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.

“It’s wonderful there. You’ll love it!” Over the last few weeks, I must have heard these or similar sentiments from a dozen friends and family to whom I mentioned that we had booked to go away with our kids and grandkids for a couple of nights at Nof Ginosar, a hotel on the Kinneret. To give credit where credit’s due, and to be more accurate, Esther – taking matters into her own hand and pity on her decreasingly competent father – actually made the booking, and then presented us, slightly abashedly, with a fully cancellable fait accompli. We were thrilled, doubly so when we checked the hotel out online. The only adjustment we made was to change the bed and breakfast booking to half-board, which meant that, for our entire stay, we never had to leave the hotel.

I have to say that the hotel certainly lived up to the build-up our friends gave it. Despite being fully booked (we are, after all, talking about the first week of August), and despite some 95% of the bookings being for families with children, the hotel, even the pool, never seemed overcrowded or unbearably noisy. This was partly because the hotel rooms are spread over four low-rise buildings in a fairly large, lawned campus. This means that the hotel lobby is not always packed, and the guests milling around are usually milling around in the open air.

The pool had only opened weeks earlier after a major makeover, which must have included extending the surrounding seating area to include enough sun loungers for all the guests using the pool. Between the pool, a small but imaginative climbing-frame area, the Kinneret itself, only 200 metres from the hotel, the children’s games room, and entertainment in the evenings, there was enough to keep our three musketeers busy and happy all day.

Food was very plentiful, and surprisingly good both in the range of choices and the quality of the preparation. However, the highlight of the couple of days was seeing how our three older grandsons moved from cautious exploration of each other to being a team. By the time we left, Raphael and Ollie, both four years old, were best mates, and Tao, who, in many of his social groups in Portugal is one of the younger members of the group, was embracing wholeheartedly his role as leader of the gang. Raphael clearly idolises him, and the three of them form a very solid unit.

Meanwhile, Adam enjoyed demonstrating his recently acquired independent eating skills and found the entire experience a sensory delight. He is still a constant smiler, and spent the entire time melting stranger’s hearts.

On the second day, Bernice and I took the three older boys on an open-sided bus tour of the kibbutz. Clearly attracting young families, the tour was curious in that the only child-oriented activity was a visit to the cowsheds, principally to see, and stroke, the newborn calves. None of our three felt brave enough to feed the cows, but they did stroke the calves, even Tao who, after a couple of minutes, had to escape the stench of the cowshed.

The remaining 40 minutes of the hour-long tour were taken up with explanations. One such explanation was of the national water project feeding excess water into the river that forms one border of the kibbutz, from where the water flows into the Kinneret, in an attempt to brings its level back up from its current very low measure. I found this interesting, but the three boys, with a combined age of 15, were significantly less impressed.

The same was true of the account of the founding of the kibbutz, overnight, by the erection of a tower and stockade, such a construction meaning, under then Ottoman law, that the erectors could not be evicted. This particular account was soured for me by the fact that our guide, having detected my accented Hebrew and asked me where I was from originally, made me, as a representative of His Majesty’s Government, the villain of that particular foundation story. I decided not to point out to him that, had it not been for His Majesty’s Government’s Balfour Declaration in 1917, any Jewish claim to the right to resettle in the Land of Israel would have been rejected out of hand by the nations of the world.

One highlight of our stay, for me, was seeing, up close in the pool, what a competent and confident swimmer Raphael is becoming. He has taken up swimming as enthusiastically as he throws himself into everything, and it’s lovely to see.

From the Kinneret, we, and Micha’el and family, returned to Maale Adumim. After another lovely Shabbat together, they set off in our car on Sunday to stay with Esther for a few days. We followed them on Monday, in Esther and Maayan’s second car, and I am writing this on Monday evening, in the Airbnb Bernice and I are staying in, five minutes’ drive from Esther, having spent a hectic afternoon and evening in the park and at their home. When Bernice and I slipped away at 9:00PM, the three musketeers were giving an almost convincing impersonation of winding down after a pretty holidayish evening. Our bedsit certainly feels, by contrast, very peaceful.

Unfortunately, we inadvertently rather spoilt Micha’el and family’s day yesterday. On their drive up to Zichron, they stopped for petrol, and, when they had filled up, the car failed to restart. Eventually, another driver offered them a jump-start with leads, and this worked. As a result, Micha’el and Esther had to waste time today taking the car to a garage for a new battery.

