Guide to the kosher male
tive as you, and we can’t quite believe our luck let alone trust our own eyes, and we just have to keep checking that it’s true. WE ADORE it when you buy us little gifts. Teddies are nice, so are cute, heart-shaped chocolates. That said, we’d prefer a new motorbike, say a Kawasaki Ninja 600cc. Lime green, with matching fairing. LISTENING TO Larry David complain about the poor service in his local launderette: entertaining. Listening to your wife or girlfriend complain about her terrible day: not so much. Some things are beyond simple explanation, so probably best not to try. IT’S SUPPOSED to be females who are congenital gossips, but we also indulge. There are few things we enjoy more than a good old natter by the water-cooler, although for greater privacy it might be more sensible to do it by the cistern in the gents, as long as the subject of the scandal isn’t using one of the stalls. AS A rule, Jewish men don’t do DIY, so any expectation that that shelf will be put up or that plug rewired is bound to lead to disappointment, if not dispute. Leave it: you can’t fight evolution. The male Jew is not predisposed, at a cellular level, towards manual labour. No Jew has ever successfully constructed a single item from IKEA, even if rumour has it a chap named Ishmael in Ancient Rome, later to assume the status of myth, is alleged to have erected a bookcase without the help of a single passing Christian. Besides, being naturally benevolent, we are thinking of our fellow man. Mow the lawn? Why, when there are decent non-Jews in the area desperate for gainful employment? ONE OF the greatest fallacies about Jewish men is that we devote much of our time to making money in order to attract a Jewish wife, a genus reputed in some quarters to be acquisitive and materialistic. Not so. No, we do it because we’re still insecure about our circumcision and we’re trying to save up enough money to buy back from the mohel what we lost. (Please note, the above does not constitute formal advice. Any woman planning a relationship with a Jewish man should first consult her mother.) Paul Lester’s column, Suddenly Married, appears monthly in the JC