Posts by Melchett Mike

Chaim'll Fix It: When asking the rov may be asking for bovv[er]

Melchett Mike — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:13:36 +0000

With Golders Green reeling from allegations (they are, at this stage, just that) of sexual abuse against one of its foremost Orthodox rabbis, the only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised at all.

Going to see your rov for marital problems is, if he is not also a trained counsellor, akin to seeing a therapist for lack of belief in God. And for a married woman to do so – and repeatedly – on her own would be as wise as consulting Norman Bates about your troubled relationship with your late mother. Tzores is certainly not all it is asking for . . .

Extending the famous Merchant of Venice monologue, "Hath not a rabbi a shmekel?" And finding himself in intimate situations with members of the opposite sex (in some cases, with members even of his own), the "Little Fella" has been known to entice all but the most proper and resolute of proprietors into doing all manner of things forbidden.

And, no, this is not a defence of pervy rabbonim. Even ignoring the filth who rally with anti-Semites (parading as anti-Zionists) on the streets of London and who have embraced the malevolent runt in Tehran, as well as the disgraceful shenanigans of the charedim in Israel, my experience of all too many Orthodox rabbis – from the assorted misfits and lunatics at Hasmonean Grammar School for Boys to those in the ever so shady world of "outreach" – has not been especially positive.

Standing over the ruins of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a rabbi of one such kiruv organisation – with a clear talent for clairvoyance and no less modest than his new, 7-storey, Old City HQ, replete with Dale Chihuly glass chandelier and Kirk ("Married Out Twice") Douglas Theater – informed our group, at its most vulnerable, that the (solemn, respectful) German teenagers we had just encountered by the mound of children's shoes were just "sorry that their grandparents hadn't finished the job."

"Why have you got so much rachmones for the Germans, Michael?" he responded, with trademark superciliousness, when I tackled him over what I saw as a horrible abuse of power.

Growing up on the fringes of the more Orthodox world, all I ever heard from friends in it was of the unbelievable small-mindedness, idiocy even, of their supposed leaders: from the prohibition on husbands kissing their wives after shul to the outlawing of patent shoes that might allow a sly glance at some M&S undies (mmm…) in the kiddush.

In my community, at least, I was privileged to know rabbis who were first and foremost human beings, one of whom – through application of humanity and commonsense (an advantage, perhaps, of the United Synagogue?), rather than the letter of cruel, anachronistic law – allowed my late brother to be buried in the main part of the cemetery. We will always remember him for that kindness.

If frummer-than-thou (what else can it be about?) co-religionists, however, choose to follow leaders who instruct them – in addition to other assorted nonsense – that Hashem doesn't want them using the Eruv on Shabbos, should it come as any surprise that they also trust in them to save their marriages?

Sadly, the title "rabbi" does not confer or guarantee moral rectitude any more than that of "lawyer" or "policeman" (or, for that matter, "yodelling, peroxide-blond, medallion-man TV presenter"). And the culture of unquestioning deference and soft-headed sycophancy that has been constructed around them, in the ultra-Orthodox world especially, has laid fertile ground for consequent misdemeanour and scandal.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

My First Time

Melchett Mike — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 09:31:34 +0000

“Don’t be silly,” I reassure Itzik, as we sip on our sachlabs on Rothschild early last Thursday evening. “Nothing will happen in Tel Aviv.”

It might as well be the cue for the siren.

There are a surreal couple of seconds, during which the occupants of adjacent tables exchange puzzled, yet pregnant, glances: “Is it . . . ? What now . . . ?”

I jump up as if stabbed with a shot of adrenaline. The dogs bark. We dart inside the café, my spanking new Galaxy S II abandoned alongside the sachlab. Clive Dunn has only been gone a week, and I have already forgotten his famous “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” (while discovering that it is true . . . no one “like[s] it up ’em”). It is the first time that I have heard a siren not marking the commencement of Shabbat or a Holocaust/Remembrance Day.

Everyone huddles together at the rear of the café. A 60-something female hears my accent and, as if encouraging a boy about to consummate his transition to manhood, asks me if it is my first time. I nod sheepishly. She imparts advice that I am in no state to listen to.

A distant boom. Perhaps two. And, within half an hour, I am home, packed and on Highway 1, on my way to the capital. I am ‘caught’ by my neighbours in the act of attempting to wheel my bag quietly out of the building. “I am not escaping,” I protest. “I have a fortieth birthday party in Jerusalem!” And it is true. But I don’t expect them to believe me. And I don’t think that they do.

I tease Itzik – a Tel Aviv real estate agent who has continually belittled my second home in Jerusalem – from the car, telling him that he won’t be getting a key (‘forcing’ the coward into having to stay with his father in Petach Tikva instead).

And Itzik is the first to call me, gloating, the following early evening, within seconds of the siren sounding in the capital. I have darted into the stairwell, where the neighbours are quickly gathering, before shooting back in to get the dogs. My Orthodox neighbour overcomes her fear of Stuey and Dexxy, whom, until now, she has refused to even pass on the stairs. “Shit,” I exclaim, in an attempt to lighten the tension, “I left the back window open.” But the attempt at humour is lost.

I meet an American woman on Saturday, who is considering taking refuge in London. Who am I to judge? I still do. And I delete an old law school friend from Facebook after he posts the “You take my water . . .” nonsense, with the caption: “Address this, Mark Regev . . .”

In fact, the next time I hear a Palestinian mention ‘his’ olive tree, I will make it my job to find said plant, uproot it, and stick it up his . . . well, in a place that it will get no light. These people attach no value to human life, never mind olive trees.

Make no mistake, when Hamas talks about an “end to the Occupation” (which, in principle, I am also in favour of ending), it is talking about an end to Israel. And, if it was up to me, I would bring those f*ckers to their knees before even agreeing to listen to talk about a ceasefire.

There is a wonderful feeling of togetherness here at present. I had been putting the finishing touches to a blog critical of Israelis. But I can’t publish it now. These are special people. And they are giving their all for our People . . . and – if the world would only open its eyes – for the values that civilised people everywhere hold dear.

To the residents of the south, we should have empathised more fully with your sacrifice and suffering, and with the intolerable circumstances under which you have had to live this past decade. To former Defence Minister Amir Peretz, respect for promoting – when few believed in it (or you) – Iron Dome. And to the soldiers awaiting your orders on the edge of Gaza, though it looks unlikely now that you will receive them, chazak ve’ematz.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Corrie verdict: A crushing blow for human rights

Melchett Mike — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 10:46:28 +0100

Last week was a singularly horrid one for all of us who know that it is our universal, inalienable right to kneel in front of armoured bulldozers without getting our new keffiyehs (they are so cool!) dirty.

And my heart wept for Craig and Cindy Corrie on Tuesday after the Haifa District Court ruled that their 23-year old daughter, Rachel – and not the IDF – was responsible for her own death under the tracks of of a Caterpillar D9 in Gaza in March 2003.

It was an outrageous injustice, and sets a horrible precedent. Whatever next . . . environmental activists running across the M1 to protest motorway widening – rather than drivers not looking out for them – having to shoulder the blame for getting splattered across it?!

"This was a bad day not only for our family, but a bad day for human rights, for humanity, for the rule of law, and also for the country of Israel," announced Mrs. Corrie after the verdict.

How right you are, Mrs. C. And you and your husband should be congratulated for your objective concern for the plight of the poor, defenceless Palestinians against the mighty Israelis – the result, no doubt, of a deep understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as opposed to any prejudice or suspicion on your part regarding the rich, powerful Jew – even though it led to your own daughter's horrible, needless death.

Rachel was a fine American. Okay, she burnt the flag (who hasn't?!) But, in writing of the natural rights of man, Hobbes, Locke and Paine surely could not have had in mind any act more noble than the "shielding" of Islamofascist rocket squads and suicide bombers by interfering foreigners who couldn't find useful work placements during college (see also http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/time-for-the-hurndalls-to-s...) and who had always heard that Arabs . . . well, everyone really, are nicer than Jews.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Highlands and Holy Lands: Observations from Civilisation

Melchett Mike — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:08:17 +0100

While I find a ten-day getaway, each year, to some remote part or other of the British Isles to be conducive to my state of mental well-being, it can also leave me feeling rather worse than when I left, constituting a much-needed break from life in this mad little place, on the one hand, but also a painful reminder of the ‘small’ things that we can never enjoy here.

Pulling into passing spaces to give way to oncoming cars on single lane country roads in the Scottish Highlands in June – always accompanied, of course, with a courteous, if perfunctory, wave of the hand – it occurs to me that such an arrangement could never work back home . . .

With the British and Irish, there is instant, mutual understanding of which vehicle of the two should enter the space, based on an assessment of relative: proximity to it at the point of cognition, velocity, vehicle size, etc.