I, like many of you, am old enough to remember when you maintained a battery by topping it up with distilled water, and it served you faithfully for years and years, These days, batteries are maintenance-free, cost a king’s ransom, and die, without warning, a week after the one-year warranty runs out. Exactly which aspect of that scenario represents progress evades me at the moment.

Still, I suppose I have to say that these should be our worries. I’m  certainly counting my blessings.

And now, although I am over 400 words short of my target, you’ll have to excuse me stopping here. 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.

Recently, the Poetry Society of America (henceforward PSA – with apologies to all of my male readers who, like me, have a challenging prostate) canvassed more than 1,000 scholars and scribes in an attempt to find “the most beautiful word in the English language”. This being what is charmingly known in Hebrew as ‘the cucumber season’, for which the nearest English equivalent is probably ‘the silly season’, the story of this quest may well have found its way into your newsfeed, as it did into mine. There it caught my eye and triggered my curiosity, so I did some more digging.

My first question was practical: How did PSA actually conduct this search? Did they give the canvassees free range to select any word they wanted? A moment’s consideration was enough to realise that this method would be very unlikely to produce a definitive winner.

In fact, choices had to be made from a list of only 20 candidates, selected in advance by Babbel – a commercial language-learning app – and a team from PSA. The complete shortlist of 20 words presented to the voters was:

1. Aurora – A natural light display in the sky; dawn.
2. Diaphanous – Light, delicate, and translucent.
3. Elysian – Beautiful or creative; divinely inspired; peaceful.
4. Ephemeral – Lasting for a very short time.
5. Ethereal – Extremely delicate and light; heavenly.
6. Halcyon – Idyllically calm, peaceful, and happy.
7. Incandescence – Light emission as a result of being heated; glowing.
8. Luminous – Bright, shining, or shedding light.
9. Mellifluous – Sweet or musical; pleasant to hear.
10. Murmur – A soft, indistinct sound made by a person or group of people.
11. Oblivion – The state of being unaware or forgotten.
12. Penumbra – The partially shaded outer region of a shadow.
13. Petrichor – The pleasant, earthy smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.
14. Sempiternal – Eternal and unchanging; everlasting.
15. Serendipity – The occurrence of finding valuable or agreeable things by chance.
16. Solitude – The state or situation of being alone, often peacefully.
17. Somnambulist – A sleepwalker.
18. Sonorous – Imposingly deep and full (of a voice or sound).
19. Susurrus – Whispering, murmuring, or rustling.
20. Syzygy – The nearly straight-line alignment of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system.

Looking at the list, a couple of features immediately struck me. The first was that the meanings of at least half of the words are associated with pleasant experiences, and none of them, with the possible exception of ‘oblivion’, has unequivocally unpleasant associations. It was no surprise, therefore, to learn that the organisers deliberately selected “phonetically and semantically beautiful words”.

A not-so-brief aside: I felt compelled to add the qualifier ‘possible’ to the penultimate sentence above, because I was suddenly reminded of Tennyson’s ‘The Lotos-Eaters’. ‘

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro’ the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.”

[Note also how effortlessly I have worked the newly obligatory reference to The Odyssey into this week’s post.]

This conscious choice of the organisers raises the question: To what extent does our perception of how beautiful a word is depend on the associations of its meaning, rather than its sound? Do you find a word like ‘miasma’ beautiful, even though it means ‘a foul, unhealthy atmosphere’? How about ‘putrescent’? It is interesting that, for me at least, the aesthetics of a word concern its meaning as well as its sound. Curiously, the branch of linguistics and psychology that studies the subjective pleasantness or unpleasantness of a word is known as phonaesthetics, a coining that seems to focus exclusively on the sound of the word, and ignore its connotation.

Incidentally, from the results of the survey, it would seem that most people find a combination of L, M and S sounds particularly beautiful: one might even say, mellifluous.

My second observation is that the list is packed full of words with classical roots. 12 of the 20 words come from Latin, and a further 7 from Greek (some of those via Latin). Only one comes from another language: Persian. You will of course already know from a blog post reference of mine from June 2020 that this particular word is ‘serendipity’.

