The Queen Mum. Nothing to do with me.

Here’s a thing I wrote for the Jewish Quarterly.

I am superstitious. Medieval-peasant superstitious. Large-gossipy-18^th-century-shtetl-fishwife superstitious. I’ll always refer to “the Scottish play” rather than, you know… the one that rhymes with MacDeath, even if it makes me sound like some old Victorian ham (if I can use that term in a piece for a Jewish magazine). I even hesitated about writing… the word that rhymes with MacDeath, as I’m not sure what the rules are. Is it still bad luck to write it? Maybe it’s OK to write “M-cbeth”, like orthodox Jews write G-d. Yes, that didn’t seem too bad. No damage done.

In all other areas of my life I’m a real rationalist, I’m practically Dawkinsian. But when it comes to matters of what brings good or bad luck, I’m a half-naked Amazon tribesman with war-paint and a spear. Who refuses to walk under ladders.

Of course I know that superstitions are clearly nonsense. Some people say it’s lucky if a bird poos on you. I say those people are probably dry cleaners. That’s nothing to do with luck, they’re just trying to make you feel better. The French have a similar thing about front teeth with a gap in them. They call them “les dents de bonheur” – “happiness teeth”, teeth that bring you luck. But as someone who has a gap between his teeth wide enough for an Italian cruise ship captain to sail his ship through without causing any damage, I think a better name would be “les dents de whatever the French is for Don’t Patronise Me”.

However these are things that bring you good luck. When it comes to things that bring you bad luck, I tend to believe every rumour I’ve even half-heard. I was once told that you have to look someone in the eye when clinking a glass with them or you’ll have seven years bad sex. Not with them, just generally. It doesn’t matter if you’re clinking with your boss or Anne Widdecombe or a hedgehog who’s been trained to stand up on his hind legs and hold a glass in his tiny hedgehog paws, the rule still applies. As a result when I clink, I stare at my clinkee with such stalker intensity that I’m more likely to get seven years in prison than seven years not-bad sex.

Beware of clinking with hedgehogs.

For me, it’s a bit like Pascal’s Wager. As you may know, the philosopher Pascal, unable to prove whether God exists or not, felt that you might as well opt to believe because then at least you won’t end up burning in hell or looking a right plonker at the pearly gates if the Big Man does exist (not his exact words). Well, I apply Pascal’s principle to just about any superstition. Why risk it? It might be true. In Scottish devolutionary terms, I see it as a sort of Pascal’s Wager Max.

This has caused problems, especially during the three years I spent studying Yiddish. Yiddish believes that as soon as you pay someone a compliment, any demon within hearing range (and demons have incredibly good hearing) will rush over and comprehensively wreck that person unless you immediately ward off the evil eye.  I soon felt absolutely compelled to throw in a quick keneynehora if ever I said something nice about someone, even in English (it literally means “no evil eye” but I think you get a better sense of it by using the slightly more playground “bagsie no evil eye”). Likewise if I mentioned something bad I’d have to throw in something like nishtogedakht (“bagsie it shouldn’t happen here”). On one occasion I found myself at a posh do talking to Prince Edward about the Queen Mum’s robust health and couldn’t stop myself blurting out a biz hundert un tsvantsik (“bagsie she should live till 120”). I even felt obliged to throw in a tfu-tfu-tfu (the triple spit which really keeps the Evil Ones at bay. And by that I don’t mean the paparazzi). Yes, I triple-spat in front of Prince Edward. It was either that or let his granny succumb to a sudden demise. Which she did just a couple of weeks afterwards. But at least I knew it wasn’t my fault.

I’ve calmed down since then and I’m hopeful that my days of relaxed indoor umbrella-opening and salt-spilling are not far away. Keneynehora. Tfu-tfu-tfu. All I have to do is screw my courage to the sticking-place, as they say in Macbeth. I mean, the Scottish play.

Agh!