With Israelis, however, such mutual consideration, and respect for the unwritten rules of the road, would, instead, turn into a potentially lethal game of “chicken”, with the driver with the more chutzpah and chest, back and shoulder hair winning the day.

I also enjoy, on my trips, the endearing ability of the English (especially) to talk enthusiastically on any subject, however ostensibly mundane. In an Ardnamurchan Peninsula hotel bar, one evening, I sit spellbound through a half-hour discussion, between the English proprietor and a patron, of the establishment’s problematic central heating system. Until the Croatia vs. Spain Euro 2012 kick-off brings a premature end to the excitement, I learn that boiler “recoverability”, not capacity, is what really matters.

I attempt in vain to imagine a similar scenario – and without audience mutterings of “ya Allah” (dear God) and “me’anyen et hasavta sheli” (literally, it interests my grandmother) – back home, where Iran, high-level corruption, making a fast shekel and plastic media ‘personalities’ appear to be the only subjects which animate.

The realization that my all too brief reintroduction to civilisation is at an end is always harsh and sudden, upon arrival at the Departures check-in desk, with the invariable, tense standoff between incredulous gentile airline staff and my adopted compatriots/Stamford Hill charedim muttering of anti-Semitism and beseeching that:

* the 20 kilo hold allowance really allows up to 35 kilos;

* the one-piece-of-hand-luggage rule does not preclude it being stuffed with weights or being accompanied onboard with an unlimited number of plastic bags; and

* the airline’s hand luggage size frame is not really binding, but for guidance purposes only.

Just in case I hadn’t noticed that I was back in Israel, on arrival at work the following morning, I am pinned to the rear elevator wall as I attempt to exit on my floor. The natives exhibit quite curious elevator etiquette: when elevator doors open here, those on the outside, rather than letting people exit, immediately stampede in, as if they have been tipped off that a buffet of burekas – cheese, potato, and spinach – awaits them at the back.

And my mind drifts back to those dreamy passing spaces . . .

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Foot in Mouth Disease: The Shortest Date

Melchett Mike — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:52:27 +0100

I recently had my shortest ever date (excluding, of course, the lovely Odelia). It lasted a grand total of six minutes. And it was still too long.

I am not quite sure why I agreed to meet Irit. She was a nagger even on the phone. But there was something appealing about her JDate mugshot that led to me to grant her an audience.

We met on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon, the last day of July. And as Irit approached the agreed meeting point (the corner of Gordon and Shlomo Hamelech), a waddling breach of the Trade Descriptions Act, the cumulation of recent dating disappointments at once got the better of me.

“I just can’t do this anymore,” I wailed to myself, even as I was squeezing Irit’s chubby hand. “Yet another wasted hour and a half, with my brain switched off and my tongue on autopilot.”

Until that infamous afternoon, I had always been the perfect(ish) gentleman on blind dates, not budging until the ninety minutes were up (this had always seemed to me, for no good reason in particular, the minimum decent amount of time to give someone, however little interest I had in the contents of their cranial cavity and/or underwear).

On this occasion, however, as I slouched back in the moulded plastic café seat, I could not have made it any clearer to Irit, however unconsciously, that I just did not want to be there.

My initial faux pas was asking Irit to remind me where her father – estranged from her mother I seemed to recall, from our single telephone conversation the previous week – lived in the States.

“That must have been another woman,” came the reply, without so much as a smidgeon of humour.

It had been. And while I managed to come up with some feeble, muttered excuse for that blunder, the daggers were clearly about to turn to tears – I was similarly, it would seem, the final straw in Irit’s dating disappointments – when, next question up, I mistook her folks’ Jerusalem-area moshav for the other’s mother’s Yavneh kibbutz.

“Look,” I said, with a completely unjustified air of defiance, “you are not the only woman I have spoken to . . .”

“It is just insulting,” Irit cut me off, clearly determined to twist the knife even further in my, now nearly fully flaked, veneer of decency. And she was, of course, entirely justified (why oh why hadn’t I heeded my own advice – see the final subheading in Dating Israeli Women: A Guide by the Perplexed – to keep notes?!)

85 minutes now seemed like a very long time indeed – an Israeli woman in revolt, and one I had no interest in placating – and there was only one thing for it . . .

“Look, Irit, you don’t have to stay. I’ll get the drinks.”

And, while far from proud of my performance (even our Cilla would have had difficulty laughing it off), I was feeling more relief than guilt as Irit took me up on my offer, getting up and departing the scene. Indeed, I supped my iced coffee engrossed not in self-loathing but in Yediot’s air conditioner ads, and still with the presence of mind to get Irit’s untouched order removed from the bill!

But had I behaved any better (if less deceitfully) than the dread Odelia, who had blown me out (cf. off) with a babysitter-mayse before we had even taken our seats?

Rather than be driven to this, or nasty porkies à la Odelia, an instantaneous shake of the head and direct, Simon Cowell-style “I don’t think so (You Are Not Mike’s New Talent)” must surely be a better way, for all concerned, of terminating a date with about as much of a future as a certain chinless Syrian.

[For original post, with links, go to http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/ ]

And we're still fond of you, Moz!

Melchett Mike — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 15:44:44 +0100

I knew you were something different, Moz, as soon as I – not-so-sweet sixteen, in November 1983 – first saw you, swinging those gladioli on Top of the Pops.

And I can still hear my mother mimicking the "uh-huh-hos" blaring from my bedroom after I had raced back from Our Price, Brent Cross, with my The Smiths cassette.

I was in your audience in Tel Aviv, yesterday evening.

And at a time that most of the world is kicking us in the nadgers – the IOC refusing a minute's silence for the 11 Israelis murdered in Munich and spineless muppets like Marc Almond cancelling gigs here, for fear of offending Islamofascist anti-Semites and their Israel-only bashing apologists (of the variety that blight this site) – I thank you, Moz, for standing by us.

Unlike Leonard Cohen (who felt he had to 'justify' his concert here by turning it into a peace circus) and Dylan (who couldn't bring himself to share a single word with his audience), you were with us heart and soul.

And seeing you parade and drape yourself in kachol ve'lavan means more to us (or, at least, to me) than you can imagine . . . I mean, I know it doesn't make you Theodor Herzl; but sadly, in these dark days, merely not being ashamed to be associated with Israel is, in itself, huge.

Indeed, I will even pardon you for not performing the greatest song of all time! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INgXzChwipY&feature=fvst)

Todah, Moz . . . you are our light that never goes out.

[For links to videos and photos, see original post: http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/and-were-still-fond-of-you-... ]

Israel, boycott the Olympics!

Melchett Mike — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:50:05 +0100

The Israeli Olympic squad should withdraw from the London Games, starting next Friday.

Seeing as the International Olympic Committee is clearly more concerned about upsetting Islamofascist anti-Semites than marking, with a minute’s silence, the memory of the 11 innocent Israelis slaughtered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Games, we have no place there.

As for the “personal moment” to be held by the London Games Chairman, Lord Coe, he can stick it up his pompous posterior. I always preferred Steve Ovett.

The absence of Israeli athletes would hardly be a blow to the credibility of these Olympics, as the US and Soviet Bloc boycotts were to Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984.

But we Jews are far better at guilt than games – never demonstrated more conclusively, or hilariously, than in this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crVyH7AV59o) Hasmonean Boys Sports Day video (I particularly enjoyed the ‘efforts’ of the high jumpers, over a bar that my grandmother would have walked over, first long jumper and the relay baton handoff) – and an Israeli withdrawal at this late stage would send out an extremely potent message.

Of course it would be horrible for those athletes whose dreams, and years of training, would come to nowt – they would have to be recognized, and compensated, by the State for their great personal sacrifice – but Israel must do what is right: Jewish blood – contrary to what is believed by the self-hating scum (see commenters below) who infest the JC site – is not cheap, and to participate in the London Olympics, after the IOC’s shameful gutlessness, would be a disrespect to the 11 martyrs and their families.

I, for one, will not be watching these Games. And should Islamic terror rear its diabolic head during their course, I trust that the IOC and that tosser Coe . . . apologies, Lord Coe will be consistent and refrain from public condemnation and/or commemoration of its victims.

[For a 15-minute memorial service, followed by a minute’s silence, go to www.minuteformunich.org at 10.45 (UK time) next Friday morning.]

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Shavuos Caption Competition

Melchett Mike — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:53:39 +0100

The following photograph was taken yesterday on Brent Street, Hendon . . .

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/shavuos-caption-competition...

Get those captions coming!

Grooming in the Green: Just imagine it

Melchett Mike — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:27:47 +0100

A gang of nine Jewish males from Golders Green – eight English-born and one Israeli – has been convicted of grooming underage non-Jewish girls for sex, the vulnerable teenagers having been lavished with salt beef sandwiches (on rye) and latkes, and plied with Palwin No. 10, at kosher restaurants across North-West London.

