To see Tuner tonight - fabulous film. It has everything: crime, thriller, great music, plot twists, terrific cast and thoroughly believable Israeli villains, and for once I am not talking politics. And Dustin Hoffman!

Word of the day: ginnel. Northern English: a narrow passage between buildings. Cousin to the York snickelway, the snicket, the jitty and the alley. England has an unreasonable number of words for “small gap between houses.” We take these things seriously.

הבוקר אני מפרסם את שמו ותמונתו של מלמד לשעבר בחיידר בעלזא באשדוד. שמו אלעזר מוסקוביץ. אני לא כותב את זה מבחוץ. אני הייתי בכיתה הזו. הייתי ילד בן 8 או 9, ובמו עיניי נחשפתי לדברים שילד לא אמור לראות, לא אמור לחוות, ולא אמור לשאת איתו כל החיים. יש עיניים שראו דברים שלא יוצאים מהראש גם אחרי שנים. יש זיכרונות שהגוף גדל סביבם, אבל הם נשארים תקועים שם, בכיתה, מול אדם שהיה אמור להיות מחנך, ובפועל הפך למפלצת לא אנושית. בשנה האחרונה אספתי אליי עדויות קשות מאוד מבני כיתתי. לא שמועה אחת. לא סיפור בודד. צבר עדויות של תלמידים לשעבר, שכל אחד מהם תיאר לי את הזוועות בכיתה. אלימות, השפלות, פחד יומיומי ופגיעה בילדים קטנים שלא היה להם שום כוח לעמוד מולו. אחד מספר על השפלות בכיתה, ילד בן 9 שאולץ לזחול ככלב מול התלמידים כאקט של ענישה. האחר מזכיר ילדים  שנתלו על מתלים ע"י המלמד. בנוסף היו גם טריקות דלת על אצבעות של ילדים. עדות נוספת מדברת על מכות קשות, על ילד שהוכה כי “הפריע”, ועל תלמיד שנזרק במדרגות. אחרים כותבים לי גם היום, אחרי יותר מעשור ויותר משני עשורים, שהם עדיין הולכים לטיפול בגלל מה שעברו שם. וזה אולי הדבר הכי מטלטל בסיפור הזה. הילדים ההם כבר לא ילדים. אבל הפחד נשאר. הגוף גדל, הזקן צמח, החיים המשיכו, אבל הזיכרון נשאר תקוע שם, בחיידר, מול אדם שהיה לו כוח מוחלט על ילדים קטנים. אני יודע על מה הם מדברים, כי הייתי שם. ראיתי. שמעתי והבנתי. כמו ילדים אחרים, גם אני גדלתי בתוך מציאות שבה מבוגר יכול לרמוס ילד, והמערכת ממשיכה הלאה כאילו זה חלק מהחינוך. חשוב לציין כי לפני הפרסום פניתי אליו. נתתי לו הזדמנות אמיתית לקחת אחריות, להתנצל, להביע חרטה, להגיד משהו לנפגעים. לא חיפשתי נקמה. חיפשתי הכרה במעשיו. אני מאמין כי התיקון הראשון של מעשה רע הוא קודם כל ההודאה וההכרה בו. מה הוא עשה? הוא בחר לנתק לי את השיחה ולחסום אותי בוואטסאפ. אז הבוקר זה נגמר. לא עוד שתיקה. לא עוד "יוסי תעזוב, עברו מלא שנים". לא עוד ילדים שנושאים לבד את מה שמבוגרים היו אמורים לעצור בזמן אמת. הפרסום הזה הוא לא קריאה לפגיעה באיש. הוא קריאה לאחריות. הוא קריאה לאמת. הוא קריאה לכל מוסד חינוכי להבין שילד שנפגע לא שוכח רק כי המבוגרים החליטו להמשיך הלאה. מי שפגע בילדים, השפיל ילדים, הרים יד על ילדים וחשב שאפשר לקבור את זה מתחת לשטיח, צריך לדעת דבר אחד פשוט: הילדים גדלו. והפעם הם מדברים.

A few classics for the millennials

Philistines on here saying David Hockney was ‘crap’ or overrated when this painting exists ❤️

I love “a Viking was out shopping…”

RT @RCdeWinter: OK, we need a joke. You might need to be a boomer to get it. A Viking was out shopping when he saw an old woman in a wheel…

Oh, the loss of the great David Hockney. Home grown and defiant to the end. What a wonderful artist.

My parents, both pensioners, were charged £850 by an emergency plumber last night. They have British Gas HomeCare, but they couldn’t get anyone out to them quickly enough. Their toilet was overflowing and starting to flood the house, so they called an emergency plumber. They have another toilet, so the immediate emergency was the flooding. The water could potentially have been isolated and a quote provided before any repair work was carried out. Instead, the work was done immediately and they were charged £850. My dad was also sent a series of text messages he had to respond to during the emergency. As far as I could tell, they didn’t appear to contain any obvious company branding, address or identifying information. Fuming on their behalf. Can’t help feeling they’ve been taken advantage of. Is this normal practice? And if not, is there anything we can do about it now?

