you know how when a bar mitzva boy gets called  "chassan habar mitzva"? for example, when getting his aliya to the torah on his bar mitzva shabbos...

well, now you have a bar mitzva boy who was really also a chassan, and not just given the title for his bar mitzva...

According to Kikar, a young boy in Mea Shearim got married the day after turning bar mitzva. This 13 year old boy in Mea Shearim married a beautiful 12 year old kalla. I don't know if in this community they consider 8th grade to be kollel, or if he now has to leave school and find a kollel that he can learn in, or if maybe he will go out to work...or maybe his wife will support him in kollel for a few years in her work as a teacher or a programmer...

The young couple's families are from the burqa/shawl ladies community, and while they marry their children off very young, members of the community say this was unusual even for their community and most of them opposed it. The father himself was out of town and only learned of it upon his return. He got upset when discovering what happened and was arrested for his behavior, but then released shortly after.

Mazel tov!

this ad ran in a Bet Shemesh ad publication..



the ad is calling for volunteers to step forward to sew burqas.. they are shooting for 1000 burqas. The burqas will be distributed for free as a public merit. Also, they are accepting donations.

I want to know where/when the burqas will be distributed... for free, I'll take one. heck, for free I will take two!

Last year a Burqa Lady was shot when she went to the Kotel to daven. When she was asked to reveal her face and identify herself, she kept going towards the Kotel. She either ignored the security guards or did not hear them, but either way they suspected she might be a terrorist and a policeman shot her in the legs after she also ignored a warning shot in the air.

I can't imagine she did not hear a warning shot (and the reports never said she is deaf) - so she must have intentionally ignored the warnings.

It turns out that since then, over the past year she has healed and has also, to the urging of her family, removed her burqa and revealed herself to the world. It seems she was so closed up in her burqa and little world, she lost all sense of communication with those around her. They convinced her of the danger involved, probably not too difficultly considering she was shot in the leg, and she has started to heal in that sense as well.
source: Mynet

I guess they found the one successful method of normalizing these women and getting them to remove their burqas. Unfortunately it involves a gun rather than persuasion.

Last night a "burqa lady" was shot.

This burqa lady was walking towards the entrance to the Kotel, when police called to her to stop. They were unable to identify her as not a terrorist, as a Jew, from afar due to being completely covered, and wanted her to stop so they could identify her.

When she continued walking towards them and did not heed their warnings, they shot her in the leg to stop her, suspecting this person might be a terrorist with nefarious intentions. It is unclear why she did not heed the warnigns to stop.
sources: Jerusalem.net and Srugim

I hope she is ok and healing.

It seems like now is not a good time to refuse to identify yourself and do things that might be considered suspicious. Everybody is on alert everywhere. The security situation everywhere is very sensitive.




And, now Ladaat is also reporting on another incident with a burqa lady in Mea Shearim. She was detained. The article does not say why or what the police wanted from her. I don't know why she did not identify herself, even after being stopped by the police that she needed to be taken away.

the people behind the Chaver program are considering their launch day, last Thursday, to be a resounding success. I don't know too many details, but they are claiming that over 6500 people signed up for membership. They also say it was so successful that askanim from other cities have already been in contact with them regarding implementation in other cities around Israel...




and, in no direct connection to the above, shortly after I saw the above sign, a "burka lady" walked right in front of my car in RBS A...  at first I made no connection, but then thought they are both signs of the Haredi community, first and foremost in Bet Shemesh, getting more and more extreme...


and now that I look at it again, it sort of reminds me of the famous Abbey Road picture (though in the other direction) of the Beatles.. maybe she and her husband/son are reenacting it..

Throughout the Western-hemisphere countries, it is fairly common to require women or men who are irregularly covered up to expose themselves, in private accompanied by an official of the same gender, for the purposes of identification when so required, such as in airports or government buildings. You can not apply for a United States passport wearing a burqa or a hat. In many states when applying for drivers licenses or passports of ID cards, any hats and sunglasses must be removed. It makes sense, as somebody has to confirm the persons identity. If there were no such need, terrorists, smugglers, runaways, criminals, etc would all apply for identification using fake names and wearing clothing that keeps them from being identified.

