Dear Izzy,

Recently I discovered that a forgery of my passport was used in a mission to assassinate some terrorist in Dubai.  And now I don’t think I can go on a holiday to Dubai to check out that indoor ski centre – yes, I know it must use up obscene amounts of energy, but the novelty aspect of snow-skiing where the outside temperate is 45 degrees C is just too compelling to resist. But now, I feel all this has been taken away from me, my whole identity has been stolen, and as I write this you should know that I am in tears, bawling my eyes out. Oh Izzy, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do…
Faithfully yours,

Johnny Fontane (named changed by editors to protect privacy).

So Johnny,

You want to know what you can do.  To quote a well known Italian gentleman I am acquainted with: YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN!  What’s the matter with you? Is this what you’ve become, a Hollywood finocchio who cries like a woman? “Oh, what do I do? What do I do?” What is that nonsense? Ridiculous!

But I don’t want to pick on you Johnny.  All you passport holders – Stop your whining!  These field agents put their lives on the line to take out an arch terrorist who would still be plotting to kill innocent civilians today, and you’re worried that now you can’t go on a shopping spree to that farshtunkeneh Dubai.

At least not all of you passport holders are whining.  Yasher Koach to you sir, Philip Carr, and everyone else displaying your seychel.

And while I’m on the topic of needless kvetching…

Governments, stop your whining! A mass murderer has been assassinated – nothing to cry about here. Even Mr Goldstone is in favour of assassinating terrorists.  To quote Ms Livni: “What was disproportionate this time? Was there a disproportionate use of passports?”

Incidentally, Ms Livni is a shayneh maydel, but I understand that there is at least one shmendrik out there who doesn’t know this.

And particularly you, Mr Rudd, one day you are announcing the most extensive counter-terrorism policy in Australia’s history, and then a few days later you have your Mr Smith getting precious about a few forged passports. Fair chapp of the chreyn jar! Imagine for a moment that a few forged passports could have prevented the Bali bombing. What do you have to say then Mr Rudd and Mr Smith? You should both be ashamed of yourselves.

And finally, you mavens in the Media – where’s your critical thinking? Maybe you shouldn’t take everything Dubai police have to say at face value – the list of suspects is now up to 26.  It only takes 11 football players to win a World Cup final, yet it apparently takes 26 agents to travel to Dubai to assassinate one terrorist?  I doubt it!  And maybe you should be asking the Dubai police this: what nationality passport was Mr al-Mabuh travelling on?  Why were you allowing this man to go about his business in your farshtunkeneh city?

OK readers, I am getting a little bit too worked up here.  I better take a lie down.  Discuss amongst yourselves!
________

All questions to Izzy should be emailed to Izzy AT GalusAustralis.com

Some nice young gentlemen from Hamas' diplomatic corp. Source: shawarmamayor.blogspot.com

By David Werdiger

A Hamas army report on its conduct in Gaza last year has revealed that two officers were ‘disciplined’ for insufficiently endangering human life when they authorized three hundred civilians to be moved to a UN school that was being used to fire rockets.

Hamas division commander Mohammed el-Hafiz, known as Abu Gosh, and brigade commander Bilal Diya-al-Din, known as Abu Falih, were summarily executed for exceeding their authority in approving the use of human shields in a dense residential area that had already been seconded by resistance fighters.

The details of the disciplinary action were in a Hamas report handed to the UN at the weekend in response to last year’s report by Justice Richard Goldstone, on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, alleging that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, during Operation Cast Lead.

The incident in question occurred on January 15 last year in Tel al-Hawa, a heavily built-up residential neighbourhood of Gaza City.

During the battle, there were fears that the Hamas rocket launch facility built underneath a popular school would be harmed and, as a result, three hundred civilians, including fifty UN aid workers, were moved there and ordered to stand outside on both the ground floor and first floor, in clear view of Israeli forces who were attempting to storm the launch facility. Hamas forces then started a fire in the adjoining food warehouse of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the organisation responsible for distributing food to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, and fanned the smoke from the blaze toward the school, so as to make it more difficult for Israeli forces to see the civilians.

