As a sort of follow-up article to the article that AMI Magazine ran a while back regarding the "Orthoprax" issue, Sam Sokol has investigated the issue of how common the "Ultra-Orthodox who behind closed doors don't believe" issue really is.

I don't know if it is as common as he concludes in his JPost article, or if more common than that or less common. He also does not do any real scientific study, though the anecdotal eveidence he gleans from the people he spoke to is very interesting, and from a sociological standpoint this would probably make a very interesting study. I can accept all his findings without flinching. The only issue I have is the title he uses - "Haredi Against Their Will".

Just because someone chooses to continue living a Haredi lifestyle despite not believing in it does not make it against his will. Nobody has forced them to make that choice, at least not in many of the cases. They can just as easily choose to live according to their beliefs and choose a different lifestyle, whether it is within another stream of Judaism or of it is completely non-religious, atheist, agnostic or whatever.

That someone chooses to live a lifestyle they don't believe in does not automatically make it against their will. They chose to do so, because they decided the benefits of staying outwardly Haredi outweigh the detriments of switching to an outwardly different lifestyle.

People need to take responsibility for their lives. If a person wants to be not-religious, I have no problem with that. Don't blame everyone else for your choosing to hide and not live by what you believe. Take responsibility. You want to be Haredi, for whatever reason, be so. You want to be something else, do it.

Source: Haredi Against Their Will 

I saw this news report the other day and was a combination of impressed and amazed by the background.

The report was about a diamond mining company, called Shefa Yamim, being merged with another company. They themselves have unsuccessfully tried to go public in the past.

The background mentioned in the newspaper is that Shefa Yamim was established by a Chabadnik  based completely on the fact that the Lubavitcher Rebbe had said, and they quote "In Haifa there is a sea. People should not be concerned that it is deep - that is the uniqueness of Haifa - that it has a sea and that it has depth and in that depth there are very valuable stones. Hashem did an amazing thing: He hid them there, in the depths underground, deep in the river."

The company, Shefa Yamim, believes the rebbe's words to mean the presence of diamonds in the area of Nahal Kishon, which is actually south-east of Haifa close to Afula.

I am both amazed and impressed by this. Amazed and impressed that they would invest all that money to explore for diamonds and other fancy stones based only on the word of the rebbe. I hope they find it and their emunas chachomim is validated.

Effie Eitam went to visit a mechina, a religious army preparatory school, in Lod. When talking to the boys about religion and the army, he related some stories from his personal experiences. One of those stories was an absolutely amazing story with Rav Mordechai Eliyahu zt"l.

Eitam relates that while the IDF was still in Lebanon, when he was commander of Otzavat HaGalil (ugda 91), he was the only senior commander that was religious in the whole division. He says he went to his rabbonim in Yerushalayim to discuss how he, as a high ranking religious commander could add a unique flavor to the army in his position. His rabbonim told him that he should form a "prayer commando unit" - he should form a select group of rabbonim that will daven every time the division is in distress.

Eitam says that Rav Mordechai Eliyahu was the "commander" of this special commando unit, and he would call him at any hour of the day or night if something serious was going on with their unit.. One time, a unit went into a mine field by Musawa. These were laser triggered mines, and the unit found themselves right in the middle of the field, in a very difficult situation. It was the middle of the night, and the moment the commander updated him with the situation, he immediately called Rav Eliyahu and the other rabbonim and asked them to daven for the unit.

While the rabbonim were davening for the unit, Rav Eliyahu told Eitam  that he should the order to to immediately leave the mine field. Just walk right out. Eitam asked for confirmation, as the mines could be activated at any moment. The rav repeated his instructions that the unit should be told to leave the area. Eitam says he gave the instructions and the unit began to leave.

While this was happening, Eitam says, he heard over the communications that area commander of Hizballah was complaining that he was not able to activate the mines, and he has a whole IDF unit trapped in the field. This Hizballah commander kept complaining, frustrated that he couldn't do anything.

The moment, Eitam says, the commander in the field reported that the last soldier had gotten out, he told Rav Eliyahu they can stop praying. Moments later, right after the rabbonim stopped davening, the whole field of mines exploded. (source: Srugim)

An amazing story of Rav Eliyahu's power and effectiveness of prayer, and I would add that it took a lot of emunas chachomim for him to move his men through an active mine field on the words of a rav.

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.