Changes are afoot for Matisyahu. He has Tweeted two photographs of himself without his beard and released an accompanying statement in which he announces: “No more Chassidic reggae superstar. Sorry folks, all you get is me…no alias.”

He recalls how he had once “felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity”, because he “felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart”. Now, he announces, he is “reclaiming” himself and “trusting my goodness and my divine mission”.  He concludes his statement with the promise: “Get ready for an amazing year filled with music of rebirth.”

Fascinating. He’s only in his early 30s yet he has already had quite a spiritual journey. During his late teens and early twenties, after dropping-out early from education, he embraced Orthodox Judaism following a trip to Israel and then joined Chabad. Somewhere in that process he had also experimented with mind-bending drugs.

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Hamas described it as ‘a violent act which amounts to a declaration of religious war on the Muslim holy places’, and evidence of ‘the Zionist scheme of aggression’.

Jeez, I wondered, what has Israel done now?

Well, it’s only gone and closed a dangerous wooden ramp that non-Muslims use to gain access to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif! All the entrances used by Muslims to access the site remain open as usual. It is only the ramp used by tourists, which is deemed a health-and-safety risk by the city council, that has been closed while a replacement or other safe solution can be found.

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When we discussed our favourite shawarma outlets, Sami’s on Brent Street got a lot of votes. I had never been to Sami’s at that stage but I gave it a go yesterday.

I have to agree – their shawarma in laffa is exceptional. The laffa itself was nice and thick, almost like a naan bread. The meat was the closest to Israeli shawarma I’ve ever found outside of the Promised Land.

Thanks to Elliot, Sandra, CityCa, Aryeh and everyone else for the recommendation. Thanks to Richard and Rob for the lift!

On Sunday evening I’m due to appear in a television documentary about Amy Winehouse. Called Amy Winehouse: Her Life and Legacy, it begins at 10.45pm on ITV2.

I donate a portion of the royalties from sales of my biography of Amy to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, the charity her family set-up in her memory. You can visit the Foundation’s website here.

Rest in peace Amy. There’s more love for you than ever.

Update: The documentary is currently on ITVPlayer here.

I was excited when my Simon Cowell biography became the number two bestseller in WHSmiths last year, but it really made me hunger for the top spot. Now I’ve achieved that with my new biography of Adele, which is currently riding high in many stores and number one in HMV. I’m very proud.

Like most people, I did some odd things when I was a teenager. I’ll cut straight to the most embarrassing of all: I actually used to go on CND marches. I blame the BBC drama Threads, a ghastly portrayal  of a nuclear attack on Sheffield of all places. It scared the life out of me and convinced me that the only way for the planet to have a future was to rid it immediately of all nuclear weapons. So I joined the anti-nuclear throngs who would march through London.

We chanted for the end of nuclear weapons, for Maggie, Maggie, Maggie to be out, out, out – and much more besides. We assembled in Hyde Park to hear speeches by puffed-up peace pontificators who told us over crackling PA systems that if Britain unilaterally disarmed, the rest of the world would follow suit the next morning. We sang ‘We shall overcome’ and then headed home, trying to avoid the nagging feeling that the exercise had been a tad futile.

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A collection of unheard Amy Winehouse songs are released today as a posthumous album called Lioness: Hidden Treasures. It’s a fascinating and moving body of work.

To be clear this is not what Amy’s third album would have been, nor anywhere near that. Rather, it is two new songs together with an assortment of lost recordings and out-takes. The amazing thing is that even Amy’s musical waifs and strays are so much better than most acts’ best of breeds. She was a class apart.

One pound from every copy of the album sold will go to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, helping children and young people facing poverty, illness, disability or addiction.

You can hear samples from the 12 tracks here. To read my Jewish Chronicle column about Amy click here and find out more about my biography of Amy by going here.

They said it couldn’t happen. Well, I’m not sure ‘they’ always know everything. Today is the 14th birthday of Hayley Okines. You can find out why this is such a magnificent achievement on her website here.