I must confess to finding something rather elitist and pretentious – or perhaps I should say high-minded – about this propensity or, perhaps, bent – towards classical etymology. What, I find myself protesting, is wrong with words from Anglo-Saxon roots? Are they somehow inherently less beautiful? Or is this, rather, a case of cultural snobbery. Matt Brogan, executive director of the PSA, pointed out that: “One of the paradoxes of language is that it is easier to hear the distinctive music of a language you don’t know than one you do,”, and perhaps the PSA’s bias reflects the fact that, despite almost a millennium of influx of French and Latin vocabulary, native English speakers still feel more at home with Anglo-Saxon roots.

In a bid for the recognition of the beauty of Anglo-Saxon roots, let me offer you ‘gloaming’ (meaning twilight or dusk) and ‘gossamer’ (literally, a fine, filmy substance consisting of cobwebs spun by small spiders); ‘heartfelt’ and ‘wanderlust’.

Two final observations, before we get to the award ceremony.

First, a quarter of the words describe a particular quality of light. The presence of light, in all its multitudes of varieties and shades throughout the day and night, is arguably the greatest single beauty of the natural world, and the list reflects this.

Second, there is, for my money, one glaring odd man out in the official list of 20 words. Lacking a single L, or M, brutally scientific, with a single, repeated, harsh short vowel sound, how ‘syzygy’ made the list is beyond me. It means (as if you needed me to remind you) ‘the nearly straight-line alignment of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system’, which is a concept that almost totally lacks romanticism. You have to love that ‘nearly’: syzygy represents a failure. Neither the connotation nor the sound holds, for me at least, any beauty or music. I suppose, as my title proclaims, that beauty is indeed in the ear of the hearkener.

And now, the envelope, please, and a drum-roll might be in order.

In third place, with 10% of the votes from the over 1,500 poets, writers, and language enthusiasts, was ‘mellifluous’, describing ‘something sweet, smooth or pleasant’ (appropriately enough).

Just ahead, with 12% of the vote, came ‘ethereal’, meaning ‘otherworldly’ (also a beautiful word). I must agree that the softness and length of all three consonantal sounds and the lilting rhythm of the word make it a strong contender.

And the winner, with a whopping 17% of the vote, was ‘diaphanous’, meaning ‘characterized by such fineness of texture as to permit seeing through’. (The word, it has to be said, has more beauty than the clomping definition I offer here. Perhaps it would have been better to define it as ‘translucent’.)

What you do with this information is, as always, entirely up to you. If I have caused you, this week, to linger for a moment and smell the linguistic roses, or even the semantic coffee, then I consider that as mission accomplished. If I have also helped you to forget, for a brief moment, the lamentable state of the world, all the better.

By this time next week, we will have been bonding again, first away and then at home, with the kids and grandkids, and I may well have some tales to share. Until then, stay well, stay sane, and stay cool.

[Blogger’s Apology: Published in error 16 hours early. Just live with it!]

[A post title to be understood as a continuation of last week’s ‘The Diminution of Joy’]

To cut to the chase: Micha’el, Tslil, Tao and Ollie arrived safely, on time and well. We were able to break our fast after Tisha b’Av with them all very much here, and while an immediate increase in joy is not religiously mandated, in this particular household it was pretty uncontainable.

Having grown used to being with the family in Portugal for a month every four months, it feels like a very long time since we saw them. The kids’ first planned visit to Israel was  torpedoed, or at least ‘missiled’, earlier this year, and it has been over eight months since we hugged them all goodbye as we left Penamacor on 17 November last year. It’s true that we have a story-time and sometimes a puppet show every week, more or less, but the boys are often not very ready to chat during these WhatsApp video calls, far preferring to hear more stories. We naturally appreciate how lucky we generation of grandparents are to be able to have regular aural and visual contact with our further-flung grandchildren (and children), but it’s still a poor second to actually being with them in person.

Settling in was a remarkably smooth and speedy process. After a refresher tour of the house, and a thorough examination of some 15% of the books, toys and games that our resident curator maintains for just such occasions as these, the boys settled into magic sand and Lego. It has to be said that our Lego collection leaves a little to be desired: the ravages of time and assorted play over the decades have cut a fairly wide path through our stock, and “Let’s build a pirate ship” proved a significantly greater imaginative and improvisational challenge here than in Portugal. However, fortunately, both Tao and (constantly learning from his older brother) Ollie lack nothing in the imaginative and improvisational department.

