I knew Yoni Palmer way back when, in the early days of RBS. We did some community work together (he much more than me) back then. We lost touch over the years, especially when he moved out of RBS, but even before that. I have not seen Yoni now in a bunch of years, and I had no idea he was suffering through this depression.

Stav Boyanjo Matza, a lawyer, saw a sign in the streets of Jerusalem. not a pashkevil, but more like the type of sign that has little slits of paper at the bottom with a phone number for people to take, like found this, lost that, advertising a chug or something... and was shocked by the sign.

We have seen groups of people doing activities in various places during Corona find ways around the rules, such as having a minyan but calling it a protest for George Floyd, having a children's street fair and turning it into a protest, and the like.

We haven't seen, that I know of, anyone running a business or event that is technically against the rules but calling it a yeshiva to get around the rules...

Until now.

Yaron Cohen, owner of Crossfit Bet Shean, a gym in Bet Shean has decided that instead of closing his gym, as per the new regulations, he will bring in shiurei torah to the gym and then 19 people will be allowed at the same time, and they can workout while listening to the shiurei torah. And I assume the word listening nit he previous sentence should be in quotation marks...

Actually, they arent actually shiurei torah in the traditional sense, but as he writes on his Facebook page:
The Torah - Crossfit
The God - the God of physical fitness
The Faith - physical fitness contributes to physical and mental health and saves people from disease

Basically, they are going to teach Crossfit as if it is Torah - not "as if" - they are saying it is Torah, so they qualify under the rules.

To clarify, he says, he is not trying to insult anyone, he respects religion and has many religious people coming to train, but this is not against religion or Torah but against the decisions of the government. If someone wants to be insulted anyway, he says, that's his prerogative, as their gym was hurt by the State.

I think it is likely they might play some torah shiurim on the sound system just as an extra precaution

Who knows? Maybe someone will become religious or love Torah just a little more because of this...

MK Ofer Shelach (Yesh Atid) submitted a law proposal that would legalize euthanasia (a.k.a. assisted suicide) for terminal patients.

The proposal passed a majority in the ministerial legislative committee, and will head to Knesset for voting.

The law will allow a doctor to prescribe a lethal does of anesthetics without being liable criminally for having given it to him.

Shelach defends his law proposal by saying that this will give the patient some sort of control over his own life even in his final days, in a way that also will relieve himself of his pain.

Obviously this bill has nothing to do with Judaism (Shelach himself said that passing it will bring Israel into the group of "enlightened" countries), and getting it passed will not be a simple thing.

While Woody Allen might not be making aliyah because of yesterdays law proposal, Dr. Death (Jack Kevorkian) might just be making initial contact right now with Nefesh bNefesh...

An interesting question came up before the beis din of Rav Yitzchak Zilbershtein in Ramat Elchonon of Bnei Braq.

The question presented was by the father of a woman who had recently married, discovered after the wedding that her new husband had a sever mental disorder and then divorced. When he realized the shadchan had known about the mental disorder and had kept it secret, he asked the beis din for a psak if the shadchan has to refund the money that he had paid for the shadchanus fee?

Rav Zilbershtein paskened that the shadchan does have to refund the shadchanus money, but only if it is definite that the medical problem existed before the wedding. if the illness developed only after the wedding, the shadchan would be able to keep the money. (source: Kikar)

Deputy Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman has announced that they are going to convert two mental institutions to work in a mehadrin format, one being converted to men only and one to female only.

This of course caused an uproar, as many, including in the medical field, are calling it religious coercion, and they point out that nowhere in the world is this done.

Litzman's response is that he receives a lot of complaints about what goes in in the hospitals. He says many people refuse to provide the necessary treatments because of it. He is simply taking two hospitals that are not at full capacity right now and running his trial system on them. I would note that he does not specify what the problems are in the mental hospitals, just that they exist and because of them people do not provide treatment to members of their families who require it.

Now even if you are crazy you have nothing to worry about. No need to look at women... I imagine that if Litzman had been made Deputy Minister of Transportation (it was suggested at the time of the building of the coalition to give the Transportation Ministry to the UTJ, but was rejected because it was not prestigious enough), we would all be riding in mehadrin buses and trains right now...

In the video you can see Litzman respond on the issue. I have no idea what the main topic of discussion was, as he is sitting with the various haredi mayors, and I see no reason why this would be their topic of a meeting, so they were probably talking about something else when this issue came up...

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...