In Israel, Jerusalem city council candidate Aryeh King, representing "the outlying neighborhoods" wants to make a similar requirement for the upcomng municipal elections. he has filed a petition with the election board to require any person coming to vote while wearing a burqa to go to a private area with a female official and remove the burqa for identification purposes.

Makes sense to me, no explanation necessary.

King, however, did explain - he said the obvious. Letting someone vote without identifying them will allow someone to vote more than once.

King's petition applies mostly to female Arab voters, largely from East Jerusalem as well as to a small amount of extreme haredi women.

King, considered a far-right wing candidate is being accused of fascism. MK Issawi Frij (Meretz) says King is doing this out of hatred and his petition should be rejected.

I don't know if King's real reason is the practical aspect of it, as he says, or if he has an agenda of hating Arabs and trying to minimize their vote, if even a bit, or make them uncomfortable. Either way, this proposal makes so much sense I am surprised it was not already a rule. Of course this affects us here in Bet Shemesh as well, but with such a small number of burqa ladies, and most of them probably don't vote anyway, it is far less of a critical issue.

According to this article in Mynet, the burqa and "shal" phenomenon is no longer limited to the Haredi community, but is now starting to appear in the Dati Leumi as well.

The story goes that a teacher in a Dati Leumi kindergarten in Jerusalem has begun coming to teach in a burqa/shal. She actually teaches dressed normally, and when out of the gan she puts on her cloak, and removes it before entering.

The administrative staff found it strange and startling, but says she is a wonderful teacher and they have no reason to remove her. The parents also think she is great. Basically, how she dresses on her own time is her own business.

Refreshingly accepting and liberal of them.

I just hope that at some point she won't begin trying to pass messages to the kids or through the kids to their mothers.

Either way,  it is interesting to see that this craziness is spreading to the Dati Leumi as well. It is possible that the teacher is a Haredi woman teaching in a DL school, as the article is not very specific, though in the article she is described as "one of ours". That could mean one of our teachers, and she is Haredi but we know her and she works for us, or it could mean she is DL - which seems to be how the article understands it.

It just goes to show you, every group has their crazies..

I don't know what it is, but the strangest news in Israel seems to usually come from Bet Shemesh....

the latest is a story with very murky details.. a family of 8, 2 parents with 6 kids, "wandered" across the border into Jordan. It seems there is a restraining order on the father for being part of the Lev Tahor cult, and not being able to leave via the airports, he was trying to sneak out via Jordan and then to make his way with his family to Jordan. This family is from Bet Shemesh.

The Jordanians took the family into custody and has returned them to Israel.

The details of what and why are still murky, but what a strange story!

It seemed for a while that the burqa and veil people, commonly called in the haredi media as kat ha'shalim, have decided to move to a low key existence as I think they were not mentioned in the media for a reasonably significant period of time after a string of very public negative activity that drew much attention to their group. That string seems to be over, as in the past week I have seen 3 different stories in the press about kat ha'shalim craziness.

In one story that hit the press, a young woman of 19 was whisked away from her home. She was eventually located in the cult and she was being set up to marry a convert 10 years her senior. the family got people involved and the wedding was supposedly stopped at the last minute.

Yad L'Achim and different "cult-buster" organizations should probably not just be looking for Jewish children of intermarriages with Arabs to save, or the classic cults in India or wherever, but should also be looking to save youngsters from getting caught up in this cult.

In a different story, reported in Bechadrei, another woman from the kat ha'shalim, this one in Bnei Braq, went into labor on a Friday night recently and  rfused to go to the hospital out of concerns of desecrating the Shabbos in the process. Clearly neither she nor her husband is learned, as if they were, even slightly, they would know that halacha allows them, even obligates them, to do what is necessary in dangerous situations. Regardless, she refused and they had the medic from Hatzalah deliver the baby in the home. After the birth she still refused to go to the hospital,  and a local midwife (the paramedic's mother) came over to examine the woman and the baby. Both were fine, BH. The local rabbis, appraised of the incident, were upset saying her behavior was against halacha.

