Funny story. A Turkish media team parked their car in Mea Shearim to do some filming. The team members got out of the car to check out the area, and while they were out a local kannoi/extremist thug spotted the car with professional cameras inside. Assuming it was an Israeli news channel present for some local filming, he smashed the windows of the car with a rock and tossed in some rotten fish.

Residents in Mea Shearim hung a sign warning the residents of Rehavia and Tel Aviv to not enter Mea Shearim out of concern of the Corona outbreak and the disregard they show for the regulations to protect against the spread of the virus.

this is after the Haredi community was under siege for the early days of corona in which they didnt adopt the rules quickly and were [partially] responsible for the early spread - now the Haredim seem to be keeping the rules more than anyone else and are still thought of as being negligent in this...thus the biting attack..

The community of Mea She'arim (or parts of it) is one of those that has been in conflict with the police in recent days over the regulations form the Ministry of Health. The police go in to break up illegal gatherings and minyanim, and the fights break out, arrests and fines, police leave, and then the cycle starts again. This is also true in parts of Bnei Braq as well, and RBS B, but right now let's focus on Mea She'arim.

The :shtieblach of Mea She'arim is a good example of the innovative and adaptive capabilities and of the wit of the Yerushalmi head.

The police closed them down, shut the shul. In its place the yerushalmim there decided instead to open a kiosk, a makolet, selling food.

A makolet is allowed to have 4 people in line at each cash register, standing 2 meters apart, plus the cashiers.

So they opened a makolet in the place of the shul, and set up two "cashiers", allowing 4 people in each line. That is a total of ten people. And then they daven while in line for the cashier (who are also davening as part of the minyan).



It is a cute attempt to try to get around the rules. I doubt it will hold the police at bay for long.

The biggest problems I see with it:
1. are you allowed to use a shul as a makolet?
2. They are now running an [almost definitely] unlicensed business and can be shut down for that instead.
3. They can almost definitely all be arrested for tax evasion and all those types of crimes for not filing taxes, not recording transactions and all the rest of the fraud crimes they are committing.

Cute, but I doubt it will last long.

The following pashkevil went up on the walls of the Mea Shearim area... it is protesting the increasing chilul shabbos around the country, especially in Jerusalem, with additional bus lines going into operation and an increasing number of stores opening for business, with municipal money being spent on chilul shabbos activities.It has even reached the point with the city providing its cleaning and garbage collection services on Shabbos itself in a number of areas such as in the Mahane Yehuda area.

Because of all that, the writers are calling for a garbage rebellion. Anybody who holds Shabbos as valuable will take his garbage out and place it in the streets rather than in the garbage bins and leave the garbage in the middle of the lanes. This will be an expression of protest that is measured, mida knegged mida.

from tweet by Shlomi Heller

Throw the garbage in the middle of the streets? To me it just sounds like every other protest and rally they hold  out there in that part of the world...

There is been a lot of talk about whose fault it is that no government was formed and Israel is going to elections again.

Some people blame Avigdor Lieberman for his tough and uncompromising stance on the draft law. Some say the draft law was just a red herring and if not for that he would have had another excuse to string them along and not join - he just wanted to bring about Netanyahu's downfall.

Some say it was the fault of the Haredi parties. Some are more specific and point to Gur specifically. The Haredi parties refused to compromise on the draft law, and even when they did, the compromise was worthless because it did not include Agudat Yisrael led by the Gerrer Rebbe.

Some blame Benjamin Netanyahu for dealing with the immunity law rather than actually building a coalition. Lieberman people say he never demanded any compromise from the Haredi parties (at least not until the last minute) and only expected others to compromise. Others blame him for not dealing tough with Lieberman until it was too late.

Some even blame Opposition parties such as Labor and Kachol Lavan for not being willing to save Netanyahu and offer a unity government but standing strong on their position of not supporting Netanyahu under indictment. As if that is the job of Opposition parties.

I know who is really to blame, and it is none of the above.

The blame should fall squarely on the shoulders of the women of Mea Shearim

According to Kikar, a group of women from Mea Shearim gathered together at midnight on Tuesday night, just as Israel was entering the final stages of attempted coalition building or turning to elections, in one of the local shuls to hold a prayer vigil against the formation of the government and in favor of new elections. They also davened against the ratification of the draft law and to give Avigdor Lieberman the strength to stand strong in his demands against the Haredi parties.