Very Superstitious is a post from: David Schneider's website

When I suggested doing a show about “Jews and the Olympics” for Jewish Book Week, I recognised the suspicious look in the organiser’s eyes. It was a look that said: Jews and the Olympics? That’s going to be a short show. And you can see what they mean: there’d be Mark Spitz, the Jewish one from “Chariots of Fire” (and I still can’t believe it wasn’t even him who kicked up a fuss about not running on the sabbath), the tragic massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and that’d be it. End of show. It’s not as if we Jews have ever had that much to cheer about at the Olympics. For us, they’ve been more Oy-limpics than Olympics. But then, if you believe the stereotype, sporting achievement has never been something we’ve valued. As God said to Abraham in the Bible (Genesis 15, 5) : “Look up into the sky at the countless stars. So shalt thy descendants be, though they shall be no good at DIY or horse-riding and sport shall be a mystery unto them. Apart from some boxers in the 1920s”.

That’s not to say that the Olympics don’t have a special place in Jewish history. After all, every year we celebrate the miracle of the Olympic torch that only had enough oil to stay alight for a day but actually lasted for eight. Nes godol hoyo shom – “a great miracle happened there”, where “there” equals Athens. As for me, I’ve always been a fan of the Olympics. I have a very early memory of being traumatised to tears when David Hemery had to settle for bronze in the 400 metres hurdles behind Uganda’s John Aki-Bua and Ralph Mann from the States. I didn’t have to google those names because I can still remember throwing myself to the kitchen floor and howling as I wittily derided Hemery’s conquerors as John Aki-Poo-Poo and Ralph Ape-Mann. I was 19 at the time. – I jest of course, I was still a little boy, but it was clear that a great career in comedy lay ahead of me.

There was even a brief moment when I dreamt of becoming an Olympian myself. Having shown a very unjewish flair for Judo (Jewdo?), there was some talk of me aiming for the Los Angeles Olympics. But what’s a nice Jewish boy doing attempting a harai goshi (“sweeping hip throw”), let alone a ude hishigi juji gatame (“arm-crushing cross hold”)? You don’t get any of those moves in accountancy. It would have meant sacrificing a more academic path for a sporting one and, as any Jewish mother will tell you, even “my son, the gold medallist” will always be trumped by “my son, the doctor”. Though possibly not by “my son, the comedian (have you heard his John Aki Poo-poo routine?)”.

The London Oy-lympics

But are the stereotypes of the non-sporty Jew actually true? The Olympics allow us to test this scientifically. Look at the medals table for Beijing and you’ll see that Israel finished in lowly 80^th place with a single bronze, level with Mauritius, Togo and Afghanistan (what sort of sporting infrastructure did they have in place in 2008?). Not so good, you might say. However – and I don’t mean to open a whole Israel vs The Diaspora can of kosher worms – if you look at the medals won by Jews overall we actually finished with 5 golds, 7 silvers and 4 bronze, or bronzes, whatever the plural of “bronze” is. That would put us in 16^th place, ahead of Romania, Ethiopia, Canada, etc. Yes: Celine Dion! Bryan Adams! Various other people we think are American but are actually Canadian! Your guys took one hell of a beating!

So maybe we’re not so bad at sport after all, although the winter Olympics stats make interesting reading. If you imagine two circles 17 miles apart, one marked “Jews” and one marked “Winter Olympic medalists” then you have a pretty accurate Venn diagram of our contribution to those games. We did win a pair’s figure skating gold in 1980 through Russia’s Gennadi Karponosov and Natalya Linichuk, but sadly only Gennadi was Jewish and as figure skating goes through the mother, it doesn’t count.

Proof of Jewish participation in the Ancient Greek Olympics

Which brings us to 2012 and the Olympics in London. I must admit I’m torn about this. On the one hand there’s my intense excitement as an Olympicophile at the games actually taking place 20 minutes from where I live. It is, as everyone’s saying, a once-in-a-lifetime experience – unless you were born before 1948 in which case it’s twice-in-a-lifetime. And if you’re over 104 and witnessed the 1908 London games then, boy, you must be bored of them by now. But still, how thrilling, how exciting it’ll be there to witness first-hand people going to the event who actually got tickets because they work for one of the sponsors. To actually be there when world record after world record is broken. There’s even talk that they might smash the magic two-hour barrier for the time it takes to drive from Piccadilly to Green Park. I’ve been waiting to be at the Olympics all my life and now it’s finally here! But then on the other hand, there’s the possibility of renting my house out for two weeks at four times its mortgage to some gullible Americans who actually think our mascots “rock”. That’s got to be just as tempting.