A UN employee and two Palestinian civilians were injured during the subsequent attack by Israeli forces.

Gaza military officials explained at the time that the fire was intended to create a smokescreen so as to trigger a huge civilian massacre when Israel struck the rocket launching facility. But a subsequent Gaza inquiry showed that Abu Gosh and Abu Falih acted against the rules of engagement, which forbid the forcible movement of civilians into the line of Israeli fire unless their martyrdom was considered “near certain”. They were executed by public hanging for their unsuccessful attempt to contrive a massacre.

International human rights organisations led by the US-based Human Rights Watch accused Hamas at the time of ineffectively using human shields, which it said had caused burn injuries to hundreds of Palestinian civilians, rather than their intended death and martyrdom.

Hamas has steadfastly denied that its human shield policy, used in heavily populated areas, was ineffective.

There are now 28 criminal investigations open in Hamas. Its judge advocate general is yet to decide whether to exile suspects to Egypt, make do with summary lynching, or close the cases.

Meanwhile, Hamas media reported last night that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had told ministers at a regular cabinet meeting on Sunday that he had decided to establish an independent investigation into the war crimes allegations.

“I don’t want officers and soldiers to get into a situation where they have to retain an attorney,” Mr Haniyeh reportedly said. “Our system of justice is very effective and there is no need for it to be bogged down by due process”.

With thanks to The Age.

For those who haven’t realized it yet, this article is pure satire and parody. It is based on the report in The Age of the Israeli response to war crimes allegations. It highlights how absurd we would consider the notion of a formal Hamas response to their own atrocities.

This article by David Werdiger was originally published here.

It was Wednesday night in Palolem, the sixth night of Chanukah. My new roommate Daniel and I went to the Beyt Yehudi for the candle lighting. After staying for a little while to enjoy the singing and jam session, Daniel prompted us to leave.
“Leave? Why? I think they’re about to serve a meal.”
“But we want to go to this restaurant where you can order steak.”
There are not that many places in India where you can get beef, given the Hindu reverence for the cow. However, the state of Goa, being an ex-Portuguese colony, is largely Christian, and thus beef is often available at restaurants.
“I don’t eat steak– I’m a pescetarian, remember?”
“Come on, we will have steak, and you can order fish.”
I didn’t know who “we” was at this stage. To my surprise, and in what seemed like another recurring coincidence, Daniel had somehow become friends with the couple who Marios and I had seen on the train on the way to Goa, and then had also sat at a table with in the pub the night before.

Just before leaving for the restaurant, Daniel said quietly to me that he had forgotten their names, and wanted me to ask them. I in turn told him that I had also met them before, and having also forgotten their names, I didn’t feel comfortable asking them. When we got to the restaurant, I suggested, without providing much of a reason, that we all exchange email addresses. That allowed us to rediscover their names. Shauli and Shoham. They had been in India at least six months already, mostly in the North. Shoham spoke English with a slight London accent, rather than a regular Israeli accent. I asked her about this, and she explained that she had spent a few years there as a child. Shauli was moderately tall, and was quite thin, a typical characteristic of a guy who has been travelling in India for a while. He also had a thick (but not long) beard, another characteristic fitting that profile. Later on, Shauli would show us a picture of himself not long before he left Israel. He was unrecognisable. His pre-India appearance was clean-shaven, reasonably solid build, and a buzz cut on top. In Israel he had been a combat pilot in the air force, flying F-16s. Now, far removed from that, he looked like a total hippy, carrying around his flute, which he played intermittently.

Daniel, Shauli, and Shoham all had good spoken English, and when in my company, they more often than not conversed in English for my benefit, although I never requested them too. In fact, I didn’t mind when they spoke in Hebrew, as it was good practice for me, and when possible, I would make an effort to use Hebrew too. Otherwise, I was quite good at speaking English with people who speak it as a second language.

