Even by my standards, I think that’s an obscure referential misquote, but I wouldn’t put it past one or two of my readers to be sufficiently nerdish Star Trek fans to catch the echo. For the rest of you, fear not: all will be revealed in due time (and it has nothing to do with Star Trek really).

In the 1960s, scientists built an English-Russian-English translating computer. To test its ability, they fed in the English saying: Out of sight, out of mind. They then took the Russian output, fed that back in, and the computer translated it back into English as: Invisible idiot.

I used to love this joke in the 1960s. Thinking back, I suspect I loved it for two reasons. First, it illustrated what I characterised as the richness of expression in English. The same phrase – Out of sight – can be understood either from the perspective of the unobserved, indicating that it is hidden or invisible, or from the perspective of the observers, indicating that said observers themselves are not in a position to see it. It strikes me now that you could argue that this indicates the paucity of vocabulary in English – one phrase with two very different meanings – but essentially I find the potential ambiguities of English a tremendous strength of the language.

The second reason why I loved it was that it relished the fact that machines would never be able to match the linguistic creativity and nuance of humans, which was immensely reassuring for someone who harboured dreams of becoming some sort of writer.

It was also, of course, a joke of its time, illustrating the linguistic iron curtain that separated the English-speaking West from the Russian-speaking Soviet empire.

Fast-forwarding to 2021-22, as editor of my shul’s magazine I started using Google Translate as a first step to translating articles written in English into Hebrew. Not only did this save considerable time, but as a bonus, when I sanity checked the first draft, I found I had enough mistranslations for an amusing article at the end of the magazine. It’s not easy to find any that will be understandable to those of my readers who are not bilingual, but here’s one. One writer, describing the scene in the gym, wrote about a ‘Nike-track-suited trio’. Google translated this as שלישייה מתאימה למסלול של נייקי – ‘a trio appropriate for a Nike track’.

Incidentally, if you haven’t used AI to render a translation in the last five years, you should note that the quality of the translation has improved exponentially.

Of course, it was way back in 1996 that IBM’s computer Deep Blue first played a series of chess matches against world champion Garry Kasparov. Although Kasparov won 4-2, in the following year Deep Blue won the rematch series 3½–2½. There were experts who argued that Kasparov played significantly below par in the rematch, and was considerably disturbed by his probably correct apprehension that any mistake of his would be pounced upon and mercilessly exploited. Nevertheless, that felt like a watershed moment.

At the same time, those of us who still believed that AI would never be able to match human creativity in language comforted ourselves with the thought that, though the possible combinations of moves arising from any situation on the chessboard are huge, they are finite, and a powerful enough computer can match a human chessmaster’s intuition and genius by pedestrianly working through the possibilities. Once the computer got fast enough at calculating all the possibilities, it became a worthy, if uninspired, opponent.

But language, we (or at least I) smugly contended, was different, and until ten days ago, I could point to evidence that supported my claim. When programmers first started training computers to solve cryptic crosswords, the results were laughable. While the computer might stumble across the occasional correct answer, it would, much more often, provide an ‘answer’ that either did not contain the right number of letters or that had no connection to the clue. Endearingly, the computer would always offer what it hoped you would believe was a carefully reasoned argument as to why its answer was correct.

For example, the following clue: Number achieved victory, we hear (3) might be answered by an LLM as follows: ‘The answer is ICE, because ice makes you numb and it sounds like ‘ace’ which is a winning serve in tennis.’ The problems with this answer are that ‘ice’ does not sound like ‘ace’ (unless the clue included a reference to Cockney pronunciation, ‘ace’ does not mean ‘achieved victory’; that would be ‘aced’ (possibly), and, finally, an ace is not a victory, it is the means by which the player achieves victory in a point. If you think I am being pedantic, then you need to understand that cryptic crossword clues must, perforce, satisfy the most pedantic of pedants. The great crossword clues are those that you don’t solve but which, as soon as you read the answer, you see how it fits the clue perfectly and uniquely.

The answer to the clue Number achieved victory, we hear (3), incidentally, is ONE, which is a number, and which sounds like (we hear) WON, which means ‘achieved victory’.

Even last year, when Professor Siddhartha Chatterjee, a computer scientist at the University of Texas, brought his AI program Darmok to the Times Crossword Puzzle Championships in London, it failed to beat the human winner of the competition, although it performed frighteningly well. When Professor Chatterjee returned with a more mature Darmok this year, the program performed better on each of the four puzzles than any of the human competitors. When I read the news, I confess that combobulateion was totally dissed.

To give you an idea of the level of sophistication required, here is a clue from the final puzzle that stumped two of the final four humans.

Wolf trap missing its lowest crosspiece (5)

This was a down clue, and the across clues that intersected it in the answer grid provided three of the five letters.

S    A    F

Give yourself 100 bonus points if you got the answer: SNARF.

Give yourself 50 bonus points if, knowing the answer, you can explain why it is the answer.

The explanation is that a SNARE is a trap and, remembering that this is a down clue, the answer contains four crosspieces: the horizontal stroke in the middle of A and the three horizontal strokes in the E. If you remove the lowest crosspiece, the E becomes an F, and the word becomes SNARF, which means to eat greedily, or to wolf your food.

I tackle the Times cryptic crosswords most days of the week, and I can never remember seeing a clue to solve which which you needed to remove a stroke of a letter to create a different letter. So, assuming the AI realised this explanation, that represents impressive lateral thinking. I actually believe it is more likely that the AI – and, indeed, the human competitors – used the three ‘lights’ (the S, A and F provided by across clues) to arrive at SNARF, and didn’t worry about parsing the cryptic part of the clue. Remember that these finalists were solving a 30-clue puzzle in somewhere around 3–4  minutes, which leaves precious little time for much more than seeing the answer almost instantly and writing it in.

Let me offer you one more clue from the same crossword, to indicate the level of linguistic subtlety and agility required,

Faint but persistent echo, winding along gorges. (8)

In crossword parlance, I would say that this clue has a beautiful, smooth surface. In other words, the clue reads very naturally, but, to solve it, we have to parse the language very differently from what appears on the surface.

Here we go:

‘Faint but persistent’ is the definition, and the answer is SNEAKING, in the sense: ‘I have a sneaking suspicion most of you have stopped reading by now.’ It’s fair to say that this is a secondary meaning of ‘sneaking’.

‘Winding along’ is ‘’snaking’, which ‘gorges’, in other words swallows or contains, the letter E, which is indicated by its NATO phonetic alphabet word – ‘echo’.

So, we have SN E AKING.

To solve this clue, you must recognise ‘gorges’ as a verb, whose subject is ‘winding along’ as a gerund/adverb phrase. On the surface, ‘winding’ is a gerundive, and ‘along’ is a preposition governing the noun ‘gorges’. All of that is beautiful misdirection. You must also separate ‘faint but persistent’ from the rest of the clue and recognise it as the definition, and associate ‘echo’ with the NATO alphabet.

All that remains is for me to unpack, in a similar fashion, this week’s blog post title. It is a misquote of a memorable line from ‘Darmok’, an episode of Star Trek in which Picard eventually realises that the alien civilisation the Enterprise has encountered speaks in metaphors. One of Picard’s memorable lines when he finally manages to communicate with this initially aggressive civilisation is ‘Shaka, when the walls fell’. You can watch Patrick Stewart utter the immortal line, here. (Incidentally, I am in absolutely no sense a trekkie, and I only stumbled across all of this sub-Tolkein bunkum when I googled ‘Darmok’ to find out the origin of the AI program’s name.)

Having uncovered the meme, I felt that it described my feelings when I learnt that Darmok had out-performed the humans in cryptic crossword solving. I was, indeed, shaken, when the walls fell.