According to the report. they gathered in the shul, in front of the open Aron Kodesh, and poured out their hearts in prayer. They kept the event secret and locked the doors of the shul to prevent anyone else from walking in and inadvertently stumbling upon them.

So, at the end of the day, the fact that the government dispersed and went to new elections was not the fault of Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, Yaakov Litzman, Moshe Gafni, Aryeh Deri, or the Gerrer Rebbe. It was the fault of Shprintzy, Ruchel, Blimi and Chaya Sara from Mea Shearim! Who says women in the Haredi community have no power??!!

Often we find people blaming the victim when an episode crops up involving the extremists from Mea Shearim or RBS B. If the violent extremist thugs attack someone walking through the neighborhood, people say she should have been more sensitive to the culture of the place and worn longer sleeves, or not walk through at all, or the soldier should have known not to go there, or the like.

Kikar is reporting that today in Mea Shearim a young man was attacked, thankfully only by threatening mobs and screams but it did not get to actual physical violence, when he went to daven mincha in one of the local shtiebels. He was attacked because he was wearing olive green pants and someone thought he might be a soldier of the IDF, so he gathered the mob to throw him out.

The poor fellow left the shul, and the neighborhood, quickly, to avoid problems, so the thugs got what they wanted.

Should we blame him for wearing green pants? What was he thinking - dressing like a soldier! he was asking them to attack him! he provoked them by his insensitive attire.

There is no way to know what will tick off an extremist thug. One day it might be this, another day it might be that. There is no way to predict such a thing.

Thugs are thugs and should be dealt with appropriately. We needn't blame the victims, when it is the thugs causing the problems.

In the list of possible Yom Haatzmaut activities to stick on your calendar, you might want to consider this one, as reported by INN:

Jerusalem activists headed by Evyatar Elbaz, who heads the rescue organization Elon to locate missing persons, plan to hold a "victory lap" with Israeli flags on the streets of the predominantly Mea Shearim for Independence Day. The protest convoy is expected to arrive in Mea Shearim this Sunday afternoon.
According to Elbaz, the "victory lap" was born in protest against the extreme haredi-religious riots in Jerusalem that "have turned the lives of Jerusalem residents into hell in recent months." he said, "The peak of course was the violent and despicable behavior of those extremists who desecrated the funeral procession and kidnapped the body of the baby who drowned in a hotel in Ashdod, adding to their roadblocks in Jerusalem, vandalism of city property, to their harming of haredim who decided to enlist in the army and, of course, their traditional contempt for state symbols such as Memorial Day for the Fallen of Israel and Independence Day." He stressed, "They have to understand that by way of violence and crazy extremism they will not achieve anything."

a protest convoy victory lap in Mea Shearim with Israeli flags. This will surely end well.

The extremists reaction to the women on bills is not really much of a story, but ther eis something interesting about it...

According to Yediot, in Mea Shearim it has been very common for the new bills graced with the images of Leah Goldberg and Rachel the Poetess to be defaced.

Defacing currency is illegal, but there does not seem to really be any way to stop it or hold anyone accountable for it.

The regular go to man for opinions out thee is Yoelish Krausz. Krausz explains that people have stopped withdrawing money via the ATM machine, as the ATM spits out the new bills. Instead, they go to the bank and specifically request the old bills. They prefer to not use the new bills, even though it is allowed.

Sounds to me like lines in the local banks have probably gotten a lot longer recently.

Krausz also explains with Chanukah upcoming and the common distribution of chanukah gelt to the kids.. those Admorim who do distribute money to their kids and grandkids will give out the old 20 shekel bills, though eventually this form of protest will expire  - eventually the banks won't give out the old bills and eventually people will just stop defacing the new ones.

The interesting part is that he says they are doing this as a reaction. The general community is fighting against them regarding "hadarat nashim" - the exclusion of women from the public sphere. This is their response, their fighting back. They are doing it intentionally, to be provocative on this matter.

Meaning, they do not really care all that much about it, but feel they have to fight back against what they are attacked for. So it makes them more extreme. I can appreciate that.

When the Bank of Israel announced that over the coming years it would be printing new bills and the selected images to grace the faces of the bills would include famous female artists, such as Rachel the Poetess and Leah Goldberg, everyone joked about how in Mea Shearim (and RBS B) they will deface the bills by ripping them or blacking out the faces or simply refuse to use them.

And now the joke is becoming reality.