At one stage, Shauli and Shoham were discussing in Hebrew something about the beauty of the Chanukah Menorah lighting ceremony as done by the Breslover shaliach at the Beyt Yehudi. I made some unmemorable comment, and then Shauli said something surprising to me, in English..

“But you know, in a way, I don’t like Chanukah that much” he opined.
“You don’t like Chanukah? What’s not too like? There’s no fasting, the food is delicious, mmmm latkes, sufganiot, and there’s no prohibitions against anything…”
“Yes, but it is about the Maccabees…I don’t like the Maccabees.”
“Oh, I think I know where you are going with this. I’ve thought about this before, although I don’t think I’ve ever discussed it with anyone. I can see how, from a certain point of view, not mine by the way, but some people who are some kind of post-modern revisionists might twist it this way…they might frame the Maccabees as the Al Qaeda of their time. You see the Greeks, they were occupiers, but they weren’t occupiers like the Romans were. The Romans occupied through brute force – they weren’t interested in the cultures of the lands they occupied. However, the Greeks were very interested in Judaism, from an academic point of view, not a religious one. But at the same time, they were trying to get the Jewish people to fuse their own culture with Greek culture. Thus the Greek occupation was as much intellectual and cultural as it was physical. And this was not always forced, but many Jews at the time embraced the Greek culture, which they saw as more modern and liberated – Greek culture and thinking was the most ‘modern’ of its time. The Maccabees took a stand against this cultural fusion or assimilation, “Ah, they were sort of anti-globalisation?”
Shauli commented
“Yes, in a way, they could have been seen as an early version of it” I continued, “And they didn’t just fight the Greeks, but also other Jews they saw as cultural collaborators….And while I don’t believe they were terrorists, I can imagine some revisionist moral relativists framing it that way.”
“That’s very interesting, but this isn’t why I don’t like the Maccabees” Shauli stated.
“Then what is it you don’t like?”
“In Israel, I support Hapoel. I hate Maccabi. They are our rivals” he laughed. In Israel, the most dominant sporting association is Maccabi, which is named after the Maccabees. Hapoel (which translates as ‘the worker’) is the next most dominanat. Both organization have professional teams in various sports in a number of cities throughout Israel.
“Do you support Hapoel in football or basketball?”
“Both…. You name it, if they are playing it, I support it. In any sport, I support Hapoel, and hate Maccabi”
“Ok, that’s the strangest reason I’ve ever heard for not liking something.”
“Yes, I know,” conceded Shauli, who was smiling broadly.

It seems not all missionaries are living life as dramatically as the Jesuit protagonists in the 1986 film, The Mission.

The following letter was dropped into the letter box of one our readers living on Hotham St, Balaclava.  The letter was printed on plain paper in Times New Roman, single line spacing, and without any spaces between paragraphs (to the extent that there were paragraphs).  Apart from the spacing, we have reproduced the letter below verbatim (spelling mistakes etc included).  We found the letter amusing, and since the author asks for the letter to be passed on to anyone Jewish, we thought we’d help out.  Enjoy and discuss.

Dear Jewish people your god Yahweh has instructed me a non Jew and not even a Church goer to tell you to assess your writings, for your massier has already been. And I must say, my name is Steve, that with no one in the world crucifying people any more, not even in Jerusalem, which I thought they might to at least give there prophases a chance of coming true, that you have missed the boat on this call. Anyway I was instructed in a dream to tell the Jewish people this two years ago but I did not know why, I am not Jewish, not that I know of anyway, so have found myself dodging writing this, but it keeps coming to me so I thought I better get it over and done with and tell the Jewish people and then leave it in there hands.

I believe your people must be Gods favourite people if God is this persistent.

