Only time will tell whether I’ve chosen the right story to follow that title. It’s not easy to gauge just how much time, but, back-of-the-envelope reckoning, I calculate we will need however long it takes us to figure out how to travel at the speed of light, and then another 124 years.

As the geeks among you will have realized, what I’m alluding to – and, as it happens not writing about this week – is K2-18b, the planet on which a team of scientists based at Cambridge University, using Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, have detected signs of two molecules – dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and dimethyl disulphide (DMDS) – that, on earth, are produced only as a result of the activity of marine phytoplankton and bacteria.

The scientific world seems to have become very excited by the prospect of having intelligent near neighbours. And understandably so! Who wouldn’t relish the prospect of driving 700 trillion miles to discuss geopolitics with a piece of seaweed? However, without wishing to put a damper on all this excitement about new folks moving into the neighbourhood, I should point out that the level of probability that where there is DMS and DMDS there is also seaweed is, at time of writing, only three sigmas (99.7%). The standard scientific bar for this kind of discovery is set at five sigmas (99.999999%). So, I wouldn’t start putting ‘K2-18b’ into Waze just yet. Mind you, since it is only 18 months since the team achieved a one-sigma result (68% probability), it is easy to understand the excitement generated.

However, my attention this week has been somewhere else entirely, or, more precisely, three somewhere elses. Just when I was thinking that the time might have come to give up on the idea of finding intelligent life on earth, three items dropped into my mainstream media feeds. You have probably noticed one or two of them, but you might not have thought of joining up the dots as I have.

For the last 90 days, I have watched and read in bemusement and amusement as political commentators have attempted, in blogs and newspaper columns, on radio and television, to justify their salaries. With a considerable vested interest, this unfortunate group of experts have been turned to for daily in-depth analysis of President Trump’s policy. Finally, this week, I see that a number of them have dropped the pretence, and admitted that Trump does not have a policy. He has no strategy, no plan for achieving his goals, no team of guides and advisers. All he has is a constantly ducking and weaving gut-instinct, which he relishes in giving rein to as it leads him to draw directionless and structureless doodles across the map of the world.

I admire these commentators for giving up the pretence of commenting on the style, cut and quality of the emperor’s new clothes and admitting that he is, indeed, stark naked. At the same time, my heart goes out to them, because in admitting this, they are also admitting that their dual functions have no meaning in Trump’s second term. They cannot interpret his actions and analyse the underlying reasoning, because they have just admitted that there is no underlying reasoning. At the same time, there is little point in their offering projections regarding the effect of the President’s latest actions. Before the ink has even dried on their latest op-ed piece, Trump will have done three new and mutually contradictory things, and undone two others, so that their article is only good for wrapping fish.

Moving from the new world to the old, I was shocked to read that the British Supreme Court ruled this week that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. This means that trans women can no longer use single-sex female toilets or changing rooms or compete in women’s sports, and that self-identifying trans women convicted of raping biological women will not be incarcerated in women’s prisons. As I typed that last sentence, the lunacy of the last more than a decade in Britain washed over me again. At a stroke, the Supreme Court seems to have made it possible for ordinary, sane people in Britain to, once again, proclaim the simple truth that ‘woman’ is a biological term.

That is what is so shocking about this entire last woke period in Britain. The grip that officially-sponsored lunacy held on the country, the totality of woke sway, made it possible to believe that the entire country was hallucinating. However, the speed with which almost everyone has celebrated the Supreme Court ruling shows that this was never anything other than a reign of terror, which only a few very principled and brave heroes had the courage and integrity to resist publicly.

Incidentally, Cambridge University, the very institution where astronomers are becoming cautiously optimistic about the prospect of alien algae, was at the forefront of the British woke insanity, scoring 2.38 (0.42 more than its nearest rival) on a scale that scored the following manifestations of woke thinking and action: anonymous reporting; anti-racism training; free speech controversies; official commitments to decolonisation; race equality charter membership; transgender-related restrictions on speech; trigger warnings.

Finally, this week, I move closer to home. I fear that some of what I am about to write may be deeply upsetting to some of my readers, but I have to call it as I see it.

As I write this, on Monday, we are at Day 563 of the war, and there are still 59 hostages that have not been returned to Israel: 35 whose families are waiting to give them a burial, and 24 whose loved ones are praying that they will be returned alive. Since October 7, with relentless determination, Israel’s national broadcaster, Kan, has striven to keep an awareness of the hostages at the very centre of the nation’s attention.