While the boys didn’t actually get to sleep until pretty late Thursday night, everybody reported having a decent night’s sleep, and Friday was spent getting ready for Shabbat and sorting out Micha’el’s working arrangements. This is less a holiday for him than for the rest of the family. As people above my pay grade at the hi-tech company I worked for were fond of remarking: ‘At Amdocs, annual leave means  you have the opportunity to work from wherever you want in the world’. In the afternoon, Esther, Ma’ayan, Raphael and Adam arrived from Zichron, meaning that we could all enjoy our first time together since Micha’el and family last came over, almost three years ago.

Shabbat was wonderful, if only too brief. It naturally took the boys, particularly Raphael, a little time to sound each other out, but by the end of Friday evening they were very comfortable together. As for our children and daughters-in-law, my brother and I frequently reflect on how wonderful it is to see how close our children and their partners all are to each other. I managed to get through giving all eight of them a bracha for Shabbat without my eyes tearing up or my voice cracking (not as trivial a matter as it may sound). And the cherry on the cake was that Tao, entirely unprompted, asked why Bernice puts one halla on top of the other when making the bracha, and I was able to talk about manna, and the double portion for Shabbat, at the Shabbat dinner table.

All too soon, Esther and family were heading home again, and then, on Sunday, Micha’el and family left for a week with Tslil’s family. We will then all be together for a couple of days at Nof Ginossar, in a hotel on the Kinneret where someone else will be cooking, washing up and cleaning. I’ll leave our further plans until a later post.

Meanwhile, just a couple of observations about changes we can see in the boys. In seven-year-old Tao, the changes are less dramatic. He has, naturally, grown. He has become more proficient at Lego, and also more easy-going in terms of collaborative play. (With his grandfather, I mean; he has always played very collaboratively with his brother). He seems to be even more comfortable than previously when speaking Hebrew to Tslil, and seems to be speaking it naturally more frequently. The years of Tslil patiently insisting on speaking Hebrew with him, even if he often answered in English, have really paid off. (The same is certainly true of Esther with Raphael.) Tslil also remarked that Tao’s Hebrew accent is more native and less English than it used to be. Not that I can confirm that; it’s way above my ear-grade.

As for four-year-old Ollie, the leap in his fluency has been huge. Last time we were in Portugal, he was speaking well, but now he is constructing elaborate linear sentences. He speaks in a measured tempo, but will not brook being answered before he has completed what he wants to say. “I haven’t finished yet, Grandpa.” He also, uncannily, but entirely predictably, is reaping the benefit of having as an older brother Tao, whose parents have never once spoken down to him as a child. So, for example, when I said that we had found the helicopter pilot’s helmet, Ollie pointed out: “Technically, Grandpa, I found it.”

When they first arrived, the boys came into the house while Micha’el and Tslil were still unloading the car. After the initial hugs and kisses (mostly in one direction, but we were, thankfully, met with less resistance than in the past), Ollie announced: “We brought our parents as well. That’s my Dad there, by the car. We call him Abba.” Incidentally, the use of “Dad” reflects the fact that, with Micha’el and Tslil now working more hours, they have taken a child-minder for a few hours, an English man who lives down the road, and who both of the boys very much enjoy spending time with, thankfully.

Over Shabbat, it was interesting to see how the cousins moved unselfconsciously between English and Hebrew. Rapha’el, who is in a Hebrew-speaking gan and, on a daily basis, hears English only from his Mummy, is much more comfortable in Hebrew. Tao and Ollie, who are in English- and Portuguese-speaking frameworks and, on a daily basis, hear Hebrew only from their ima, are more comfortable in English, but their Hebrew is good (and, no doubt, will be even better after a month in Israel, including a good time with their Hebrew-speaking family).

Which brings you more or less up to date. Now we have a week of wondering whether an assortment of world leaders will allow us to spend a couple of days up North next week, or whether we will have to remortgage the house and take everyone away closer to home, or hire a housekeeper and have everyone stay with us for the week. Whatever the coming week brings, we are all in the same country – in it together, you might say – and that is very, very precious.

There’s a long line of blog posts queuing up to not be chosen this week. I may have a couple of observations to make about the World Cup. Nothing to do with the actual football, you probably won’t be surprised to hear, if you know me at all. But then, it doesn’t really seem to be the matches that have been grabbing the headlines in this World Cup, does it?

Staying with a summer stuffed with sport, I seem to have let both Ben Stokes’ retirement from the international game (cricket) and Wimbledon (lawn tennis) slip through my fingers, joined this week by The Open (golf). So many missed opportunities.

