Rav Eyal Tziyunov.

Today, in honor of the first day of school, many politicians spent time visiting schools around the country.

Kikar is reporting on an interesting psak given by Rav Bentzion Mutzafi.

Rav Mutzafi, one of the leading Sefardi poskim, was asked if it is ok for children to eulogize a parent, a father specifically, at the father's funeral, and also to call out "Abba" - Father!, at the funeral, as some do in grief.

Rav Mutzafi responded that the minhag in Sefardi communities everywhere is that a son does not eulogize his father. Only at the conclusion of the shloshim period, the first 30 days of mourning, does the son eulogize. Rav Mutzafi says this has been the minhag from early generations, and he heard so as well from Rav Bentzion Aba Shaul zt"l.

Rav Mutzafi added that the fact that we commonly see son's eulogizing the father today is a mistake and was adopted form the Ashkenazim. Many do so not knowing it should not be done. In the days of Rav Yosef SHalush, in Jerusalem, nobody would dare eulogize his father at the funeral as Rav Shalush would tell him off and not allow it.

In the sefer Sdei Chemed it explains that children should not follow the body in the funeral procession, nor call out "father" in grief, as it arouses the mazikin, the dangerous demons and forces...

MK YomTov Calfon (Yamina) has proposed a law that would [attempt to] put an end to discrimination in seminaries based on ethnicity.

The general psak among sefardim, at least in Eretz Yisrael, has been for the women to not wear wigs as hair coverings, but to wear tichels of various styles. Some do wear wigs, and I am sure it is supported by some rabbonim, but the general psak has been against wigs.

Rav Ofir Malka, a sefardi dayan and posek, has recently paskened in a shiur in Ashdod that a woman who gets a new wig should make the bracha of Shehecheyanu, made upon the joy of acquiring something new. This was surprising to the community and local rav, Rav Mashanya, stopped the shiur in protest.

When Rav Shlomo Ben Shimon, a Sefardic former Av Beis Din Hagadol was asked the same question, for confirmation, he scoffed and said a goy should make the bracha - a play on words of the hebrew word for a wig being "peah nochrit".

It seems to be a controversial psak.

a group of Haredim have been protesting outside the military court in Jaffa due to the detention of a young woman who did not declare herself religious and get her automatic exemption, thereby being considered AWOL when she did not respond to her draft notice. Behadrei calls them "extremists", and while one can never tell just from a few pictures, some look like they might be part of the extremists community and others might not be.

One of the signs being held in the pictures struck me. Someone is holding a placard saying that "the sefardi and traditional daughters are nobody's property. We will fight for their honor until the end".

I think that is very honorable of these people to protest on behalf of a sefardi woman as they would for an ashkenazi woman. Though it might just be an excuse to have a protest, but still at least they dont discriminate.

Now, if they would take the same approach regarding the issue of the seminaries refusing to accept sefardi students into their schools, causing a crisis of a different sorts, that would really be something. Being that they are so concerned, I expect to see pictures of them protesting outside the houses of the askanim, rabbonim and school administrators to defend the honor of the sefardi women. Maybe that would do something towards helping resolve the crisis.

There is an interesting pashkevil being posted around Haredi towns and neighborhoods:



The pashkevil is published by a group calling themselves "The Sefardi Eida Hachareidis". They are basically the Satmar of the Sefardim.

The pashkevil basically says it is prohibited to participate in elections in Israel - both national elections and municipal elections.

I dont know anything about this group. A search online has just a few mentions from 2015 in which they also publicized extreme anti-government positions, but besides for that I don't see anything else about them.

I'd like to know more, if any of you are familiar with them. What are their positions and beliefs? What do they do besides for putting out an anti-elections message once every few years? What issues do they get involved in? How many people do they represent?

At worst they'll take away another handful of votes from Shas, but I don't see them being more influential than that..

It’s good that the Ashkenazim received the Sephardim and not the other way around, because otherwise they’d have set up another Arab country in the Middle East. If the Sephardim had come first, this would be another crappy kingdom. The country's Sephardim and Mizrahim should look in the mirror. How many universities were there in Morocco? What did we know about the developed world? How much technology was there in Morocco? When you move cultures, the first and second generation pay the price. You can’t get away from that. The price is justified, and I understand it. In exchange, we received independence and democracy.

