If You Tickle Us...

Should I stay or should I go now? Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble An if I stay it will be double So come on and let me know This is a comment left on the previous post. Any suggestions? Ok fellow DC members. It's Friday morning, a time to make decisions about this shabbos, and about the future. I think it is fair to say that GG is a different place this shabbos than it was last shabbos. The dramatic developments have been a game changer. Last shabbos everyone was gung-ho. We were confidently stating that the whole thing would blow over somehow. This shabbos RCH is critically wounded, possibly fatally. His brother MH has become an object of public ridicule like never before. REH either has or has not resigned from various public posts, but is certainly on the warpath in favour of his family, a position that has minority support in the kehilla at large, if any. Our shul is in complete disarray. Kedassia in GG is at its lowest ever ebb possibly sin

“Heads can only be checked by a trained expert”

So the day has arrived, the game's afoot and kick off just hours away. The vuvuzela shofers will sound, the home team will cheer the players bought from overseas by cheque book scribblers and not a few brown-bags if not brown-nosed bungs. The fans will wrap themselves in the team colours of black and white, many own goals will be scored, the captain is guaranteed to be ruled offside and if I'm not careful I'll shortly be running out of metaphors. But what do they hope to achieve and how do we measure their success? If a sell-out crowd is what they're after they have secured it by shrinking the stadium and summoning the kids which are never in short supply round here. We do have them for a reason, after all. If logging off or filters is their aim it may cause a temporary upward blip and then life will settle back to its normal course just as it did in the USA. The organisers will want to see how widely the event is covered on websites which their filters would otherwis

Another day another poster. The anti-internet rally organisers have been pasting our walls for the last fortnight with the palette of colours technology places at their disposal while the opposition uses nothing more than an old fashioned word processor and so must do with black and white. The message however is clear: Leave the kids at home - this is not where they belong. If you want the kids to see their gedoilim take them to a shul not a stadium. The organisers have spent a fortune to shrink the stadium so that banks of empty seats are not flashed round the world by tweeters at the anti-tweeting rally. All they need the kids for is as a stop gap and so at worst they might have to readjust slightly the partition. Moving the goalposts is what they call it at Leyton Orient.

Hurrah for common sense! Finally someone is prepared to say what many are thinking and saying in shuls and mikves up and down the square mile that the event is an ego trip of our dear Rov and Rosh Hakohol and the expense, the invitees, the leaflets and the venue are simply to show that we can do everything that NY can. Except of course that NY has an eiruv . It may be for the wrong reasons but how refreshing to see a contrarian view in these mad times. Reb Elyokum may also be concerned only with children, teens and koilel yungeleit rather than the event as a whole but then one must be mad to want to bring kids along in the first place. Incidentally, the Schlesingers are also the ones who won’t hold their events in YHS which suggests they know a lot more than we do. Reb Elyokum: we’re all Briskers for a day!