I had to admit here recently that I do not get out enough, but unless, I am very deaf, I have not heard the echoes in the national media we might have expected after the JC’s comprehensive report of Mick Davis’s critical comments on some Israeli policies. Those reverberations might come yet, of course, and those who put their hands to their lips and urge “not in front of our neighbours,” may still be right. Mr Davis’s words could still be picked up and used against Mr Netanyahu and Israel. But it’s more than a week now and even a fastidious reporter, who did not wish to soil an ear by holding it close to the ground, must have heard rumblings of a communal controversy. Why, even David Milliband has joined in.

So why the silence? We know all the media read the JC by the freedom with which regularly they make off with its scoops. My own theory, still in the process of evolution, is that the newspapers, especially, just do not know how to handle this story. Here is a leader of Anglo-Jewry (and forget the Jewish Leadership Council, his role as head of the UJIA makes him a top leader) who speaks critical thoughts about Israels’ policies - or the potential outcome of those policies - which is not unfamiliar fare in the non-Jewish media. He seems to have the support of many of his peers. But Mr Davis and they remain dedicated to Israel, he most practically by heading the top pro-Israel fund in the land. Whoops! What’s going on here?

It is going to be interesting to see how the press resolves this conundrum. Or maybe they will not even try. And, suddenly, we will find ourselves nonplussed by the fact that it doesn’t really matter what we say in front of our neighbours. They don’t care. Just think what that might follow from that…

If you have seen this before don’t read on but, last night, at a shiva, the distinctly Orthodox and highly-reputed South Hampstead rabbi, read his prayers (davened for the cognoscenti) from an iphone! It was news to me but, apparently, all the weekday prayers, and the appropriate portions of the Torah, are available for downloading. Suddenly, technology is bringing us startlingly close to that day when you will need only to phone nine other men in order to have an instant minyan. There are some interesting halachic questions there. But I do want to be present on that day when He on High responds to an online prayer with “You called?”.

You don't normally expect to find members of the Charedi community at a Limmud event. But Ian Sharer, a strictly Orthodox councillor in Hackney, visited the local Limmud day in the borough for the first time to speak about his work.
What he saw impressed him – in particular a packed session on the completion of the Steinsaltz Talmud.
He says he'd happily go again.

Saudi-backed Muslim schools in UK teach sectarianism, extremism, homophobia and anti-Semitism

Veteran reporter John Ware reporting for the BBC’s flagship investigative programme, Panorama will reveal tonight that more than 40 Saudi-funded Muslim schools and clubs in the UK are teaching the official Saudi national curriculum to about 5,000 pupils.

The programme, British Schools, Islamic Rules, airs tonight on BBC One at 20.30 GMT.

There is enough top military brass (retired) in the House of Lords almost to furnish a parliamentary detachment of their own, among them former chiefs of staff, supreme commanders and medal-heavy generals. What, I wonder, will they make of the arrival in their midst of an ex-IDF soldier, a holder of the Israel army’s “outstanding soldier award”? That unusual distinction appears nowhere in the media’s biographical notes on last week’s elevation to the peerage of Jonathan Kesternbaum, one-time director of the Chief Rabbi’s office and subsequently holder of some of the most challenging posts in business and technological development in Britain. Most of the newspapers missed something else. too. While he is, as they report, currently executive director of NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, the largest endowment in the UK exclusively dedicated to fostering innovation, he is about to sit in an even more challenging seat. At the end of the year Kestenbaum - Lord Kestenbaum - will take over Lord Rothschild’s responsibilities as Chairman and Chief Executive of Five Arrows Limited, the investment company controlled by Jacob Rothschild’s family interests, while Rothschild will remain on the board of Five Arrows under Kestenbaum’s chairmanship. Mr Kestenbaum will also work closely with Lord Rothschild on the overall management of his family’s various philanthropic organisations. Howzat for a former mazkir of B’nai Akiva, born, of all places, in Tokyo, and only just 51? Oh, and yes, this - to me - young man, who will sit at the head of one of the most powerful capitalist outfits in the world, will take his other seat on the Labour benches!,

The wait is over for Waity Katie. A big Mazel Tov to Prince William and his new princess Kate Middleton.

The natural question now is whether the Royal Wedding of the Century (my copyright) will have any impact on the Jewish world.

Which Jewish celebs will be invited? Will Lord Sacks be there and will he be eating Hermolis or Tony Paige? When are they going to have a L’Chaim? Will she be heading to Hatton Garden for a diamond ring?

I’ve just spotted a piece of fairly foaming invective published by the Palestine Chronicle.

Written by Stuart Littlewood, author of the book Radio Free Palestine, the open letter to the Liberal Democrats lays out opposition to the planned alterations to the universal jurisdiction legislation of which we all know so much.

I do not intend to link to the piece, should you wish to read the whole thing I’m sure you will be able to find it with some quick Googling, but below are some excerpts which lay out quite clearly the furious and enormous opposition that can be expected when/if the coalition government finally moves to change the law.

There's a growing campaign to institute kosher bushtucker trials for Jewish contestants on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

After all, would you rather swallow a plate of wriggling maggots - or consume a bowl of calf's foot jelly?

PS A correspondent has suggested that since there is apparently a surfeit of locusts in Australia at the moment, and locusts are permitted in the Bible (in theory), then they could provide a kosher alternative. There are apparently four main species of locust - and only the Red Locust gets the rabbinical thumbs-up.