Fuck you—I’m not giving you any!

Poor Mhairi Smellie. Her first name, a Scots Gaelic name, was pronounced vary, which sounded close to very. The name Smellie was common enough in Scotland, but to be called something which sounded like very smelly was a singular misfortune, and indicative, surely, of a lack of parental foresight.

I conclude that the kaddish, in Rashi’s day, played only its traditional role, in and out of the context of mourning. It was still a liturgical corollary to a pedagogical activity. Indeed, in Rashi’s reading, the liturgy of mourning that the kaddish accompanied was itself not construed as an expression of mourning, even if it was expressed by mourners. “Neither a lament nor a dirge”: this seems odd. In this unlachrymose interpretation of the prayer of justification, Rashi seems to have divorced language from reality. Of course these words are a lament and a dirge! Just see where they are said.

And there is actually quite a lot of entertaining dykery going on under the guise of bees sipping flowers, that sort of thing ...