christianity.

It is only since coming on aliya that I have become familiar with this verse. To examine why this is so, and why it appears in some siddurim and not others, we need to look at the history of Maoz Tzur. (It is here that I am indebted to the National Library’s blog, which is always a fascinating read.)

Maoz Tzur was written in the Middle Ages, and it is quite possible that the sixth verse was composed together with the first five and that the sixth verse was suppressed, either by the Christian authorities throughout Europe, or by the Jewish communities themselves in the interest of self-preservation.

However, some scholars argue that the last verse is not part of the original piyyut but a later addition. This makes sense; otherwise, why sing this poem specifically on Hanukkah? The words of Maoz Tzur refer, in each verse, to a different exile (Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome), and it could have been sung on many other occasions in our calendar. Only if the poem ends with the story of the miracle of the cruse of oil is there reason to associate it specifically with Hannukah.

There are a few references to Maoz Tzur in medieval Jewish literature, but the first time we see a reference to that last verse is in 1696 in a book printed in Germany, outlining the main laws and ideas of daily mitzvot and the festivals of the year. In the chapter discussing the laws of Hanukkah, the author writes:

“I found it written, and since the poem of Maoz Tzur deals only with the three kingdoms of Babylon, Media, and Greece, and the fourth kingdom of the exile of Edom, Yishmael, is not mentioned at all, therefore, we established some rhymes that speak of this redemption from exile, to be recited after the song Maoz Tzur in the tune of Maoz Tzur.”

I find myself wondering whether, in Germany in 1696, at the dawn of the Enlightenment, things looked promising enough for Jews to feel that they could anticipate God’s vanquishing of Edom. It is certainly easy to understand why the Jews of 19^th Century Eastern Europe and mid-20^th Century Europe would have felt that they had no strength to sing the sixth verse.

On the other hand, it is easy to understand how, after the establishment of the State of Israel, and after the Six-Day War, and after the recalibration of Catholic-Jewish relations in the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-60s, Jews, in Israel and in the liberal democracies, felt that they could foresee a future where Israel’s last imperial enemy was finally vanquished.

And then came October 7. And then came the globalisation of the intifada. And I find myself wondering now whether we will feel able to sing, to that rousing, uplifting tune, the words of the sixth stanza of Maoz Tzur, or whether we are now in one of those periods in history when we can still pray to God to vanquish our enemies, but we cannot imagine the accomplishment of that vanquishing.

One final thought. Maoz Tzur makes it clear to us that, at different points in Jewish history, the focus of antisemitism is sometimes on Judaism as a religion, and sometimes on the Jews as a people. The target of antisemitism is sometimes the religious rituals, artefacts, practices and beliefs, and sometimes the people themselves. Our enemies sometimes restrict our freedoms, sometimes exile us, sometimes enslave us, sometimes murder us.

The enemy we face today claims, of course, that he is anti-Zionist, not antisemitic. His fight is with Israelis, not Jews. What this means, if I am reading it correctly, is that his objection is to the concept of a Jewish people, not to the concept of a Jewish religion. The flaw in his argument is his belief, or claim, that the two are separable. The fundamental truth, of course, is that the Jewish people is inexorably bound up with the Jewish religion, and both fuse together in the Land of Israel.

Our enemies actually understand this. They acknowledged it when they attacked us on Yom Kippur 50 years ago, Simchat Torah two years ago, Yom Kippur less than four months ago, Hannukah a week ago. (Do you detect a theme, there.) They acknowledge it every time they kill a Jew “for being a Zionist” even though they have no idea whether the individual Jew they kill identifies as a Zionist.

One of the tragedies in our current situation is that there are Jews who reject this truth, even though our enemies embrace it in their actions against us. But that is a subject for another time.