Happy birthday Hayley, you little minx! Congratulations to your wonderful mother Kerry, too. As I wrote on Hayley’s birthday last year, it is families like the Okines that show the rest of us what love and life is all about.

You can buy Hayley’s magnificent book Old Before My Time here. Be inspired.

As you might have read, a Labour MP called Paul Flynn has caused offence by suggesting that Matthew Gould, Britain’s first Jewish Ambassador to Israel, might have divided loyalties.

Flynn, 76, kicked all this off last Wednesday, when he told a Select Committee discussing the Adam Werritty saga: “I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories but the Ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service.”

Interesting choice of words, no? The clause ‘I do not fall for conspiracy theories but…’ suggests he feels he has this time.

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I never met the Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, though as I wrote in the Jewish Chronicle in June, I would love to have done. I’ve read and heard so many stories from those who encountered him. They fascinate me.

This superb speech, by Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, at the international Chabad conference in Crown Heights, Brooklyn last week, is so inspiring. It includes several stories and observations about the Rebbe. Lord Sacks remembers how the Rebbe had told himself: ‘If the Nazis search out every Jew in hate, we will search out every Jew in love.’

Treat yourself: settle down in front of this for 31 minutes.

Visit Jewish.TV for more Jewish videos.

After mild weather for several weeks it seems that winter is arriving in Britain. Fine by me, I don’t mind winter at all.

Meanwhile, I have a column about Bibi in this week’s Jewish Chronicle. You can read it online here.

I enjoyed watching a short documentary about the inspirational work of Rabbi Harvey Belovski, the rabbi of Golders Green Synagogue, on the BBC this morning. It was called On The Road With An Orthodox Rabbi.

These ‘mainstream media meets Orthodox Jews’ documentaries are sometimes a little uncomfortable, but I found this a basically sensible and interesting insight into life as an Orthodox rabbi.

I’ve met Rabbi Belovski and also corresponded with him for some time. He’s an extremely kind, supportive and fascinating man. As an outsider, I would say he’s a superb ambassador for Judaism in the modern age when secularism is becoming increasingly trendy.

UK-based readers can watch the documentary on iPlayer here. You can follow the Rabbi on Twitter here. Kol hakovod, Harvey!

An epochal development: kosher food manufacturer Yarden has produced a cook-at-home shawarma product. I first heard of this momentous news when Yarden’s new product won a ‘Shawarma Showdown’ organised by Israel Connect. The blind-tasters preferred it to that of leading joints Solly’s and White House Express.

I bought some Yarden shawarma while I was in Golders Green recently and tried it last night. It only needs three minutes frying in a pan, so even someone as culinarily-catastrophic as I was able to prepare it. I also added some rice, hummus and salad to the plate. That’s the sort of confident mood I was in.

Oh, it was delicious. It was as if I had teleported from east Berkshire to Golders Green. I highly recommend that shawarma aficionados – that’s all of us, right? – try it out. Let me know what you think.

Meanwhile, I’d be curious to hear what your favourite shawarma joint is. I wrote of some of my favourite British places last year, including White House Express (whose manager once dubbed me their ‘shawarma ambassador’).

However, my favourite shawarma place in the world is Hakosem in Tel Aviv. On the corner of King George and Shlomo HaMelch, Hakosem serves shawarma that is almost grotesquely luscious. Their falafel is also amazing. They will often hand you a free sample of falafel as you queue. I believe Hakosem means ‘magician’ – and it is well-named.

What’s your favourite shawarma eatery?

Back in June I wrote in the Jewish Chronicle about ‘the magnificent Rabbi Yisroel Lew’ of Chabad Bloomsbury, the man who nicknames me ‘Hasidic Goy’. It was wonderful to bump into his magnificence whilst dining on shawarma at White House Express last night.

Actually, speaking of the Jewish Chronicle, I have a column about Benjamin Netanyahu in this weekend’s edition. I’ll post a link here when it goes live on their website.