Unlimited supplies of lox offered as bait to get Jews to leave Israel – nice try Mahmoud. However, your offer to move Jews to greener pastures is just the latest sign of your total lunacy.
There is more that ties Jews to Israel than could be undone by the offer of lots of lox. Granted, the Ashkenazi population will feel the tug of your proposed Loxland. But even the offer of free fish will not to get the Jews to leave their ancestral homeland, promised to them by God, inhabited by them continuously for nearly three thousand years, and defended by an army that could cook your kabob tomorrow.
Meanwhile Canada doesn’t like the idea one bit:
Canada Condemns Remarks by Iranian Tyrant
“President Ahmadinejad’s statement represents a willful distortion of history and an attempt to prevent political reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians,” Canadian Foreign Minister Maxine Bernier said in a statement.
“It is comments like these that make Iran a country of concern for the international community,” the minister said. “Canada continues to work to focus attention on the Iranian government’s atrocious human rights record. To that end, Canada will once again be leading a resolution on Iran at the UN this autumn.”
On second thought… Perhaps the Madman from Tehran does not really hate Jews. After all, Northern Canada has only 100k some people in an area the size of Western Europe. There are diamonds, gold, coal, and lots of places for summer colonies and bungalows. Not to mention, that with recent Global Climate Change underway, most of Northern Canada will be prime beach-front property very soon.
However, the Iranians would then ship weapons to the Inuit, the native inhabitants of Northern Canada. The New Israeli-Canadians might be facing off against some harpoons tipped with more than just barbs. Imagine the Inuit Liberation Organization, the Inuit Resistance Army, Inuit Army of God, and so forth. And what would ck do? After moving himself all the way to Jerusalem, only to have to see him shipped back to Canada?
Of course this is hardly original thinking for the Iranian Despot. Israel Zangwill tried to get the Zionist Congress one hundred years ago to consider using Canada as a temporary home for Jews from Russia, but was met with opposition from within the Zionist movement and others.
What would have happened if Zangwill had triumphed and millions of Jews from Russia had been diverted across frozen seas to Alaska and Northwest Canada? It would kill the Kosher Alaska Cruise industry–who would want to hang around home on a cruise ship. And another thing, the lox plate at all simchas would be refilled continuously, without regard for cost.
TM, have we got a campaign now?
Next Shavuot, I’ll tell the story of cheesecakes.
Sarah, you are so learned I took you seriously.
Man, I keep having to look Latin phrases. “With a grain of salt.”
Anyway, I agree with Sarah’s shmeer campaign.
JM, I was just poking fun at Shy Guy as he claimed self-respecting Jews didn’t eat lox but smoked salmon.
Cum grano salis, smoked salmon (from Nova Scotia) turns into lox once it hits the inside of a bagel. Just as cream-cheese (invented by Quakers) turns into a shmeer.
I am not a bagel fan, but I have never heard anybody call one an unsweetened doughnut.
Quite the opposite: in occupied Europe, after Victory, my father heard American charity doughnuts called “zissen bagels” by the few remaining Jews, who were given them, at taxpayer expense, to cheer them up.
That was after my father won World War II without soiling his hands by touching filthy firearms. He was very clever that way. He merely raised his terrible voice, and victory was his. You didn’t need guns back then.
Times have changed.
People are so wierd these days.
They think you have to defend yourself.
They don’t see the charm in being an unarmed peasantry. It’s fun being an unarmed peasant! You get exercise, holding your hands up. That’s tiring, after a few minutes. Very good exercise. There’s a cute picture of a little boy in that position, being taken on an outing by some uniformed men, out of the Warsaw ghetto, I think.
Bialys are much, much better. I actually don’t like bagels. Who knew.
Mmm, beigels..
I don’t rely on Wikipedia though; I got that information from books I once read. Wikipedia can be fun, but it is not a reliable source by any scientific criteria.
Hey! I can read the Wikipedia entry, too!
Actually, it’s called a ‘bagel’ as it was the Austrian / southern German word for ‘stirrup’. The bagels symbolized the stirrups of the cavalry. Jews from those areas took them to Eastern Europe with them. Bagels were somewhat forgotten in Central Europe as their originally dogged consistency did not exactly make them a treat in comparison to all kinds of delicate pastries that gained more and more acceptance then. Typically, American bagels are softened (e.g. through adding eggs to the dough) to make them easier to chew on.
I thought we called it a bagel because it’s not a bialy and vice versa.
. . . and we call a ‘bagel’ an ‘unsweetened donut / doughnut’, because ‘bagel’ is so shtetl . . .
No self-respecting Jew eats lox. We eat smoked salmon.
Great post, Rabbi.
It reminded me of the joke where the Almighty asks Moses where he’d like for the Israelites to settle. Moses, California in mind, starts replying, “Ca – Ca – Ca…” – “What? Canaan? That rocky desert place? I can’t quite see why you’d want to go there, but if that is your wish, Moses, so be it.”