One can just imagine the response of the BBC and Guardian etc "PC Brigade", springing to the defence of Anglo-Jewry, protesting that the crimes had nothing whatsoever to do with race or religion . . .

Yeh, right!! We'd have a modern-day blood libel on our hands! And we wouldn’t even get to Nick Griffin. We wouldn't need to, with . . .

• A now happily (for us) retired former MP and Mayor of London accessing his impressive stash of Zionist/Jewish/Israeli – they are, after all, interchangeable – stereotypes to "make sense" of the case;

• A weekend magazine feature on the ultra-Orthodox Jewish male's attitude towards The Shiksa, with, among the interviewees, perhaps, a Haaretz 'journalist' who once saw some charedim kerb crawling in the Diamond Exchange district (as he was exiting a strip club);

• A Saddam-saluting Jock, foaming at the mouth, claiming the guilty verdicts should surprise no one, seeing as Diaspora Jewish males merely follow the example set for them by the IDF, with their war crimes against the poor, peace-loving Palestinians;

• A half-page Guardian ad taken out by an assortment of self-loathing writers, actors and other luvvies (vying, perhaps, to become the UK's new Number One Self-Hating Jew), pledging to have circumcision reversals (foreskin regrafts) to distance themselves from a religion that "allows" such crimes; and

• The dishonourable Member for Manchester Gorton once again cynically exploiting the memory of his poor late grandmother, telling the House of Commons that "she did not die at the hands of the Nazis for Jews to do a thing like this."

But a gang of nine Muslim men – eight Pakistani and one Afghan – grooming, abusing, assaulting and/or raping up to 47 (that is forty-seven) vulnerable girls in Rochdale, every single one of whom was white, has, we are being told, nothing to do with Islam or its followers, or with its or their attitude towards females and, especially, non-Muslim females.

Nothing whatsoever.

[For original post, with links, visit http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/ ]

John McCarthy

Melchett Mike — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:29:02 +0100

I forgot to turn off my Internet radio, last night. It’s a fantastic piece of gear, that can broadcast BBC Radio 5 Live to Jaffa . . . if you want to hear it, that is.

Having dozed off to debate about Roy Hodgson’s suitability as new England football manager (horrid that the media and ‘fans’ are already getting on his case), I half woke up, at 5 a.m., to a 30-minute conversation with former Lebanon hostage, John McCarthy, about his new book, You Can't Hide the Sun: A Journey Through Israel and Palestine.

Now, McCarthy – held by Islamic Jihad for over 5 years, longer than any other Briton in Lebanon – comes across as a perfectly decent and reasonable bloke, without agenda or malice, the type of English ex-public schoolboy with whom you might strike up a pleasant conversation over tea and scones in the Kenwood House café. The journalist and BBC Radio 4 presenter is certainly not – on the face of it, at least – the type to “salute” Saddam, to make “concentration camp guard” jibes to Jewish reporters, or who “might just consider becoming [a suicide bomber].”

The pages in his Haileybury twentieth century history book referring to the 1948/49 Arab-Israeli War, however, must have been torn out by a previous student, because McCarthy, this morning, referred to it as a “civil war” – i.e., between civilians of the same country – when it was, of course, fought between a ragtag Jewish army and a military coalition of seven Arab states and foreign volunteers (of whom McCarthy made absolutely no mention), in addition to native Arabs.

Indeed, McCarthy's ridiculously one-sided account of 1948/49 made Jewish soldiers sound more like Bosnian Serb and Croat ethnic cleansers than fighters against an alliance sworn to the destruction of their nascent state (mandated by the 1947 UN Partition Plan).

McCarthy’s interviewer, Up All Night presenter Rhod Sharp, didn’t once challenge his account. Perhaps he knows no better. But why couldn’t I imagine the same happening had his guest, instead, been Benjamin Netanyahu or even Shimon Peres?

As it turns out, the only tea I will be sharing with McCarthy is the contents of my pot, over his head . . .

Towards the end of the conversation, describing a card game that he stumbled across in the northern city of Acre (Acco) while interviewing Israeli Arabs for his book, McCarthy told of his surprise at discovering that an Iraqi-born Jew, keen to use his mother tongue, had been accepted into the group. This “common humanity,” McCarthy said, gives him some hope for the future.

“The trouble is,” the Arabs told him, “he takes our money from us every day.”

Indeed. Those clever Jews.

When his agent advises him that Michael Parkinson only interviews people who have actually done things, David Brent (The Office), referring to McCarthy, replies:

"He had that guy in Lebanon who spent years chained to a radiator. What did he do? Nothing! He was chained to a radiator!"

With all McCarthy’s shameful disinformation about Israel and Jews, we can only be sorry that he is not still there.

[You can listen to the Up All Night interview with John McCarthy at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01h0d9g/Up_All_Night_02_05_2012/ (2:05.48-2:32.45)]

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

[Webmaster note: The title of this post has been altered, with the sub-head 'Now where's that radiator?' being removed.]

Luzon my religion: Israel's not-so-beautiful game

Melchett Mike — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:37:20 +0100

“No need for excuses,” quipped a fellow Anglo-Israeli on the phone, as I was attempting to explain why I was at Maccabi Tel Aviv vs. Rishon Le’tzion (and thus couldn’t hear him). And Ron had not missed the irony. There was, indeed, a need for excuses!

While going to football in England is an “Update status”-worthy event – “At the Emirates,” “the Lane,” etc (though less, it must be said, “Elland Road”) are oft seen on Facebook – only the most secure will own up to attending games in Israel, or even to watching them on telly.

All of which makes it all the more curious that everyone here is up in arms about the mass brawl at Hapoel Ramat Gan vs. Bnei Lod on Friday afternoon, surely the most entertainment ever witnessed on an Israeli football pitch . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIFz0uf2I-o

I had been trying to tell Ron that, as the (not-so-proud) owner of a Maccabi Tel Aviv season ticket, I had no choice but to go to games. If there is some way of measuring such things, however, I am confident that the ticket represents one of the worst ever returns on 1,200 shekels (around two hundred pounds).

The excuse for my moment of madness was that I had just moved to within a few hundred metres of Bloomfield Stadium, the home of Tel Aviv’s biggest clubs, Hapoel and Maccabi (I chose the latter because I am forbidden from wearing red). And it is a measure of the wretchedness of the Israeli soccer experience – the football is crap, the officials are worse, and the spectators are largely odious, knowing nothing about The Beautiful Game – that, when I am at Bloomfield, I find myself daydreaming about wet, blustery evenings at Hendon FC.

While it is not only Israeli footballers who are knobs, they don’t have the excuse of the Bests, Gascoignes and Cantonas, or even of the Collymores, Di Canios and Balotellis, i.e., that they can play. Strutting, play-acting tossers and prima donnas like the ars’s ars, Itzik Zohar (now a TV pundit) – widely considered by Crystal Palace fans to be one of the club’s worst ever signings (no mean feat, I can tell you!) – and my own personal bête noire (having had to suffer him all season), Maccabi captain Barak Itzhaki, don’t have any such excuse.

What I have, however, gained from my season ticket is an understanding of why Israeli football fans leave piles of garinim (sunflower seed) shells on terrace floors – it gives them something to do for 90 minutes (I, too, have now adopted the custom) – and familiarity with a wide variety of Hebrew songs, from “Mi shelo kofetz adom” (Whoever doesn’t jump is red [i.e., Hapoel]) to “Ima shelachem zona” (Your mother is a whore), nearly all sung to the identical tune. Indeed, 90 minutes at Bloomfield makes a visit to the nearby Ramat Gan Safari entirely unnecessary.

“If they were at all capable of reflection, the monkeys who booed [Ran] Ben Shimon out [of Maccabi Tel Aviv] – following Saturday’s home defeat to Kiryat Shmona, ironically his former charge that got him his position – will come to regret their mindlessness. A 38-year old coach who, last season, took the relative nobodies from the northern border to 3rd place, in their very first season in the top flight, will obviously go on to greater things. His successor, Avi Nimni – however great a player for Maccabi – probably won’t.”

I published the above – in http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/ran-ben-shimon-a-deeper-mal... – on November 3, 2008. Earlier this month, Kiryat Shmona clinched its first ever championship – the first to be won by a club outside Israel’s three major cities in nearly 30 years – under Ben Shimon (who rejoined the club as coach in April 2009). And, no, Avi Nimni didn’t.