In addition, this last week offered a very tasty morsel that seemed right up my alley: a trivial news story about language. In fact, I have filed that one away for later.

However, this week my mind is elsewhere, or, rather, elsewheres. None of the locations is particularly sunny, but I am finding them all inescapable. First, if all goes as planned, Micha’el and family will be landing in Israel on Thursday late afternoon for a month-long visit. This is, of course, a very exciting and sunny prospect; yet, I find that I cannot allow myself to surrender to the joy of anticipation, because, in a particularly dark recess of my mind, lurks a small voice that keeps computing the likelihood of another round of war with Iran being launched between now and then. Is this rational? Almost completely not. Does that matter? Not at all. The niggle is playing constantly in my mind, and I know it will only get steadily worse between now and when their plane, God willing, lands at Ben Gurion airport.

Moving from the domestic to the public: Last week ended with the dissolution of the first Israeli government to run its full term since 1988, but not before a string of egregious legislation was passed, as I described last week: legislation whose sole purpose for the outgoing government was to attempt to secure Haredi support for Likud in forming the next government.

This week began with the release of a video showing Rav Dov Landau, the leader of the Haredi Litvak world, addressing the heads of the Yeshivas of Mir and declaring the national religious Jews to be a bunch of “foolish”, “evil” “murderers” who send soldiers to kill Arabs, not for the sake of protecting the lives of Israelis, but “for the glory of the state”.

Yesterday, Rav Landau read a written statement on camera, in which he said: “One must be careful to avoid all ideological debates. Our outlook is clear to us from our teachers, the mighty pillars of the earth, whose waters we drink. In particular, one must be extremely cautious about debating with people who, under the guise of their beliefs, persecute the Torah and those who study it, and who are incapable of understanding or delving deeply into our outlook—the outlook of our great teachers, the Chazon Ish and Rabbi of Brisk, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing. This was demonstrated over the past day, when remarks I made in a private conversation were publicized, and, with the hatred characteristic of the ignorant, were treated in a distorted manner and with a complete lack of understanding.”

Rav Landau was effusive in insulting the knowledge, questioning the integrity and impugning the motives of those who found his words offensive. However, he refused to correct the false impression he claims his critics have of the meaning of his words, claiming they are incapable of understanding his outlook.

Earlier this week, on a morning current affairs radio show, the two presenters – one secular, the other modern Orthodox – interviewed a Haredi journalist and commentator, who attempted to explain Rav Landau’s position. At one point in what was a very civilised, but highly emotional discussion, the religious presenter, Kalman Liebskind, recounted how, at some point during the war, his son and two sons-in-law were serving on reserve army duty at the front, and his daughter and daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, had all moved in with him and his wife.

At 3 o’clock one night, he was awoken by a knock at the front door. He sat bolt upright in bed. In Israel, especially in wartime, a knock at the door in the middle of the night means only one thing. He noticed that his wife beside him had not been woken by the knock. Thinking only of his grandchildren sleeping peacefully on the second floor, above his head, he was rooted to the spot. He could not move. After ten minutes, during which there was no second knock at the door, he finally realised that he had woken from a nightmare. “I don’t resent,” he declared on national radio, “I really don’t resent that Rav Landau’s sons and grandsons don’t serve in the army. But I do find it really painful that while I sat bolt upright in bed, too terrified to move, Rav Landau was able to sleep peacefully.”

In Israel, in 2026, that is the kind of focus and deeply personal intensity you can find in a morning current affairs programme. The power of that story, and the refusal of Rav Landau to engage, or to allow his community to engage, with Israel, are measures of the huge challenges that face all of us over the next months as we move towards our autumn elections.

They are also reminders of the third elsewhere that my mind is at this week. Tomorrow (Wednesday night), we will reach Tisha b’Av, the most tragic day in the Jewish calendar, the day that marks the destruction of both the First and the Second Temples. I find myself, as this week rolls on, reflecting on those halcyon days in earlier decades when a debate about whether the time had come to remove Tisha b’Av from, the Jewish calendar seemed not completely unreasonable, even if the only sensible conclusion the debate could reach was that the time had not yet come.

This year, this decade, this week, the question seems ludicrous. To help ourselves acquire a sense of the loss of the Temple, the huge uncertainty over the future of Jewish existence, we need only follow the news from Israel or any centre of Jewish life around the globe. A more pertinent debate this year would seem to be whether the Zionist endeavour can survive the internal existential challenges it faces, and whether Jewish communities outside Israel can survive the antisemitic onslaught they face.

