No singing in the shower dear bucherim!

To paraphrase an old joke: “20% of Chassidic men sing in the shower, the other 80% daven. Do you know which prayer they daven??”

JERUSALEM (AFP) – A former Jewish grand rabbi, Mordechai Eliahu, has laid down the law on amateur operatics under the shower: you can hum but you can’t sing.

“You will not sing in the shower,” the former leader of Israel’s Sephardic Jews instructed a listener inquiring about Talmudic laws on an ultra-Orthodox religious radio programme.

Eliahu explained that the Hebrew language, holy to the Jewish religion, was not to be sullied by use in a bathroom, Wednesday’s edition of Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported.

But the rabbi, considered a religious authority in world Judaism, went on to soften his stand. “To hum without a word in Hebrew crossing your mind is acceptable,” he conceded.