While her reasoning was bad, if she had planned from the start to have a home-birth nobody would have said boo. Plenty of women opt regularly for a home-birth, though I think most of them go to the hospital after the birth to be examined, and  plenty more have home-births, or taxi-births, regularly that are unplanned. The fact that she chose to have a home-birth is not really a big deal, but her reason for it is a big deal - her decision to make up her own halacha against the Shulchan Aruch and against those who know better than her.

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It is hard to believe 4 years has already passed since this story was big. The woman known as "Ima Taliban" - the most famous of the Burqa ladies, Bruria Keren, who went to jail to serve a four year sentence for abusing her children, has today been released.

As you can see in the video below of her release, as she left the prison she collapsed. maybe she is weak from her restrictive behavior - she has poor nutrition from not eating well in prison along with being weak from the heat and being burdened with her layers of garments - maybe it was just the heat, maybe she just tripped because she cant see where she is walking.

She served her time for her crime, but she really needs mental care. Clearly prison did not fix her craziness (as prison rarely does) and she should have been required as part of her sentence to undergo some sort of psychiatric treatments...


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Here is a fascinating read about a journalist who succeeded in being granted an interview with the leader, Shlomo Helbrans, of Lev Tahor, a long-standing cult of the veiled and burqa women based in Canada. According to the article the leader has never before agreed to grant an interview, and while one must wonder why he now agreed, he only agreed this time after the journalist agreed to listen to 10 hours of lectures in an attempt to make him religious. Maybe no reporter before ever agreed to this demand.

Anyway, the article is part 1 of 2 and is a fascinating piece.

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Veiled Woman Gives Interview To Explain Why She Wears It

There is a lot of overlap between what is called the group of veiled women and the burqa ladies. This lady who granted the interview below is called one of the veiled ladies, but she is wearing a burqa. Maybe she only covered her head for the interview but normally only wears a "shal".

one point she makes is that in the secular communities she is well-accepted, and in the haredi areas she is attacked and vilified. In the secular communities, she is told that she reminds them of Sarah, Rivka, Rochel and Leah. I wonder how she reminds them of that, as nobody alive today has seen them or images of them. Any assumption of how they dressed is just an assumption.

Another point she makes is that we live in a democracy and everybody can and does dress how they want.

She also says most of them are baalot teshuva.

Here are some more recent updates on the issues of the tzniyus fights of [mostly] Yerushalayim:

• The veiled women group has decided to fight back. Not just with a PR campaign as it started, but to actually fight the Eida. They have started holding protest rallies outside the homes of different members of the Eida who signed against them.
• Tomorrow in Jerusalem elections are set to be held for new leadership of local neighborhood councils. These councils are the main body to work with the Iryah on issues of local education, construction, culture and more. In Geula the local rabbonim announced that for the first time every the local elections in that neighborhood will operate under a mehadrin format with separate voting for men and women. Since people don't vote together, I can only assume this means gender-separate lines. They plan to have women vote in one box and men in another. When the iryah found out about this, they insisted that this is illegal and said that they will send supervisors to ensure there is no gender-separation. Of course, this is now  fight. With the rabbis telling everyone local that it must be separate, there is no way the Iryah will be able to enforce it even if they try to - the locals will simply say that it is voluntary. (source: NRG)
• An organization is promoting more modesty among businesses in Sderot and elsewhere in the south. Mimaamakim reps are going around town asking businesses to sign on to the plan and insist that their employees dress according to a dress code. In exchange for the agreement, they will receive a Modesty Certificate to display. They say tens of businesses have signed on, while many refuse to. (source: Haaretz and see A Mother in Israel for analysis). They also say they plan to soon expand their activities to all parts of Israel. (source: Bechadrei)
• Previous announcements that Hatzalah was planning to open a womens division have led to confusion. Many people thought that this meant they will be training women and organizing a unit of female volunteers as EMTs and paramedics. Hatzalah came under pressure due to the implication. Hatzalah has released a statement denying the idea that they would be training female volunteers and sending them out in a unit (called NeSHaMA). They say that they will only be training the wives of male Hatzalah volunteers how to be more supportive of their husbands. (source: Kikar) I would add that in my post on this issue last week, I wrote that it is not likely they would be training women as Hatzalah volunteers to go out in units on ambulances.