This will, I feel, be a very sombre Tisha b’Av. I wish you a meaningful day, and may you find comfort in the message of the readings from the prophets that will then accompany us on the seven-week ascent to Rosh Hashana.

“Torah study is a foundational value in the heritage of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”

On the surface, this is not, you would have thought, a contentious statement. Yet life in Israel is lived on an iceberg: what is on the surface represents only a small percentage of the total mass.

This one terse statement is the final total wording of the pared-back Basic Law: Torah Study, passed this week in its second and third readings and now enshrined in law. Lacking a constitution, Israel’s legislators have, over the years, passed a number of basic laws – a classification that carries something of a constitutional status. Basic laws are intended to serve as guiding principles of government, and although their exact status is not clear, they have historically been treated within Israel’s judicial system as superseding other laws.

This week sees the Government scrambling to pass a slew of laws in what will be the last week of the sitting of the current Knesset, prior to its dissolution on July 17, in preparation for the campaign leading to the general election that is scheduled for October 27.

If you are nor abreast of political developments in Israel, you may be wondering why this apparently innocuous statement of the value of Torah study has been taking up such valuable Knesset time precisely now. The answer is simple: but the ramifications of that answer are profound.

This basic law represents the latest attempt by the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political parties to ensure their community blanket exemption from national service. It simultaneously represents the latest attempt by Bibi Netanyahu to secure his continued leadership of the country by securing the continued support of the haredim.

I want this week to focus on the beliefs and actions of the haredim, rather than of Bibi. The Israel Defence Force, when calculating its needs, has always factored in an average of a month of annual reserve duty over a period of decades. However, this model has been sustainable only because Israel’s military campaigns have typically been short and sporadic. We are currently over 1000 days into this war, and the strain on the reservists, in terms of their family and work commitments, as well as emotionally and mentally, and on the country as a whole, has been, and continues to be, colossal. Understandably, there have been calls across Israeli society, including, this week, from the IDF commander in chief, for the haredi sector to share the burden.

The response from the haredim continues to be threefold. First, Torah study is a supreme value, such that haredim cannot take time away from it for any other purpose. Second, their Torah study has triggered divine protection of Israel as effective as the protection offered by the IDF. Third, the IDF is not structured in such a way that young haredi men can serve in it and preserve their haredi values.

I want to examine each of these arguments, and to ask whether they are valid, and what they tell us about the haredi community.

Taking the third argument first. The IDF has taken great steps to create an environment that threatens the haredi way of life as little as is possible, within the constraints of running a people’s army to stave off an existential threat. The solution the IDF offers is undoubtedly less than ideal. At the same time, this haredi position shows remarkably little confidence in the effect that 12 or more years of education within the haredi world have had on the resilience of young haredi men to resist the temptations of the outside world. John Milton put it best when he stated: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”

Turning next to their first argument. It is clear from the classic Jewish sources, from the written Torah to the Oral Law to Rambam and beyond, that the purpose of Torah study is to equip the student to fulfil the mitzvot. The virtue does not lie in the study per se, but in its application in the student’s life. When we look at the mitzvot, we see the requirement to fight in a righteous war, we see the duty to help and protect others, we see the duty to shoulder societal responsibilities. Torah study that interferes with, or prevents, or comes at the expense of, carrying out these responsibilities is not Torah study for the sake of Heaven.

I turn finally to the second argument. The haredim ask the nation to believe that their Torah study has triggered divine protection of Israel as effective as the protection offered by the IDF. This is part of their professed belief that, for one who devotes his whole life to studying Torah, God will provide. They ask the nation to believe this, but their very actions demonstrates that they themselves do not believe it. Rather than spending their every waking moment studying Torah, many haredi rabbis form political parties, spend their days in the Knesset plenum and committees, call their students away from the study halls to demonstrate in the streets, overturn and set fire to rubbish bins and police vehicles, bring traffic to a standstill, in order to achieve their political ends and to provide for their material welfare.

If they believed what they ask the rest of the nation to believe, they would simply study and trust in God. Their very presence in the nation’s political life puts the lie to their preposterous, and profoundly unJewish, claim.

