the following email was sent to a local community email list and I want to share it with my readers, in case any might want to be in what has a pretty decent chance of becoming a viral video...

Email:

You are invited to partake in a great project -
Ari Goldwag, the popular singer and resident of RBS is filming a new music video and wants YOU to be a part of it.
His hit single "Am Echad" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6g76dF2D_w speaks of all streams of Am Yisroel coming together - Chiloni, Dati, Chareidi, Chassidi and everything in between.
There will be a mock concert on the stage in Ayalon park on this coming Thursday. Ari would love people of all walks of life to join and be filmed for the video - men, women and children, old and young.
Come join in the fun - and tell your friends.
His last video (Hashem Loves you) has over 100,000 hits on youtube!
THURSDAY 15/8, 4 PM (filming will be over by 6 pm, please try to be there for the whole time) AYALON PARK, RBS (near the stage at the top of the park)
See you there!

With the bad press Ramat Bet Shemesh has been getting recently, Bet Shemesh really but it is spillover from RBS B, I think it is only fair to post the following email that was sent this morning to the local email list:

Last week I had to get to the train station to catch a train for Tel Aviv before Shabbos to join my family in who came to visit from Chul. 

There were no taxis available for a *long* time prior to departure time and I had not anticipated this difficulty.

Mishamayim, this lady stopped her car on Ayalon & Dolev and *drove* me to the train station herself, despite the shabbos preparations that were awaiting her!

I had no words to describe this chessed. This lady refused payment and only asked for me to give some tzedaka to her favourite organization.

Kol hakavod to her and to the wonderful people living In RBS A.

Especially when there is fighting and conflict, which there has not been for a long time, it is important to point out that RBS and BS is in general a wonderful place with wonderful people. The fights happen, not everybody is great and willing to help others, to let others be, but for the most part acts of chessed like the one described above are normal occurrences and part of daily life with the wonderful people of Bet Shemesh.

A Windfall! I found a long lost uncle to leave me an inheritance!

This is the email I just received from my soon to be long lost uncle...

I am Mr Suleman bank manager of BOA Bank in Burkina faso.
I will like you to stand as next of kin of $5.8M Dollars
so that my bank will transfer the money into your account
then i will come over to your country so that we share the money,

Yours,
Mr Suleman

Wahoo! I am rich!

These types of emails are soooo 1999

The following was sent to the local community-wide email list... take it as you wish, but its content qualifies for being posted here...

My husband went to his rebbe for chanukah lighting. The rebbe told everyone
that there was a man who was recently niftar in beit shemesh. soon after,
the deceased man appeared to his brother in a dream. In it he told him that
there are now kitrugim(prosecuters) against Am yisroel because ppl are not
davening enough for the three bachurim that are being held captive in jail
in Japan (if u dont know the story not long ago 3 bachurim were promised 3
free tickets to visit a Rav if they would do a favor and bring a package to
someone in Japan, they agreed and unknowingly the package contained drugs.
The penalty for drug smuggling in Japan is one of the most severe in the
entire world. These boys are still being held captive.

this is a very legitimate story so please pass this message around and give
ppl the names of these bachurim to daven for their release. :

Yoel Zev ben Michal Reisa Chaya
Yackov Yosef ben Reizel
Yosef ben Eita Rivka

E.

I like how they are described as "being held captive". They are in jail because of a crime they committed. They are not being "held captive". I have no problem with people trying to work for their release or for lightening their sentence, or whatever, but let's not portray it as if they were taken hostage in a midnight raid in their quiet village.

Ever hear of the Nigerian email scam? If you have been using email anytime over the past 13 years or so, how could you not be familiar with it?

Jameel just forwarded to me the latest, most recent take-off of the Nigerian email scam.


---------- Forwarded message ----------

(of course, Turban Tip to Jameel)

I just could not resist posting this...

the following is the content of an email that was just sent out to the local email list...

Subject: psssst ....Wanna spread Strep Germs All Around this Purim? EASY!


S"D

It's much TOO easy to spread strep germs around.

But please:

1)  If you're going to handle outgoing Mishlo'ahh Manos with open [even almost-healed] cuts or sores on your hands, and refuse to first cover your hands with CLEAN disposable rubber gloves; or

2)  If you tend to lick your fingers, or to wipe your nose, while preparing food, or you begin food-preparation without proper soap-washing of hands;

BY ALL MEANS, TELL THE RECIPIENT ABOUT YOUR FOOD HANDLING, in effect that should warn him/her to save the food for burning Erev Pesahh.
THAT'S THE SAFE WAY TO CONSUME SUCH FOOD!

A Happy & Healthy Purim to All

That's a riot!!!

To me, "Davening G'mach" sounds like it should be a gmach where if you cannot make it to davening one day, somebody else would daven that day for you (I would so overuse that kind of a gmach!).

