Abi Melbit - At least I'm alive

People who've been following various Jewish blogs and/or the Jewish music scene have probably heard that Lipa Shmeltzer was forced to cancel his appearance at a concert after criticism from various "Gedolim".

The controversy apparently was about his Yiddish song based on "Lion Sleeps Tonight" - he made a quite entertaining promotional video for HASC which you can see below (or here).

I tried to find a copy of the lyrics, but so far haven't been able to, so if anyone knows where could find them, or could translate the Yiddish, feel free to leave a comment.

Gumboots

My sister just forwarded me a copy of the lyrics to Fredd Dagg's famous Gumboot song.
You see she just booked her wedding in the Woolshed which is on a farm, so I pointed out the protrocol requires White gumboots for the bride (as opposed to regular black gumboots for the groom and guests).

Well, I suppose if you grew up knowing the gumboot song, this would have been funny, and if you didn't grow up with that song - well can't blame me.

BTW - this song has nothing whatsoever to do with Billy Connolly's "If it wisnae fur yer wellies" which is clearly a simple rip off (the fact that it pre-dates Dagg's song raises a question about the space-time continuum, but that's a different question).

Anyway, without further ado, here is Fredd and his Gumbooty song:



(Intro, spoken, with gusto.) 'Righto, kick it in the guts, Trev... '
Gumboots, they are wonderful, gumboots, they are swell
'coz they keep out the water, and they keep in the smell.
And when you're sittin' round at home, you can always tell
When one of the Trevs has taken off his gumboots.

Chorus:
If it weren't for your gumboots, where would ya be?
You'd be in the hospital or infirmary
'coz you would have a dose of the 'flu, or even pleurisy
If ya didn't have yer feet in yer gumboots.

Now there's rugby boots and racing boots, and boots for drinkin' rum.
But the only boots I'm never without, are the ones that start with "gum".
I've got short ones and long ones, and some up to me belt.
I'm never dressed 'till I've got on me gumboots.

Whenever I sing at the opera, my gumboots are a must.
They help me hit the high notes, and protect me feet from dust.
They keep the water well away, so me voice won't get no rust.
You will not never see me without me gumboots.

Now Rob Muldoon, and Rowling, they haven't made a hit.
They're ruining the country, more than just a bit.
If they keep on how they're going, we'll all be in turd.
So you'd better get yer feet up yer gumboots.

The Demographic threat

For many years, Israelis who were in favour of handing parts of Eretz Yisrael over to the Arabs claimed that this was the only way to create Peace - they even had a phrase for it "Land for Peace" i.e., if we give the Arabs "Land", they'll give us "Peace". Over recent years that phrase has become less common, for the simple reason that it turns out that if you give the Arabs "Land" they give us 'War", and "Land for War" didn't have such a good ring to it.

You would have thought that the Left wing would have said "opps, my bad - you were right all along, let's all move to Hevron", instead they came up with a new slogan, a new reason to surrender territory - the 'Demographic Time Bomb".

The logic runs something like this: the Arabs reproduce faster than the Jews, there is nothing that we can do to change that, therefore soon we'll have an Arab majority if we don't withdraw from territory - yes it might lead to war, but the only other alternative is to give up on the idea of a "Democratic Jewish State".

There are so many holes in this argument I don't know why anyone takes it seriously (*why is war a better alternative?), but possibly the biggest problem is that the numbers are just plain wrong.

Firstly, no one has a clue how many Arabs there are in the Palestinian territories, the PA puts the figure at 3.8 million, but Demographer Yoram Ettinger puts the number at 2.6 (see Arutz Sheva's story).

But Wait - it turns out that the real demographic threat isn't the Arabs after all. Amnon Rubinstein has and article in today's Jerusalem Post where he admits that the demographic threat isn't the Arabs, rather it's those damn Charadim, it seems like the biggest threat to Israel is Charadim having babies, and we must do everything in our power to prevent this.

If the result is a decrease in the Jewish population, and a real demographic threat from the Arabs, that's OK - we'll just give them a State (what other choice do we have), and if they use that state to lob missiles at us, well, at least that would be better than having to share a country with those damn Religious Jews.

Who's occupying Gaza now?

This is one of the funniest things that I've read for a while - an actual question posted on the UN Web Site where the questioner asks the UN Spokesperson why the UN refers to Gaza as "Occupied Territory" - after all, the only foreign forces in Gaza now are UN troops - is the UN occupying Gaza?

Hat tip: http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/

Source: http://domino.un.org/

**Questions and Answers

/...

Question: You read a statement about the situation in Gaza before and I know it's difficult to change terminology, but we have a new Secretary-General now, so let me try it again. A year and half after the last Israeli withdrew from Gaza, the UN system still refers to Gaza as an Occupied Palestinian Territory. The only people who are not Palestinian in Gaza currently are UN people. Do you mean that Gaza is occupied by the UN?

Spokesperson: Definitely not.

Question: So who is it occupied by?