It looks to me like Jesus must have been your saviour, I can’t think of anyone else in history but I could be wrong, but that is up to you to work out, if he was your massier you will have to work out how to worship him in your own manner, you must have something in mind you’ve had a couple of thousand years to think about it and you have been waiting, I hope your people have something good up there sleave. I think in the old days some of your people were not ready for change, and I wonder if someone turned up today as the chosen massier would things still not change, as some people that control things and have power would not want things to change just like the old days. Anyway you’re the chosen People and if you’re reading this and you’re Jewish I have done my job. So spread the word and ask a phew questions of your beliefs and fce answers will lead you to your promised land and the truth, maybe Yahweh will give you the answers in a dream if you just ask.

Good luck and may Yahweh keep loving you Steve.

Pass this manuscript onto anyone that is Jewish please.

Amir Khan and Dmitry Salita in an old-fashioned stare down. They will fight on Dec 5.

By Anthony Frosh

Last week, a rabbinical student named Yuri Foreman became a world boxing champion.

Jewish boxing champions are nothing new.  Daniel Mendoza, often known as the father of scientific boxing, and English champion in the late 18^th century, was a Sephardic Jew.

In fact, in the first half of the 20^th century, the American boxing scene was littered with fighters of Jewish heritage. Max Baer and Barney Ross were arguably the most famous of these. Baer was a bona fide world heavy weight champion in 1930s, who wore trunks with an embroidered Magen David.  Ross (born Dov-Ber Rasofsky) was also a bona fide world champion in the 1930s in the lightweight welter-weight divisions.  Ross was born into a religious family, apparently grew up with the ambition of becoming a Talmudic scholar and teacher.  However, the murder of his father in an armed robbery saw him turn his back on Orthodox religious life, and instead he became a man of the streets, rather than a man of the books.

Even in Australia, there have been some Jewish boxers of some note, such as David Oved and Henry Nissen.

However, until relatively recently, there have not been any professional boxers to my knowledge who could be described as frum, or devoted to their religion, at least not during their boxing careers.

Born in Belarus, raised in Israel, and currently residing in the USA, Yuri Foreman has become only the second Israeli ever to win a world boxing title.  The only previous Israeli world boxing champion, Johar Abu Lashin, won his title in a lesser rated boxing association. While Abu Lashin’s achievement should not be minimized, it is fair to say that Foreman’s title is a greater achievement, having been won through the top-flight World Boxing Association (WBA).

Dmitry Salita is another Baal Teshuva fighter born in a former USSR country.  From Odessa in the Ukraine, Salita became frum after moving to Brooklyn.  Entering the ring with Yiddish rap song playing, he apparently attracts a large following of Chabadniks who come along to watch his fights, chanting “Dima, Dima…”  In what will inevitably be described as a promoter’s dream, the undefeated junior-welterweight will next fight Amir Khan (British Muslim) for the world title.  At the press conference to announce this fight, Salita wore standard Charedi garb of black suit, white shirt and a black yarmulke.

Uriel Ben-Hamo has been Charedi his whole life, which in some ways makes his story more remarkable than either Foreman’s or Salita’s, even though his achievements as a fighter have not been as notable on a world stage.  Ben-Hamo, a reigning Israeli kick boxing champion, was born into a Charedi family in Israel, and still attends Jerusalem’s Magid Mesharim Yeshiva on a daily basis.  Ben-Hamo is studying to be a sofer stam (scribe),  but at the same time has aspirations toward winning a world-title.

I would conclude the article here, but possibly someone is out there thinking: “How can you write a story about religious Jews who are professional fighters without mentioning the great Zab Judah?”  Judah (as is  was once described as “the greatest Jewish boxer of all time.”   Judah is from a Black Hebrew Israelite family.  However, Judah (at least as of 2006) has apparently moved away from the faith of his father, and instead moved closer to Yehoshua.  Yes, while our Zabdiel could duck and weave with best of them, it appears he perhaps could not stand up to the quiet onslaught from the Jews for Jesus crowd.

