minor anecdote that some might describe as an "only in Israel" moment..

I had to take my son to the doctor this afternoon regarding a torn ligament.

This doctor, wearing a כיפה שקופה as they say - a transparent kippa (meaning, no kippa), started to put the information in and look at the situation. He stopped and asked my son a question on the parsha. A good question, not just what was so and so's name or who did this or that.

Then, when hearing that the injury had happened right before shabbos, he asked if it was already Shabbos when it happened or if it was before Shabbos. When he heard it was before Shabbos, he breathed a sigh of relief and said that is good because Shabbos protects us, so that would be a problem if it happened on Shabbos.

When he splinted it and explained how that will help it heal, my son asked if it will heal on its own, and the doctor said of course not - Hakadosh Baruch Hu will heal it.

Then, he asked about the Hebrew names of the fingers and explained why the middle one is called the "ama" and how it would have affected Noah building the Ark had he not had his middle finger and not been able to measure an ama, after also explaining that Noah would have worn his tefillin on this finger and because he was a tazaddik he must have kept the Torah's mitzvos, as the Torah preceded Noah because Hashem created the world after looking in the Torah so he already knew about tefillin.

Go to the doctor, a seemingly secular doctor, and get all that Torah and mussar! You can never tell by appearances...

Get this...

Police raid a house in a town near Beer Sheva. They have a tip of a meth lab or some other drug enterprise going on there.

The team enters the house, finding a woman in her 60s with four children. They search the house, and find some locked doors. After opening the doors, they discover the lab.

At that moment, in walks the suspect they are looking for. He runs the lab. Seeing he is caught, he gives himself up right away, with but one request. He was scheduled to then hold the bris ceremony for his newborn son, and requested from the police to allow him to do so before taking him in.

The police decided to allow it. They stopped their activity of searching the house further, and even participated in the bris ceremony. After the ceremony concluded, they arrested him and took him in. He even thanked them for being so considerate in letting him do the bris before arresting him.

The commander of the unit said that one must remember they are dealing with people, even when they are acting illegally, and he is happy his policemen were able to mesh their professional duty in carrying out their tasks, with also acting humanely and with compassion toward the suspect.
source: Kikar

I wonder if he made the leading police officer the sandak at the bris...

does this qualify for an "only in Israel" story?

The story behind the picture:
a young man in Kiryat Malachi was called in to the police station and given a restraining order from his wife, who had recently given birth to his first-born son.
The fellow wanted to perform the mitzva of pidyon haben, redeeming the firstborn son, but the restraining order presented a problem. As the 30th day approached, the father came up with an idea by which both parents could be at the pidyon haben - by holding the ceremony in the police station. He asked the police chief, who agreed to the idea.
The pidyon haben ceremony was held in the shul of the police station. As an aside, the young man, in his excitement and emotional state had forgotten to bring a kippa along, and the police were once again able to come through in a pinch and provide the head covering, in the form of a police cap.

I am not a big fan of calling stories "only in Israel", but this really sounds to me like an "Only in Israel" story!

A nice story is spreading through Facebook, as reported by Kikar. I first saw it shared by Jameel, both on his FB page and then on Muqata.

Nir Mennusi wrote, on his Facebook page, that he went out to his car on a busy street in jerusalem and as he gets to his car he sees a young haredi fellow, Litvishe and clean shaven, feeding the parking meter where his (Nir's) car is parked.

Nir stopped him and asked if he is aware that he is putting coins in the meter of "my car"? The young man responded that in another moment you would be getting a parking ticket... Nir looked up and saw2 meters away and advancing was a city meter maid checking all the cars and giving tickets.

"Ashrecha" - praise to you, he called out to the haredi fellow, though as he turned back he saw the young man was already running off to stick a few coins in the next row of cars that might have gotten tickets.

That's not the end of the story... after all, one can get in trouble for feeding the meter of someone else's car to avoid a ticket. the metter maid caught up with the young haredi fellow. the meter main, a bare-headed and stubble-faced man, stopped the young men and explained that he should check better as he showed him some cars had a digital parking device in the window so did not need the meter to be fed. The meter maid took the young man along with him and showed him which cars needed their meters fed..

Nir says that after he watched this he could not control himself and he went over to them and said "the two of you have made my day! you are simply two tzaddikim, and there should be many more like you in Israel!". The meter maid responded saying "I am no tzaddik, he is the tzaddik and I am just helping him..."

The meter maid might have just been helping, but he probably could have gotten in a lot of trouble for giving up all those tickets by helping the young men feed the meters...

Ynet spoke to Menussi, who seems to be the son of someone famous and is himself a baal teshuva who manages a website and teaches Chassidut, says that despite the cynics who have commented on his status claiming it to be an urban legend, it really happened and he saw it. All he wanted to do was share a nice story that happened to him.

Such a story also raises halachic questions, such as could this young man, if he wanted to, have demanded Nir, or the other car owners, reimburse him the money? if he had gotten in trouble, would they have had to pay his fine? Would they have to not just reimburse him but also pay him for his time? If he saw the meter maid coming, would he have been obligated (rather than just good-will), if it was not too much effort that would incur him a serious loss, to go out and feed the meters?

Despite all those side-questions, there are good people out there doing good things. And it is nice to share a good story every now and then.. Kol Hakavod!

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Picture Of The Day


The Knesset wanted to give honor to the former Prime Minister Shamir, but halacha must be taken into consideration...

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A Guest Post by Dr. Harold Goldmeier

Israel's special forces soldiers gearing up for an attack on Iran

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Two things I spotted today...

Only in Israel:

1. I passed a lotto stand this morning in Ramat Gan. The guy in the booth selling the lottery tickets was reading a book in between customers. The book was the Jewish classic, "The Kuzari".