Here are some more recent updates from the fight regarding women in the public sphere (including the burqa and veil cult battles with the Eida):

• Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Saban Forum over the weekend, expressed her concern for the safety of Israel's democracy. One of the causes for her concern was the increase in the removal of women from the public sphere, along with the allocation of specific sections on the bus for women in Jerusalem.
• Many Israeli politicians responded to Clinton's words basically telling her to mind her own business and deal with her own citizens problems. At the same time they agreed and expressed the concern and problem with the local situation.
• Pashkevils were put up in frum neighborhoods of Jerusalem trying to encourage the strengthening of the motivation to continue the mehadrin process on bus lines. It seems the new "smart card" (rav kav) in use on bus lines around the country, and specifically Jerusalem, makes the mehadrin methods more difficult to comply with. Passengers getting on the bus must get on in front to swipe the card. The signs encourage the women to still get on in the back and pass payment or their smart cards forward to the driver. The signs also point out that by law the driver is supposed to lower his  radio so only he can hear it, if requested, and he has to open the back door, if requested. The sign encourages people to tell the driver to lower the radio, and to demand being allowed to get on in the back. If the driver does not comply, complaints should be filed with both Egged and the Ministry of Transportation.
• A couple husbands of the "veiled women" have decided to take the reigns and fight back against the Eida. They have granted "exclusive" interviews to both Kikar and Bechadrei to voice their position.. Some highlights of what they said things: they say the Eida never really came out against it, rather the Eida opposed women who do "strange" things against the minhag yisrael. There was one woman who did some things on her own and that caused everyone to get upset. The Eida has a problem that their daughters have begun wearing wigs, so now they have to oppose this so that nobody should look frummer than them. The Eida had no right to judge them, as the Eida never heard their side of it. They threaten to stop eating the hechsher of the Eida, and thereby hurt the Eida where it counts unless they retract their opposition and stop the protests against Rav Rompler.. A woman wearing a "shal" is like a telephone poll - do you get attracted to a telephone poll? It is the same thing. Who cares if we don't send out kids to school - millions of people around the world, and in Israel too, do homeschooling, so why is this strange? We coordinate with th Ministry of Education and we homeschool our children. Why does it matter that we don't birth in hospitals? Many, in Israel too, prefer to give birth at home.
• MDA is opening a new station in the Beis Yisroel neighborhood of Mea Shearim that will be manned only by men. Personally, I see nothing wrong with this, as it is meant to serve the local clientele which will only use the service if it is provided in this manner. Hatzala already does this in most places. 

Are the burqas worn by the "Burqa-witzes" not modest?

I don't mean from a philosophical perspective, such as perhaps they are out of place, attracting attention and the like. I mean are they actually immodest in the sense that physically they expose too much?

I don't think there is a person in the universe that would suggest such a thing. That is, that is what I thought until this morning.

It seems that the Burqa-witzes have come up with the newest chumra. If wearing a burqa, which entails wearing 7 to 8 layers of clothing to get rid of any possible appearance of the shape of the person beneath, along with the head coverings and the face covering, along with gloves and more to cover the hands completely as well, was not enough, now the women found a new chumra to pile on top of all that.

According to this report, they have realized how immodest the burqa is. They have unwittingly been completely exposed in public (when they go out) and are ashamed of having allowed this to happen. They just realized that as the cloth of the burqa and mask drape over the woman's face, it forms, and displays publicly, the shape of her face.  Problem. Immodest.

To resolve the problem of immodesty, they have once again used their creative senses in fashion design. The place inside the burqa some sort of a pipe that sits atop the woman's head. Then, when the cloth of the burqa drapes over the woman's face, it is kept at a distance from actually resting on the face and forming the shape.