But, I ask myself, could AI ever create a cryptic crossword puzzle? Let’s answer that question with a crossword clue. Be the first to post your solution in the comments below this post.

Which pastas, etc get cooked.? Look here! (5,4,5)

In just under two weeks, Israel is going places. One of the places it is definitely going is to the polls. A second place it is almost certainly going is to the dogs, and the two are not unrelated.

Israel desperately needs this election, in order to start moving on from a position of stagnation on multiple fronts. However, it is far from certain that the results of the election are going to leave the country in any position to move on.

As has more than once in the past been the case, I have not yet decided which party I will be voting for. There are, as has always been the case in the past, several parties I already know I will not be voting for, but, sadly, that still leaves a wide choice.

I thought today that I might describe some of what I would like to see come out of this election. Perhaps that will help me decide how to cast my vote on October 27.

First, I’d like to see (or rather to have seen) each party publish, the day after the election date was declared, a 5–10 page manifesto: a clear, practical statement of what they plan to achieve if they form a government, and how they plan to achieve it. A few parties have such a blueprint, but many do not. If I have to intuit what a party’s platform is, and what its plans are, beyond slogans like “Anyone but Bibi” or single-issue statements like “Sharing the national burden evenly”, then I can hardly make an informed decision.

Next, I’d like to see far fewer parties in the next Knesset. If a party wins four or five seats, there is one of two possible outcomes. It may be lucky enough to find itself holding the balance of power in the Knesset, and joining the governing coalition, while extorting from the largest Government party a ridiculous number of Government ministries – some newly minted purely as a bribe – as well as getting funding for some project that favours their particular constituency. On the other hand, it may find itself out in the cold of the opposition, where, with a handful of members, it will have no real impact on public life.

The way to achieve my desired result is probably to increase the electoral threshold to something like 8%. This would, I imagine, lead to politicians grouping together as a single party under a broader tent. This would mean that when I cast my vote, I would know who would be in the government if my party won. There would be no unexpected and unacceptable coalitions.

Raising the electoral threshold is one way. A more far-reaching change, and one that I would also welcome, is to move, partially or wholly, from a proportional representative system to a constituency system, where an individual MK is elected in a local constituency, competing against individual MKs from a range of other parties, in a first-past-the-post race. The prospect of having a local MK who is required and incentivised to represent all of his constituents is very attractive,

I would also welcome the setting in place of a process that would eventually lead to a constitution and reform in the balance between executive, judicial and legislative powers. The country needs that reform, and deserves leaders who have the maturity and responsibility to create a framework that can arrive at a programme that unites, rather than divides, the country.

If the balance of power still needs to be held by a Haredi party (and I hope it will not but suspect it will), then I would like it to be The Charedi Public, a new party that advocates for secular studies, workforce participation, and IDF conscription for anybody who does not study full-time in yeshiva.

Lastly in this list, I would like to see the back of Bibi. He was, for many of his years in Israeli politics, a tremendous national asset: as Finance Minister, and, in many ways, as Prime Minister, However, it is clear that much of his naturally diminishing energy is now devoted simply to his political survival, rather than to the survival, and progress, of the nation. The time has come, indeed it came some time ago, for him to hand the baton to the successor generation – a generation he has, throughout his career, striven to stifle.

I’m not sure in what order I would rank the above ideas. However, if I could only have one wish, then it would be that the very first action taken by the new government be the appointment of a state inquiry into the events of 7 October. Simple justice cries out for this, so that those responsible for the failure are compelled to take responsibility. National security requires this, so that the necessary lessons can be learnt and changes made to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. The nation as a whole needs this, as a vital stage in healing and moving on from 7 October.

The upcoming election feels tremendously important, and yet the build-up to it gives no sense of significance. I hope and pray that, before October 27, and after it, the nation finds that sense and moves forward with purpose.

Well, blow me down. You turn round twice and it’s Tuesday again and, yet again, I have no idea what to write about this week. So far today I have been playing very elaborate avoidance games. We were in Zichron yesterday, experiencing the weekly double whammy of not only getting to spend quality time with our grandchildren, but also having our children express their gratitude to us for doing so. I keep telling them they’ve got that backwards, but they don’t seem to have caught on yet.

While we were in Zichron, two parcels arrived at our home in Ma’ale Adumim.

Following on from last week’s rant against delivery staff, I could tell you how one of the drivers called me to say that he wasn’t familiar with Ma’ale Adumim and wanted me to direct him to Hashminit Street! He then asked me where Number 14 was. I explained that he should find an even-numbered house, walk to the next house and check its number to discover whether he was walking in the right direction or needed to turn round, and then walk until he came to the house that has a 14 on the gate and two 14s on the wall of the house. He then called to ask me if the gate was painted black.

I congratulated him on having found the house and asked him to leave the parcel (which, incidentally, weighed less than a kilo) next to the electricity box, out of sight from the street. When we arrived home that evening, we found the package, in a box large enough to contain a microwave, placed just inside the front gate. As I say, I could tell you all this, but two weeks in a row would start to sound like an obsession, and, anyway, all of you have stories that can top that, and, as one of my readers commented last week, at least the parcel contained what I had ordered.

Which was, as it happened, a digital photo frame, to replace the one that died on us a few months ago. In preparation for its arrival, Bernice and I had sorted through the photos we had taken on her birthday, when all of the family were with us, so I spent a couple of hours this morning working out how to transfer from my laptop to the frame, which involved trying to deduce where my younger self would have stored the Micro-SD card after he last used it many years ago, and then working out whether the photos were better as ‘fit to frame’ (with a slight border on one axis) or ‘fill the frame’ (with the danger of lobbing off tops of heads or severing fingers, but usually then being able to slide minimally to restore the missing body part).

Then, having finished my granola yesterday, and returned from Esther’s too tired to make another batch last night, I cleared with Bernice that we would move breakfast to lunch today, so I breakfasted on boiled eggs and a toasted platzel, and made granola in time to lunch on fresh fruit salad, granola and yoghurt.

Which means (I realise I am risking my life beginning two paragraphs in one blog with a subordinate clause acting as a sentence, but, if I don’t start living dangerously at 76, what’s life for?) that I now have about an hour and a half to write my blog before we go off to join my brother and sister-in-law, Martin and Adèle, for an earlyish dinner in Jerusalem. That would serve as an excellent segue into one half of today’s topic, had I not decided to start with the other half.

What a week it has been. Apparently, if you ask AI how, as a suicidal jihadist co-pilot, it would recommend overpowering the pilot, taking control of the plane, and crashing it into a skyscraper in Israel, it will give you a much better plan of action than attacking him with the fire axe stored in the cockpit. So, until AI manages to organise its agents sufficiently to take over the world, and either kill us all or keep us as pets, which many estimates seem to suggest may be soon after Chanukah, it should be able to ensure much greater success for Islamic fundamentalist terrorists.

Then there’s the Irish football team, who seem to have missed the memo about either refusing to legitimise Israel by playing them or agreeing to play them and behaving in a civilised way. They preferred to have their cake and eat it. Or perhaps they simply wanted to make up for not having expressed the appropriate moral indignation when they were exchanging Heil Hitler salutes with the German national team back in the day.

All of this was, of course, topped by the Durban Revivalists, aka The Green Party of the UK, who, at their annual conference this week, passed a motion declaring that Zionism is Racism. Apparently, backing a “single, democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine” is not racist, despite the fact that this state would ethnically cleanse Palestine, and (in the best-case scenario) expel all Jews. I still don’t really understand the process by which most of the ecological evangelists became mindless antisemites, but that is undeniably what has happened in Europe.

In addition, of course, publication day for this post is October 7, the third anniversary of the pogrom of 2023. The huge shadow that this casts is even darker because of the double realisation that the process of understanding how Israel failed to predict or immediately respond to the horrific assault has not even started yet, and that, despite three years of military and political efforts, despite the progress that has been made, the multiple threats to Israel are still present on all fronts.