In a country where news typically breaks hourly, rather than daily, almost all hourly radio bulletins have contained an item featuring an extract from an interview with, or a speech by, a member of a hostage’s family. Not infrequently, such an item has been the lead or second item in the bulletin. Only rarely have these sound-bites been truly definable as news.

On Day 563, this unequivocally reflects an extreme prioritization that, I would suggest, can no longer be seen as reflecting the objective reality of newsworthiness, but, rather, speaks to the broadcaster’s subjective understanding of its own role and influence. One of the most striking examples of this bias is a weekday daily two-hour current affairs programme, with a human face, from 10:00 till noon.

The presenter, Keren Neubach, features every day a lengthy interview with a hostage family member, in which her empathy and compassion are eloquent. Almost always, these conversations are very upsetting to listen to. With many of these interviewees, whom she has spoken with more than a few times, over the last almost 19 months, Neubach has clearly forged a personal relationship that means a great deal both to them and to her. In her opening monologue this morning, she spoke of how today seems like a routine day:

“Pesach is over; perhaps you’ve taken the kids to kindergarten and gone off to work; Holocaust Day is just around the corner, and then Independence Day. Have you started planning your barbecue? Apparently a perfectly normal day. But nothing is normal, nothing is routine. Because in Gaza, at this very moment, 59 of our brothers and sisters are still being held. Some of them alive, tortured, suffering, threatened, at this very moment; some no longer alive. Their families are waiting as well. And nothing will be normal, or routine, until all 59 come back home. They all have to come back, up to the very last one.” The tone, directness and bluntness of this piece are typical of Kan’s approach until now.

However, yesterday and today, on the programme that immediately precedes Neubach’s, both one of the two co-presenters, and one of the expert commentators, calmly stated that it is by no means certain that the hostages will ever be returned. For the last year and a half, I have dreaded that there is no situation in which Hamas will consider it to be in its interest to return the last of the hostages, but this is not a position that Kan has given voice to over this period, and, in Israel as a whole, it is not an opinion often spoken aloud in public.

Kan published today the result of a recent opinion poll, which showed that 56% of those questioned favoured ending the war immediately in return for the release of all the hostages, while 22% were opposed and 22% did not express an opinion, I was surprised that Kan gave publicity to the survey, which showed far fewer supporting the return of the hostages if the price is ending the war than Kan’s presentation has been suggesting over the last months.

On the same programme, they played a message from a mother speaking directly to her hostage son. (Kan has been featuring such messages since it was first revealed that hostages sometimes are able to hear Israel radio broadcasts,) Interestingly, in the message, the mother states that 80% of the Israeli public support ending the war immediately in return for the release of all the hostages. The survey results suggest otherwise, but the media prominence given to hostage family members and protest rallies has, until now, created a different impression.

I have no idea whether what I see this week as a shift in Kan’s perception and projection of the reality we live in is a temporary blip, or represents a policy change, or is something less formal and more spontaneous. I welcome it as what seems to me a reading of the situation that is more grounded in reality and is, on the whole, healthier, than the “Bring Them Home” mantra that has, until now, suggested that the fate of the hostages lies with the Israeli government rather than their Hamas captors.

All I know for now is that I have identified three (count them: three!) examples of widespread delusion melting after receiving a dose of sanity. I don’t know when I last felt so positive about the future of the human race’s ability to understand the reality it finds itself in. (Not optimistic about the future of the human race, mind you! Let’s keep a grip here.)

I suppose I should also take heart from the fact that, if life on earth ever proves to be untenable, we can always go and live with those nice bacteria round the corner on K2-18b.

It is one of life’s imponderables that, every year, Pesach appears on the Jewish calendar at exactly the same time, and yet, every year, no matter how long in advance we start our preparations, and how carefully we plan our Gantt charts, we always end up only just managing to get in under the wire. This appears to be true whatever measures we take to minimise the load.

My sibling sympathies were stretched mighty close to their limit last week when, at the end of our pre-pre-Pesach phone conversation, my brother, who is spending Pesach this year with children and grandchildren at a European resort hotel, was unsure whether he would be able to spare the time on Wednesday for our pre-Pesach conversation, because of his packing.

