Dear All

I was thinking last night that I should give some advice to women about to marry.
Be sure you know your fiancee’s name before you get married.Then put into your phone or address book.Then if you feel so inclined, you can shout it when you make love.Maybe not on your honeymoon as a hotel is not very private.But when you get home it will be satisfying to scream” Sigmund” at midnight unless you are asleep.
Find out how much money you have coming in and decide to spend it as fast as you can as that will spur him on to earn even more.You can still work but why not  retrain as a therapist as  you can share your horror stories with your husband
Psychoanalysts earn a lot but may have to start work at 4 am to fit in  people who want to come before work
When you have a baby, teach your husband how to bottle feed so if he does get up at 4 am he can feed the baby while he listens to his first patient.Then he can write a book about how helpful his patient found this.Or not.
See things in a different way.Marriage is good for you but only if you have achieved object constancy.I have not done so myself so I am never sure if my husband is the same man I married.He seems less a particle and more like a wave as he never keeps still.I find him somewhat annoying in bed.
That reminds me we need a new mattress as not the centre is higher than the sides which means I roll off and so does he.Not to mention our cat Felicity and her 3 kittens.They are very bold as they don’t leave the room when we embrace and also they follow me into the bathroom too.As they don’t understand English I can’t make them go away.I  will not slap them or curse.I am already rather wicked.
I can’t write it here but I am a spy.For whom I have no idea.I keep a journal about everyone in this street and their odd behaviour.I am sure someone will buy it off me soon
I can smell the cloves in my bread and butter pudding.So I will continue later~Cheery bye
Kristy

From  desert sands to burning bush;
Moses  on Mount Horeb learned
The ten commandments ,bold in truth

By Canvey Island, waters rush.
The Hasidic from East London turn
No  desert sands nor burning bush

There are reasons, I’m bemused.
Will God be with the tidal turn?
The ten commandments, hauled in truth

In their memory of  Negev
For  hot spaces they may yearn;
Ache  for sand and burning bush

Sand a-plenty they will have.
On Canvey Isle, their innards churn.
The little children tease with love

Over Canvey, cherubs blush
For they too  have felt the pain,
Ache  for sun and burning bush

Now joyous children freely play
Who would think they’d come this way?
By Canvey Isle,  Thames’ waters rush.
The Lord transplants the Burning Bush.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/oct/08/shalom-canvey-island-haredi-jews-moving-to-essex?CMP=share_btn_link

They love the peace and being by the sea.The locals seem very welcoming as many of them were from East and NE London.After the war the government built new houses there.There is a railway station so commuting is easy

 

The new Messiah will fly on a great horse
A burning stallion arched in perfect grace
As he crosses Europe he perceives
The scattered remnants of his fellow Jews

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/08/the-story-of-the-jews-belonging-1492-1900-review-simon-schama-fight-to-fit-in

“The first volume of Simon Schama’s mammoth undertaking, The Story of the Jews, ended two and a half thousand years after it began, with the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Iberia. The second volume, entitled, with more than a smidgen of irony, Belonging, begins in the Venice ghetto, where many victims of that expulsion found uneasy refuge.

Some had fled from Portugal, where, during the Easter of 1506, about 2,000 “New Christians” (Jews who had been forced to convert) were slaughtered in three days. “The ostensible cause,” writes Schama, “was a vocal comment made by a New Christian in church to the effect that a miraculous illumination on the face of the Saviour on the cross might have been a mere effect of candlelight.”

That incident warrants only passing mention, but it’s a shocking reminder of just how vulnerable Jews have been in Europe over many centuries.

Belonging, which covers the period from 1492 to 1900, is concerned with the Jewish search for security and the efforts – both coerced and voluntary – at assimilation in Europe (there are brief excursions to other settlements, in America, and as far off as China).

Jews have traditionally been caught in a double bind: not trusted as a distinct minority, and trusted even less when they attempt to adopt the majority culture/religion.

It’s a position that has led to repeated cycles of persecution, expulsion, confinement and a ceaseless hankering to be accepted. That, in essence, is the story of the Jews and Schama lays it out in rich, complex and fascinating detail.

Although this is an ambitious doorstop of a book, Schama is not interested in history writ large. His signature method is to recount the plight of individuals against the swirling backdrop of events. It’s a high-wire approach that can leave the reader wondering if the extended anecdotes – a tragic conman in 16th-century Venice, rumours of a Jewish sex cult in 18th-century Moldova – will ever reach the firm ground of historical import.