And yet…

And yet, our sweltering and seemingly endless summer appears, right on cue, to have ended. Sukkot, for the first time in years, gave us the most clement of weather: dry, but bearably hot-to-warm, with no strong winds. If you suffered in your sukkah in weather different from this, then perhaps you should consider taking the hint that the best place to build your sukkah is… in Israel. Just saying.

Now we seem to be moving into that shortest of seasons in Israel: autumn. Mornings start crisp. Days are sunny but feel a little fresher and lighter. Evenings are pleasant. We no longer need the ceiling fan on in the bedroom at night. We are seriously discussing whether we need to take sweaters when we go into Jerusalem this evening.

It really feels as though summer had ended, and it has been a very special summer. It began in earnest with Tslil, Micha’el and the boys over here for almost five weeks, and is ending with Adèle and Martin returning to England this week after a month in Israel – their first proper visit in three years. Nothing personal, national or global happened to interfere with those trips, and we were able to spend a lot of quality time with our nuclear and extended family.

All of the last few books that I have read aloud with Bernice have lived up to their promise – which is not always guaranteed – and we have enjoyed some good film, theatre and concerts in recent months. On Sukkot we both were entertained in friends’ and family’s sukkot, and entertained family in ours. We met up with friends we haven’t seen in too long.

For me, the tefilla in shul over Tishrei very much helped me to celebrate the chagim in a frame of mind and spiritual state that brought me much closer to where I would like to be than is sometimes the case, something that was helped by a book that I am halfway through reading at the moment and will probably write about here some time in the next month.

From the sublime to the gorblimey, as we used to say. Sub specie aeternitatis, it matters not a jot, but, I’m sorry, I can’t help my petty competitive streak. Shortly after I started playing bridge again, I joined the Israel Bridge Federation, and started competing in a weekly duplicate competition in Jerusalem. Beginning as a Registered Player, I quickly gained the handful of points needed to rise to the level of Advanced Player (a very generous misnomer). Last week I played not with my usual partner, but with a friend whose mental acumen at the age of 92 I aspire to. We came top, and the four points this earned me raised me to the next level: Vice Master. While I recognise this is a name open to misinterpretation, I feel ridiculously, and totally disproportionately, chuffed at having reached these giddy heights.

So, while it is true that some of the glass is full and some is empty, I’m not at all sure that, for me at least, and at this distinct point in time at least, the dividing line is as far up the glass as halfway. It honestly feels more like three quarters. I genuinely hope that the same is true for you. The secret, I read this week, is always to have aspirations and never to have expectations. My aspirations start with me having Bronze Vice Master in my sights. I invite you to pursue your own.

Blogger’s Note: Good grief. I’ve just written an upbeat self-help column. I certainly didn’t see that coming!

Although the Torah instructs us to be joyous on all of the festivals, it is Sukkot alone that is known as Zman Simchateinu, the season of our joy. So, as I sit in our sukkah, seeing whether I can finish writing before the sun’s rays inch their way across our backyard far enough to drive me back indoors, it seems appropriate to devote this week’s post to something that personally gives me great joy:  complaining. With your permission (or, rather, now I come to think of it, with or without your permission), I’m going to indulge in a proper old moan this week.

Fortunately, I do have something specific to moan about this week. However, before getting down to particulars, let me start with a general moan. I have previously written about the pleasure I get from seeing a master of their craft, whatever that might be, plying that craft, be it thatching a roof, cooking an omelette, blowing a glass bowl, or whatever. Sadly, the converse is true. Watching someone completely fail to display mastery of their craft I find truly aggravating. Unfortunately, life in Israel in the 21^st Century affords me plenty of opportunities for such aggravation.

For example, from time to time we order something on line. If it is something fairly large, or if we are feeling unusually affluent or lazy, or if the retailer is offering free home delivery, we sometimes take that option. As a result, I will receive, over the next few days, one, or two, or sometimes considerably more, emails or SMS messages or WhatsApps, or some combination of all three, updating me on the progress of my order from supplier to delivery service to my home. Eventually, a message will inform me that, in the course of the day, the delivery driver will phone me with details of his impending arrival.

Like any prediction, this message is not always destined to be accurate. Sometimes the driver fails to contact me, and the parcel arrives, unannounced. The first we know of it may be a ring of the doorbell or the discovery, hours later, of a package on the doorstep, or just inside the garden gate.

However, usually, the driver does phone, to announce that he is in Ma’ale Adumim, and to ask for our address. I understand that he is simply verifying the address printed on his delivery manifest. He may then ask whereabouts in Ma’ale Adumim Hashminit Street is located. Have these people never heard of Waze?

In the next phone call, the driver informs me that he is already in our street, and asks me to come out to collect the parcel. This is the point at which I don’t point out that I paid for home delivery, not street collection; instead, I channel my inner Bernice and tell myself that, if the driver gets 70 customers to come out to the street, he shaves an hour from his workday and can spend more quality time with his children.

So I go out to the street, where I stand for five minutes, which would allow enough time for the driver to drive the length of our street five or six times, if he were indeed in the street. However, he is, of course, still five minutes away, and simply wants to ensure that it is I who wait for him in the street for five minutes, rather than he who waits for me. I then go back indoors to wait for the next phone call, some five minutes later, telling me that the driver is now genuinely in the street, standing outside Number 12, and asking where Number 14 is.

This is the point at which I don’t explain that, in almost all streets in Israel, the numbering starts at one end of the street with odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right, and continues down the street with the house numbers ascending. So, if Number 12 is on his left, the driver should turn around so that Number 12 is on his right, and walk down to the next house on the right – the house, incidentally, that has the number 14 displayed on the gate and in two different positions on the wall of the house itself.

But, as I say, I don’t explain that. Instead, I walk out to the street again, and collect my package, and spend the rest of the day wondering whether the driver managed to find his way home at the end of his working day.

However, this is not what has aggravated me this past week, because, having ordered a ser of earphones online, I opted for collection. The only option for collection was a minimarket five minutes’ drive away, which is a pretty efficient, and very popular, collection point for Ma’ale Adumim.

I was a little surprised, therefore, to receive a message from the delivery company a few days later, telling me that my parcel was ready for collection from a felafel eatery in Mishor Adumim, the industrial estate eight minutes’ drive from us. I assumed this was an inefficient error on the part of either the retailer or the delivery company, but I suspected attempting the rectify the situation and gettimg the package redelivered would cost considerably more in effort, even more in time, and even more yet in aggravation, than simply collecting the package.

Fortunately (or so it seemed at the time), the SMS came with a link to a route map, showing the exact location of the felafel place. Since Bernice was planning to be in that area anyway the next day, she offered to pick up the package. I wish I could say that I was surprised by her phone call 15 minutes after she left home the following day, telling me that she was at the exact spot indicated on the map, and all that she could see was an open-air car park, a double-gate leading to the delivery bay of a large supermarket, and a smaller gate leading to the entrance doors to a banqueting hall. The truth, however, is that I wasn’t surprised. I had not really expected the felafel place to be there, and I had, indeed, tried to persuade Bernice not to stop off there, but to leave me to waste my time going there afterwards.

While Bernice went on to her destination, I searched online for a phone number for the retailer. I had no intention of engaging with the delivery company, who were, from my perspective, simply the monkey. I wanted to speak to the organ-grinder. Unsurprisingly, on their website there was no trace of a phone number. Customer service was (or, at least, claimed to be) reachable by WhatsApp. I duly initiated a WhatsApp conversation, although, technically, since a conversation requires two parties, I initiated a monologue. In due course, I was rewarded with an automated reply, informing me that I could expect a response within one working day. (We are, of course, deep into a period in the Jewish, and, therefore, national calendar in which working days are few and far between.)