In the end I’ll probably stay and witness Lord Coe’s extravaganza (rumours that Steve Ovett is organising a £10bn rival London Olympics for this summer are as yet unconfirmed but I wouldn’t put it past him. He just can’t let it lie). Personally, I’d love to see a few more events that Jews like myself and my family can excel at, just to up that Jewish medal count, events like synchronised kvetching, the 10 kilometre guilt trip or, for the orthodox, tennis mixed doubles with a mechitza, a dividing wall, to keep the men and women separate. In the meantime we’ll have to make do with Greco-Roman wrestling and the least Jewish activity on the planet, three-day eventing. And so, to paraphrase Jewish New Year cards the world over, may I be the first to wish you a very happy and prosperous Olympics and well over the fast(est man in the world contest).

With thanks for the pics to chigwiri.com

Les Jews Olympiques is a post from: David Schneider's website

Here’s a thing I wrote for the Jewish Quarterly.

Future Rabbi?

Congratulate me. I’ve just written a whole sheet of A4 by pen. After years of computercentricity it felt weird, foreign, as unwelcome a throwback to the 1980s as news that The Tweets have reformed so we can hear the “Birdie Song” live again (ah, “The Tweets”. Now there’s a name that finally has meaning in this social network age). As I heaved the pen clumsily across the paper, sweat pouring from my brow, Repetitive Strain Injury gathering in my freaked-out forearm, I felt like a man trying to plough a field with a… well, with a pen. And after all that intense manual labour, the words were about as legible as if they’d been written by a three year old. With his foot. Where were the clear curves and confident uprights of Times New Roman or Arial, the font which, as every Disney fan knows, gained its elegant look by sacrificing its voice to Ursula the Sea Witch? I couldn’t work out how to cut-and-paste, couldn’t make any of the words bold – writing with a pen and paper is rubbish.

Give me a couple more months and I’ll say the same about books. Jews may be known as the People of the Book but as far as I’m concerned we can already be rechristened (sorry, bad choice of words) the People of the Kindle. I’ve only had my e-reader a few weeks and I’m already cured of my nostalgia for the smell of a new book, the look of its cover, the physicality of turning the pages (which now seems almost as tough a form of manual labour as using a pen). I like that no-one on the tube can tell I’m reading Katie Price’s “Being Jordan” for the 4^th time (I hate missing the nuances and subtext). And why tell people you’re halfway through a book when you can tell them you’re 46% of the way through (Kindle virgins – there’s a little bar at the bottom of the screen that offers you this detail). I confidently predict that within five years even Torah scrolls will be in electronic tablet form and therefore so much easier to lift.

My writing style also betrays how I’ve evolved into a man who spends his whole life tapping at a computer (homo tapiens? Presuming you rhyme “sap-“ with “tap”). Too much texting and social networking have eliminated pronouns from the start of my sentences, and as for the verbs “to be” and “to have”, forget it. Fairly confident that irritates lots of people. Seen them banging on about it loads. Then there’s the informality of my email sign-offs. It’s always “best” or – heaven help me – “bestest”, from “Dave x” or “Dx”, even – and what a terrible slip of the keyboard that “x” was – when writing to the Chief Rabbi.

At least my writings aren’t littered with LOL’s and OMG’s (or, for the orthodox Jew, OMG-d’s). I’m over 40 so it would contravene the 1995 Act Your Age Act, but I can see the appeal. LOLs and smiley faces don’t half help clarify what you’re thinking – Kafka would be so much more understandable if “Metamorphosis” had begun “One day Gregor Samsa woke up to find he’d been turned into a huge beetle LOL”. Still I’m unable to resist the asterisk. Once confined to walk-on roles for footnotes and the occasional expletive, the asterisk has clearly got a new agent. It’s now constantly in work on the internet: to stress a word you *really* want to pick out or to express the feelings of the writer about his own sentence *wonders if he needs to give an example*.