As I outlined last week, my major preparations were completed on Wednesday, which I dedicated to baking. Bernice, on the other hand, faced, on Thursday and Friday, a mountain of cooking for the two days of Shabbat and Chag, and barely had time to draw breath. From where I’m standing, however hard she worked over those two days, it was certainly worth it, because we assuredly ate royally over the weekend.

As it turned out, I had a couple of errands to run myself, even if one of them was entirely self-imposed. Let’s start with the other, since that was responsible for me aging considerably last Wednesday.

For the last several years, we have had a water machine, which provides us with chilled, almost-boiling, and tepid filtered water at the press of a button. Having access to what are to all intents and purposes unlimited and immediately available supplies of water for both cold and hot drinks is, throughout the week, a real pleasure, and, on Shabbat and Chag, a great convenience. While many people would be hard-pressed to find a use for tepid water, I find it perfect for adding to flour to make bread dough. I recognise, as I type this, how I am simply oozing first-world privilege, but not having to play around mixing hot and cold water to get the right temperature for the sourdough starter to thrive is a real bonus.

The only drawback with our last machine was that, after quite a long period of working perfectly, once it had lulled us into a sense of security, it became rather unreliable, and started breaking down every couple of months. These failures often took the form of a slow leak. Eventually, we decided that we would stop paying insurance for free servicing, since the technician was only in Maale Adumim once every two weeks, and we would simply wait until the next technical failure, and then give up on the machine.

Fortunately, it responded to this threat by behaving for a good few months. However, a couple of months ago, it started leaking again, and, after a few days of laying towels alongside the slow leak and changing them every few hours, we accepted the inevitable. This happened shortly before we were due to go to Portugal, so we decided to try living without a machine for a few weeks before deciding whether we wanted to try again.

The trouble is that there are only one or two companies that offer a machine that provides hot water on Shabbat using a technology that is acceptable halachically (in accordance with Jewish law). These companies are not the market leaders, and so their technical, and other, support is not as responsive or efficient as that of the market leader.

By the time we returned from Portugal, we had more or less decided that we would give it one more go. I waited a couple of weeks until I judged that companies would be offering a special pre-Pesach deal, and then placed our order. As it happened, they only offered delivery to, and installation in, Maale Adumim on Wednesdays. The Wednesday 11 days before Pesach was, unusually, a day we were going to Zichron, and so I arranged delivery for last Wednesday, four days before Pesach. “No problem”, the sales rep assured me. “The technician will contact you first thing on the day to arrange a window of three hours when we will deliver and install.”

On Wednesday, I started baking biscuits for Pesach, growing increasingly aware that no technician had called. At 10 o’clock, I decided that ‘first thing’ had certainly passed, and so I called the service centre of the company. An automatic answering service that sounded deceptively efficient informed me that I was 31^st in line, but recommended that, since my time was precious to them, I leave my number, and, when my turn came, they would call me back.

Yes, of course I experienced a sinking feeling, and of course I had my doubts, but when, five minutes later, the same service informed me that I was now 31^st in line, I decided to take a leap of faith and leave my number.

Over the following two hours, I continuing baking. In sympathy with the cinnamon balls in the oven, a little round knot in the pit of my stomach heated up and hardened, until, at 12:17, I phoned again, at this stage more in hope than expectation. I was perhaps less heartened than I should have been to hear that this time I was only 26^th in line. I decided to hold on this time, and, as I waited, I began to get myself used to the idea that we would spend Shabbat and Pesach with bottles of water chilling in the fridge, and water staying hot in an electric urn. After all, I reminded myself, this was undoubtedly far better conditions that the Children of Israel faced when they left Egypt.

Astonishingly, the numbers started coming down, and, very shortly after I had been informed that I was 18^th in line, I got through to a real, living, breathing person. I succinctly explained the situation, and the real, living, breathing person immediately responded: “You’ve come through to the wrong department.” (I, of course, hadn’t ‘come through’ to anywhere; the system had delivered me.) “I’ll put you through to Sales.” “Now we’re cooking,” I thought. “Perhaps we will go to the ball – or at least drink water – this Pesach, after all.”