While it is poor taste to say “I told you so” (but I’ve started so I’ll finish), the malaise to which I referred in that second post to melchett mike was not just of players and fans, but of Israeli football as a whole. It starts at the very top, with Israeli Football Association chairman Avi Luzon (and family) – more dodgy than Ken Bates after a little tamper with the wheels of his Zimmer frame – and is encouraged by media coverage of the most moronic kind, giving Zohar, Eyal Berkovic and Eli Ohana, the dickheads of the “double pass,” free rein to puff up their already over-inflated egos (see http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/moti-you-aint-no-motty/)

Ohana was wonderfully lampooned in a recent Yediot Aharonot article (http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4209518,00.html) – showing that it is not only snooty English olim who are fed up with the know-it-all local football coverage – for his studio criticism of the tactics of Real Madrid coach, José Mourinho:

“As the inhabitants of Blah-Blah Land, we have got used to the idiotic nonsense of blabbermouth commentators, but there is a limit even to chutzpah. Sitting there is [Ohana] the coach of the Israeli youth team, the big shot who succeeded, in his last examination in the league, in relegating Kfar Saba to the second division – of a calibre that, even in the Maccabiah (against Jewish teenagers who looked more likely to win a bible quiz), had to make to do with the bronze medal – and he is giving a lecture on football to the coach who has won the Champions League twice, taken six domestic championships in three different countries, with a seventh in a fourth on the way. It is almost like [Israeli singer] Avihu Shabat criticising John Lennon or [comedian] Shahar Hasson slagging off Jerry Seinfeld.”

The bottom line is that most Israelis (including TV and media pundits), however much they love the game, don’t – for a reason that I cannot quite fathom – truly understand it (or, at least, not in the same way that we do). This was most apparent, yesterday evening, watching Barcelona vs. Chelsea with half a dozen natives, who were constantly whingeing about the West Londoners playing “boonker” (i.e., defensively). How exactly did they expect them to play, protecting a lead against Lionel Messi and Co. at the Nou Camp, with a place in the Champions League final at stake? With expansive football?!

Needless to say, I won’t be renewing my season ticket.

And there isn’t any proper cricket here, either. Still, there are the women. There is the weather, too. And the food. And golden memories of footballers who could both “mix it” and play . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8kxMnc5KUs

To all readers of melchett mike – whether Maccabi, Hapoel, or even Bnei Yehuda – happy barbecuing!

[For original blog, with photos and links, go to http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/ ]

Buying in Bet Shemesh: Let the freier beware!

Melchett Mike — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:07:30 +0100

I had to laugh just now, perusing The Jerusalem Post's Passover Real Estate supplement (passed down to me, JC-style, by my mother).

On page 10 of the magazine, Jerusalem and environs real estate agent Shelly Levine lists a 51-cottage project in Sheinfeld, Bet Shemesh (see http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/spitters-and-splitters-what...) as one of her "five best picks" in and around the capital, giving more than a little credence to my contention – in http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/be-a-wise-buyer-not-a-forei... – that agents "will sell their own mothers to do a deal."

But the opinion of Levine, President of "savvy agency" Tivuch Shelly, is clearly held in high regard. "Not a day passes," she informs readers, "when real estate buyers or investors don't ask me, 'What's THE best place to buy now in Jerusalem?'"

And you will never guess who we discover, a mere 22 pages later, to be conducting "Exclusive sales" of the Bet Shemesh cottages . . . yes, it's our Shelly!

In describing Sheinfeld as "the internationally acclaimed pace-setting community . . . with full spiritual facilities," Levine must have had in mind "one-of-a-kind" scenes and neighbours – a mere stone's throw/spitting distance away from her project – like these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFl4VWCxVso

Even if you still believe, however, that in Bet Shemesh you will find "top quality of life in a value-driven environment," I suggest that, when sitting down to talk money, you make the vendor watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U2M6vsMy48

[In the Rosh Hashanah 5773 edition of Real Estate: Grad deals in Sderot! Only a few homes remaining.]

For original post, with photos and links, go to: http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Brothers and sisters, stop yer wailing!

Melchett Mike — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:28:43 +0100

Tomorrow marks 50 days since young Ethiopians set up a protest tent at the top of my street.

I walk my dogs, Stuey and Dexxy, past the tent – situated outside the Prime Minister’s Residence, on the same spot that the Shalit tent stood for three and a half years – with its “Stop Racism” and “Apartheid 2012” signs, most mornings. And, if you ask me, there are just some people you can never please.

Admitted, Israel’s 120,000 Ethiopians suffer institutional racism and discrimination, and enormous economic, employment-related and educational hardship – unemployment is over double that in the Jewish population as a whole, nearly three-quarters of Ethiopian families live below the poverty line, and their children are forced to attend separate kindergartens and schools – but, hello-o, would Ethiopians prefer to still be living in Africa, with its famines, droughts, human rights abuses and civil wars, rather than in Israel, with Big Brother and The Voice?!

Many passers-by clearly also have difficulty understanding what it is exactly that that the tent-dwellers want . . .

“My parents and their 17 children walked here from Morocco in 1955,” one woman told me. “We lived on leaves and grass,” she continued, “but we didn’t complain.”

And an elderly gentleman, born in Yemen, said: “We are also black . . . I mean, lighter than them, but still black. And it wasn’t easy with those bastard Ashkenazim, I can tell you! But we succeeded. And we did it through hard work, not charity.”

And, while we are on the subject, my aliyah wasn’t easy either. I had to share the ulpan/absorption centre with at least two dozen French, and – with the exception of the half-wit who walked around screaming “You fuck my wife?” (the only sentence that he knew, having apparently spent all of his high school leçons d'anglais memorising the script of Raging Bull) – the swines refused to speak a word of English.

And not all the new olim came with cash in the bank. Indeed, one of the Russian lasses was even said to have run a knocking shop from her bedroom (tragically, I only tend to discover such things when it is too late).

So, Ethiopian brothers and sisters, in the prophetic words of (your) Bob, you’ve gotta be “iron like a lion in Zion”: see your Israeli cup as half full . . . and stop yer wailing!

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

From Jew-obsession to the mechanics of murder

Melchett Mike — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:12:31 +0100

“The Muslim faith has nothing to do with the insane acts of this man.”

So opined the French President, last week, following the latest acts of cold-blooded murder by a hate-filled Muslim, including once again – almost a year to the day since the Itamar infanticide – of three Jewish children, this time aged 3, 6 and 8.

“Nothing to do with”? Are you sure, Mr. Sarkozy?

How much Islamofascist terror must we endure before we stop having to listen to such PC b*ll*cks, and before we stop putting ever so delicate Muslim sensibilities before the hard truth? When, instead, is the Muslim community and its hate-inciting imams going to be told to put their murderous, bloodthirsty house in order?

And, while telling things as they are, it is not only Muslims who are to blame for such atrocities. Much of the Islamofascist’s fuel, and the climate in which he is allowed, even encouraged, to operate, is provided by the “Israel-only bashers” (http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/the-israel-only-bashers-a-c...) – the George Galloways, Ken Livingtones, Jenny Tonges, even the sad, bitter nothings like Gert Meyers (see previous link), of this world – who, by relentlessly demonizing and attempting to delegitimize the Jewish state with their hateful, hypocritical agenda (while remaining largely silent, for most recent instance, about the slaughter in Syria), provide fertile ground for the murder of Jews.

Don’t even dream, however, of calling the Israel-only basher an anti-Semite. He, of course, has nothing against Jews (some of his best friends . . .), merely opposing Israel, which – by pure coincidence only – just happens to be the Jewish state. Neither is it by virtue of their conflict with Jews that the Israel-only basher gives the Palestinians his sole, undivided attention (to the exclusion of Syrians, Kurds, Iranians, Coptic Christians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Equatorial Guineans, Zimbabweans, Burmese, Tibetans, North Koreans, Cubans): it is just that the Palestinians are, intrinsically, far lovelier and cuddlier than every other persecuted people.

Having lunch in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market, a couple of weeks ago, I struck up conversation with a nice non-Jewish couple from Colorado, visiting Israel for the first time. “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” said Jim, while we were still on our soup, “but why do so many people hate the Jews? I just don’t understand it.” I went through the list – jealousy and Jesus being the only reasons that seemed to make any sense (and, then, not much) – before concluding with my own view, that it is just part and parcel of, though a sickness in, the human condition.

In the week that saw John Demjanjuk go to meet his diabolical maker – the very same, no doubt, as of his fellow auto mechanic Mohammed Merah – I couldn’t help but wonder whether the millions spent on attempting to bring an incontinent Ukrainian peasant to justice would not have been better earmarked for more effectively countering the deadly lies of the Israel-only bashers, and for providing proper security for Jewish communities around the world.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

From Raleigh C to Petach T: Musings on Shul

Melchett Mike — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:57:43 +0000

The theory of Primary Return-to-Womb Craving describes the infant’s resentment at his extrusion from the womb, and his longing to return to it. And while this infant has, thankfully, got over the loss of that particular sanctuary, he has experienced greater difficulty in overcoming that of another: his former home town shul. I just haven’t found anywhere to replace Raleigh Close.