Actually, it is not that, but read the email below that was sent to a local email list... and here you have the "Davening G'Mach"...

Chazal tell us that if someone davens for the needs of his friend, and he
needs the same thing, he will benefit first.
Many of us have something which we daven for (health, parnassa, children, etc) and there are others that need the same thing.
We have created an anonymous tefillah exchange program. Let us know what it is you need, and we will give you the name of someone who needs the same thing. You daven for them, they will daven for you. It is free, and completely anonymous. Email us at KolHamispalel@gmail.com

I just read in the newspaper (here in the US of A) about a study that was conducted regarding the proliferation of checking email while in curch. The study showed that about 12% of Americans check and send email while sitting in the pews. Atlanta was one of the highest communities at 22% and Chicago was near the low end with 9%.

I do not think church is any different than synagogue, though I am not aware of any specific studies on the use of email in shul. I would guess we would see similar numbers, if a study was done.

I know that in Israel many shuls have signs up that request people coming in to pray turn off their cellphones. I have not seen similar signs in shuls here in the US, but I am sure there are shuls that do have such signs.

Then again, the signs do not really help much. There is one shul I daven in in which the gabbai himself answers his phone during davening (he is not davening at the time, but present during other minyanim) and talks briefly. Plenty of people answer their phones and either talk, or make noises to let the person know he is davening, or answer questions with hms and uh uhs, or leave the shul when the phone rings. And there are some people who either set their phones on silent and do not answer or turn them off completely.

And that is talking on the phone. The study I mentioned above is regarding not talking but checking and sending email, which is basically a silent and unnoticeable (to others) activity.

Even some of the people who do not (or try not to) talk on the phone while in shul, do read and respond to text messages they recieve while in shul during services. I do as well. I try not to, but sometimes I cannot resist the urge to send out a quick and witty reply to a text message I received. I do not have email or internet access on my cellphone, so I am not guilty of emailing others while talking to God, but I have been guilty of the occassional SMS.

I frequently see people in shul checking their email or surfing the internet (to check the exchange rates, the stock market, on a busy news day to see updated news, etc..) .

Why do we do this? Do we not recognize and believe that we really are talking with God? Are we just in shul out of habit? Are we not paying attention enough to what we are doing?

There might be some of that, but I think most people who go to shul to daven do it not out of habit, but out of belief that it is right and proper. If it was just a habit, it would be easier to stay at home and daven. It is faster, convenient, and easy. I have done so in the past at times in my life when davening was more of a habit to me, but I almost always go to shul now because I believe it to be the correct and appropriate way of davening.

So I think most people who go probably do not just go out of habit. On the other hand, davening does have an element of boredom to it. There is a lot of time wasted in shul during the services. Often the services are moving at a slower pace than the congregants like. It is difficult to pay attention the whole time, even for someone who tries to pay attention and daven properly.

Maybe shuls need to speed up the services a bit so there will be less "dead" time available causing people to lose focus and start emailing and internet surfing. Maybe there is a different solution.

It used to be that if someone was bored or distracted for a few minutes, he just daydreamed or thought about other things. Now, with the world literally at our fingertips, it is easy to suddenly spend even a moment of boredom with other things to do. So where we used to daydream we now check our email or the stock market.

I do not think the reasons for checking email are new. I think the source of it is the same boredom that was always there. It is just a new thing that is available for those down moments.

Tired of receiving all those email requests to say tehillim for someone who might have died 5 years ago because nobody ever follows up on these emails? Or maybe the person got better? Or maybe someone is sick but you do not want to receive 10-15 emails a day asking you to say tehillim for various people?

Well, this new website probably will not help that. As long as email is free, people will still send those tehillim requests to you, along with the request to forward the email from AOL and Microsoft to earn $1000 or the virus warning.

However, this website is still a great idea. Using CholimList you can keep track of cholim, create and use public and private lists of cholim,break down tehillim into sections for dividing tehillim up among various people, email reminders, and more!!

Check it out and register to use it...

As you can from the screenshot I attached below, I just noticed that Gmail is now open for everybody and anybody to sign up for. No longer do you need to look for people to send you invitations.

http://www.gmail.com - go knock yourself out!

We all get the viral emails, right? How often do you get something that you originated?

Does not ahppen to me often, but today it did. This morning a friend of mine sent to me an email with the contents of this post: http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2006/11/sharon-wakes-up.html

I did not write the original spiel. It was written in hebrew. I simply was the first (that I know of) to translate it to English. After I translated it, a few other blogs copied and posted it (I know some gave me credit, maybe there were others as well though that I do not know of.

It seems someone copied it off a blog and sent it out by email. As these emails go, the email has made its rounds and someone sent me the post that I wrote!