There's a cute story in the news today about a 102 year old man who received a letter from his local municipal offices that he should register for kindergarten. The letter was sent "to the parents of Yosef Eshed"..

Yosef Eshed was one of the founders of the State of Israel - not quite in the league of David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin and the like, but he played an important role nonetheless. Eshed, born in Poland, immigrated to Palestine in 1936. In 1938 Eshed served in Orde Wingate's Special Night Squad division and was an officer in the Royal British army and served, among other things, protecting the oil pipeline laying ambush and attacking terror units targeting the pipeline.

According to Yediot, Eshed is the last surviving member of Wingate's Special Night Squad units...

So why is Eshed being invited to register for kindergarten? It seems the municipal computers could not handle the 3 digits of his age and dropped the leading 1. The computers though he was 02 years old, so they sent him the letter. It seems Eshed's parents are not available though, so he had to open the letter himself, and decide whether or not to register.

As an aside, it turns out 19 other letters were sent out to people over 100 years old. When the issue became known, some were caught and taken out of the system and some were actually sent out..

An interesting tidbit from the news yesterday was the driver for Depute Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman was arrested when traces of marijuana were found in the government vehicle. The driver had crashed into a wall in Jerusalem during the day, and the marijuana was discovered when police searched the car. The driver was arrested and his license revoked for 90 days.  The driver claims that he had smoked some pot a few days prior to the incident and he had been off-duty at the time.

For his part, Litzman claims he had nothing to do with it and the incident happened during a private drive of the driver when he (Litzman) had not been present.

Just a funny incident. Picturing the ministers drivers smoking up and getting high makes me laugh.




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Sorry, but I could not resist posting this...

How Many Camels fit in a Subaru?

How do you fit two camels into a Subaru? This is not the beginning of a joke, although a Bedouin resident of the Negev managed to complete the inconceivable feat when he stuffed two camels into his car in order to transport them to the West Bank.

A Bedouin resident of the Negev brought two of his camels into the Palestinian territories. In some unknown way, he managed to load the two large animals into his Subaru.

"Once, goods used to be smuggled on camels. Now we are smuggling the camels themselves," joked Amir Abu Jamma, a resident of Ar'ara who photographed to unusual sight.

Abu Jamma said that the car's driver explained to him that he was smuggling the camels to the Palestinian territories to be slaughtered and sold for meat. "It is less expensive than lamb. For the price of four sheep, you can buy one camel," he explained.

Let's see how many jokes you can come up with for this story....

And in some lighter news....

The paper ran a story today of a bride from Kiryat Gat filing a complaint with the police... 12 years ago she went to her friends wedding, and gave her what she says was a considerable gift of 200 NIS at the time. Now she has become engaged to be married and invited her friend to her wedding. Her friend informed her she would not coming to the wedding.

The bride demanded that she at least give her an equal gift to the gift she gave her 12 years prior. the friend (is she still one? - don't know) refused.

The bride went to the police to file a complaint. The police tried to convince her there is nothing they can do about it. Not giving a gift is not a criminal offense. She insisted on filing the complaint, so they allowed her to.

As the police said, "By law we have to accept any complaint from any citizen. If someone wakes up int he morning and wants to file a complaint that he did not see the moon at night, we have to accept it. So we accepted her complaint. However, the file will be closed due to "lack of guilt"."

I thought this story would be a nice light break from the heavy war news. I hope you enjoyed it!

Now you have to choose your childs name not just based on whom you wish to name after, or something meaningful, but in our hi-tech world of connectivity you have to also make sure it will not clash with Internet filters.

A fellow yid, Dr. Libshitz in Philadelphia, tried to change over from his AT&T dial-up account (they still have those things?) to a Verizon DSL account.

His registration was rejected. After trying to figure out why, he finally found out it is because his name contains an expletive within it, so the system automatically rejected him.

He got the run-around, including company representatives suggesting solutions like "Change your name".

Dr. Libshitz, obviously, refused to change his name just so he could sign up with Verizon.

So he returned his Verizon dsl kit and stick with his AT&T account. Slashdot writes that after the Philly Enquirer got involved it all worked out, but the article in the Philly News does not say that, so I don't know for sure.....

What do you think of this pshat?