Nevertheless, I refused to be deterred from casting my bread on the waters. I sent a second WhatsApp message, explaining that the pick-up location address sent to me was not that of the agreed pick-up location, and, furthermore, that the second location appeared not to exist.

A second, more thorough, search of the retainer’s website revealed an email address, to which I immediately sent the same message. Astonishingly, I received a response to the email from a genuine, living human being within a few minutes. This response informed me that, before I had finalised the order online, the small print on the order page had informed me that the company reserved the right to change the pick-up location without my prior agreement or knowledge, and furthermore, that the felafel place definitely did exist and was located where the map said. The email smugly stated: “We happen to be from the area.”

When Bernice arrived home, I drove to the location. In the absence of any better option, I walked through the gate to the banqueting hall entrance, looking ever more closely at the map on my phone. A security guard called out to me: “Looking for the felafel?” When I confessed I was, he told me to go into the banqueting hall, take the lift or the staircase down one floor, and there I would find it.

And, indeed, there I did find it, and, after the usual delay (Why don’t the parcel retrievers ever believe you when you say it is a small package? And why can’t they store the packages in numerical order? And why can’t they remember a nine-digit number when that is the key required skill of their job?) I received my package and headed home.

As I passed the security officer on my way out, I thanked him, and asked: “Why don’t they have a sign pointing in the direction of the felafel place?”

In a very friendly tone, he asked me where I lived.

“Ma’ale Adumim,” I replied.

“And what country do you think you live in?” he asked bemusedly.

“You’re right! You’re right!” I agreed. “I guess you ask people if they’re looking for the felafel a couple of hundred times a day.”

“Not quite, but often enough,” he replied with a smile.

We wished each other Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach, and I made my way home.

On the drive home, it gradually dawned on me that I felt more uplifted by the helpfulness, the humour and the warmth of the security guard than I felt depressed by the inefficiency of the entire collection experience. I believe I must be getting soft in my old age.

I felt uplifted even further when I realised a little later that I had a ready-made topic for this week’s blog, which, in contrast to last week’s, has actually been about something.

I eagerly await the discovery of what grist the coming week will bring to my mill.

If this turns out to be a very slight piece, I hope that, in the spirit of the (Jewish) season, you will forgive me. This has been a busy few weeks, what with Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and my brother and sister-in-law arriving for the first time in three years (blame that three-year absence, principally, on Iran and, equally, His Majesty’s Foreign Office, with its guidelines on foreign travel making travel insurance unobtainable for much of the time).

Anyway, they are now in Israel, and we hosted them last Shabbat, which was wonderful. We had a lot of catching up to do, but we managed to cover a reasonable amount of the agenda. Other opportunities are planned for later.

The plan was that, after Yom Kippur, I would be able to devote today to writing this week’s blog post. However, I had to go and select my lulav and etrog this morning, and then, after exercising and before showering, it seemed only sensible, as well as very much approved by tradition, to at least start ‘erecting’ our sukkah. As I have mentioned (‘gloated’, some might say) before, our pergola functions as our sukkah roof, and the house wall, the public shelter wall, and our dividing wall with our neighbour provide the required three walls for the structure to qualify as a sukkah. All that I need to do is remove and replace a single line of slats from the pergola, and, by that act, I have fulfilled the obligation to erect a temporary dwelling.

Bernice and I discussed my going onto the roof of the pergola, as I did last year, to remove the slats, since our pergola is very high and not reachable by our ladder. Inspired by the increased walking I did when we lent our car to Micha’el and Tslil during their month in Israel, and appalled by how out of shape I was, I started a daily regimen of exercises for the senior citizen. Combined with keeping up the walking, this means that I now feel in slightly better physical shape than a few months ago. We’re not talking Kevin Spacey in American Beauty here, but a little less couch potato.

In light of this, and much to my surprise, Bernice agreed that I could go up on the pergola roof, and, if I felt comfortable, I could do the raising and lowering of slates required. I agreed that, if I felt at all unsure, I would swallow my pride and come down. In the event, both the pergola and I turned out to be in better shape than might have been the case, and I breezed through the operation in a few minutes.

Even so, all those odd jobs have a way of adding up, and, by the time we sat down to breakfast, it had actually become brunch. I planned to start writing immediately afterwards, my only problem being that, as seems to be happening with increasing frequency lately, I had no ideas for a topic. In the spirit of the age, I gave the handiest AI on my phone – Copilot – my blogsite address, and asked it to read my posts and suggests a topic for today. Within seconds, I had a list of eminently sensible topics, all very accurately reflecting the flavour of my posts. However, and, perhaps, unsurprisingly, the list was rather uninspired and uninspiring, I find myself hoping that this is a reflection more on CoPilot’s limitations than on the unimaginativeness of my blog.

Just as I was about to lock myself in the office and sit in front of the blank laptop screen, Bernice reminded me that I have a routine specialist appointment tomorrow, and the specialist will want to see my latest blood test results and compare them to the previous numbers. I find the most useful way to present this to the specialist is to create an Excel spreadsheet with the two, or even more, sets of results side by side.

Fortunately, it is easy to download an Excel of each separate blood test result from our health fund’s website, and to combine those separate files into a single sheet. Of course, since the nurse filled 11 separate phials of blood last week (a personal record for me), I had to download 11 files and combine them into one sheet, which took a little time. I then faced the problem that my last couple of sets of tests (the specialist likes to see a full history) did not cover all of the tests I did this time, so I had to write a formula to allow me to match the relevant values on the spreadsheet. I know, of course, that AI could do all of this for me. I also know that it would take me a number of frustrating iterations to find a way to express clearly what I wanted from AI. I will, I suppose, have to face that learning curve at some time in the future, but early this afternoon didn’t really feel like that time.

Creating the Excel also presented another challenge. The test results online are presented in Hebrew format, reading from right to left. Name of test/Result/Normal range (or, rather, Normal range/Result/Name of test. The Excel generated by the site is, curiously, displayed from left to right. (If the one or two of my readers who can explain to me why this is so, they are welcome to try, but I don’t promise to stay awake.) I wanted to switch this to display from right to left. This is straightforward in Excel, but it raises some interesting questions. If you are displaying for a Hebrew reader a range of normality, should the minimum be on the right, so that it is read first, or on the left.

This is a question I first wrestled with when I started running the British Council’s English Language learning centre in Jerusalem. We were advertising evening courses. In a Hebrew-language advert, should a course that runs from 7 to 9 on Sunday (ימי א’) evenings be presented like this:

ימי א’ 19:00-21:00

or like this:

ימי א’ 21:00-19:00

If your eye is reading from right to left, it seemed to me natural to start with the starting time; in other words, to put the starting time on the right, so that the eye sees it first.

Even though we had not been in the country many years at this stage, I already knew that the correct address for such a question, if I wanted an authoritative answer, was the Academy for the Hebrew Language, a body less draconian than its French equivalent, but, nevertheless, the ultimate authority on questions of usage and vocabulary. Unsatisfyingly, the answer I received was that both styles are used. In the end, I chose the second option as less challenging for the reader, and nobody ever questioned it.

It strikes me now that there might be situations where the expression of the time-frame might be ambiguous. If, for example, a particular medical test was conducted using a very expensive piece of equipment, of which a hospital could only afford one, tests might be carried out 24 hours a day. If a test took 12 hours, there would be no way to know whether 09:00-21:00 meant that the test started or ended at 09:00. In such a case, I suppose one would have to write: From 21:00 to 09:00, or: From 09:00-21:00

Anyway, by the time I had manipulated and sanity checked the data in my Excel, and printed out the copy I need tomorrow, it was mid-afternoon, and I still had no idea what I was going to write about today.

Which is why there is no blog post this week.