For the haredim, the sole purpose of the Basic Law: Torah Study is to ensure that haredim do not serve in the IDF. For Bibi, the sole purpose is to buy him more time as prime minister. The one ray of sunshine on this bleak prospect is my hope that enough Israeli citizens, and, specifically, enough Likud supporters, will be sufficiently disgusted, at this coalition abandonment of the reservists and other defence forces who have carried this country for almost three years, to vote for a change of government on October 27. We can only hope, because, if after the election we have more of the same, the future will look even bleaker than it does now.

I’m not in general a fan of slogan t-shirts, but I own two that I am fond of. The first, which I seem to remember I bought around the time of my 40^th birthday, reads: ‘So far, this is the oldest I have ever been.’ This is a sentiment that is newly true, and strangely uplifting, every time I put the shirt on. I am even considering being buried in it, having first crossed out the opening two words.

The second bears the slogan: ‘If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bulls**t’, a philosophy that, if my memory serves me correctly, has served me well for about 63 years.

As Tuesday comes round again, and I find myself sitting facing a blank screen, I am trying to harness the power of the message of that second t-shirt, because the subject I am juggling with this week is particularly challenging. I’m fairly confident that my readership this week (in fact, most weeks) falls into two groups: those who are passionately knowledgeable about the subject, and those who know nothing and care less about it. In each week’s post, I attempt to find a way to ignite the interest of the second group while bluffing my way through with the first group.

This week, that dual task presents an even bigger challenge than usual, because my subject is football (as Group 1 know it) or soccer (for the benefit of many of those in Group 2). What you need to know at this point is that I belong in Group 2. I don’t pretend to know how that happened. I grew up in a football family, in a football community, surrounded by friends who were football fans. I played as a child – never well but never embarrassingly badly; in pick-up games, I would be chosen by one or other captain around the halfway mark of the selection process. However, I was always much more interested in playing, or watching, tennis or cricket than football.

Yet here I am, about to talk football. Or not, possibly. If you are expecting me to write about the World Cup, then you will be disappointed. Instead, I’m writing about a four-part TV drama series, James Graham’s adaptation for the BBC of his stage play: Dear England.

I first need to give the (essentially factual) background to the story. [Group 1 can skip the next three paragraphs.]

In the Euro 1996 semifinals, England footballer Gareth Southgate missed the crucial sudden-death penalty, crashing England out of the tournament and cementing decades of national footballing anxiety. Twenty years later, Southgate is unexpectedly appointed as the caretaker manager of a deeply fractured, media-battered, and underperforming England squad. Recognizing that the team is crippled by a historical fear of failure and the weight of public expectation, Southgate introduces sports psychologist Pippa Grange. Together, they challenge the traditional, aggressive culture of the dressing room and encourage the young players to face their fears, keep emotional journals, and talk openly about their vulnerabilities. This new psychological framework frees the team, culminating in an unexpected, joyful run to the semifinals at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The second half of the narrative deals with the mounting pressure of success and the inevitable intrusion of the real world. Heading into the Euro 2020 tournament, the team has evolved into a powerful symbol of inclusive national unity. However, England loses the final at home on penalties, and the three young black players who missed their kicks are subjected to vicious racist abuse online.

The drama tracks Southgate and his squad navigating this cultural backlash, leading into the highly controversial 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The story ultimately reaches a thematic resolution during the tournament’s quarter-final exit. When captain Harry Kane misses a crucial penalty that knocks England out, he isn’t vilified by his teammates or left isolated on the pitch. Instead, the team instantly rallies around him, offering the immediate emotional support, protection and love that Southgate himself never received in 1996.

While the team does not bring home a literal trophy, the narrative concludes that Southgate successfully rewrote England’s toxic cultural script—proving that true strength is found in recognition of vulnerability, compassion, and collective resilience.

It is almost impossible to over-estimate the degree to which identifying with the England football team contributes to English national identity, or the degree to which obsession with the fortunes of the team dominates the British media. The title of the play and TV series is the salutation of an open letter that Southgate wrote to the nation and published in the sporting press after the racist backlash that followed the missed penalties in the 2020 Euros.

He wrote: “what I want to speak about today is much bigger than football… Our players are role models. And, beyond the confines of the pitch, we must recognise the impact they can have on society. We must give them the confidence to stand up for their teammates and the things that matter to them as people…Why would you choose to insult somebody for something as ridiculous as the colour of their skin?… When England play, there’s much more at stake than [the result]. It’s about how we conduct ourselves on and off the pitch, how we bring people together, how we inspire and unite, how we create memories that last beyond the 90 minutes. That last beyond the summer. That last forever.”