The Bank of Israel will be putting the new 20 and 100 bills into circulation at the end of this week. Actualic reports about how in Mea Shearim they are saying they will not use these bills and will refuse to accept them as payment. Yoelish Krausz says it is not such a big deal as many in Mea Shearim continue to use dollars rather than shekels anyway. He says if they get such bills without realizing it, they will simlpy pass them along to other people - i.e. they will use the money as it was intended, by passing it along and using it to pay for goods and services rather than hanging it on their walls and looking at it longingly.

There were a lot of protests yesterday, in many parts of the country. Many of them were in protest of the arrest of 2 young yeshiva guys who had evaded the IDF draft registration. Those are old and boring news items by now. The more interesting and unusual protest was actually a small one in the area of Mea Shearim.

Actualic reports on a protest led by a small group of extremists (aka sikrikim). The city of Jerusalem, led by Mayor Nir Barkat and his deputies Yitzchak Pindros and Yossi Deutsch, both representing the Haredi community, inaugurated a new park on Strauss St, in the vicinity of Mea Shearim.

As an aside, interestingly, the name of the new park is "Gan Yoshke". However, the sikrikim were not protesting the name. I don't know who it is being named in honor of, but I will assume Yoshke does not refer to the person who first comes to my mind when hearing that name, and I will assume the sikrikim have no problem with that specific name.

Anyways, the sikrikim were protesting the new park because, according to them, the local community administrative body is destroying the Nation of Israel  via the children - and they warned parents that this park is the gateway to integration into the destructive army.

LOL

That's right. They claim the problem with the park is that it will lead to integration into the IDF. I am not even going to ask how the park is a gateway to the IDF.

I guess they found a way to make it interesting. Had they protested the park for any more expected reasons, such as a breach in tzniyus or whatever, the entire thing would probably have been boring and gone unnoticed. Now they might get some airwaves from it by making a ridiculous connection. It is still mostly unnoticed, probably dwarfed by the massive protests around the country blocking traffic at many intersections and also by the lack of interest into the idiocy of these people except as a weird sideshow, like the bearded lady at the circus...

Someone in Geula was upset about the annual Neturei Karta protest at the Kikar Shabbos intersection at the time of the memorial siren for Yom Hazikaron. In response, that person, seemingly unidentified, blasted Hatikva out a window somewhere.

The following photo won second place in the National Geographic photo contest for 2014


the contest caption on the photo reads:

Mea Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox district of Jerusalem. Newly married couple Aaron and Rivkeh will be alone together for the first time after their wedding ceremony. Their marriage was arranged by their families. The 18-year-olds met once to confirm the choice; since then they have been prohibited to meet or even talk.

National Geographic Traveler Director of Photography Dan Westergren, one of this year's judges, shares his thoughts on the second-place winner:

"Photography is a powerful tool for showing the ways that people around the world are clearly different but in many ways the same. The Orthodox fur hat and wedding dress are clues that this picture was taken in a very distinctive place. But the smile and laughter of the bride and groom indicate that these are teenagers reacting to a new situation.

"When I look at the image I can't help but think about the nature of love and marriage around the world. Here is a scene that in many parts of the world could be a young couple on their first date. Because of the clothes they are wearing I know that this is not a lighthearted encounter but the beginning of a lifelong commitment. Any photograph that can make me think that much deserves to be a winner."

We will use a firm hand against anybody who tries to impose fear on citizens who are fulfilling their obligations to the State... The best answer to these outlaws is the number of haredi draftees that has grown significantly in recent years, and will grow even more in light of the decision taken by the government at the beginning of the week about increasing the sharing of the burden..

  -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after hearing about the haredi soldier who was attacked in mea Shearim

I don't post the image of every pashkevil put up in Mea She'arim or RBS B by extremists. I don't usually want to give them a voice. I only post the ones that are either so unique or if I have something unique to say about it.

The following pashkevil is very unique. It even made me laugh a bit.

photo credit to INN

As reported on INN, the pashkevil posted in Mea She'arim is protesting that Egged employs female bus drivers.

the pashkevil states that Egged is well known for its mistreatment of the haredim and of everything holy to religion, whether by abominable pictures on huge advertisements or by mass chillul shabbos just to anger God - l'hachiss.
Now, to add a serious sin to their other sins, they have taken the counsel of Bila'am to cause the masses of travelers to sin by replacing male bus drivers with immodest female drivers... they will do everything in their power to ensure that these lewd buses will not enter our holy neighborhood.. we will use all means to push them out of our camp..

this pashkevil made me chuckle...