And, for those who care, the relevance of this week’s title is a line coined not by the long list of politicians who stole it at various times in the 1980s, but, apparently, by Bob Thaves, an American cartoonist of whom I confess I had never heard. In 1982, he drew a cartoon in which three characters are looking at a sign for a “Fred Astaire Film Festival”. One character says the following: “Sure he was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, … backwards and in high heels.”

With Yom Kippur behind us, it is, astonishingly, as every year, already time to wish you Chag Sameach for Sukkot, which begins this Friday evening. Weather permitting, next week’s post will come to you from our Sukkah. (At this stage, it isn’t easy to guess whether excessive heat or a rain shower is more likely to make that an unrealistic hope.)

There are weeks when I know some days in advance what I will write about in my blog. In these, idyllic, weeks, my walks to and from shul on Shabbat afford me at least 50 minutes to play with the idea and start to map out how the post will flow.

Then there are weeks when I have no idea what I will write about, until, on Monday or Tuesday, I sit in front of the laptop and wait for the muse to inspire me. While occasionally a little nerve-wracking, this is also very often exhilarating, and sometimes results in what I judge to be among my best pieces.

And then there are weeks like this week. Shabbat and Sunday were, of course, Rosh Hashana, and my mind was occupied with issues even more pressing than my blog. So it was that, on Sunday evening, I opened up my phone to catch up with the news, and discovered the news item that clearly had to be the subject of this week’s blog.

On Motzei Shabbat, 12 September, the British film NAZA won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.

That fact, the incidental facts around that central fact, and the worldwide attention that that fact has attracted, make it impossible for me not to write about the film. In addition, I feel that the moment to write about is now, and not a few weeks down the line, even though I have not yet seen the film. I have, however, seen a two-minute trailer, and I have read a considerable number of reviews, opinion pieces, and news stories about the film and its screening, and I believe that, confining my comments to what I am able to learn from all that, I have a couple of observations to make that may be worth reading.

The film itself is British, produced by The Guardian and James Wilson’s JW Films. (Wilson is a long-time collaborator of Jonathan Glazer, the film’s executive producer.) The film’s directors – Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor – previously directed No Other Land (2024), an Oscar-winning documentary about the Israel Defense Forces and settler violence in the West Bank, To note that all of the above are long-standing outspoken critics of Israel’s policy in Yehuda and Shomron and Gaza is not to invalidate their right to make the film. I would certainly not want to live in a country where it was illegal to make a film criticising government or army policy. However, it is worth going into the cinema recognising that all those involved with the production have an agenda, and ensuring that your critical faculties are appropriately sharpened.

The film consists almost entirely of one-on-one interviews conducted by Yuval Abraham with individuals who are presented as members of Israel’s military and intelligence community, who describe the procedure the IDF follows when planning and executing targeted strikes designed to kill individual terrorists in Gaza. I have, in the previous sentence, stated that this is how they are ‘presented’, because the objective observer has to take on trust from the filmmakers that we are watching genuine personnel. This is because all of the participants appear anonymously, with their faces blurred and their voices digitally altered so that they are unidentifiable.

I certainly have no evidence that the participants are not genuine, but, on the other hand, neither I, nor anyone else, has any way of verifying their genuineness. The filmmakers ask the audience to take their word, both their claims and their conclusions, on trust. I have seen them called whistleblowers, but I would argue that that is an inaccurate term. Whistleblowers may seek protection, or go into hiding, but they do not act anonymously.

Certainly, no court of law would consider ‘evidence’ presented in such a form. Again, I am not claiming that the participants are not genuine. However, I would certainly argue that any review of the film unquestioningly talking about the ‘proof’ it presents, and accepting all of the narrative at face value, reveals a pre-disposition to believe the worst.

The same pre-disposition was demonstrated by the audience at the film’s premiere in Venice. Free Palestine banners and flags were unfurled after the screening, and the record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation the film received was surely a reflection of an audience flourishing its politically correct sensibilities. The 80-minute documentary may be good, but objectively 25-minute standing ovation good? I somehow doubt it.

I want to make two specific points. The first concerns the film’s title. This is a British production and, although all of the interviews are conducted in Hebrew, with English subtitles, the title – NAZA – is the transliteration, rather than the translation, of a Hebrew acronym. Naza is the IDF’s acronym for Nezek Agavi, collateral damage. I find myself wondering why the filmmakers chose to keep the acronym, initially incomprehensible to any potential English-speaking audience, rather than simply calling the film Collateral Damage. I have spent the last couple of days trying, and failing, to rid myself of the ugly suspicion that NAZA was simply too wonderful a gift for the filmmakers to spurn, with its twin echo of Gaza and Nazi.

The second point is a broader one. Let me accept, for the moment, that the account given in the trailer I watched is accurate. Israel deploys AI and surveillance techniques that enable the quantification of all collateral damage that can be expected to be sustained in the elimination from the air of any given terrorist target. The interviewee in the trailer states that sometimes a potential 20, 30, and even 300 civilian deaths were authorised in a single attack. On one occasion, he claims, the figure authorised was 500. (You can view the trailer here.)

The fact that even The Guardian has never claimed a civilian-to-terrorist ratio greater than 5:1 certainly suggests that the figures quoted above (20, 30, 300, 500:1) presumably apply to the killing of a very, very small number of senior Hamas leaders.

The reviews that I have read of the film take this as evidence of the indefensible savagery of Israel’s conduct of the war. Online commentators take it as evidence of Israel’s conducting of genocide against Gazans.

What this clip in fact demonstrates is that Israel follows the Geneva Convention: the international rules of conduct of conflict that Israel is a signatory to and that Israel has also adopted as domestic law. When conducting a war, countries are required to estimate the collateral damage expected to result from any action, and to make a judgement as to whether the military benefit of the action justifies the estimated collateral damage. From the testimony of the interviewee, that appears to be exactly the procedure that Israel followed. It also clearly demonstrates that Israel is not conducting genocide. A country carrying out genocide would not have a maximum authorised civilian collateral damage figure; indeed, the higher the collateral damage, the better. Such a country would have no interest in accurately estimatingcollateral damage.

There is, of course, a second discussion that needs to be had. Even allowing that the IDF (or the political leadership) considered the acceptable maximum collateral damage for each action, was their final conclusion morally acceptable? To answer that question, of course, requires knowing Israel’s assessment of the realistic potential threat of the specific target. This is not a question that the film addresses, and, if my reading of some of Israel’s official responses is correct, it is not a question to which the personnel interviewed in the film would have had the answer. The intelligence assessment of specific targets would have been beyond their rank.

It certainly seems that the moral questions that surround this whole issue are not ones that the narrow remit of the film addresses. Given the political agenda of the filmmakers, it is easy to understand why they chose the narrow remit that they did. It is also very probable that they all too correctly calculated how the film, even with its narrow remit, would be received by the audience in Venice and by far too many people around the world.

For a fuller and very thoughtful reflection on all of the issues raised by NAZA and its reception, I encourage you to listen to Haviv Rettig Gur’s analysis on his podcast, which you can watch here.

As the calendar hurtles us ever faster towards the new year that starts this Friday night, I feel as though I owe you some kind of a summation of 5786, the year we have just lived through. However, I don’t feel remotely equipped to sum up this past year, not least because I spent most of this summer not following the news but rather focussing on family matters. I realise that I never wrote about Micha’el and family’s departure. I suspect that was because it wasn’t easy to say goodbye to them all, not knowing when we would all be together again.

Since they left, Bernice and I have booked our next trip to Portugal, for mid-November to mid-December, but it will, I fear, be rather longer before all ten of us sit round a table together again. However, their almost-five-week trip gave us plenty of opportunities to do just that, and we have plenty of really good memories to cherish, and even some great photos to keep those memories fresh.