I can no longer, since making Aliyah, describe myself as a shul-goer. Indeed, the synagogue attendance line of my JDate profile reads “Sometimes” only because “For Kaddish” is not an option in the drop-down list. I suppose it might be different if I had kids, though definitely if the strength of my belief in “The Big G” (and I am not talking Gooch, Gatting or Gascoigne) – or, at least, in the Orthodox Jewish conception of Him – could not fairly be compared (though by someone less reverent than me) to a middle-aged erection.

As a result, prayer, for me, has only ever really been about superstition, bet-hedging, and football: I admit, with no little shame, to having recited a particularly kavanadik Shemoneh Esrei in the car park of a South Yorkshire service station on the way to a Leeds v Glasgow Rangers Champions League tie. Needless to say, it didn’t help. And, a few months later, towards the conclusion of an FA Cup marathon against Arsenal – and having learned nothing from my earlier heresy – I vowed to the friend standing next to me, as Gary McAllister was lining up his free-kick, that I would attend shul more regularly if he scored. He did. But so, too, subsequently, did Ian Wright. Twice. And I felt justified to renege.

Otherwise, I recite the first paragraph of the Shema on take-off, during turbulence – at the point it starts inducing mutually empathetic looks between passengers (who, previously, hadn’t even noticed one another) – and when awaiting the results of medical tests. Indeed, when observing folk deep in prayer these days, they appear to me to be faintly ridiculous, and even, on extreme occasion, mentally ill. Anyway, repeating that He is the main man/real deal/bee’s knees in scores of different ways just doesn’t do it for me (and, more to the point, neither, I suspect, does it do it for Him).

But none of that seemed to matter in Hendon. And Raleigh Close still is, for me, Shul, both in terms of community and its many, quite indelible characters . . .

* legendary shammes Moshe Steinhart and his blundering, malapropism-littered announcements, awaited considerably more eagerly than the rabbi’s sermon;

* the gangling, mustachioed choirmaster – imagine the love child of Freddie Mercury and Russ Abbot – with equally deliberate, exaggerated (and ridiculous) conducting and leining styles;

* the young shockler who would sway so violently during prayer that one almost expected his head to fly off his shoulders, and who was once catalyst for a communal debate on Derech Eretz when the minister, wanting to commence his sermon, was ‘forced’ to wait for him to finish Shemoneh Esrei;

* the little man who would storm out in mid-sermon (“He’s off!” would be the excited whisper) if – or, more accurately, when – he disapproved of any of its contents;

* the large one who perceived it as a personal slight – and so many shul-goers (Jews?) love nothing more than to imagine these – whenever a hat or tallis bag was innocently placed on a sill of the stained glass windows endowed in memory of his parents: “Do you mind,” would come the familiar bellow, “that window belongs to my parents!”;

* the even larger one still who, for some reason known only to him, took it upon himself to be sole guardian of the Simchas Torah whisky supply;

* the pensioner who would openly fill her coat pockets from the Community Centre kiddush tables, as well as the various others who you just knew wouldn’t budge an inch to let you get at a piece of that herring;

* Angelo the caretaker, whose physique and bone-breaking handshakes made Goldfinger’s Oddjob look like a pansy in a bowler; and

* the seemingly permanently irate member whose tirades, raising awkward (and important) issues that no one else dared to, would get more bums on seats at AGMs than the right to vote for another tit in a topper.

With Yahrzeit for my late father falling on a recent Shabbos – not the quick, painless, weekday tefillah for me, this year – I ‘enjoyed’ two contrasting experiences that proved to me that there is nowhere quite like shul to study the excesses, idiosyncrasies and neuroses of my fellow Yeed . . .

On the Friday evening, before dinner at a friend’s in the area, I attend Mekor Chaim, a ‘Germanic’ establishment on Petach Tikva’s Rechov Frankfurter. Now, Yekkes are renowned for their near-obsessive timekeeping and attention to detail. And it is no myth: I arrive, five minutes early, to an empty synagogue; but, by the opening words of Ashrei, it is virtually full.

Standing at the back (always my favourite spot in shul), minding my own business, awaiting the arrival of my friend Henry, it becomes increasingly apparent that I am unsettling the shul’s gabbeh. He asks me to take a seat on at least three occasions, with increasing levels of assertiveness. I do so, but am then told to vacate the one I have chosen because it doesn’t have a little green sticker. These, I discover, have been painstakingly positioned on (the identical spot of carpentry of) every seat in the shul not belonging to someone. When I inform the gabbeh that I am waiting for Henry, he leads me to his seat and tells me to sit in it.

The problem when Henry arrives, however, is that the free seat next to his also doesn’t have a little green sticker. Henry directs a glance at the octogenarian on the other side of it as if to say “He is my guest, do you think it would be okay . . . ?”, but, met with a look of “Rules are rules”, thinks better of it and plants himself in the row in front.

In view of Mekor Chaim’s obvious puritanism, I am rather uncomfortable at being introduced to complete strangers, even ex-Hasmos, after the service as “melchett mike”. The last time I had been in a shul this strict – the Golders Green Beth Hamedrash, better known as Munk’s (Mekor Chaim, I later discover, is known to its expat members as “Munk’s Lite”) – was 32 years ago, for Johny Finn’s bar mitzvah. On that occasion, I received an unceremonious whack to the back of the head from a complete stranger – for talking during leining – so savage that my cousin still delights at the mere recollection.

Anyway, it is not Raleigh Close.

The unbending strictures of more Orthodox shuls can, when combined with the rather more flexible business ethics of certain of their members, result in seemingly glaring moral contradictions. At Brent Street’s Hendon Adass (consisting largely of refugees from central and eastern Europe), for example, a husband and wife partial to a post-service peck on the cheek were said to have received a letter from shul management warning them to refrain from such lewd acts. Several other congregants, on the other hand, returning from prison terms for offences of fraud and deception, were in receipt of no more than a “Boruch haboh!”

Such shuls can also be a vehicle for wonderful comedy. My favourite Hendon Adass story is of the brothers who, one Yom Kippur, informed their younger sibling, who wished to go home and eat, that the rabbi held the keys to congregants’ homes. They then watched the five-year old walk up the hushed aisle and repeatedly tug on the tallis covering the head of Rabbi Pinchos Roberts – severe at the best of times, never mind on the Day of Atonement – who, when he eventually peered down, was met with the now legendary words: “Goldberg. 1 Shirehall Lane.”

Shabbos morning at the Central Synagogue in Jaffa (yes, a long walk from Petach Tikva) is a different proposition altogether. Founded by Romanian olim, but now attended by a hotchpotch of 17 (I counted) males of predominantly Sephardic origin, its kaddish – unlike that in Petach Tikva, recited in mutually considerate unison from around the bimah – is an exercise in who can bawl the loudest.

Later in the day, attempting to slip off sharpish after Havdalah (to beautify myself for a date), I am accosted by the shul nutter – there is always one – who, refusing to accept my pleas that I am not an American, insists on getting my telephone number.

“I don’t know it by heart,” I reply, congratulating myself on my ingenuity, until Nutter insists, after locating a pen, on giving me every one of his four numbers, each of which he inscribes with the numeric dexterity of a 3-year old.

Most definitely not Raleigh Close. And I am relieved to get back to Stuey and Dexxy.

A week and a half ago, however, imbibing the spirit of Jerusalem and (with no kaddish commitment) just looking for a nice Friday evening shul experience, I receive a tip-off about HaNassi, an Anglo minyan on Rechov Ussishkin, a mere seven minutes’ walk from my new home. And, while hardly identifying with the overtly political nature of the rabbi’s Purim handout – not to mention his contention that one’s choice of fancy dress is “an expression of the real person . . . illustrat[ing] the innermost desire to really be what the costume represents” (I had dressed up, the previous evening, as a camp sailor) – it is lovely to be surrounded by familiar, ex-Raleigh Close faces.

“This is not for you,” opines another Henry, who, while seemingly pleased to see me, is certain that I am looking for a younger crowd.

But he is quite mistaken. This is exactly for me. See you on Friday!

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Some Don't Like It HOT

Melchett Mike — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:40:41 +0000

After years of hair-tearing frustration with the crap cable, and even crapper customer, 'service' provided by HOT Israel, I am finally – following numerous broken promises (to myself) – doing something to disengage from the bastards: I am connecting my newly renovated apartment with HOT's satellite competitor, yes.

I had, originally, again ordered HOT – a technician was due at the apartment last Tuesday – because, as well as being reactionary (I still use a paper diary), it offers a convenient television/internet/telephony "triple", I am used to navigating its TV channels, and can rarely pass up on a deal (it is currently running a Samsung Tablet promotion).

But after receiving, in the days following the order, half a dozen calls from HOT customer service incompetents enquiring why I hadn't yet ordered, and then a chance, elated call from a friend, Hanna, who had just switched to yes, I decided to follow her lead . . .