2. Billboards in Tel Aviv were advertising a popular price comparison website. the billboards bore a large image of Moammar Qaddafi with the words "When you have to leave Libya quickly and need to get the best price..."

This morning I was in the supermarket stocking up on chametz. As I was by the cashier getting my stuff rung up, the cashier offered me the option of buying from the store's sale items, based on the size of my purchase. One of the items on sale was diapers, and they were being sold 2-for-1. It was a great sale.

I told her no thanks. She was surprised, and asked if she can buy them since I am not, and I said sure, no problem. Then she asked again, just to confirm that i really don't want them. I said to her, I don't need them as I don't have children in diapers.

This cashier who is very nice, and I always try to frequent her table when she is available because she is pleasant and efficient and I have been buying from her for many years, suddenly felt bad thinking she had hurt my feelings. She said said, "Sorry, B'ezrat Hashem soon". I didn't know what to respond, as she had obviously misunderstood me...I figured it was better to just let it go..

We are all one big happy family in Israel.

A beautiful "Only in Israel" story happened on Friday.

How about this for an "Only in Israel" situation -

During the "Nine Days", Channel 2 of Israel Radio, along with the religious stations of Kol B'Rama and Radio Kol Hai, will be broadcasting 28 siyumim. This is in coordination with Rabbi Brod of Chabad. It seems the late Lubavitcher Rebbe encouraged public siyumim for the 9 Days.
(source: Haredim)

It raises an interesting question - whether l'chatchila a person can consider that being part of a siyum so he can eat fleishigs during the 9 Days. I guess Chabad might hold yes. But even for Chabad it might not be l'chatchila and might just be for those who are eating meat anyway, this makes it b'dieved ok.

The amazing part of this is that the siyumim are on the radio, and not just on the religious stations but the general radio station is going to be broadcasting them! All this so that people eating meat will have heard a siyum rendering it permissible, without the slightest of effort.

I got a phone call last night from an insurance agent wanting to update his file.
He had a list of questions to run through with me, and they included questions about diseases the agency wanted to know if I have.

Every time he mentioned the name of an illness or disease, the guy said a combination of "chas v'shalom"s and "she'lo neida"s ("God forbid" and "We should not know from it"). He did not just mention it once at the beginning or end of the conversation to be nice. He mentioned it every time he had to ask about a sickness.

A little jolt of emuna reminder from the insurance guy...Only in Israel.

Gary from Kosher Casuals told me the following "Only in Israel" story during our Friday morning tortuous run up a a mountain the other day..

Gary went to pick up a Torah scroll being returned to his shul after it was lent out for a person in mourning to use for the week of shiva.

As he was walking to the car, carrying the Torah, there was a garbage truck about 100 meters away, picking up the garbage.

One of the sanitation engineers saw the Torah being transported. He put down the refuse container and ran over to kiss the Torah. He also let the car with the Torah pass and go first before the garbage truck.

Imagine this - a guy driving down the highway to Eilat (a flat, monotonous highway that is easy to lose track of your speed), is caught driving 50kmph (about 31mph) faster than the speed limit.

Blip Blip (cop blares his siren) - "Mazda - Pull over to the side of the road."

"Officer, what is the problem?"

"Do you realize how fast you were driving?"

"Umm, I was driving at about the speed limit. why?"

"Sir - you were driving, or should I say flying, at 141kmph. That is 50kmph above the limit. I am confiscating your license and you can get it back in the police station in Eilat."

Eventually this went to court. In court, the driver again claimed he was driving the speed limit, the police radar gun confused his car with a different car that was passing him, etc. a number of claims that the court rejected due to inconsistencies in his story.

Then he claimed, "Your honor - I am a new immigrant and don't speak or understand Hebrew very well".

The courts eventually realized after some background checking that he is a doctor and has been living in Israel for 28 years!
(source: mynet)

After 28 years he still considers himself a new immigrant!!?? With that claim, he shows himself to be a real Israeli, and as far from a new immigrant as you can get!

This never could have happened had the bus been a mehadrin bus....



Funny that they say "we're surprised you don't have to pee"... and that the policeman tries to stop them but then let's them continue when they explain....

Only in Israel!

(HT: Jameel)

Here is a great story.
A guy was stopped by the police while driving for a random check (they do that a lot here in Israel). The law is that until age 21, you can only drive a maximum of 2 other people in the car. This guy had four passengers in the car, and it was two days he would turn 21.

The driver, Frankel, claimed that his Hebrew birthday had already passed two weeks earlier, hence he was allowed to drive with four passengers as he is already 21. The police did not accept the argument and gave him a ticket to come to court, where they request his license be suspended.

In court, Frankel's lawyer explained that in the haredi community they only use Hebrew dates, so Frankel really considered himself 21, and being that Israel is a Jewish country, "it is impossible to argue with the fact that he was already 21 at the time of the incident".

The judge accepted the argument, and let him off, saying Frankel clearly acted in good faith and considered himself 21 because of the Hebrew calendar.

Only in Israel...

I had to go to the post office to take care of a couple things, including paying a bill.

I told the clerk what I needed to do. She thought for a minute, and then said why do that? If you do it like this...(and she goes on to describe a slightly different process), you will save 3 Shekels!

Unfortunately I could not do what she suggested, as I did not have what I needed to do it with me. When I told her that, she said ok, go get it and come back. I laughed and said just to do it for the extra 3 shekels, as today is the last day I could do this specific transaction without a penalty, and could not do the alternative method until tomorrow...

Unsolicited advice how to save a couple of shekels... only from a Yiddishe Mamme...