Within 30 seconds, Sales, in the form of another real, living, breathing person, picked up my call. I succinctly explained the situation, and the real, living, breathing person immediately responded: “You’ve come through to the wrong department. I’ll put you through to the Service Department.” “No!” I screamed, only milliseconds after the real, living, breathing, but clearly not thinking person had transferred me back to the queue I had left a minute earlier, where I was now 24^th in line.

Around this point, Bernice started ensuring that she kept at least one room between myself and her, as I grew more and more enraged. Clearly, the company had taken far more orders than they could ever fulfil in one day, and they were simply delivering the machines to the people who had had the foresight to make it clear that, if the machine did not arrive in time for Pesach, they would cancel the order. Why, oh why, had I not hired some neighbourhood teenager to house-sit for us on the previous Wednesday and take delivery? Had I learnt nothing in 38 years of living in Israel?

I spent the next hour gathering every last reserve of self-control that I could, and, when I felt as psychologically ready as I would ever be, I phoned again. I was 16^th in line, so things were clearly looking up. A real, living, breathing person picked up within three minutes, so clearly the numbers 31, 18, 24, 16 were generated at random purely to amuse the service staff.

“Good afternoon. How can I help you?”

This time, I didn’t succinctly explain the situation. Instead, I very calmly said: “Before I explain the situation, let me make something clear to you. When I have explained the situation, you are going to realise that you cannot help me. At that point, do not transfer me to another department. We have already tried that over the last five hours, and it doesn’t work. Instead, I want you to put me on hold, use another line to contact the person who can help me, confirm that they can help me, tell them to phone me immediately, take me off hold and tell me that someone will be phoning me immediately. Will you do that?”

“Please explain to me what the problem is.”

“First, you have to agree that, when you can’t help me, you will put me on hold, use another line to contact the person who can help me, confirm that they can help me, tell them to phone me immediately, take me off hold and tell me that someone will be phoning me immediately. Will you do that?”

“Please just tell me how I can help you.”

“Not until you agree to do as I have said.”

“I understand. What’s the problem.”

“I don’t need you just to understand. I need you to agree to do it.”

“Yes. I’ll do it.”

Then, and only then, . I succinctly explained the situation, adding an explanation of how previous calls had failed, and the real, living, breathing, thinking  person immediately responded: “Please hold the line.”

She put me on hold, which was, to my huge relief, accompanied by a completely different piece of muzak from the ‘waiting for someone to pick up the call’ muzak. I held the line until just before the point where I would start to believe that I was wasting my time, and then, wonder of wonders, my thinking service rep took me off hold and informed me that I would be contacted “within the next three minutes”.

I thanked her profusely, wished her a Happy Pesach, hung up, and fought to suppress the conviction that I would never receive a call. However, not within three minutes, it is true, but no more than five minutes later, an installation technician called me, to confirm my address and say that he would be on our doorstep within half an hour.

Which he was, with a brand-new matte black machine that almost disappears under the kitchen cupboards, and a story about the technician who should have installed our machine having had an accident. Who knows whether that is actually the case? However, at that stage, I was prepared to cut the technician some slack, not least because he was quick, efficient, tidy, pleasant, gave us his number and assured us he would arrive after any call for service within no more than 48 hours. He even admired my coconut pyramids.

The happy ending is that the water was piping hot and refreshingly cold all through Shabbat and Chag. (I’ll let you know about the tepid when I’m making bread again in another week or so.)

I promised you earlier on accounts of two errands. However, the water machine has taken almost 1900 words, in much the same way that it took 5 hours on Wednesday. So, the other errand will have to wait until next time, unless something more urgent turns up.  

This week’s offering is, of necessity, rather short, and you may judge it to be remarkably thin on content. Those of us more inclined to view the world through a glass half full are celebrating the fact that it has arrived in your inbox at all. Let me explain.

You almost certainly won’t need me to tell you that Pesach begins this coming Saturday evening.

Do I really need to say more? Alright, then. At the risk of stating the obvious…

What this means in practical terms is that we need to be ready for Pesach this coming Friday evening, and being ready, of course, means having Shabbat and Chag meals ready for two days.

This means (you can see the Gantt chart forming before your eyes) that Bernice needs Thursday and Friday to cook and prepare. Fortunately, I have a long-standing medical appointment on Thursday, so I will be out of the way and she will be able to get on.