I called HOT on two separate occasions to cancel the order, but neither "Linoy" nor "Mohammed" could locate it against my name, address, telephone or ID numbers. And, entirely true to form, on Tuesday afternoon – the day on which the technician would have been due – I received an sms informing me that one would be visiting the following (i.e., Wednesday) afternoon. I called once more to cancel . . . but "Oshrit", too, could not find any record of the order in HOT's 'system'.

There must, however, be some communication at HOT – at least when they are about to lose another 300-plus-shekel-a-month customer – because, early on Wednesday morning, Natanel, the agent with whom I had closed the original order, called to enquire why I didn't wish to proceed with it.

"If you are asking," I said, "I will tell you." And I proceed to go through my HOT List . . .

* HOT's automated system still, after six years, doesn't recognise my telephone number;
* HOT's customer service representatives are still convinced that I live on Melchett, even though I sold my apartment there six months ago;
* I live at number 4, not at number 10 (in the same way that, on Melchett, I lived at 31, not 3);
* Natanel did not disclose, in his original call, the 300 shekel connection fee;
* I was thoroughly pissed off by the repeated, misinformed calls after the order had already been closed;
none of HOT's customer service reps could find evidence of the order; and
* even the date agreed for it was recorded erroneously.

Natanel's response? To tell me that my complaints were nekudatiyot me'od (very specific), that I shouldn't get pissed off so quickly, and, wait for it . . . to ask: "Aren't you grateful to HOT when watching television programmes that you enjoy?"

I replied that I did very much enjoy the English football, but that I could also watch that on yes. And, ignoring his second point (which may actually have something to it), I once again went through my HOT List.

"It is one hundred percent impossible," said Natanel, "that a rep could not find the new order."

"Well, it is one hundred percent something," I replied, "because three out of three couldn't!"

And, while I could not disagree with Natanel's contention that no customer service is perfect, I informed him that HOT's was by far and away the worst that I have ever had the misfortune to experience, with not a single call passing without some degree of irritation, aggravation or annoyance.

With a sigh of resignation, the admirably persistent (and intelligent, for a HOT employee) salesman enquired,"Is there anything I can do that will make you reinstate your order?"

"No," I answered – knowing that the free months that sprung to mind were a non-starter – with no little satisfaction.

Natanel abruptly terminated the call.

And while I am not fooling myself that there won't also be issues with yes – this is Israel, after all – deserting HOT has accorded me both much-needed therapy and sweetish revenge.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Dating Israeli Women (Part II): Freeing the Dirty Dog Within

Melchett Mike — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:54:10 +0000

Well, it wasn’t really The End (see my previous blog, Dating Israeli Women: A Guide by the Perplexed). J . . . oh, f*** it, Jennifer forgave that e-mail, and granted me a stay of execution. A brief one. We saw each other twice more, before that dreaded pregnant pause on the telephone, on the evening before our fifth date . . .

“Mike, you are a great guy, but you feel more like a friend.”

I consider proposing friendship with “extras” – Jennifer is an almost indisputable “9”, and I haven’t had too many of those – but refrain.

So, where am I going wrong?

As I explained to a friend, last week, I think I have lost that predator’s instinct. When I was less serious about settling down – and preoccupied not with the future but, largely (if not merely), on gaining access to the Kodesh Kedoshim (Holey of Holeys) – I had a far lower goal:attempts ratio. Now, however, I am like Fernando Torres, a forlorn centre-forward who can no longer rely on his nose for goal, but who has started to think too much . . . rather than just poking, sliding or slamming the ball into the back of the net.

Let’s face it, when it comes to matters sexual, we are animals. And I could certainly learn a thing or two from Stuey and Dexxy in that regard: When they come across a hitherto unknown canine, they don’t agonize for weeks on end about a little excess facial hair or slightly imperfect hind symmetry, but rather head, without hesitation, straight for the “box”, where they have a jolly good sniff, often a bit of a lick, and decide, purely on the basis of that, whether or not to take it on from there. (The object of this attention does, on occasion, not take too kindly to it, though – very unlike their owner – neither Stuey nor Dexxy have ever been accused of going too fast, or of being interested only in one thing.)

Therefore – while incumbent upon humans to add a moral dimension to their behaviour (take note, most recent “dirty dog”, Ryan Giggs) – the great scorers, both footballing and otherwise, will be in maximum sync with their animal sides (hence the sobriquet of my childhood hero, Allan “Sniffer” Clarke).

Human blind dates, however, are – to my shagrin – considerably more fraught than their canine equivalents. And, while it is perhaps inadvisable to follow the example of the romantic JDater (of Persian origin) who, twenty minutes into his first meeting with my friend in Manhattan, announced “I want to be inside you now” (she ran out), we are guilty of complicating the natural and straightforward . . . when we should, instead, be finding and releasing that hidden dog (or, at least, centre-forward) within.

I have come to see dates in terms of the motor vehicle . . .

And – unlike the meeting/clash of eyes across a crowded room, of trolleys in the supermarket aisle (the SuperSol on Tel Aviv’s Ben Yehuda Street is even said to stage a weekly, unofficial p’nuyim/p’nuyot [unattached] evening), or of body parts in a nightclub lavatory, where the wheels of love/lust are at once in motion – the blind date car is entirely stationary . . . and facing an extremely steep hill.

As the driver, I consider what is in front of me and decide, (rightly or wrongly) more or less instinctively, what gear to put my brain in.

On occasions, the battery is completely dead, and all attempts to start the vehicle are futile. You both want to say (though neither of you has the courage): “Listen, there is no point. Let’s just go.”

On others – a recent Saturday morning, for example, when I met a lovely woman for breakfast in Modi’in, but just couldn’t imagine filling up – I go straight into cruise control. We spent a very pleasant couple of hours, before I sent her a text message, that evening, stating that “something, I don’t know what [a white lie], was missing.”

I suffered no such shortage of imagination with Jennifer. But after screeching off in first, and moving swiftly and smoothly into second, I hit trouble in third . . . and never reached fourth. In the old days, I would have been in fifth before I (and certainly she) knew it. My changes, however, have got a little rusty, and women, I think, sense that hesitancy.

Well, the gear box is definitely due some attention. A thorough service and oiling should do it, followed by a few spins around the block (prompting me to wonder whether I should be amending the “languages spoken” field in my JDate searches to Russian). And, as Fernando Torres must also be reminding himself (it is comforting to know that I am not alone), it only takes a second to score a goal.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Dating Israeli Women: A Guide by the Perplexed

Melchett Mike — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:09:01 +0000

“You have to find an English speaker,” opined John over lunch on Hashmona’im Street last week, as I whinged about my latest debacle with Israel’s finest.

And John may well have a point. But it takes a strong-willed man to settle for fish and chips or a Big Mac and fries, when he could, instead, feast on a Me’urav Yerushalmi (Jerusalem mixed grill).

J, Israeli, 40 and divorced (plus none) – whom I had met through JDate (I am, depressingly, back) – was that perfect Ashkenazi father/Sephardi mother combo: tall, willowy, olive skin and taltalim (those unmistakably Israeli curls). And clever to boot. A Me’urevet Tel Avivit (Tel Aviv mix), if you like. And we had been on two extremely encouraging dates before the start of the fun and games . . .

Our third meeting – preceded by a discernible tailing-off in our flirtatious, daily text messaging – is cancelled by J, by sms, on the very same evening, with more excuses than a Hasmo boy: “pressure at work . . . not feeling well . . . Will call you.” But no call.

Just to be one hundred percent that my intuition is correct – I know that I will not be able to cope with the teasing thought that that body, skin and hair (and, of course, mind) might, just might . . . – I text J to tell her that I have got the message (that she is “not particularly interested in pursuing this”).

“Wrong again,” she texts back. “Will call the second I leave work.” But, again, nada.

The following morning, I receive an e-mail from J containing the exact same excuses. Petulant and keyboard happy as ever, I cannot resist the knee-jerk response: “Not looking for great dates at this stage. Or excuses. Or promises of phone calls.”

The End.

As usual, I search for possible reasons for this latest failure. I ponder, for example, whether having been bolder, more forthright, more Israeli, and having made a move in the second date tapas bar might, just might, have paid dividends. Most Israeli guys would have in the first date pub. (I take with a pinch of salt, these days, the Israeli woman’s oft-heard assertion that she likes English manners. They most like what they are used to.)

There is little, however, to be gained from idle speculation or self-flagellation. But why is it so damn difficult to meet a nice, genuine, uncomplicated woman in this city? Yes, yes (you slaves to your therapists), I know: I must take my share of the responsibility. It must be my fault, too. And sometimes it is. But more often, like this time, it just isn’t.

