It looks like Yesh Atid might get the rare passage of a law proposal in an anti-Yesh Atid coalition..

MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) has proposed a law that would allow secular people and traditional people to refuse to work on Shabbos, and it would be illegal to fire them for their refusal.

Currently the law requires anyone refusing to work on Shabbos to base the refusal on religious belief and to submit an affidavit stating his religious opposition. This means only actively religious people are legally able to refuse to work on Shabbos without risking getting fired.
source: Kikar

This is surprising considering that for the most part it is illegal to operate businesses on Shabbos, with exception. So a business owner can illegally make his employees work, illegally, and they cannot refuse to work, illegally, because they are not religious.

Even in a business that is operating legally on Shabbos, the current proposal, if it passes, will do away with such discrimination on religious basis and allow people to equally benefit from the day off and not be forced to work.

This law has agreement from both sides of the bench and MKs from the coalition are signed on it as well.

Interestingly, the law was prepared for Lavie by the "Reform Center for Religion and State". I would expect, based on history, the Haredi parties to reject the proposal, despite what looks like a law they should/would agree with, just to prevent the Reform from gaining a victory of sorts with a successful law proposal on a religious issue. I don't know what they will do, but it will be interesting to see if they cooperate on this because of the law itself being in line with their ideals, or if they will reject it because of where it came from.

Aliza Lavie and Lihi Lapid will conduct a 'hafrashat challah' ceremony

  -- Kikar

I love election season. it brings out the funniest in our politicians. They come with with the craziest advertisements, and then the stunts are "to die for".

MK Aliza Lavie, the religious one in the pair, and Yair Lapid's wife, Lihi, are helping the party dig for religious voters and for traditional voters, and to that end will have a hafrashat challa ceremony on Thursday in Netanya.

Lavie explained that it won't just be for religious women, but this is a custom that has gotten into Israeli society and is not specifically for the religious.

Perhaps Lapid got to his position just for this very moment, sort of like Queen Esther, - to help some women in Netanya perform a mitzva that maybe they normally do not do!

the best show in town...

The letter of Rav Shalom Cohen banning women from academic institutions, even Haredi ones, has taken up much of the airwaves over the past couple of days. People are upset, people are supportive, stories are coming out how bad education is and how it caused people to stumble and has destroyed families, people are questioning, how could it be, Rav Ovadia's daughter, etc.

(as an aside, the most interesting story I heard, from a rabbi on the radio, was the one where a young women went to one of these academies and then got a job. At the job she became exposed to the internet, and then things changed with her spirituality - he didnt say what specifically,but it negatively affected the home and children - I found that story funny as it did not really have to do at all with the academy. In her workplace she used the Internet and that was the problem he described, but he blames the academy for her downfall.)

One comment in particular stood out for me.  MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) criticized Rav Cohen as becoming irrelevant and disconnected form the people. Lavie said he is trying to take the community many years backwards , and he is going directly against the moreshet, the legacy, of Rav Ovadia Yosef whose daughter founded the Michala Hacharedit, with the blessing of her father..

Without getting into debating Rav Cohen's words (I think most readers here know what I feel on this topic), I think MK Lavie is off-base. Rav Cohen is not obligated by Rav Ovadia's legacy. I dont even know if that can be called his legacy - just because it was one thing he did and supported, does that become his legacy? Who decides what someone's legacy is?

But even if it is the legacy of Rav Ovadia, why should Rav Cohen be obligated by it? Rav Cohen is a big boy and, to paraphrase Robin Ventura, he took a position, as head of the Moetzet of Shas, in which he had to put his big boy pants on. He can do what he feels is right, regardless of what Rav Ovadia thought. Rav Cohen is in charge now, he is the go-to rav, he makes the decisions. He does not have to follow someone else, but can do what he himself feels is right.

Statesmen are not obligated by Rabin's legacy, whatever it might be, or Ben Gurion's legacy or Menachem Begin's legacy, and rabbis are not obligated by Rav Ovadia's legacy, or Rav Shach's legacy, or the Brisker Rav's legacy.