When I did resume following the news, it quickly became clear that we are well into the season of celebrating Israel’s thriving democracy. In another seven weeks we face a general election, after this government has, remarkably and uncharacteristically, run its full term. In a part of the world dominated by dictatorships and coups, Israel should be celebrated as a democracy, However, the last week or so has reminded us that even that least bad of all political systems can be, at times, difficult to stomach.

Israel’s voting system is one of nationwide proportional representation. The electoral threshold is currently set at 3.25%, with the number of seats a party receives in the Knesset being proportional to the number of votes it receives. If a party fails to meet the electoral threshold, the votes it received are distributed among all of the parties that did meet the threshold, in proportion to the number of votes each of those parties received. So, if three parties contest the election, and Party A receives 65% of the votes cast, Party B receives 33%, and Party C receives 3%, the votes Party C received will be redistributed, Party A receiving another 2% and Party B another 1%.

There are a total of 120 Knesset seats, which means that a party that receives 5% of the total vote will win 6 seats.

One thing that results from this system is that, in the weeks after an election is announced and before the deadline for registering parties is reached, new political parties tend to sprout like mushrooms after rain. No end of people – retired senior military figures, successful businessmen, social campaigners, some considerably less-than-public figures –  allow themselves to be persuaded that they can expect to garner 5% or more of the popular vote, and gain a voice in the Knesset.

This situation inevitably leads to an unhealthy amount of horse-trading, with major party leaders selling realistic slots on their candidate list in return for a smaller party joining the behemoth. Many of those who offer their party’s support are more easily able to do so because they are single-issue parties, with a certain amount of ideological flexibility.

As a result, it is easier to determine, in many cases, who a minor party leader will sell his allegiance to and who he will not, than it is to know what the minor party’s position is on, say, health or education reform. You must also remember that, on what is perhaps the most important issue in Israel in 2026 (as, indeed in 1956, 1966, and most years since), there is scarcely any daylight between the party leaders. On the question of security, it is not easy to find anyone outside Israel who reads the map as Israel does, but, inside Israel, it is increasingly difficult to find anyone who reads it differently. The rest of the world talks as if the two-state solution is within arm’s reach. Israels know that it is as good as dead in the water, at least for the foreseeable future.

All of the above is by way of a background that most of you almost certainly do not need. What I actually want to talk about this week is a particularly ugly consequence of the fact that there is not a lot of ideological disagreement between many of the parties, and, therefore, little material for policy debate. If you can’t argue about issues, what’s left? Why, personalities, of course, and the last week or so has thrown up two violent character assassination attempts.

The first was from Sara Netanyahu. In many democracies, the Prime Minister’s partner is expected to play a passive supporting role, principally when hosting foreign leaders. In Likud, Sara Netanyahu is, arguably, the eminence grise, a very significant influence behind the throne. At the very least, she is a woman with strong opinions, which she voices behind closed doors and sometimes in front of them.

Last week, she was, I suspect, selected by those who are running Likud’s election campaign to drop a bombshell. She was being interviewed on Channel 14, a firmly pro-Government television channel. (The Netanyahus would not agree to be interviewed on any Israeli media outlets that were not supportive of the Government. That is definitely not their style of democracy.) During the course of the interview, she referred to the well-documented story of Yair Golan’s actions on October 7.

Golan is the leader of the left-wing Democrats party, and also a former deputy chief of staff and reservist major-general. Soon after hearing about the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023, around 8AM, he put on his army uniform, drove to his old HQ at Home Front command, got issued with his old rifle and ammunition, and immediately headed south in the direction of the Nova festival. Over the next hours, he was contacted by, first, his sister, and then two other separate people, all sending him pin locations of family or friends who were hiding from the terrorists near the festival site. He located and evacuated these three groups.

Reflecting on this action, Sara Netanyahu said: “When you’re a military man of such high rank, claiming that you fought on October 7, already early in the morning you were there, already dressed and ready at a very, very early hour when others didn’t know, such as the prime minister, Who is the prime minister anyway to know that a war is breaking out? Why let him know?”

There is quite a lot to unpack here. First, there is the insinuation, unsupported by even a shred of evidence, that Golan had advance notice of the Hamas attack and chose to make political capital out of that advance knowledge by contriving to arrive at the site of an attack by Hamas hordes armed only with a rifle, before significant army forces arrived. This insinuation is clearly deranged, making no logical sense at any level. Are we to believe that Golan was in league with Hamas, or that the army chose to keep information from the Prime Minister and not to act on that information by mobilizing forces, but to inform Golan?

Then, there is the further conclusion. If I know that this story is nonsensical, then so does the Likud campaign manager. If he allowed Sara Netanyahu to launch the story, then he (or if Sara acted without consulting him, then she) must have contempt for the intelligence of the undecided voters, and must believe that they will, on the basis of this ludicrous accusation, vote for Bibi.

Golan responded by demanding that Sara Netanyahu issue an unequivocal public apology within 24 hours and arrange for financial compensation to be donated in full to survivors of the Nova music festival. He further announced that, if she does not comply, he intends to sue her for defamation.

Sara reportedly rejected Golan’s demands, and issued demands of her own. She reportedly called on Golan to publish a public apology and clarification within 24 hours and pay NIS 100,000 shekels in compensation within 48 hours.

Bibi, meanwhile, was quick to release a video, stating: “I do not think there was a betrayal on October 7. There was a major failure. All the signs were there, and they decided, based on a miscalculation, not to anger Hamas — not to wake me up and not to attack in advance. That was a failure, but it was not a betrayal, and my wife also did not say there was a betrayal. That is simply nonsense.” One more cynical than I would claim that this video was the premeditated and choreographed follow-up to Sara’s punch.

One more Machiavellian than I would claim that, on a day when the news included the failure of multiple water desalination plants in Israel and rising energy prices, Sara Netanyahu ensured that the lead news story would be one that eventually drew everyone’s attention to the theory that the defence establishment deliberately kept from the Prime Minister the suspicions of a planned Hamas attack, fearing that he would order pre-emptive action at the Gaza border.

While we were still recovering from this story, ex-Prime Minister and opposition party leader Naftali Bennett endorsed a Haaretz report that, days before the attack, the premier received a personal warning from United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed about Hamas’ plans.

While Bennett offered no explanation as to how he knew the story was true, he went on: “Netanyahu bears personal and direct responsibility for the failure that led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis on his watch. He did not go to the field, did not warn the heads of the security system, did not prepare Israel for the attack, and did not convene the cabinet.” Instead, Bennett alleged, Netanyahu continued strengthening Hamas by transferring more funds and promising additional permits for Palestinian workers in response to outside pressure.

In a certain light, I should perhaps celebrate the fact that I live in a democracy where the press, and an ex-prime minister, can freely accuse the Prime Minister of such a colossal error of judgement. As the same time, I must surely bemoan the fact that the public standing of the Prime Minister is such that the newspaper and the ex-prime minister can believe such a thing of the prime minister. (Or, at least, claim to believe it.)

All in all, these last days have left me with a foul taste in my mouth. I can only hope that 5787 brings the country fresh, idealistic, political faces. I wish all my readers a happy and healthy New Year. May you find in this period an opportunity for spiritual refreshment, and may we all sleep safe in our beds in this coming year.

Last week, I kept you waiting until the final paragraph of the post before explaining the cryptic title: ‘How Much does a Hole Cost?’ This week, I am changing this around, and starting with the explanation of the title, and then going on to explain its significance to this week’s topic.

My late father, as many of you know, owned a delicatessen and grocer’s shop in the large Jewish London suburb where we lived. The shop was a well-known and well-loved part of the community, as the long queues outside the shop on a Sunday morning demonstrated. There were, I am sure, two main reasons for this: first, the delicatessen items that my father sold were second to none.