Finding attractive women in Tel Aviv is, of course, not a problem. Walking its streets and boulevards, or whiling away the hours in its cafés and bars, most male visitors (of a heterosexual bent, at least) come to believe that they have found themselves in some kind of female wonderland. Indeed, so high is the general standard of totty here that many people (or, at least, those who don’t know me that well!) cannot understand why I am still single, or not, at the very least, having a lot more fun than I am (it’s sex with someone I love!) And I can understand their bemusement: stick your very average Tel Avivit– one whom an Israeli guy would not look at twice – in a London “Jew do,” and the males will think that all their Hanukkahs have come at once.

The empirical evidence, however, can be more than a little misleading. And dating Israeli women, while often enjoyable, even memorable, rarely comes – for the non-native, at least – without substantial challenges, stresses and aggravation. Indeed, the lure of more attractive, hotter blooded females – accompanied, as it usually is, with better, more frequent, and certainly swifter (as in earlier, rather than shorter) rumpy-pumpy – is offset by behaviour that can range from the puzzling to the downright objectionable.

So, for the uninitiated, here are a few tips – of a “do as I say,” rather than “as I do,” nature – gleaned from my experiences dating Israeli women and, especially, Tel Aviviot (who, as with Jews, are “just like everybody else, only more so”) . . .

Don’t even attempt to understand them. It isn’t possible. This is even truer of Israeli women than of the fairer [snort!] sex in general. You will have great dates after which they won’t answer/return your calls, and dire ones following which they will demand to know why you haven’t called.

Don’t be shocked by anything. From inappropriate, even outrageous, remarks and conversation on the date, to last minute (and I mean minute!) cancellations before it (see previous posts: T.A. Woman: Feeling a Lemon in the Big Orange, Suicide is Painless: Dating Etiquette in the Holy Land, and The Tel Avivit’s Subtle Art of Seduction). First date sex is also far from unusual here: if you are a nice Jewish boy from a nice Jewish community – like North-West London, for instance, where “getting to know” a Jewish girl on a first date would be far more newsworthy than anything on the front page of the JC – but that is what you are after, Aliyah may be the best move you ever make!

Take any criticism levelled at you, but (unless you are planning to dump them anyway) avoid the temptation to give any back. Most Israeli women can’t take it. I recently went out with a Rebecca, who, on our second date, and without warning, saw fit to pat the (negligible) protuberance from my t-shirt. “Yesh lecha keress!” (you have a pot belly), she exclaimed, clearly delighted with herself, as if having discovered a new planet. When she brought up the subject again, on the fourth date – evidently, neither my ‘corpulence’ nor Rebecca’s ‘frankness’ were deal breakers (40-something beggars, especially, can’t be choosers) – I was better prepared: I informed her that I like my breasts large (not true, incidentally), and enquired whether she might be willing to go under the knife for me. Her face! What a picture! She looked like she had just swallowed a Beit Hashita hot pepper whole. (Neither did Rebecca care for me asking her not to throw every scrap of food that she wanted to bin to Stuey and Dexxy instead, thus reducing her sorties to the garbage . . . though she had absolutely no problem telling me that it was inappropriate to joke with her 5-year old daughter about locking her in the fridge (was it?))

If you feel that you are being used, that is because you probably are. I also recently dated a Maya, who demanded a detailed date plan (verbal) ahead of each of our meetings. And she vetoed many of my suggestions (especially of dining options), leaving me with the distinct impression that she saw me as a kind of TimeOut Tel Aviv with a MasterCard . . . or, more accurately, she was the TimeOut, I was the MasterCard.

Multiple date. It is almost an unwritten rule that simultaneous/multiple dating is fine until you have been on three or four dates with the same person (and, sometimes, even after you have had sex). Nearly everyone here – or in Tel Aviv, at least – does so, so put your chutz la’aretz (out of Israel) values to one side and get on the same playing field! And as a corollary . . .

Keep notes. I once simultaneously dated a woman with an Afghani mother, and another with an Afghani ex-mother-in-law. I got my wires crossed, and mentioned the wrong one to the wrong woman. This might not seem a big deal when dealing with Afghani matriarchs (and I extricated myself easily), but it would have been a huge one if I had referred to the wrong date about – and this is not an invented scenario – the inspection, by JFK security on ‘her’ departure from the US, of the other’s collection of dildos. I would even recommend keeping a brief, identifying note following each name in your mobile phone: an age thing, perhaps, but I find it harder and harder to remember, and to differentiate between, Hebrew names. Not so long ago, I called the wrong woman, informing her that I was on the way to pick her up. “What are you talking about?!” she squealed. Realising my mistake, I panicked and hung up, and, there being no way back from that, deleted her details from my phone.

You may well, by this stage, be asking yourself why you would possibly want to heed the dating advice of a single 44-year old who lives with his two dogs . . . and you’d be quite right!

Best of luck.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/

Spitters and splitters: what have the charedim ever done for us?

Melchett Mike — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:10:09 +0000

Everyone’s been talking charedim here, this past week, after ultra-Orthodox Jews spat on a 7-year old girl as she walked home from school in Bet Shemesh. And I am not going to hide behind the journo’s favoured “allegedly” because, even if this child has been telling tales, such incidents have been regular occurrences in the city – 15 miles west of Jerusalem, and with a large, modern Orthodox, Anglo expat community – over recent years.

And, the thing is, I just don’t buy the spurious, disingenuous even, “It’s not all of them” defence employed usually by more moderate, but still observant, Jews – for whom such extremism perhaps poses uncomfortable questions – as a smoke screen to conceal the fact that it is most of them. While having little time for the arrogance of so many of Israel’s chilonim, I couldn’t help but ask myself this past week: What have the charedim (unlike the Romans) ever done for us? (Suggestions by comment, please, below.)

As a (peculiar perhaps) child, I owned more black-hatted, long-bearded and sidelocked figures – collected on frequent family holidays to Israel – than Action Men. In fact, I was enchanted by chassidim, and – attending Orthodox schools, and possessing a precocious fascination with the “Old Country” (as well as grandparents who would relay the more juicy details of a story, unfit for a child’s ears, in Yiddish) – they seemed the closest link to my matrilineal Galician forebears (to whom I was more drawn than the rather more clinical Litvak misnagdim on my father’s side).

Easily the most memorable aspect of our fourth year Hasmo Israel Trip was the Friday night tishen in Mea Shearim and Bnei Brak, at which I had been mesmerized by the spectacle of thousands of chassidim gathered around the table of their Rebbe. And immediately upon making aliyah, I trained as a tour guide at Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial Museum), largely because – as well as enabling me to look the Teuton in the eye as I presented him with a less palatable account of his recent history than that fed him by Germany’s postwar educational system – it enabled me to really ‘touch’ this past. And, in 2000, I visited the south-eastern Polish city of Ropczyce, and its satellite towns of Radomyśl Wielki and Sędziszów Małopolski, which at least some of the Reiss Dzikówer chassidim had the vision and/or good fortune to abandon in time.

Something, however, has changed in me – perhaps I have lived here for too long – because I just don’t see charedim in the same light anymore: I no longer see warm, charismatic, spiritual guardians of our wonderful religion. What I do see are ridiculously anachronistic, lazy, chutzpadik, and in many cases (as in Bet Shemesh) violent, spongers and parasites, who threaten our democratic, tolerant values differently, but no less meaningfully, than our Islamofascist cousins in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

Following a Friday night dinner, last year, at my cousin’s home in the ‘normal’, Anglo part of Bet Shemesh, we took a late night wander up the hill into the charedi area on the other side of the valley. Stuey and Dexxy were on their leashes, and I didn’t let them get close to any of the ‘penguins’ whom we passed on the road. But the intimidation to which we were subjected – one particular nutter following us and muttering “noshim ve’yelodim” (women and children) as if he had never seen a dog – made us beat a hasty retreat. And how I resented that: these leeches, the overwhelming majority of whom, neither paying taxes (can someone please explain why they are allowed to vote) nor serving in the army, contribute nothing to this country, telling us – like the skinheads and “yobs” of our boyhood in England – on which of its streets we could and could not walk.

Sikrikim, a splinter group of Neturei Karta – the scum whose distinguished roll of honour includes kissing up to the little brown Hitler in Tehran – are believed to be behind the recent events in Bet Shemesh. But they, to my mind, are just the worst of a generally bad lot. Charedi discrimination against women (it goes without saying that they are also viciously homophobic) – closing roads to them, forcing them to the back of buses, and even defacing female faces on advertising hoardings – has become commonplace in Jerusalem. And why would a secular Israeli choose to visit his capital on Saturdays when ultra-Orthodox pressure has succeeded in virtually closing it down (it is well-nigh impossible to even grab a cup of coffee in most areas of the city)?

