Miss World weds; a castaway and a cow
‘Quickie convert’ row
G Rabbi Mordechai Piron, Chief Rabbi of Zurich, has rejected requests to annul the conversion of former “Miss World” Anneline Kriel, from South Africa, which he carried out after three weeks. Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris, of South Africa, said this week that it was wrong for Rabbi Piron to have converted her “without checking with us” and repudiated “all those who support short-cut methods of becoming Jewish.” Rabbi Harris, formerly of London, said he had serious doubts about “the standards of observance” of Miss Kriel, who married millionaire South African businessman, Mr Philip Tucker, in October. Permission to marry in an Orthodox synagogue was refused by the Johannesburg Beth Din. The couple married instead in a Reform synagogue.
Lady Moseley slams BBC
G I hear that Diana Mosley has written to Marmaduke Hussey, chairman of the BBC, about an apology she thought he’d given the Board of Deputies over her appearance as a castaway on Radio 4*s Desert island Discs. Lady Mosley wrote: “I have never in my life been accused of antisemitism until ‘Mandrake* said in the Sunday Telegraph that I was an ‘elderly antisemite.’” She continued: “The Sunday Telegraph published my letter, which said I considered being *anti a whole race or nation absurd. I have met antisemites in England, France, Germany and America, but I am not of their number. ” “I thought,** she concluded, ‘that Desert Island Discs was a harmless, if trivial, little musical programme, and it would be nice to hear some favourite records. As to it being a life ambition to be the castaway, what a pathetic ambition! Journalists are as silly as they are inaccurate!” Maybe I was being silly wondering why she had such fond recollections of Hitler and was so heavily biased in her musical choices towards Wagner?
Holy (red) cow
G Squelching through the mud, his ceremonial robes billowing in the wind, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, visited a ranch in the North of Israel on Tuesday, in pursuit of the red heifer, whose ashes will purify the people of Israel and enable them to rebuild the Temple. Rabbi Eliahu explained. Although there were a few reddish cows on the ranch, they did not have the pure colour called for by the Torah. So the embryos of a number of unblemished red strains are to be brought frozen from Europe and implanted in local cows.