Al Ha veDa על הא ודא

…when I read this comment by Ozzie on Hirhurim:

Once went to a housing fair in Israel. Went to a Chareidi booth and I was not wearing a hat or jacket, my wife was in a tichel and denim skirt. We were told immediately that the development was only for chareidim. I pointed out to him that I has studied in Chareidi Yeshivas for 7 years followed by a Chareidi Kollel for 4 years and was teaching at a Chareidi institution. I then went to a Religious Zionist booth. They saw my black velvet yarmulka and told me that the development was only for Dati Leumi. I pointed out that I had served (and was still in Miluim) in the IDF and my wife was in Hebrew University. Neither booth was moved by my “qualifications” but made their “psak” based on the absence of hat or the presence of black. In the immortal words of Martin Luther King (almost) I would say “I dream of a time when my six little children will not be judged by the color of their yarmulka but by the content of their character”.

…or, “More things that Israelis do and nobody can explain the reasons for”

1. Drive to a parking lot about 500 meters from your house. It will be full to overflowing, but you can always double park in the access road.
2. Set up your bonfire 10 yards down-wind from somebody else’s. At intervals during the evening, go and complain to them that sparks from their bonfire are getting blown at you.
3. Assuming you have about 25 people at your bonfire, prepare 100 baked potatos wrapped in tin foil. Put them on the edge of the bonfire where they won’t get cooked or deep inside where you will never be able to find them. If you’re lucky, about 10 will get eaten. Leave the other 90 in the ashes, still wrapped in tin foil.
4. If people are still hungry after eating some scraps of scorched potato peel, impale marshmallows on spits and burn them to a crisp in the flames.
5. Don’t bring any water to put out the fire. Either just go home and leave it burning, or the rest of this sentence has been censored. This is known as “כיבוי סופי” or “final extinguishing”, though I never understood what other kind there is.

   Update: Thanks to Danny’s comment, I now realize that I have been mishearing this phrase for years. It’s actually כיבוי צופים, “Scouts’ extinguishing”. מכל מלמדי השכלתי!‏

Blog meme time (thanks to Talmida).

Total number of books I’ve owned.

No idea. How do you count? Do multi-volume sets count as 1 or the number of volumes? I have a lot of those. The total is certainly more than 1,000, probably less than 10,000

Last book I bought.

A dead heat between Travels in Hyperreality by Umberto Eco and The Bible and the Sword by Barbara Tuchman, from the very cool bookshop in Shatz Street.

Last book I read.

Started or finished? I am reading the Tuchman book in my commute and the Eco book in bed. The last one I finished reading was The Picturegoers, David Lodge’s first novel.

Five books that mean a lot to me.

I will write down more or less the first five I think of. I am sure I will think of others and regret not being able to include them.

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth.

Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Yes, I know it’s geeky, but what do you expect?

Borges’ short stories.

Souls on Fire by Eli Wiesel. Money quote:

Two men separated by space and time can nevertheless take part in an exchange. One asks a question and the other, elsewhere and later, asks another, unaware that his question is an answer to the first.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White, especially The Book of Merlin

Tag 5 people and have them do this on their blog

No.