All of his specialist items came fresh, daily, from suppliers in London’s East End that he had grown up with, and Dad was a master slicer of smoked salmon. When we buy smoked salmon in the supermarket these days, and discover that 200 grams yields 4 slices (or, more accurately, wedges), I cry. Dad would have conjured at least eight wafer-thin slices out of the same 200 grams, allowing you to savour the flavour without being overwhelmed by a fatty texture.

Similarly, even on a good week, the shmaltz herring I buy in the Machane Yehuda shuk – Jerusalem’s street market – is no match for the shmaltz Dad sold, and though I don’t do a bad job of cleaning and slicing the fillets, I know I’m barely fit to wash up Dad’s herring knife.

The second reason for the popularity of the shop was Dad’s broad smile and genuine pleasure in greeting and serving people. My brother told me last week that just recently a woman he does not know, on hearing his surname, recalled how much she had enjoyed shopping at Brownsteins and what a lovely man my father was (and that’s almost forty years after Dad retired).

Sunday morning was the busiest time of the week in the shop. Despite Britain’s restrictive Sunday trading laws at the time, Dad was allowed to open to sell fresh perishable foodstuffs on Sunday, and, between 8:00 and 1:00 on a Sunday there would be a constant stream of customers.

Every week Dad bought the same range of bread: brown bread (rye, with caraway seeds), black bread (like a pumpernickel), bulkas (a brioche-like loaf), platzels (known in Israel, inexplicably, as bagels, rather than as bialys), beigels (that’s how we spell them, east of the pump – Aldgate pump, that is, a historic former water pump dating from 150 years ago and notionally considered to mark the Western edge of London’s East End), knot rolls. Dad would buy the same quantities every week, but, on some weeks, he would sell out, while, on other weeks, he would be left with a pile of unsold bread.

The staff always had a superficially convincing explanation for bread sales. If the weather was good, and the bread sold out, it was obviously because everyone was going on a picnic. If the weather was good and bread sales were poor, it clearly meant people were out for the day and planning to eat out. If, however, the weather was bad and sales were good, it was a sign that everyone was staying in and needed to eat at home. Finally, if both weather and bread sales were bad, then obviously, knowing they could not be out in the open air, people were planning to drive to a restaurant to escape being trapped at home.

Dad’s explanation was much more scientific. Bread sales on a Sunday, he maintained, were a complete mystery: unpredictable and inexplicable. Given the size of his Sunday customer base, that seems statistically plausible.

All of which serves to explain why, in our family, any unpredictable outcome always invites the comment: “It’s like bread sales on Sunday.” Well, let me tell you that your response to last week’s post was like bread sales on Sunday.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much, if any, response to the post. Aside from it being a niche subject, it would, I assumed, exclude the distaff side of my readership. I also, in my naivete, was not expecting any of my readers – the majority of whom are closer to my age than my children’s – to disagree with the sentiments I expressed. However, to my astonishment, it proved to be a post that provoked a larger and quicker response than any of my posts has for some time. Clearly urination is a topic close to your hearts (though anatomically closer to your kidneys and bladders).

If you check back on my website to see whether anyone has left a comment (don’t worry; I am not deluded enough to imagine that anybody actually does this), you will know that three people commented publicly. It is true that only one exposed his preferred underpant technique for urination. The other two made more general and less personal comments, but nevertheless.

However, no fewer than four people wrote to me privately, within a couple of hours of the post going public. In addition, one reader linked to my blog in his own weekly blog post, and he tells me that the only response he received to his post last week was a comment on my post. Clearly, with my choice of subject matter last week I touched a nerve – metaphorically, I hasten to add – and I would like to share, under the veil of strict anonymity, some of their insights.

One friend told me that her husband calls underpants with no front opening ‘uncircumcised’. I love the fact that that is not only a neat and accurate practical description; it also offers a moral judgement on the heathen items themselves.

Another friend, who revealed that he has always pulled down the waistband, offered the rallying cry: ‘Free Willy!’, a slogan that suggests an advantage of the pulldown method that hadn’t previously occurred to me. The pulldown does, I accept, offer freedom of movement, and may therefore be more convenient and comfortable. It also, I now realise, makes hands-free urination an option, which may, one can only hope, account for the staggeringly high proportion of public convenience users who choose not to wash their hands after urination.

This very morning, after exercising, I uncharacteristically went to the toilet before changing out of my drawstring shorts and no-front-opening underpants. (I have just started exercising daily after a long period of couch potatodom and, when exercising, I wear the holeless underpants that I bought by mistake years ago.) In the light of all that I have written and read on the subject in the past week, I decided to try the pulldown method. While I cannot imagine adopting it other than when exercising, and other than in the privacy of my own privy, I will concede that I did feel a certain element of ‘Free Willy’.

Which is slightly unnerving. The conviction with which I set out my position last week should certainly not allow me to experiment with pulldown, let alone see any merit in it. I am left wondering which other of what I take to be my foundational beliefs can be so easily undermined. Can I really have been on this earth 76 years and still not know where I stand on urination? It seems I can no longer feel the solid ground of self-knowledge underfoot. Perhaps Mr Bean really is funny and Lord of the Rings is a great work of literature. I certainly hope not, but I’m not quite as certain as I was a week ago.

And on that unsettling note I think I will leave you for another week. But, just before I go, let me share with you a link to a video sent to me by a reader, which, I hope, will put this topic to bed for good: the gentleman’s definitive guide to urination techniques. You can view the utterly respectsble video here.

The experience of many decades has made me something of a sceptic with regard to geopolitics – and also, indeed, national politics – but this last week has taught me that, when it comes to men’s underwear, I am ridiculously naïve. Let me explain.

But before I do, a word of warning. This week’s topic – the fly-front – is one that you may regard as a little too intimate for you to feel comfortable. If so, let me assure you that, by skipping this week’s post, you would be missing even less of import than usual, if that is possible.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that a couple of pairs of my boxer shorts were starting to look rather long in the tooth, and ready to be put into service as dusters. So, when I happened to be in the mall the other day, I decided to look for replacements. Bernice had mentioned that she had seen some  on sale in what she calls the ‘cheapy shop’ – although it is certainly a lot more expensive than a dollar/pound shop – situated in our local mall.

Some years ago, on a similar shopping expedition, I made the mistake of buying underpants that (as I discovered when I unpacked them at home) had no fly-front opening. This was the first time that I had encountered such a phenomenon, and I admit that it perplexed me. How, I mused, are you supposed to handle urination, with no fly-front to open? I decided that such underwear must be aimed at the sport and exercise market, and designed to provide extra support and a close, non-chafing fit. I concluded that those who bought this underwear made sure to empty their bladder before changing into their exercise gear.

In light of all this, I was pleased to read that one of the three features of the boxers on offer, according to the blurb on the cardboard packaging, was ‘front opening’. I bought three pairs for a very reasonable price, and headed home. Once there, I unpacked the first pair. Pausing only to admire the elegant fly front, I flipped the flap over, curious as to whether the front opening would sport a button or not. What I actually uncovered, rather than the opening both expected and promised on the packaging, was an unbroken single piece of material, with a razor-sharp crease where the opening should have been, but no opening.

Suspecting that this was simply a rogue pair that had slipped through quality control, I prised open the flap on the second pair, without undoing the cardboard packaging. Same story: razor crease; no opening. Seizing the offending underwear, I marched downstairs to Bernice with my dispatch from the (fly) front. Her calm response was: “Didn’t you check them in the shop before you bought them?” “No!” I spluttered. “Look! It says on the packaging: ‘Front opening’!” “And you believed it?” was the world-weary and mildly contemptuous response. “Yes! I believed it! Why would it say ‘Front opening’ if there isn’t a front opening?!” Bernice didn’t really judge that question worthy of any response.