A guy was just mentioning to me how he is having difficulty doing a very basic activity on his computer. He mentioned maybe he would ask his 6 year old child to do it for him, as they seem to be born with it, and he cannot understand how they understand these computers so quickly.

So I suggested to him that we all know the famous midrash/gemara that says an angel teaches a fetus in the womb all over the Torah. So perhaps, nowadays, the angel also gives the fetus a course in computers.

Are you familiar with the term ,"Instant Replay"?

We all know that the NFL has used Instant Replay technology for years to settle disputes and appeals on close calls. Sometimes going back to the video shows the ref got the call right, and sometimes they have to overturn a bad call.

The MLB has been discussing implementing Instant Replay on and off for years already. I think it is a bad idea - let the umps make the decisions, even if once in a while they get a close call wrong.

What about Instant Replay in Judaism and Halacha?

There was recently an incident at a wedding in Jerusalem - they concluded the ceremony under the chuppa. The groom and bride headed into the yichud room, while the guests began to eat their appetizers.

Someone present at the wedding claimed that he had heard the person making the 5th bracha, which concludes with "M'Sameach Chassan v'kallah", confuse it and mistakenly say the conclusion of "M'sameach chasan im ha'kallah". The halacha clearly says that when the bracha is mistaken in this way, the brachos, all of them, under the chuppa must be repeated.

They asked the Rosh Yeshiva present what to do. He said if Instant Replay is good enough for the NFL, it is good enough for me! Just joking, but he did instruct them to check the videos from the photographer to see if the mistake was really made.

Upon confirmation that the bracha was really recited incorrectly, they decided the sheva brachos had to be recited under the chuppa again. They called out the chassan and kallah and redid it.

So, if Instant replay is good enough for deciding halacha, I guess it should be used in the MLB as well!

I just heard (second hand) this great Yom Ha'Zikaron anecdote about standing for the siren...

Introduction: the Hebrew word for siren is tzfira

This American seminary girl was returning to Israel from her Pesach trip home to the USA (visiting her family). She happened to return to Israel on the night of Yom Ha'Zikaron, though she knew nothing about that.

Anyway, so she is in the taxi on the way to Jerusalem from the airport. The taxi driver stops the taxi and says, "tzfira". The clock strikes 8 and the siren begins to wail. They stand outside of the taxi, and the sem girl starts shuckling and says the Bracha of "Al Sfiras Ha'Omer" and counts that days Omer.

After that she recounts how beautiful it is that in Israel, they sound a siren to announce the Sefira and everyone counts at the same time.

I recently gave a small donation to a local charity for which I just received a thank you note. The charity in question is a sub-division of a larger charity in which I donate to fairly regularly.

I remember the specific donation. I had made a donation to the parent charity and the next day (I assume by chance - I think they were just going around the neighborhood) someone showed up at my door for this new charity. They explained to me it is specifically for dealing with giving clothing to the needy and they are a sub-division of local charity x.

I said I just gave them a donation yesterday so I will only give you something small. I had 20 shekel in my pocket and gave it to him.

I just received a very nice letter and I would never have expected it for a small 20 shekel donation, let alone one that I gave in cash.

What's funny about it though is not the fact that I got a letter thanking me for a 20 shekel donation. What is funny is the text of the letter.

"Dear Mr. Rafi G shlita,

On behalf of the hundreds of families who merited to benefit from your donation and received vouchers for basic clothing towards the yomim tovim and the summer.

Please accept our heartfelt thanks for your kind contribution of 20 shekels.

The donation was distributed 100% to the needy. etc. etc. etc.

(The letter was sponsored by company y)".

If my measly 20 nis donation helped hundreds of families buy basic clothing, they must have bought about a quarter of a sock, if that much, for each family. They really spread out the donations!!!

I just heard this story from someone who was involved and knows the story firsthand. This person is the CEO of a mental health facility.

He told me: A certain Minister of Health (not the current one) came to tour this mental health facility.

Somehow at some point he got stuck on his own in an enclosed, "padded" area. He called over the nurses to help him get out and he said "I am the Minister of Health and got lost, please help me out".
The nurses responded to him that he should sit down right there, all these other people also claim they are all sorts of ministers...