Dear Izzy,

From time to time, I find myself invited to simchas in which I am not well acquainted with the hosts.  For example, in one case we were invited to a wedding where the connection was that my wife goes to book club with the bride.  I for one had never even met the bride, let alone the groom.  When at simchas like this, I find it hard to get involved in the dancing (hora).  I feel like I’m a wedding-crasher.  As a coping strategy, I’ll either stand on the outskirts of the dance-floor and clap along to the music, doing my best to keep to the beat – or if I am a little more brave, I’ll join the outer-most circle of the dancing.  Given how unacquainted I am with the central figures of the simcha, I feel too uncomfortable to join the more inner circles.

However, I have witnessed that there are some types of guys that have no problem with throwing themselves into the thick of the dancing, even though they are also completely unacquainted with the groom etc. A small part of me looks down at these people, who are perhaps unable to ascertain their place as a mere bit-player at the function.  Mostly though, I envy these uninhibited free spirits, who dive headlong in to join a spinning huddle made up of only themselves and the immediate family members of the groom, none of whom they have ever met before.

Do you have any advice on how I should approach these trying situations?

Philip, 29.

Rose Bay, NSW.

Izzy, in his ballroom dancing champion days

Philip, your problem is that you’re focussing on the wrong part of the simcha.  For me, as much as I enjoy the hora, I enjoy the mixed dancing even more.  I like to go and have a dance with all the young bridesmaids.  When I was your age, I was something of a ballroom dancing champion.  As I get older, I can’t dance the hora as frenetically as I used to – but I can still swing the young ladies around and show them a thing or two about the rumba or the tango.

Ok, but to answer your question (I don’t want to get in trouble again with the editors for not answering the question): I make my decision on whether or not to jump into the hora based on what kind of table I am assigned to.  If I get a good table … something close to the dance floor and the head table, I take my place at the heart of the hora.  However, if I get a rubbish table … you know, near the kitchen, miles from the head table, then forget about it!  If they don’t want me, I don’t want them!

Dear Tante Bayla,

A couple of weeks ago, my beloved and I decided to visit the Dali exhibition at the NGV for the Art After Dark session. When we arrived we were dismayed to find that the queue to buy tickets was at least an hour long, taking up the entire atrium. If we actually got in, we’d have hardly any time to see the exhibition before it closed for the day. As we were debating whether or not to stay, I spied my old high school art teacher — let’s call her Mrs Chagall — out of the corner of my eye. She waved us over to her spot at the front of the queue, and told us that her sciatica was playing up and she was going to go home, but we were welcome to take her spot in the line.

Before I could even begin to formulate a response my beloved jumped the rope and voila, we were at the front of the queue. We had our tickets within ten minutes and ample time to peruse the exhibition. But I feel guilty that we pushed ahead of all the other people patiently waiting. Was it right of us to accept Mrs Chagall’s offer? Shouldn’t we have bided our time in the queue like everyone else? (Beloved said no! carpe di queue, etc.)

What should we have done?

Guilty Art Lover, Bentleigh, VIC

Dear GAL,

This is a tough one. On the one hand, had you waited in the queue with everyone else, you could have missed out on seeing the exhibition entirely. And technically, you didn’t make the queue any longer for the people behind you – you were simply replacing Mrs Chagall. On the other hand, what you did was morally dubious. You jumped the queue. You took what wasn’t yours! In the school tuckshop line, this sort of exchange is called a “Chinese swap” (nu, primary school kids aren’t known for their political correctness) and is seriously frowned upon as the ultimate manifestation corruption and dishonesty. In thirty-six degree heat, you just gotta wait your turn for your Sunnyboy like everyone else.

But primary school morality is perhaps not the best arbiter of right and wrong. So let us turn to the Good Book, where there’s plenty of queue-jumping and dubious decision-making to reflect upon!

Case in point:

Jacob convinces Esau to hand over his birthright as firstborn in exchange for THE BEST CHULENT OF ALL TIME. Aided by his mother, Rebecca, Jacob then dons a hairy disguise and steals some blessings from Isaac intended for Esau, thus starting the biggest rivalry EVA and altering the course of Jewish history for all eternity. Jacob is also considered to be the granddaddy of the Jewish nation. (Sucks to be Esau.) So it would appear that you can indulge in your queue-jumping sans guilt, safe in the knowledge that you are emulating our righteous (cough, cough) forefathers.