Chassidic sects are also, on the whole, extremely exclusive – with the notable exception of Chabad Lubavitch (one of the main reasons that it is viewed so suspiciously by the others) – with frequent outbreaks of violence between them (the most recent just a month ago). While the rest of us may joke about our tendency to factionalism – “splitters!” – most also cherish our common brotherhood. Seemingly not so, however, charedim. A chassid of the Gerrer sect (considered amongst the more moderate), living in Tel Aviv, informed me that he considers secular Israelis “goyim”. And after helping constitute his struggling minyan during the year of kaddish for my father, even dragging in reluctant “goyim” from the street, I was only once invited to any of their homes . . . and then only on the morning of Pesach for that evening’s seder (sure enough, though, at the end of the 12 months, I was asked for a donation!)

I exclude the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox from much of the above, though their Shas party is a toxic mix of religion, political patronage and social welfare, currently led by a small-minded twerp, formerly by corrupt demagogues like Shlomo Benizri (in jail) and Aryeh Deri (out of jail), all backed by a loose-tongued, rabble-rousing lunatic posing as a spiritual leader (should be in jail). Hamas without the virgins, if you ask me.

If charedim wish to live in the past, rather than in a modern, democratic Jewish state, I suggest that we ship them – or, at the very least, those amongst them who refuse to abide by the law of the land (and I would make all of them pay taxes and serve in the IDF) – back to eastern Europe. Let them see how their shenanigans are tolerated there.

One thing is for sure, though: we would be better off without them.

Happy (Goyishe) New Year!

[For original blog, with links and photos, go to http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/ ]

Big Boys, Little Boys and Ladyboys

Melchett Mike — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:00:55 +0000

Friday, October 28, 2011. The departure lounge of AeroSvit flight VV238 to Kiev. The atmosphere couldn’t be more different from that of an El Al flight. Rather, there is no atmosphere. It could be pre-Gorby Russia. Pasty-faced Slavs, the odd one with a hint of Semite, kitted out in Allenby’s finest: poor, nondescript t-shirts and denim, and more fake leopard skin and cheap leather than an ’80s Romford hen night.

It is all my own fault and I know it, having opted to save $400 by flying this dodgy Ukrainian airline to Bangkok – for my annual Norwood charity bike ride – via Kiev, rather than direct with El Al. And I have been dreading this moment from the second I finished reading out my Isracard number to my travel agent, Sasi. I even went through a spell of seeking reassurance from the Ukrainian immigrants in our office mailroom: Surely there was no reason to be concerned? AeroSvit is, after all, an international airline? “Hishtagata (have you gone mad)?!” was not, however, the response I had been counting on.

Oddly, though, the thought most distracting me now is not of my decapitated torso lying on any one of the three runways, but how, if one of the planes does go down, my poor mother will be able to grieve with my fellow torsi’s Russian-only-speaking relatives. Having all those North-West London Jews, none more than one or two degrees of separation away, on London-Tel Aviv flights was always a huge source of comfort as I pondered the horrible.

To take my mind off such macabre thoughts, and to give me something to look forward to on my return to the Zionist entity, I look out for my new Sveta. Though, to be truthful, none of the gold gnashers on display really do it for me.

“Inflate se jacket by blowing in se tube. Sank you.”

I recite the Shema. And, for once, with real kavana (intent). To my great relief, however, the three hour flight – like the following three – passes without alarm. Indeed, the complete absence of charedim, together with the only few dozen Israelis, make AeroSvit a considerably less vexing alternative to El Al.

On arrival a full day later (but one before the group from London) at the Imperial Mae Ping Hotel, Chiang Mai, I spend Shabbos morning – there being no shul in the vicinity – in silent contemplation of what I would like to do with either, though preferably both, of the stunning Thai totties adorning the hotel pool. They turn out to be ‘guests’ of some tattooed young Americans who look like they have been given an all-expenses-paid break from I-raq. I am surprised that the girls can still walk.

And taking a stroll with a fellow Norwooder up a bar-lined street the following evening, and ignoring the continual entreaties of “Massaaage?”, I suddenly announce to Martin that “I have to talk to that one.” Of course I won’t actually do anything – hypochondria, not moral fibre, you understand – but we mere mortals can’t just pass up the opportunity to get so close to a near “ten”. And the apparition turns out to be honest and drop dead gorgeous in equal measure: “You know I a ladyboy . . .” I scuttle off back to Martin, my tail between my legs . . . or, at least, on its way back down there.

In spite of its most appealing purveyors, I am not tempted by the instant gratification on offer in Thailand. While I wouldn’t disagree with Boris Grushenko that “as empty experiences go, [sex without love] is one of the best,” rumpy-pumpy without even the hint of a chase really doesn’t do it for me (and the all-too-common sight of sixty- and seventy-something westerners – British especially – ‘enjoying’ silent meals with girls young enough to be their granddaughters is a study in mutual degradation).

Many Jewish males, however, do appear to have a real fascination with the prostitute. So it was, during my student days, that Orthodox boys from north Manchester would spend the early hours of Saturday nights/Sunday mornings driving around Chorlton Street Bus Station – which they renamed “Rechov Bonoys” (girlie street) – observing and conversing with them. And many more actually utilise their services. There was even a black kippa’d (velvet, noch) ex-Hasmo who, while still frequenting the corridors and classrooms of Holders Hill Road, was said to have repeatedly indulged a penchant for S&M with an Asian “zoynoh”.

None of this should really raise eyebrows, in view of the Israel Diamond Exchange, Ramat Gan – and similar “Rochvei Bonoys” in Israel and abroad – teeming with charedi (ultra-Orthodox) males six nights a week. The practice is muter (permitted), I understand, on the basis that the relief provided assists the dirty bastards in observing the laws of family purity.

But it is not only Orthodox Jews who enjoy such activities, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, and ex-football managers David Pleat and Avram Grant – he of the “It’s his body, he can f*ck as many hookers as he likes” missus – were merely unfortunate, high-profile brethren who were caught. And perhaps there is even a certain logic to this seeming affinity:
- prostitution is a profession (the “oldest one” even);
- its practitioners display a certain entrepreneurial spirit in operating a cash business;
- relations with them come with a large dose of guilt (we all need a bit of that); and
- perhaps most critically of all, Jewish females (of the Ashkenazi variety, at least) are said (I wouldn’t know) not to believe in sex after marriage.

My main vices are chocolate and croissants rather than a predilection for such ladies: I didn’t so much as have a massage – “happy ending” or otherwise – on the recent trip, though I swear it had nothing to do with the Thai experience of two Jewish friends from Liverpool, who were greeted some years ago, on removing their boxers, with: “You big boy. You little boy.” Little Boy never lived it down.

And I, of course, bear no culpability for the regrettable occasion on which I found myself in a midtown Manhattan ‘massage parlour’ after being duped by a friend – whom I first met at Ohr Somayach (yeshiva) of all places – who informed me merely that he was treating me to his favourite Korean masseuse. (Interestingly, the same friend relates how Tel Aviv’s knocking shops were once – just before the ’90s Russian aliyah, following his less than successful stint at Ohr Somayach – staffed by teenage Israeli chayalot [soldiers] requiring assistance with their rents.)

The bike ride, oh yes . . . it was great! And listening to Michael, a beneficiary of Norwood’s services, relate how the charity has changed his life hardly left a dry eye at the closing Friday night dinner. (Thank you, once again, to all those of you who supported my participation.)

Following a few days’ recuperation for my aching thigh muscles back in Chiang Mai, I spend the last evening – though, regrettably, not night – in the company of Giulia, 31, from Sicily, whom I meet at the Loi Krathong (Festival of Light) street parade.

“Iza dizguzting,” Giulia opines about Thailand’s sex tourism industry. I nod in vigorous, though somewhat disingenuous, agreement, when all I have been thinking about since meeting her is biting on those meaty Sicilian lips. At dinner, however, the conversation inevitably comes round to the Middle East . . .

“Whya donta youa givea dema backa deira land?”

While every syllable of Giulia’s thickly accented, though excellent, enormously sexy English should cause me to care less and less about the Arab-Israeli conflict, I finally reach for the serviette dispenser and draw a rather impressive sketch of the region, providing her with a ten-minute potted history since 1917. Odd, I consider, that I feel compelled to defend Israel to Giulia now, when I have recoiled whenever hearing Hebrew over the past fortnight (invariably in local markets, from “monkeys” dragging around huge suitcases and arguing over grushim [pennies]).

My prayer to be seated between a pair of Ukrainian lovelies on the return AeroSvit flight from Bangkok goes unanswered, and I instead find myself across the aisle from three Israeli frechot of the most ghastly variety.

“What?!” one of them barks at the perfectly polite Ukrainian stewardess, on being informed that she will have to put her backpack in the overhead locker. “I don’t want to.”

“If there is a pogrom now,” I resolve to myself, “I am Ukrainian.” And Giulia, and those lovely totties by the pool, are a distant dream.

http://melchettmike.wordpress.com/