North London life coach wins 11 international awards for documentary jewishnews.co.uk/north-londo… via @JewishNewsUK

REVIEW: How to Make a Mess, Upstairs at The Gatehouse jewishnews.co.uk/review-how-… via @JewishNewsUK

Yet another poster who doesn’t know the difference between “bought” and “brought”. Sigh.

Anthony Head got so famous in Britain for a coffee advert that his serious acting work dried up. So he moved to America and ended up on a hit show about hunting vampires. He died this week at 72, and that coffee advert is the least interesting thing he ever did. It was for instant coffee. The story started in 1987 with a woman knocking on her neighbour's door to borrow some, and it ran for six years like a tiny soap opera, each instalment ending on a will-they-won't-they cliffhanger. The country got hooked. When the last one aired, around thirty million people tuned in to see if the couple would finally get together, and a newspaper ran it on the front page. There was even a spin-off novel and a hit album, all from a coffee advert. That kind of fame can trap an actor. The bigger parts stopped coming, so Head went to America and landed Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He played Giles, the school librarian and guardian of a teenage girl who secretly hunts vampires, the calm grown-up quietly keeping her alive. He once said he based the character on Hugh Grant, all stammering and bookish. For seven seasons he was the warmest father figure on television. Years later he got to play the exact opposite. Ted Lasso is a comedy about a kind American coach loose in English football, and Head was the villain, Rupert, a rich and cheating ex-husband. His former wife wants to hurt him so badly that she hires Ted hoping the team will collapse. Head started as an occasional guest, then joined the main cast, ending up in 18 episodes. He said the bad guy was the fun part, because a villain has more going on, and he liked playing men who were nothing like him. You can see the care in it. Rupert starts out as a cartoon and slowly turns into something sadder, a man with money, a young wife and a new baby who still cannot enjoy a single thing he owns. By the end everyone around him grows up. He just shrinks. None of that was him. His Ted Lasso castmate Brett Goldstein said Head "played the worst person in the world," and pulling it off so well took real talent, because in life he was the kindest man on the set. When the news broke, Sarah Michelle Gellar, the young actress he had looked after on Buffy, posted a photo of the two of them. "I'm not okay," she wrote. He died months after losing Sarah Fisher, his partner of more than forty years. He leaves behind two men named Rupert, one a gentle teacher and one a cruel charmer, and a long line of people who knew him saying the same thing. The gentle one was closer to the truth.

Tonight is my last night in Glasgow. It is where I was born. It is where I spent my childhood, where I became a Bar Mitzvah, and where much of my understanding of myself was formed. Mostly because of my parents, Scotland has always been the constant. No matter where I happened to be living, whether London, Hong Kong, or elsewhere, there was always an assumption that Scotland would be there. It was the place I returned to when life became complicated, uncertain, or challenging. My parents were here. It was familiar. It was home. Tomorrow, I leave the UK and make Aliyah to Israel. Over the past few years, I have spent a great deal of time writing, researching, and speaking about Jewish identity, Jewish peoplehood, Jewish indigeneity, and Jewish self-determination. In many ways, that journey led me here. Not because I stopped being British, but because I came to understand more deeply what it means to be Jewish. Tomorrow I will become an Israeli citizen. I leave with great love for the life my parents gave me here and excitement about the chapter that lies ahead. Scotland will always be where I am from. But tomorrow, I go home.

For no particular reason I decided to rewatch The Frisco Kid, starring an unlikely odd couple in Gene Wilder and a baby-faced Harrison Ford. It is still deeply and enjoyably silly. Cute and funny.

Just got a scam call. “This is the HMRC”. “Who?” “The HMRC”. “What does HMRC stand for?” Silence. “Well?” “Um, Revenue and Customs”. “Do better. Goodbye.”

Last night PSG fans rioted during and after the Champions League final. 57 police officers were injured. Cars and shops set alight. One mob even tried to storm a police station. Police arrested 780. 22,000 police were deployed. Presumably, if they are drawn to play an English club in next year’s Champions League, all the people who claimed they wanted Maccabi Tel Aviv banned on grounds of public safety (and not because they were in fact a bunch of anti-Jewish racist obsessives), will be demanding the French fans are banned too?

Deepest sympathies to Emma Barnett for her continued agonies with endometriosis as described @RosamundUrwin. But it is NOT incurable! I had it for 7 years and the Mirena coil is better than hysterectomy. It is quick, and if properly done, painless. Not enough women know this.

I’ve had lots of questions about whether the #bbcStoryville #documentary, #WeWillDanceAgain is still on @bbciplayer. The answer is yes, it’s still there. If you’re in the UK and you want to watch, or encourage others to, it’s on this link bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0… #Nova #october7

Sorry, reporting like this is deranged. 30 extreme anti Zionists (and yes some Jews) block booking seats in venue with clear intent to disrupt event so organisers decide to postpone and reschedule is not end of days for UK Jewry. Shabbat shalom.