BUT. Jacob gets his comeuppance. He’s conned by Leah and Laban, the BEST QUEUE JUMPERS OF ALL TIME. They make you and your Beloved and look positively saintly. Leah marries Jacob ahead of Rachel, and Jacob is forced to toil another seven years for Laban until he finally gets to marry his true love. (Happy sigh.) But ultimately Rachel and Leah have a very dysfunctional, unhappy relationship, with Leah constantly flaunting her fertility and never able to reconcile herself to the fact that Rachel is Jacob’s true love. (Echoes of The Bold and the Beautiful here.) Then poor Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin. And then there’s the whole saga with Joseph and Benjamin and the other brothers kidnapping Joseph and then pretending he’s been killed, etc. (Echoes of Dr Phil, anyone?)

So, in conclusion – queue jumping is bad. It has led, respectively, to:

1. The Arab-Israeli conflict;
2. Slavery of Jews in Egypt; (and by extension, the invention of matzah… *shudder*)
3. All subsequent Jewish suffering and persecution;
4. Bad soap opera plots (see B&B reference above);
5. Bad self-help reality TV (refer to Dr Phil).

So unless you want to initiate a world war, accidentally marry your Beloved’s sister, or end up on daytime television, I would advise that queue jumping of any sort is best left well alone.

As penance, say eighteen Hail Marys and tune in to Galus’ liveblog coverage of John Safran’s new TV show tomorrow night. (There will be no queues.)

Love,

Tante Bayla

Of course, some people are members of both the Jewish community and the Indian community. Source: Forward.com

By Anthony Frosh

Many months ago, perhaps last summer, I was walking down an East St Kilda street with RachSD, and in front of us were two young men who appeared to be from the Indian subcontinent. They were having a conversation on which I was desperately trying to eavesdrop.

“So, where did they live before that?”

“They were basically like us; they just lived in communities around the world.”

Unfortunately, I can’t provide you with any more verbatim quotes.   Firstly, it was long time ago, and memory fades.  Also, it was hard to hear them.  They spoke quietly, there was traffic noise, and most damagingly, RachSD unfortunately did not pick up that I was attempting to eavesdrop on the people walking in front of us (whose fascinating conversation she was oblivious to), and thus she kept trying to engage me in whatever it was she was talking about.

These young men seemed to be talking about the peculiar Jewish people with whom they now found themselves sharing a neighbourhood. From the bits and pieces I heard, there were at least a few inaccuracies in their understanding of who these Jewish people were, and where they came from.  Part of me wanted to interrupt these young men and say, “Hey, I’m a Jew, allow me to be of assistance with your questions.”

If truth be known, I did do something like this once.  Nearly a decade ago in a library in Ichinomiya, Japan (a town of over 300,000, where most likely I was the only Jewish resident), I saw an old Japanese man with a large stack of books on the desk in front of him, all the books about Jews. “Sumimasen…” I interrupted him. Unfortunately, due to the linguistic barrier, and perhaps the old man’s shyness, I was not able to be of much assistance with whatever it was he was researching.  From my limited Japanese, he seemed more interested in asking if I was married… perhaps he had a shidduch in mind.  Anyway, back to the topic…

The Indian community in Australia has been growing steadily for some time now.  If one walks down Carlisle St in Balaclava, it is fairly evident that after Jews, the next largest ethnic minority in the neighbourhood are Indians.  Our community leaders need to be reaching out to the leaders of the Indian community, in order to establish what ought to be a natural alliance.  We have plenty to offer them, and they have plenty to offer us in return.

Firstly, there’s the CSG.  Anyone who takes the slightest interest in the news would be aware that the Indian community has recently experienced violent, racist, unprovoked attacks.  Our own CSG could liaise with suitable people from the Indian community, train them, and help them to establish their own CSG.