Problem solved! Burqa 2.0

Over the past few days a number of interesting developments, incidents and updates have happened in the issues of the kat ha'shalim - the veiled/burqa ladies cult, and with the fight around women in the public sphere in Jerusalem. I am combining the two issues into one post, as the more I think about it the more I am convinced they are pretty much the same issue, or at least very closely connected.

Here are some interesting developments, in no particular order:

•  Rav Ratzabi, a leading rav of the Yemenite community, spoke out the other day against the fight against the veiled/burqa ladies. Rav Ratzabi said there are tzanua women who want to wear veils, and some people including rabbonim and talmidei chachomim oppose this. They have made it into a war. They are trying to prevent people from performing a mitzva. This is something we never thought would come back, but women, nashim tzidkaniyos, have taken it upon themselves and renewed it. And now to come and oppose it? Even if rabbonim cannot lead the way in bringing it back, there are those women doing it on their own and instead of being respected for it they are being shamed. They say [they oppose it] because it is different, it is attracting, it causes chilul hashem. The rabbonim who have opposed the shals never came out against wigs, they never came out against pritzus. If they came out against shals and also against pritzus, I would say it is l'shem shamayim. But it seems like the yetzer ha'ra has taken control over them.
• Rav Eliezer Berland, head of Shuvu Banim, also spoke out about the issue, though there are conflicting reports as to what he said. Initial reports claimed Rav berland spoke in favor of the shals, saying that all women should be wearing shals, they are adding holiness and purity. It is prohibited to look at the shape of a woman, even if she is wearing a thousand coverings. Women, Rav Berland supposedly said, should not go outside and walk around in the streets - it is assur to see a woman, even if she goes with a thousand shals and a thousand covers...  Then Bechadrei got a recording of his shiur in which he said the opposite.  According to this report, Rav Berland said those who go in shals are building a beis hamikdash of lies, just like Chonyo built a false beis hamikdash. When a woman works on her holiness she does not put on a shal. The shal is meaningless. A woman who does not daven shacharis mincha or maariv wants to be considered a tzaddika so she puts on a shal. Then another woman who davens shacharis mincha and maariv every day and sits at the Kotel for 4 hours every day saying tehillim is no longer called a tzadika. There are some women who wear the shals who can't even hold a siddur. She puts on a shal and suddenly she is the leading tzadekkes of the generation. 
• Some yeshiva boys in Mea Shearim tried to light a womans shal on fire. I don't think such violence is justified.
• Another crazy story has come out about the behavior of these women. I don't know if it is true or not, but this is what was reported: two of the leaders of the group agreed between themselves that their children would marry each other -a 16 year old son to a 23 year old daughter. The women ran the ceremony, despite the son not agreeing, and they were married (I am not sure how). Shortly after, he insisted on divorcing his new wife, but she refused to accept a get. Instead of working it out he simply went ahead and married someone else. Personally, I think this story is either completely made up or somehow confused with other stories into one mess of a story.
• A city councilman in Jerusalem decided he has had enough with the suppression of women's images from the public sphere in Jerusalem. He decided to take action and hung from his office window a picture of a woman. Haredi askanim were upset calling it a provocation.Meir Margalit, the perpetrator of the "provocation" responded that it is not a provocation, rather there have been cases of vandalism where signs were destroyed because they had images of women. To protest the vandalism he hung the picture out his window. Margalit added that the haredim can do whatever they want in their own neighborhoods, but they should not mix into the lives of the secular public. He even claims he supports gender-segregation on haredi buses, as long as it is only on buses in haredi areas.
• It has been said that even the women wearing shals and burqas are really expressing a form of womens liberation and freedom. Even though they are choosing to go 200 years backwards, they are choosing to do so and are not listening to the mens opinion or instructions. On that note, the women of the kotel are demanding equality by the Kotel. On the mens side of the Kotel area, various awnings have been installed for shade and protection from the elements, along with a large covered section within which many men can go to daven. On the womens side no awnings have been installed, and the covered section is very small. A group of "Kotel women" have requested of Rav Rabinovitch, the rav of the Kotel, that he create a covered area for the women as well. It seems this request was organized by an activist group after complaints of no covering after a rainy day, and they say that regular yerushalmi kotel women had complained to them as well. I don't know why no awnings or covered areas were installed by the women, but maybe it is now on the way.
• A reporter, after following all the stories of the veiled women cult, was curious how people would react to actually see one. The reporter dressed up in a burqa and walked through downtown Jerusalem in her costume - downtown being Jaffa and King George streets. It turns out people are not so tolerant even though all she was doing was walking. The police had received a number of calls about a suspicious character and a possible terrorist. After sending cops to the area to check it out and chasing her down, they discovered it was a reporter working on a story.

