This is just weird...

I have not done a pashkevil of the day in a while, but this one is very interesting

People used to joke when having two items that one is for milchigs and one for fleishigs. And if they had 3 they would add that one is for Pesach.

Now THIS is a great pashkevil on the walls of RBS B (as reported by Behadrei - personally, ever since they built the new road circumventing B I have almost never had a reason to drive through B)...

this pashkevil is rich:

Remember this video from a couple of weeks ago that had some Yerushalmim singing and having a kiddush in shul, depicting the scenes of a shul? It was a really well done production.

I love this pashkevi/broadside

It says:



I love it. At least they also support wearing masks, though they could not just go ahead and tell people to wear masks, they also had to criticize those who do something else totally unrelated...

The City of Jerusalem announced, on its Facebook page, an initiative to try to give a boost to local restaurants and other businesses in the entertainment industry, by turning the "hot" streets downtown into a boardwalk at night so that restaurants can put tables out in the streets to have more seating. Live music will also be out at different spots. On the Facebook page the list of streets and exact times are listed, and it starts tomorrow and will run through August.

The issue is that restaurants have been allowed to open, but people are hesitant to go to restaurants and eat indoors. The restaurants mostly do not have a large enough area indoors with enough seating to do reasonable business, so even though they were allowed to open, business in this fashion is still extremely difficult. This nighttime arrangement is meant to give them a big boost for their businesses, and with the added entertainment and boardwalk style, should be a big draw for people to go enjoy.

To me it seems like a nice initiative to help businesses get back on their feet and get people out again.

Not everyone agrees. But I guess that is not a surprise. You can't make everyone happy all of the time.

Kikar is reporting that the Eida Hachareidis is calling for this to be shut down or face protests that
will shut the city.

The Eida believes that this initiative is a major breach that will turn the streets of Jerusalem into a boardwalk with entertainment with the most serious of sins along with a major unbearable source of pain for the haredi neighborhoods that are nearby and their houses and neighborhoods will be turned into a den of thieves.

The Eida says they cannot allow this to happen, to desecrate the holy city and to turn Jerusalem into a breached city with no wall, and to ruin the little that is left after all the breaches that have happened previously.

They call on the city to cancel these plans or they will do everything possible to put a kibosh on them and prevent the desecration. A spokesperson for the Eida threatened serious protests that will shut down the city.

The City of Jerusalem responded with wonder wondering what their problem is as the intent is to give a boost to local business and help people with their parnassa after the disaster from Corona.

In recent years they have mostly been ineffective with their protests, and my guess is that this is just lip service and we won't see any significant hafganot over this. I am not sure what serious sins take place by a couple sitting to have dinner while listening to music and seeing a performance. These might be regular sins, as they happen all the time in many places. I do not know what about this turns it into a serious sins. While some individual places might be worse than most , my guess is the serious sins were happening in those places anyway even before this.

Rav Moshe Mordechai Karp is a posek and dayan in Kiryat Sefer - Modiin Ilit, and has been involved in (led?) a number of social battles for the Haredi community, such as the fight against women wearing wigs to cover their hair, the use of Shabbos elevators, the Internet, and others. Now Rabbi Karp is taking on the latest enemy - children's books. Actually, a specific children's booklet.

Signs are going up signed by [Rav] Moshe Mordechai Karp against a children's book called Albumix - The Amazons 1 (this is a booklet that is also a sticker album). Karp says that from what he has seen of this book, it is very dangerous for our pure children - much more dangerous even than missionary books attempting to take our children away..

The book is bad and you need to get rid of it if you already bought it, but, Rabbi Karp says, you should not even return it to the store - as someone else will then buy it and you are assisting them in stumbling. You need to just destroy it, get rid of it. People should be careful and check all the booklets entering your home. 

He includes a couple of pages from the booklet. I assume these show some sort of offensive content, but I was unable to read any of it.

1. Forewarned is forearmed.. if this bothers you, know in advance not to buy it. If you do buy it and then regret it, he says you cannot return it but must get rid of it.

2. Avraham Ohayoun, the author, has put out 300 books, including 50 books of comix similar to this one and is referred to (based on an Internet search) as Harav Avraham Ohayoun, and on at least some of his books uses the title HaRav, though on this one it looks like he does not. This is not a book written by some troublemaker, unknown to the community, that might have nefarious motives. Not that this makes the book necessarily good and kosher, but he has a good reputation and probably deserves the benefit of the doubt.

3. Did the author not pay the necessary protection money to have his book approved by whatever askan brought this to Rab Karp's attention? I don't know.

4. The real crime of this book, and of similar books is that it makes our kids dumb. These comix make our kids not want to read real books that are not illustrated like a comic book.

This pashkevil, tossed around Jerusalem, bears a quip that is actually cute and funny.


The pashkevil very simply calls upon the righteous women, the honorable princesses, to sit in the inner section of the bus.. and then it concludes with a play on words, referencing the expression - kol kvoda bat melech pnima - the honor of the daughter of a king is internal - but they divide up the words differently to mean - the honor of the daughter of a king is inside.

cute

this could also qualify for Pashkevil of the Day

A group of rabbonim have published and signed a letter against gyms and fitness centers.

According to the letter, the existence of gyms and fitness centers in Jerusalem is a spiritual and educational problem. It would be one thing if they were just there for the secular public, but some advertise as an appropriate atmosphere for the Haredi community.

These gyms have television screens to watch while working out, and there is inappropriate (at best!) music playing in the background, along with general issues of tzniyus.

The letter continues that while we believe exercise is important and necessary for maintaining one's health, these gyms are not just for health but also promote a culture of body worship. For us it is a means, for them it is an end.

