Recollections of Carmel College: Research on Subjects of Jewish Law - Autobiographical Jottings

Almost this entire book comprises material from my autobiography discussing my writings over the course of half a century.

The first part of this book is a very detailed account of my recollections of my high school days between the years 1953 to 1960 at the Jewish Public School, Carmel College, situated not far from Oxford in England, under the headmastership of Rabbi Kopul Rosen. This account which is titled "Seven Years at Carmel College" includes a large variety of subjects connected with the school, namely, the different subjects taught, various teachers on their staff; various societies; extracurricular lessons (for example Talmud); dining hall and food served; dormitories; examinations internal and external; and formal ceremonies which took place during the school year.

In earlier published volumes, I described how I had researched the various subjects of Jewish law for nearly thirty papers of mine. In this volume I added a further four papers of mine. Three of these papers were on subjects connected with tefillin, namely, the tefillin of Shimusha Raba (a Rabbi who lived in the Geonic period); occasions when one may put on tefillin on Shabbat; and at what stage of the service one should take them off before Musaf on Rosh Chodesh. The fourth paper was on the subject of Chol Hamoed and whether or not photography and driving a vehicle are permitted on these days.

In the past, I accompanied a number of the research papers which I had written with my autobiographical account of how I had performed the research for these papers, together with any follow up material. In my book I included this information for about a further thirteen research papers of mine. These autobiographical accounts included, the papers on techelet (the bluish colour of tzitzit threads); putting on tefillin on Shabbat; celebrating Shabbat in the Park Hotel in Hevron at the beginning of 1968; transfer of Arabs from Eretz Yisrael; dicephalus (two headed) twins; Israel's title to Eretz Yisrael under international law and Jewish settlement throughout the whole of Eretz Yisrael with special reference to Hevron; secular Zionist agenda for a Jewish State; heter mechirah (sale of the agricultural land for the Shemita year); a case of adoption and conversion with particular reference to Jewish Law; and the Chinese etrog (an etrog with "fingers").

In addition, I included in my book autobiographical material of a general nature on subjects I had written about. These included subjects appertaining to the various articles and letters appearing in my research; pupils' work books; Torah research papers; and Torah riddles and records.

Every year since almost my birth, I had to obtain the accessories for these Festivals, namely a Shofar for Rosh Hashanah; Sukkah and Arba'at Haminin for Sukkot; and Matzah for Pesach. In my book I went into detail, as far as I could remember, year by year from my childhood to the present, how I obtained these accessories and how I utilised them. 

It was in about the 1960s that my mother, (after someone had tasted one of her recipes!), was asked whether she would give a recipe each month for the Woman's supplement of the London Mizrachi paper "The Jewish Review". Over the course of the years, she submitted seventy recipes all on a strictly voluntary basis. In 2005 it was decided to collect all these recipes and publish them in a book, which I arranged and edited. I wrote an account of how I did this work and it is an appendix in my book.

The last part of the book is an account of my genealogy up to the time of four grandparents, and in each case, I went back several generations explaining the various sources I searched for and utilised in preparing this genealogy.