Spokesperson: Well…

Correspondent: I think there are some Israeli soldiers on the border…

Question: Not borders, who is Gaza occupied by?

Spokesperson: Traditionally, this is the terminology we have used. Yes?

Question: But the situation on the ground changed since Israel withdrew from Gaza.

Spokesperson: I will look into this.

Correspondent: Thank you.

A letter to the Editor

One of the organizations that I am involved with is a group called Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Mid-East.

One of the things that this organization does is monitor the New Zealand press, and alerts members to cases of extreme bias or inaccuracy.
Well last week the Herald on Sunday (an Auckland Weekend Paper) published one of the worst diatribes against Israel I've ever seen in a New Zealand paper (and that's quite an accomplishment).
Take a look for yourself

The author is a well known radical left politician in New Zealand, you can read all about him in Wikipedia.

I submitted a letter to the editor, very hard to relate to such an article with a 200 word limit, but here's my best attempt:

Sir,

Matt McCarten’s column printed January 27 is so full of exaggerations, lies, and outrageous comparisons, that it is hard to see how anyone with even a minimal understanding of events in the Middle East could take Mr. McCarten seriously.

Since Israel ended the occupation of Gaza over two years ago, the Hamas leadership been involved in what Mr. McCarten describes as “causing a nuisance”.

“Nuisance” is a very mild word to describe over 4000 missiles fired at civilian population centres, including homes, schools, and synagogues.

One of the targets of these missiles has been the electrical power plant in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. This power plant has been providing the Gaza Strip with a large percentage of its electric power.

After the number of daily missiles rose to more than fifty, Israel decided to react by reducing the amount of power provided to Gaza by the power plant that was the target of the attacks.

Mr. McCarten’s conclusion was that this slight reduction of power is on par with Nazi planned genocide during WWII. Mr. McCarten’s extreme prejudice seems to have clouded his common sense or sense of proportion.

So, what do you think?

Avraham Fried in today's Daf

Everyone seems to be talking about the snow in Jerusalem (and Chevron) or the Winograd Committee (which I have very little faith in, if Olmert had an ounce of dignity, he would have resigned 2 years ago, if he doesn't, he'll find a way to weasel out of this one)

However, before tomorrow's Daf, I wanted to share these words of wisdom from נדרים מ"א ע"א
The words were turned into a popular song by Yossi Green, sung by Avraham Fied on his disk Chazak! You can listen to the beginning of the song here, note that he rearranged the words slightly. The words, as they appear in the Gemara are here:

במערבא אמרי

דדא ביה כולא ביה

דלא דא ביה מה ביה

דא קני מה חסר

דא לא קני מה קני

Hebrew free translation (from Rabbi Shteinzaltz):

בארץ ישראל היו אומרים:

שזו הדעת, בו – הכל בו

שאין זה בו – מה יש בו

את זו קנה, וזה לא קנה – מה קנה?

And in English (from Kollel Iyun Hadaf):

In Eretz Yisrael they said:

If one has knowledge, he has everything.

If one lacks knowledge, what does he have?

If he acquires knowledge, he has everything.

If he does not acquire knowledge, he does acquire anything.

Prayer in Schools

On of the recent news items that has really baffled me has been the Kerfuffle over prayer in State High schools in this beloved country of ours.

In case you're smarter than me and don't follow the local Israeli media, a few weeks ago a group of students at a non-religious high school in Ramat Gan complained that they were not allowed to daven Mincha on school property. This ban was supported not only by the school principal, but by the Mayor of Ramat Gan.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would be bothered by a group of students that want to pray in their own time. If they wanted to set up a different quiet activity during recess like a chess club, reading group, meditation circle, or whatever, do you really think that the mayor would take the time to make a fool of himself by opposing it.

Finally our great and noble (and militant anti-religious) Minister of Education, Yael Tamir, got involved, and today published a ruling. Her conclusion - that schools have to allow "any" type of prayer, however if there is no suitable location on the school campus, an alternative venue must be found within a 10 minute walk.

Well - how is it possible that there are schools that have no available space, no empty classrooms, or corner of a schoolyard where a small group of students can gather, in their own time to daven?

There were other times and places where Jewish Prayer was limited or banned, how tragic that this could happen here in the Jewish State - is this really what we waited 2000 years for?

And even more tragic - how can we sleep at night when someone like minister Yael Tamir is responsible for the education of hundreds of thousands of Jewish children?


Before I close for the evening - 2 happier notes -

• The much-awaited snow finally started falling in Jersalem, (see Aish's Window on the Wall), may the snow and rain continue to fall and be a Bracha to our beloved country.
  
• Radio Kol Chai reported this morning that in response to teh Kassamim in Sderot, a group of Sofrim have volunteered their services to check and replace Mezuzot in that city (which is by itself good news). The amazing part of the story is that 70% of the Mezuzot were found to be Kosher, or even "Kosher L'Mahadrin" - I wish that our holy city of Modi'in had such a pass rate with mezuzot.