All of this made the Southgate story a powerful vehicle for playwright James Graham to explore English male identity. In addition, he recognised how the story “describes a perfect narrative arc”. Film critic Mark Kermode, reviewing the TV series, aptly described the story as “a redemption narrative straight out of Shakespeare.” At that level, the series is very self-assured, and works very powerfully, even with a seven-day pause between episodes. I can only imagine the dramatic thrust of a two-hour play on stage, with a single interval,

The obligatory disclaimer screened before each episode of the TV series read: “This is a fictionalised account of the struggles and successes of England’s football teams, based on extensive research and interviews. It features characters inspired by some real-life individuals, and some composite characters entirely imagined by the author. Throughout, dialogue has been imagined by the writer.”

At the same time, of course, the documentary nature of the drama is very heavily emphasised. Joseph Fiennes plays Southgate, with the benefit of prosthetic teeth and facial hair, Southgate’s signature waistcoat and an accurate impersonation of voice and mannerisms. It isn’t always easy to distinguish the performance from the interspliced archive footage. Footage both of actual play, particularly the sudden-death penalty shootouts, and of fan reactions, on the stands, in the pubs and on the streets, add to the documentary feel.

At other times, the TV drama feels a little theatrical: for example, when the three black players take their penalties (against a black backdrop), or when Southgate takes a phone call while walking in the forest, and the caller ‘arrives’ to conduct the conversation in person as they walk side-by-side. These moments are slightly jarring, both because TV is a much more literal medium than theatre and because the series strives to emphasise its documentary credentials.

I want to mention two other telling details from the series. The first is an encounter between Gareth Southgate and then British Prime Minister John Major outside the England dressing room immediately after Southgate’s missed penalty in 1996. While attempting, unconvincingly, to console Southgate, Major frames the moment not as an individual failure, but as the last act of a summer that united the nation. He then mistakenly addresses Southgate as ‘Gary’, rather then ‘Gareth’. Much as this seems like a brilliant dramatic invention by the playwright, emphasising how out of touch the English establishment was with the mood of the nation and how isolated Southgate truly was at that moment, contemporary accounts attest that Major did actually make this clumsy gaffe.

The second detail is that, as Southgate rebuilds his team in preparation for the 2022 World Cup, the names of the ‘sacked’ players and those who are making their debut are displayed on screen, together with their legacy number – a unique, chronological number assigned to a player based on the exact order in which they made their debut for England. It is initially surprising to realise that Harry Kane, for example, England’s current captain, is #1207. I would intuitively have expected there to have been far more England players since the first international match in 1872. This detail emphasised, for me, the extraordinary achievement that each individual player’s selection represents.

As Southgate himself wrote in his Dear England letter: “The journey to earn an England cap is an incredibly difficult one, regardless of background or circumstance. Only around 1,200 players have represented England at senior men’s level. Ever. It’s a profound privilege. Don’t forget, many of our lads started out at Football League clubs like Barnsley, MK Dons and Sheffield United. Their backgrounds are humble. For them to make it to this point as one of the chosen few in England’s history … well, it simply doesn’t happen without pride. This is a special group. Humble, proud and liberated in being their true selves.”

Without ever losing its relentless focus on Southgate the man, and his difficult but ultimately liberating journey from penalty failure to national achievement, the series has interesting things to say about the English nation, and young English men, in the 21^st Century. The individual players in Southgate’s England teams, and their cohesion or lack of it, are a microcosm of English society.

I have read accounts which suggest that, on stage, the play succeeded in giving theatregoers who were not football fans a sense of the passion, the community, the peaks and troughs of following a sporting journey unfolding before your eyes, while simultaneously giving football fans who were not afficionados of the theatre a sense of the passion, the community, the peaks and troughs of following a dramatic journey unfolding before your eyes. While that experience is unavoidably diluted on the small screen, I can attest that the drama succeeded in keeping not only me, but also Bernice, on the edge of our seats, and if you think I’m not a football fan then you should see Bernice!

If you’re in Group 2, and you’re still here, I’m flattered. If you’re in Group 1, and you’re still here, I’m stunned. I must find something a bit easier to tackle next week. Meanwhile, it is beginning to look suspiciously as though it might just be not entirely inconceivable – dare I say it – that it’s coming home.