#EyalGiladNaftali
#bringbackourboys

the Knesset is generally the best show in town.. here, in a Knesset committee, the committee led by MK Aliza Lavie for advancement of the status of women, Lavie gets into a screaming match with MK Hanin Zoabi about her supporting the terrorists...

The Knesset has been dubbed (by me) as "the best show in town".. and MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) is one of the MKs that make it so...

As quoted yesterday, MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) is promoting a bill that would require 50% representation of women on religious councils. Gafni opposes the bill and says those behind it are hypocrites, and even said that more Haredi MKs voted for a female president than female MKs who voted for a female, yet they demand spots in the religious councils... Deputy Minister Eli Ben Dahan responded to the bill saying the numbers are inaccurate, and the bill is unnecessary as the religious councils are working towards 20% representation which is very reasonable and in no other government body or anywhere else is there a demand for 50% representation.

here is the entertaining video...

all they are fighting about the name of a committee... not even a policy item..

MK Aliza Lavie reveals that she aspires to be Minister of Religious Affairs .. she talks about her memories, her approach to religion, how she can be religious without covering her hair, her participation in an Orthodox minyan in which women are full participants in all ways (Shira Chadasha), and other interesting issues..

"Kosher Style"..

Kosher style refers to food that is not kosher, but it could be, or, it is similar to food that is kosher just made differently. We've all seen the restaurants in the United States that are kosher style. Some states have even banned use of the term "kosher style" in their advertising because it has been deemed to be misleading, as people don't always realize kosher style is not actually kosher.

According to MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid), the reason why Poland banned shechita is because when the Prime Minister was there with his delegation, he did not insist on eating kosher food, i.e. he was fine eating non-kosher meals. When the Polish people realized kashrut is not a big deal or very important and the Jews don't really care about it, they decided they have nothing preventing them from banning it.

Somebody who had been a part of the PM's delegation on the trip to Poland denies Lavie's version of the trip and says that the food served, as always, was "kosher style", he says they ate fish (besides for people who ordered actual kosher meals), and had no connection to being the cause for the Poles banning shechita.

In his words:

“The whole visit was done, as is usually done, kosher-style. I distinctly remember we were served fish. For those members of the delegation who asked for it, and there are quite a few [in the PMO], there was proper kosher food under rabbinic [supervision].”
The kosher food was served “on separate plates, and a rabbi present made sure it was really kosher,” the official recalled.
“That’s been the standard for decades,” he noted.
The official also rejected Lavie’s suggestion that Israeli officials’ level of observance was connected to the Polish decision to outlaw kosher slaughter. “I don’t see any basis in these claims,” the official said.

I must say, "Kosher style" is not a very good defense against the accusation of eating non-kosher food, as kosher style by its very definition means the food was not kosher. Whether it actually had anything to with the Polish ban on shechita or not I have no idea. I highly doubt that with all the religious Jews and Jewish organizations that had spent many months and resources fighting the upcoming ban a delegation from Israel eating "kosher style" food is what sealed the fate.

MK Aliza Lavie

On the other hand, it seems pretty stupid for Israel to send a delegation to fight a possible ban on kosher slaughter while they themselves are eating not kosher food. Just for the spirit of what they were there in Poland to do should have been enough of a reason for them to eat only kosher food on that specific trip.

Overall it seems to me to be a non-issue. Israeli prime ministers were never careful as a policy to eat only kosher food, even when on official state business. Even if they tried to not make a big deal out of it and downplay it instead, as Yehuda Avner related about a trip Yitzchak Rabin took and tried to keep his non-kosher food out of the attention of those around to avoid a coalition crisis, they did always eat non-kosher food. They just tried not to draw attention to it. Netanyahu did no differently, as stupid as it was for the reason mentioned above.

I do find it interesting that this criticism about Netanyahu's delegation not insisting on kosher food, and blaming the shchita ban on it, came from a Member of Knesset from Yesh Atid, a party accused of being anti-religion (at best), rather than from one of the explicitly religious parties...
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