To continue the discussion of the burqa ladies and the Eida's fight against them...

In what claims to be the earliest video of the Israel, really Palestine at the time, numbers are discussed showing that there was always a Jewish majority. In the images shown, an early look at the women of Jerusalem of the time, over 100 years ago, you will see the Burqa women of Jerusalem...



Back to the story, the Badatz Eida has put up their pashkevil warning people away from this group, and had it signed by 45 of the Eida poskim:
Despite signing the pashkevil against the group, Rav Moshe Bransdorfer (I counted four Bransorfers signed on the pashkevil) responded to a "shal-wearer" who called him to ask if she would have to stop wearing the shal now that the Eida has come out against it. Rav Mosh Bransdorfer's response was that the Eida did not come out against wearing the shal (veil or burqa), rather against the group who do it in a non-tzniyus way and also change other traditions of the Jewish home.

Rav Bransdorfer said that she could continue wearing the shal if it was done in a tazanua way, with the husband's approval and without all the surrounding issues, and he strengthened his words by adding that his own mother wore a shal. Ladaat has an audio recording of the call.

Interestingly, the group of shal-wearers have responded (do they have an official spokeswoman?) to the Eida's onslaught with a letter/pashkevil of their own. They say the Badatz has no authority over them, and each person can chose ask his or her own rav to listen to and ask what to do. As well, they say the attack on them is just giving strength to those who attack religion. And, attacking the group because of claims that some of the women are doing bad things is similar to those who attack the entire general haredi community because of the bad actions of a few haredim.



They weren't going to take this sitting down...

And last but not least, in Saudi Arabia wearing a burqa is no longer enough. Now women with sexy eyes peeking through the burqa are going to have to cover those up as well. I'd say that the local burqa women would be next, but they already cover their eyes...

2 more stories of the Burqa Ladies have hit the airwaves. It is almost hard to believe that these people can be so crazy, but when you see how they dress and think it is the right way, you realize they can be.

1 story is that at a wedding in Jerusalem the other day, the kallah, a member of the burqa club, refused to put her hand out in order to receive the ring. She refused on the insistence that doing so is a breach in the rules of tzniyus. It took some time, but supposedly the officiating rav, someone associated with the Eida, pressured her enough that she gave in and did it. (this was initially reported in forums by someone supposedly present, but the administrator removed the post. so it is only alleged)

With the Eida finally starting to fight against the phenomenon, seeing as how many of those involved are somehow coming from the Eida ranks or otherwise associated with the Eida, perhaps they need to not just talk about how it needs to be stoppeג, but maybe they should actually put some real social pressure on, such as, say, not agree to perform weddings for them? Or other similar bans - no life cycle events such as bris, or others.

The second story is stranger. A woman, a burqa lady, fighting with her husband about the schooling of the children, took her three kids and disappeared. He wanted the kids to be educated in a normal haredi school, but she refused (I would guess that she wanted to only send them to the school set up by the burqa people). This led to regular fighting, and after he shut off the electricity in the apartment where she was (she wasn't living with him?), she took the three kids and ran away, going into hiding.

The mother is due to give birth to child #4 in the near future, and considering the way they go it seems she will refuse to go to a hospital. the Eida has contacted the hospitals and requested they be informed if she shows up. They are threatening to take away her kids, and are working together with the social workers to resolve this. (source: Bechadrei)

It just gets stranger and stranger.