The conclusion is fairly tame with calling on parents to be aware of where their daughters are going to exercise and who else is there.

I am happy it is not a ban, but a call for awareness. Nothing wrong with warning parents to be aware of what is what .

I wonder why parents only need to worry about their daughters and not their sons.

The biggest threat posed by these gyms is the statistics that show that most people who take out gym memberships. According to published statistics in the USA, 80% of people with gym memberships do not use them. I am not sure if that number is the same or similar here in Israel, but it is clear that most people dont use the gym after signing a membership. The rabbis could easily warn people of the waste of money involved and that might be enough for the majority to stay away...

This broadside/pashkevil is up and around Haredi areas:



The broadside is warning people to not buy an air-conditioner without a hechsher (in this case the Kahsrut Badatz Mehadrin of Rabbi Rubin) because when you walk into a room with air conditioning the heat of your body causes the temperature to rise slightly in the room thus causing the air conditioner to work harder.

Air conditioners have always had thermostats and have always worked to keep the room cooled to whatever temperature you set it to, yet now we need hechshers on our air conditioners. There are also some people (even though most do not) who  only open the fridge door on Shabbos when the compressor is running - this seems like a similar argument.

But marketing is marketing, even if it creates a new chumra in the process.

Someone or some group, presumably extreme anti-zionists such as Neturei Karta or similar, have put up these broadsides on Jerusalem walls...

The pashkevil is announcing the "last warning" to the Haredi Members of Knesset. They are being warned that if they continue negotiations with the Israeli government and the IDF over trafficking in thousands of souls that will be lost for jobs and seats in the Knesset of Heretics and for fat budgets, the Jewish community will perform the Pulsa Denura curse on them and on their assistants, including blowing of the shofar, black candles and strong curses!

uh oh

this one is all over, declaring most cigarettes as containing real chametz and therefore cigarettes cannot be smoked on pesach unless you clarify that your cigarette does not have chametz mixed into the cancer stick contents.

Smoking chametz on pesach would give new meaning to the definition of kares as a punishment..

I always wonder how nowadays, with all our knowledge that is not disputed about the dangers of cigarettes and with all the big warnings of death and poisons put on by the surgeon general, anybody in today's day and age can start smoking. I can understand someone older who is addicted and has not been able to stop, but I cannot understand people who start nowadays.

the pashkevil makes some interesting points. It talks about nude and skin colored tights and stockings being prohibited and causing the shechina to leave us, yet it has been spreading among us. As well, manufacturers are now using thinner threads so you cannot rely on the listed denier measurement. One must ensure that the stockings completely block out any skin and skin color from being visible, and that is not a chumra but is the basic halacha. The warning is also for store owners selling stockings, not just the women buying them.
And the final interesting part, at the bottom of the poster, says that the seminaries are ignoring the issue. It says the seminaries are forcing the students to wear specifically skin-colored stockings and claiming that the black stockings are immodest. This is the opposite of intellect, the opposite of logic and the opposite of Torah.

these pashkevils have gone up around areas like Bet Shemesh and Jerusalem...



do poison pills really need a hechsher? and it seems Rabbanut poison pills wouldn't be good enough. Only the best hechsher when poisoning yourself!

new pashkevilim are up on the walls of Haredi towns calling upon the women of the community to not use the services of male doctors but only to use the services of female doctors.

The truth is that intially i understood the pashkevil to be referring to "female doctors", or OBGYNs. Upon rereading the sign, I see it seems to refer to all doctors, and not just OBGYNs. They are calling on women to only get themselves examined by female doctors and not male doctors.

They are also upset at what they seem to think is the refusal of the various kupot cholim to employ and provide female doctors for the community and call upon the people to leave whichever kupat cholim does not make female doctors available.

The good thing about the sign is that, while it quotes things several rabbis have [supposedly] said, it does not bear the signatures of any rabbonim as if this is a call from them. Anybody can print a sign saying whatever they want and nobody can stop them, so this is just a sign from some anonymous person saying what he/she wants - if you ascribe any authority to such signs in general, this one does not even claim any rabbinic authority.

I am wondering why this calls for females to visit female doctors and not male doctors but does not call upon men to only visit male doctors and not female doctors - unless it is specifically referring to gynecologists without explicitly saying so.

I also do not know why the kupot are not providing the necessary amount of female doctors, if the local community is requesting it. Are there not enough available? It is interesting to me that people who do not want their wives and daughters to get higher education, academic degrees and the like, will go ahead and demand female doctors. Maybe they should consider sending their daughters to medical school to ensure there will be enough female doctors available to the women of the community.

People should visit whatever doctor they feel will give them the best care available, whether female or male. Tzniyus can and should be a concern, among other issues, as one takes into consideration many issues when deciding which doctor to use.

During the Peleg protests in the streets, the police arrested a secular man who distributed flyers with inappropriate and hurtful materials on them at the protest. The offender tossed the flyers around and then left the scene.

Police investigated and picked someone up for the crime and will hold him accountable.
source: Actualic

I wish they would show equal competency and professionalism in finding the authors and distributors of the pashkevilim in the "chardak" campaign and holding them accountable.

Another pashkevil of interest that went up during the holiday period was the following pashkevil calling for people to prepare to leave Israel for foreign lands because of the government of kofrim and the decrees they enact against the religious community (specifically the IDF draft). They announce the formation of a fund to help families relocate - they will pay for plane tickets to Europe and the USA and moving costs as well. No mention is made of whether or not they will fund the $150,000-$20,000 tuitions per kid, plus health insurance, after the move or if the families will be on their own after the initial move.

Anyways, I say good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I wonder which communities they think will embrace them and welcome their extremism, but I hope they find such a community somewhere outside of Israel, and specifically outside of Bet Shemesh.