Since Thursday and Friday are needed by Bernice, this means that I must do my Pesach biscuit and cake baking on Wednesday. Fortunately(!), Bernice has a medical appointment on Wednesday, so she will be out of the way and I will be able to get on.

Tuesday is, of course, Zichron day, and we will be (are) collecting Raphael from gan early, as usual, for a day of grandparenting.

All of which means that we had to schedule the big changeover for Monday. We have this down to a pretty fine art, these days. Over the years, a number of factors have aligned to make our Pesach changeover more and more manageable.

First, we renovated our kitchen, increasing our cupboard space to enable us to keep a lot of Pesach ware in the kitchen all year. Then we stopped eating meat at home, freeing up more cupboard space so that all of our, now reduced, Pesach ware could stay in the kitchen all year round. Then we got rid of a lot of Pesach ware that we never used, especially now that our entertaining is a lot more modest.

As a result, our preparations for the changeover are in two phases these days. Spaced out over an increasing amount of time as we slow down with the years, we tackle the cleaning of the kitchen cupboards, and the overflow fridge and freezer, over a couple of weeks. (This year, Esther and Raphael helicoptering in for a day had been a huge help. They may not realise it yet, but they may well have set a precedent.)

Then, the day before changeover, Bernice and I work as a team, tackling the kitchen appliances: fridge, freezer, oven, hob, coffee machine, toaster and so forth. This we completed on Sunday, as scheduled, and even found the energy to pack away and condense all the dishes and pots and pans, and even to do our big supermarket shop, before collapsing into bed.

Finally, on Monday, after breakfast, we cleared up and put away the final few items, then cleaned the kitchen surfaces and floor, sinks and so on. I covered the work surfaces, and we had all the Pesach ware removed from its less accessible cupboards and packed away at a convenient height, all the food unpacked and put away, in time for a light lunch.

So far, so good. In fact, we were pretty smug about the fact that we had managed to keep to our tight schedule, and, yet again, had proved that “No, we’re still not too old for this!” The plan had been for me to write my blog once all that was done. However, I had needed to schedule an unexpected medical test, and, when I phoned to make an appointment on Sunday morning, I was offered a slot in an hour and a half. Unfortunately, that was not enough time to arrange the necessary paperwork and drive to the other side of Jerusalem. I was then offered a slot on Monday afternoon, which was too good to turn down. So, soon after lunch, off I went.

By the time I returned from the test, which, needless to say, took far longer than anticipated, involving as it did the usual ‘hurrying up to wait’ time, I was feeling pretty exhausted. After supper, I fell asleep over the crossword, and, by the time I woke up, it was time for bed. Bernice suggested that I give the blog a pass for this week, which I reluctantly planned to do, offering as an excuse that our non-existent dog had eaten my homework. However, on what is proving to be a very warm night, I find myself unable to sleep. Instead, I have been lying awake composing this post in my mind. Eventually, around 00:20, I gave in, and got up to creep into the office where I am now just coming to the end of the post, at what I am pleased to see is no later than 01:18.

So, some kind of minor victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, if you will.

Next week, I’d like to promise 3,000 words of geopolitical analysis, but, you know me: it’s just as likely to be pointing out that, incredible as it may seem, Britney Spears (who I confess I would’t be able to pick out in a police line-up) is an anagram of Presbyterians. (Hands up all those who didn’t believe me and had to check it for themselves.)

By the time we meet again, we will be well and truly into Pesach, so let me wish you Chag Sameach. However you are marking the season, may it be meaningful. And, as we approach the festival of freedom, and pass the awful landmark of one-and-a-half years since October 7, may we see all the hostages, alive and no longer alive, returned to their families.

This week, a game of two halves: one of no consequence whatsoever and the other that may tear this country apart. (What is particularly disturbing is that this is only one of the two or three items in the news threatening to tear the country apart.)

I’m going to get the serious stuff out of the way first.

Last week, I buried my head in the sand. This week, I can’t bring myself to ignore all of the stories that are vying for attention in the media. So here’s just one.

In Jerusalem last week, I was approached in the street by a haredi beggar. I dismissed him with a wave of the hand, feeling a mixture of two emotions.

Many years ago, I heard a far better person than me quoted as saying that, if someone is reduced to approaching strangers in the street to ask for money, you should contemplate for a moment what can have brought them to these straits, and what this humbling of themselves may be costing them emotionally, and then you won’t feel able to deny them at least a token donation. They are, after all, providing you with the opportunity to do a mitzvah.