And so, a couple of days later, I found myself back at the shop, explaining to the cashier, and then to the manager that she referred me to, that I had been sold goods under false pretences. “But you’ve opened the package,” was the response. In fairness to the shop, once I pointed out that only by opening the package could I discover that the claim on the packaging was false, the manager, with no more fuss, instructed the cashier to refund my money in full.

While I was in the store, I checked all of the underwear racks, and discovered that none of the items on sale featured opening fly fronts. This led me to conclude that I probably needed to reconsider my hypothesis about sports underwear. To my astonishment, my online research has revealed that (and I quote): “Most men don’t actually use the fly. Surveys from [leading] brands have shown that the majority simply pull the waistband down.”

What? Really? In what universe is that a comfortable, convenient, modest modus operandi? In my, admittedly limited (but, given my ongoing prostate issues, not as limited as it used to be or as I would like it to be) experience, men standing at public urinals do not “simply pull the waistband down”. (Not that I make a habit of closely observing my fellow urinators, you understand. But if the man standing next to me suddenly “simply pull[ed] the waistband down”, I’m prepared to hazard a guess that I would notice it.)

‘if IOn reflection, it is entirely possible that all the men who do “simply pull the waistband down” do so in the privacy of a cubicle, leaving the urinal to us fly-fronters. If that is the case, then I suspect that the average age of the men using urinals must be significantly lower than the average age of those using cubicles. “Simply pull[ing] the waistband down” sounds to me distinctly like a young man’s game. I plan to start paying more attention and to test this hypothesis, although I probably won’t report back to you on my findings, and, if I’m not careful, I may conceivably find myself under arrest.

Having found no suitable underwear in the cheapy shop, I was forced to resort to one of the more up-market outlets, where I was able to find fully fly-fronted underwear. My takeaway from this experience is an answer to the question I posed in this week’s title. In the world of men’s underwear, a hole costs about 20 shekels…and is worth every agora.

I left you last week with the following closing sentence. “Something tells me I need to get a good night’s sleep if I’m going to be up to partnering Bernice in taking our threesome to the model farm and toy tractor driving track tomorrow morning.” In the event, this proved to be partly accurate and partly very wide of the mark. I had imagined that I needed my energy to keep up with the three musketeers going round a farm and pedalling toy tractors. Little did I know!

Bernice and I certainly got our good night’s sleep, in our comfortable and very quiet Airbnb. By the time we had woken, abluted, driven over to Esther and Maayan’s flat, and had a leisurely breakfast, everyone agreed that the sun was rather too high in the sky for a day at the farm with no shade. The proposed Plan B was a gymboree in the Zichron Mall, which was sold to us as a good news and bad news deal: ‘The good news is there’s efficient air conditioning; the bad news is it’s early August and the place will be full of screaming children.’

Despite the bad news, the prospect of sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned space, watching the grandsons climbing and swinging and sliding and jumping, sounded very attractive, and so we all readily agreed to Plan B. Little did I know!

After a short drive, we arrived at the mall, ‘we’ being Bernice, Tslil and myself in charge of Tao, Raphael and Ollie. Raphael led us competently through the mall to the Gymboree, and, a couple of minutes and a not unreasonable amount of money later (adults free), we were all shoeless, the kids wearing their newly-purchased rubber-dimple-soled socks, and the adults wearing the socks we had brought especially for the occasion.

Walking into the space was a revelation. Bernice and I had previously taken Tao and Ollie to a gymboree in Portugal, but this was an experience at an entirely different level. The thickness of cushioned padding around all the apparatus, the level of sound absorption, the complexity, range and sheer scale of the apparatus were all very impressive indeed. I soon discovered, however, that the afternoon was going to be a whole other good news and bad news deal than the one anticipated. The level of noise was very reasonable; such was the scale of the place that, even though there were plenty of children there, it did not feel overfull. The air-conditioning was indeed excellent.

However, while I saw many, many fathers, all of whom were at least 30 and in some cases over 40 years younger than me, sitting on the floor at the side while their children clambered over, under, through, round, along and between the apparatus, Raphael, to whom I had been assigned, had other ideas. When one of your four-year-old grandsons calls out: “Come on, Grandpa!” it would take a man even harder-hearted than me to cock a deaf’un.

Not that I followed him everywhere. He started on a cylindrical, four-storeyed installation that could be accessed through a hole I doubted I could fit through and that had a ceiling clearance at each level that barely reached my shoulders. When one of the several constantly circulating and ever-watchful attendants heard Raphael calling me to follow, and saw the sceptical expression on my face, he told me that I couldn’t manage that ascent, and that there was one round the corner that was far more adult-scale. Raphael willingly came back down and led me to the other ascent and, for the next hour, all of my energy went into keeping up with Raphael, or at least keeping him in sight.

It is astonishing how much I can still do, physically, when driven by the twin incentives of not wanting to shatter Raphael’s illusion that I can still do it, and not being able to contemplate facing Bernice and telling her that Raphael is somewhere in the two acres and four floors of the Gymboree, but I can’t say exactly where.

After about an hour, when I had settled into a rhythm and got my second wind and was feeling that I could easily handle this, Ollie joined us. (Tao, needless to say, was off in a league and a world of his own and Tslil was able to keep a much less eagle eye on him.) Eager to do everything Raphael was doing, but not always quite as capable or confident, Ollie presented me with a new challenge, of staying close enough to Raphael not to lose sight of him and simultaneously close enough to Ollie to keep an eye on him as well. Somehow, I managed to negotiate thirty minutes of being with them both, and, when the boys reached a consensus that they were ready to call it a day after a very intense 90 minutes, I could even pretend that I was disappointed to be leaving so early.

Outside again, we had sandwiches and a drink, and then the boys rode a ten-shekel automat carousel. All the boys know that, when we go to malls with them, they can sit in the cars and fire-trucks or on the horses, but neither Nana nor Grandpa is going to part with ten shekels to add the music and movement. However, on this special occasion, and with the per capita outlay coming in at less than 3.34 shekels, I pushed the boat out. Of course, nobody had a ten-shekel coin, but, these days, mind-blowingly, these penny arcade machines accept credit card payments.

While we were in Zichron, we also spent time in the pool Esther and family belong to. Less grand than the country club, this is the pool on Kibbutz Maayan Zvi, and Esther and I had a great time with Raphael and Tao.

Apart from that, we were mostly just hanging out, in the very hot August days we have been having. Leisurely evenings on the third-floor balcony, enjoying the sea breeze that reaches Zichron, and savouring Esther and Maayan’s excellent homemade pizza, felt so special, just because we were all together with nothing special to do. We left on Wednesday evening, leaving Esther and family to go camping in the north the next day, and Micha’el and family to go to the centre for a few days of mostly visits with Tslil’s family.

Meanwhile, we came home to our big, empty house and enjoyed a very quiet Shabbat. Quiet, that is, except for a brief interlude on Shabbat afternoon, when, in less than an hour, Maale Adumim enjoyed the greatest amount of rain in a single day in August ever to fall anywhere in Israel. It came out of nowhere, with no warning, and left as suddenly, and was, in the interim, spectacular. The garden looks grateful for it; the cars, rather than being left looking mud-streaked, as is normal with unseasonal rain, gleamed afterwards; our street looked like the rapids and the new tunnel to Maale Adumim flooded.

It has been refreshing, and, for us, nostalgic, to be remarking on the weather in August in Israel. However, we now seem to be back to typical August weather, and today (Tuesday) temperatures have dropped to the seasonal norm, for a change, after what has been, until now, a very hot spell.

Micha’el and family arrived back with us today. Esther and family are arriving tomorrow, and will stay until Shabbat. Then, next Tuesday, the trip ends and we revert to our routine, doubtless cherishing the memories of a very special few weeks.