Secondly, there’s the restaurant business.  It’s no secret that kosher restaurants have a longevity problem.  Meanwhile, Indian restaurants are proliferating everywhere, and even those whose kashrut observance prevents them from setting foot in these establishments would have to admit that they smell great from the outside.  Yet, as successful as these Indian restaurants appear to be, the proprietors are not without their own problems.

As most people would know, Hindus are forbidden from eating beef.  But if you peruse the menus of a random assortment of Indian restaurants, you will find that most of them have beef on their menu.  “How can this be?” you might ask.  Well, as one Indian restaurateur explained it to me: when he initially opened his restaurant in Prahran, he did not offer beef.  However, he found he could not attract  the Aussie consumer without having beef on his menu.  “They kept asking, ‘where’s the beef?’”  And thus with much conflict in his heart, he introduced beef to his restaurant’s menu, believing he would be financially ruined if he did not. According to this restaurateur — who for obvious reasons did not want to be named — he would cause enormous shame and disgrace to his family back home if they found out about the beef.

The answer, of course, is the kosher beefless Indian restaurant.  Indian restaurateurs agree to make delicious kosher Indian food for the Jewish community, and we agree to eat it without pressuring them to offer us the sacred cow.

I could go on about other synergies, but let’s hear what the readers have to say!

This article has now also been published at AussieIndoLanka

Exhibit A

By Anthony Frosh

It’s an unfortunate happenstance that the Jewish High Holidays frequently coincide with the AFL finals. I am ‘fortunate’ enough this year to be supporting a team that failed to qualify for the finals, and thus am not faced with the temptation to compromise my observance of the yomtovim with the thrills of observing a blockbuster football game.

But even with my team (the West Coast Eagles) finishing at the wrong end of the ladder, as I arrive in shul and open my machzor to see the Birchat Ha-Shachar (lit: Blessings of the Dawn) section, which my Birnbaum Machzor uninspiringly translates as Preliminary Morning Service, I can’t help but wonder “Who won last night’s preliminary final?”

Exhibit B

Invariably, I will only need to scan the other congregants to find my answer. Without fail, someone who supports the victorious team will be there, silently gloating, adorned with a scarf (or worse, a kippah) with their team’s colours and emblem. This Rosh Hashonah has been particularly bad. With the success of St Kilda, I’ve seen several men wearing kippot with a most inappropriate emblem. For those unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, the St Kilda emblem is essentially a shield that features a big cross on it (see Exhibit A).

That’s right, a kippah with a big cross on it is now what passes for Jewish head covering. Even worse, the style of this shield is heavily reminiscent of the Crusaders’ shields. To quote Bob Marley, “If you know your history, Then you would know where you’re coming from.” Time does not permit a history lesson here, but suffice to say, the Crusades (to quote Wikipedia) “became a part of the history of anti-Semitism.”

Now I’m sure there’s many Jewish St Kilda Football Club supporters reading this now (some of them adorned with crosses) and saying to themselves, “He’s just bitter because his team didn’t make the finals.” Now, I’d be lying if I said that bitterness wasn’t the primary motivation behind this article. However, as a secondary concern, I would like to help Jewish St Kilda FC supporters to find a more appropriate symbol to adorn their regalia.

We all know that St Kilda FC’s moniker is the Saints; the closest Jewish equivalent to saints are tsadikim (righteous ones). From now on, Jewish St Kilda supporters could call themselves the St Kilda Tsadikim. They could remove the crusader’s cross from their emblem, and replace it with the letter tsadik (see Exhibit B).

So there it is, I’ve found a way for Jewish St Kilda supporters to support their club at shule in a less offensive and heretical manner. Now please, if you are going to write in and tell me that I shouldn’t be wearing West Coast paraphernalia because the eagle isn’t a kosher bird, you would do well to save your keystrokes. I don’t subscribe to that.