I’ve got to the stage when it’s a struggle not to use asterisks and other internetisms when writing an article like this. The other day I even used *facepalm* in conversation (it’s internet for finding something so stupid you want to slap your forehead with your hand; see also *facedesk*). I was talking to an aunt with dementia at the time so the expression was never going to fly. What am I like *facepalm*?! But that’s homo tapiens for you. It may frustrate the peddants (spell it with two d’s, it really annoys them) but it’s surely only a matter of time before asterisks and LOL-style acronyms (Lolcronyms?) enter formal written text and our prayer books are full of “Blessed are you, OMG, who has created the fruit of the vine smiley face”.

Dx *hits send**takes rest of the day off*

Futureman. Is that a Jewish name? is a post from: David Schneider's website

Tremendousnews, over to you…

5 Terms in English Slang Everyone Should Know is a post from: David Schneider's website

Jordward. At one point everyone was trying to get in with the twins.

You have to hand it to Simon Cowell. In a bid to outwit the campaign against an X-Factor Christmas No.1, he’s announced that this year’s winner’s song will be a version of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine. Thus he wins.

Of course that’s not true. Though fans of Rage Against the Machine will tell you that the new line-up of Leona Lewis, Jedward and that old man who did some breakdancing on “Britain’s Got Talent” has been a disappointment. I totally understand the rage against the X-Factor machine. It’s agony to know that a constituency of knee-jerking automaton fans will buy a record, however crap, and get it to number 1 at Christmas. Still, it worked for Cliff Richard.

And that’s slightly my point. This is nothing new. It’s just that now, like that monkey that Jeff Goldblum turned inside out in “The Fly”, we can see the innards, the mechanics of the music biz, or at least the ones we’re allowed to see:  the process of selecting a plastic star, the A&R man (Simon Cowell), the ruthlessness.

But it’s one of the great things about X-Factor that the monkey guts are out there. It’s like democracy in miniature, complete with all the manipulations and flaws and spin and sham. At the next general election, Johnathan and David Dimbleby will no doubt be known as Javid, and if no party gets an overall majority it will go to Deadlock, with the Queen probably bottling it and putting it to the public vote. The Jedward phenomenon is like an experiment in what would happen if the Science Fiction Loony Party got enough votes to really threaten the system.

Personally, I didn’t like the twins. They shouldn’t have been there. We have to remember that women threw themselves under horses for the right to vote on the X-Factor. But as a true free-speech liberal, I may not approve of how they sing but I will fight tooth and nail for their right to sing like that. Except with the Wham one. That was awful.

You could have a field day analysing what we can learn about democracy and voter intentions from protest votes in reality shows. We should ask a political correspondent – John Sergeant, perhaps. Ultimately, though, the people saw Jedward off. That’s the great thing about reality TV. It reassures me that, in the end, the great British public are honest, unprejudiced rewarders of talent, decency and good teeth. Democracy works.

Even in the 50s, Xfactor brought families together

I’m an X-factor fan (there, I’ve said it!). I know it’s massively flawed, especially the new format where the first half of the results show has nothing to do with the competition (though I did enjoy that woman last week who was one of the best Michael Jackson impersonators I’ve ever seen. Janet Something). But at a time where viewing habits are so split, it’s good to have something that unites us whether we hate it or love it or just want to slag off the strange black meringues Dannii calls her hairdo for that week.

Don’t get me wrong, I want Rage Against the Machine to get to number 1. It would make a vital statement about democracy, the power of subversion, and the resistance to a cultural hegemony imposed upon us by the Big Business. Then again, that Joe Mcelderry has got such a cute smile.

Thanks to @stanandollie for the pics.

X(mas)-Factor is a post from: David Schneider's website