A fight in Geula - Mea Shearim is ending up in beis din, and interestingly, the Eida Hachareidis is claiming to be the only beis din with the ability to judge the case because it involves questions of tzniyus.

The vaad of the neighborhood in Geula -Mea Shearim, run by the thugs (aka sikrikim) and the Eida did not want an empty storefront to be rented out to a business, but only to be used as offices. They claimed that having a store on the bottom floor would create a tzniyus problem in the area.

After a while, the owner was not able to find a renter for an office, and he gave in and rented his space to a store selling paper goods. The owner of the paper goods store was threatened and harassed, but he opened his business anyway.

Eventually the "Vaad Geula" sent him a summons to appear in beis din. The owner decided he was not going to the Eida beis din and instead opened a case in the Rabbanut beis din, even signing a shtar borrerus - an arbitration agreement. He justified this by quoting the halacha, saying that the defendant gets to choose the beis din.

To counter this, the claim was floated that because the problem is one involving tzniyus, only the beis din of the Eida is able to be a judge of the issue.

The store-owner responded explaining why he does not want to be judged in their beis din.

He then received a final summons saying that if he continues to refuse to appear before the beis din they would publicize an issur against shopping in his store.

And that is how a pashkevil is born..

(source: Bechadrei)

The most interesting part of this fight is the claim that only the beis din of the Eida has the "right" or "ability" to judge issues of tzniyus.

Quote Of The Day

This evening we will gather and come to a decision how to respond to the US Embassy that warned against visiting Mea Shearim...

  -- Jerusalem activist Chaim Miller

How sad. Over the past few weeks, the comments (I have said them to when people ask me about Bet Shemesh) while driving through, or talking about, RBS B, whether with taxi drivers or with other people, has more often than not been along the lines of "this is the bad neighborhood of Bet Shemesh". How shameful that "the bad neighborhood" is one that is religious (and it is in that name that it is bad... yet there are other religious neighborhoods that do not have the description of "bad neighborhood" appended to them).

Now, according to Ynetnews,:

The US State Department is concerned over recent violence exhibited by extremists in Israel's haredi community and has published a travel recommendation for tourists: Do not walk around dressed immodestly in haredi neighborhoods for fear that extremists would assault you in the street.
The travel recommendations which were updated by the US State Department two weeks ago with the recent phenomenon of women's exclusion and haredi violence in mind, calls on American tourists to dress appropriately when visiting religious sites in the Old City and in haredi neighborhoods and to avoid driving through those neighborhoods during the Sabbath.
"Most roads into ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhoods are blocked off on Friday nights, Saturdays, and Jewish holidays. Assaults on secular visitors, either for being in cars or for being 'immodestly dressed' have occurred in these neighborhoods," the consulate said.

How sad and shameful it is that a travel warning must be made declaring religious neighborhoods to be dangerous with the threat of possible assault. Whether it is true or not that these are the most dangerous areas in Israel that deserve such a warning is besides the point. Is it more dangerous in these areas than in South Tel Aviv where people are mugged and beaten far more regularly? More so than Lod or Jaffa or other bad neighborhoods? yet some religious neighborhoods have now been deemed to be worthy of travel warnings.

German Pastor Martin Niemollier famously said:

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

In a perfect example of the above, Kikar is reporting about an incident on Shabbos in Mea Shearim. On Friday night some daughters of "a known Admor" were walking through mea Shearim. Some of the extremists did not like they way they were dressed, and poured fish oil over them, ruining their sheitels and their clothing.

The oil was poured from the porch of one of the apartments that is under dispute between the Neturei Karta and others (Gur has been involved in this dispute, making me think the victims in this attack were gerrer women) over who has control of the property (called "the hekdesh"). Hanging from that porch were signs announcing that women wearing wigs should not walk through the area.

To exact some revenge, the hassidim of said Admor went on Motze Shabbos and wreaked some havoc on the apartment and it's contents.

Kikar quotes a local resident as saying "It can't be that modest women that walk through the neighborhood are attacked by them. It began with women not from the haredi community, and today it is our own women who are attacked. Which rav allowed them to pour fish oil on women?"

Or as the good pastor said "...then they came for me..."

Picture Of The Day

Some Dressed In Holocaust Uniforms at Protest Rally in Mea Shearim last night

1. It does not look too different from their regular striped outfits. Maybe thats how they chose them in the first place! Or maybe these are their pajamas!
2. "Sick" is all that can be said of these crazies.