So, one emotion I felt when I waved this beggar away was a tinge of guilt. As it happens, I had no change on me. These days, I don’t normally take my change purse with me when I go out. Of course, I realise that, at some level, failing to take it is a convenient way of avoiding having to deal with the question of whether I want to give some change.

The other emotion was the fleeting thought, which is habitual with me, that if you are prepared, and able-bodied enough, to be out on the street in all weathers begging for small change, then you could, with less effort, find and hold down a job that would pay at least as well. This is not a thought that I am particularly proud of, but there it is.

Earlier today, I realised that, the next time a haredi man approaches me in the street to ask for money, I may not be able to resist giving him not a couple of coins but a piece of my mind. The dialogue I have prepared in my head goes something like this.

‘Have you completed military or national (public) service?’
‘No.’

‘Why not?’
‘Because I devote my life to studying Torah.’

‘How does that contribute to the nation as a whole during this war?’
‘My learning contributes to Israel’s victory and helps protect the soldiers.’

‘Then why are you frittering away your time now begging for money when you could be studying Torah? Surely if, by dint of your study, HaShem will protect our soldiers, then by dint of your study, HaShem will provide for your material needs.’

Actually, in light of today’s headlines, I plan to give him two pieces of my mind. Here is the second.

‘There is a serious shortage of manpower in the army that could be met by haredim if they chose to serve. Because of that shortfall, many reservists have served, over the last year and a half, 200 or more days of reserve duty. As a consequence of that, 41% of them have been fired from their jobs or lost their businesses.’ (I may have to explain to him that 41% means more than 4 in every 10.)’Many of these reservists have wives, or husbands, and children. How dare you turn to the Israeli public and ask for money when these people are sacrificing their economic stability in order to defend the nation, which includes you? How dare you?’

You may want to pause here, to avoid the incredibly abrupt change of gear.

Last Shabbat afternoon found me diving down some diverting rabbit holes in the Collins English Dictionary. (I’m the guy who reads the dictionary so that you don’t have to.) On the journey, I encountered a couple of things that I thought I might share with you today.

Let’s do this in the form of a quiz. Do you know what these trousers are called?

One point if you answered knickerbockers. However, if you recognised them as a particular breed of knickerbocker, and correctly identified them as plus fours, then give yourself two points.

When I stumbled on the etymology of plus fours on Shabbat, I was staggered. How, I asked myself, can I have lived for 75 years, and, for at least 60 of them, known what plus fours are, and never asked myself ‘Why? Why are plus fours called plus fours?’

The utterly charming answer is that your standard knickerbocker is cut so that it ends at the knee. However, the distinctive look of the plus four is achieved by adding another four inches of material to the leg. Plus four inches: obvious, isn’t it?

While we’re giving out points, here’s another opportunity to pit your wits. What do the following words have in common?

Bangle, bungalow, chintz, chutney, cot, gymkhana, juggernaut, shampoo, thug, toddy.

Give yourself one point if you answered that they all came into English from Hindi, during the period when the British ruled India. Before we get to the bonus points, let us pause to note that the ‘gym’ in ‘gymkhana’ is a corruption. The origin of the word is the Hindi gend-khana, which means a ‘ball house’ or ‘racquet court’ and is a place where sports activities take place. As the term was adopted by the British in India, ‘gend’ was altered to ‘gym’, purely under the influence of words like ‘gymnastics’.

Now here is your chance to earn five bonus points. When I look at the above list of words from Hindi, one of them stands out for me. I can understand how most of them were adopted in English: they described activities or objects that were characteristic of India and not of England. However, when I read the list, one word puzzled me. Surely, I thought, this is something that was adopted in England rather than in India. Which word do you think that was?

Shampoo: my limited experience of India suggests that 19^th Century Indians washed their hair with river water rather than shampoo. How can shampoo have come into English from Hindi.

A ten-point bonus for anyone who worked out that, in Hindi, champna is a verb meaning to press, knead or massage, and the original adoption in English was for the process of massaging the scalp, then for the process of applying shampoo by massaging the scalp, and only then for the soapy liquid itself.

None of which is of any consequence whatsoever, but at least it won’t get me into trouble with any Haredi beggars I encounter in the coming days.