  -- former mayor of Sderot Eli Moyal

it should be noted that Moyal himself is Sefardi. I don't know that that makes a difference, as he is now being called a racist by many.

So, MK Yisrael Eichler called sefardim by the derogatory slang name "frenkim", saying the frenkim go to the army because they are weaker (i.e. weaker in torah and spirituality than the ashkenazim).

Eichler said this in conversation with "internal' Belz media contacts, but it was a "hot mic" and leaked.

Now there is a debate raging about whether not Eichler is a racist because of his referring to Sefardim as "frenkim". His office denies it saying there was not a hint of condescension in his voice or tone. He called it "fake news" and apologized to anyone hurt by what he said. He was supposedly opposing the claims of the "Peleg" people that there is a draft decree in Israel and more Sefardim get drafted as cover for the ashkenazim. According to Eichler he was saying there is no draft decree but there is a problem with people dropping out of yeshiva, ashkenazim and sefardim, in Israel and abroad, and many of them end up in the army.

Whatever he said, and whatever he meant, and in whatever context he actually said it, a public figure like Yisrael Eichler would do well do banish such slang and derogatory names from his lexicon. Eichler builds his persona on his sharp tongue and character but nowadays using such derogatory names is not acceptable in society. He can easily show his concern for the sefardi yeshiva boys without calling them "frenkim". It is even a bit surprising that a seasoned politician like Eichler would use such a term, even on "internal"media, knowing that there is nothing really internal about it.

It might not be my place to express outrage on behalf of the sefardim, but I can at least suggest that Eichler wisen up about such things.

MK Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid) tried to get a law passed that would take away funding from educational institutions that are guilty of rejecting potential students based on their ethnic origin.

Cohen "expected" to at least get the support of Shas for the bill, if not also the support of UTJ. After all, the Haredi school system is among the worst offenders in this issue and many sefardi families in the Haredi community suffer from such discrimination and every year we hear the heartbreaking numbers of kids who have no school to go to simply because they are sefardi.

UTJ was not really expected to support the bill, as they do not fight for the little people. They tend to represent those who hold the power - the administrators of the institutions who are also usually the askanim of the community. UTJ has never fought against them, no matter how much they go against the instructions of the gedolim - any time the issue has come to the Knesset to possibly put an end to it, the UTJ MKs have not supported the victims.

Shas, on the other hand, does at least claim to fight for the weak, and at times they do. Their entire campaign for the last elections was predicated on that - their work on behalf of the "shkufim" - the transparent people, the little people - the people nobody else stands up for. Shas was expected to not oppose such a bill that was meant to protect the natural voters of Shas.

But they did.

Both UTJ and Shas opposed it, and not because it was a bad proposal, but because it was proposed by Yesh Atid. Shas was not going to oppose it but instead just leave the plenum and not be present for the voting. They were called back in when it seemed like the coalition might not have a majority without them, so they returned and voted against. MK Yigal Guetta even said afterwards that he voted against the bill but is embarrassed by it.

Not only that but UTJ is now threatening to "punish" Shas for considering not voting against the bill. UTJ is going to "reevaluate" its working relationship with Shas because of how Shas almost did not oppose the bill.

If only the people in charge would look out for, and work for, the people they are meant to be working for... that is, the people. not their honor, not their friends, but the people... if only..

As I have said before, in my opinion, having a party like Shas in the Knesset, by its very existence, perpetuates racism/discrimination against Sefardim. As they work to supposedly rid society of racism against Sefardim, they enhance it and they effect more racism in practice.

This time it comes out in a side effect of the repealing of the core curriculum law that would have forced the Haredi educational system to teach core curriculum subjects or risk decreased funding from the government.

The side effect is in another part of the same law that was also repealed at the same time. The clause stated that it is illegal to discriminate against Sefardi young women in the various seminaries and schools. That has been repealed as well, and now it is legal to discriminate against the Sefardi women and not accept them into the schools.

That means, the Haredi parties, both UTJ and Shas, supported changing the law to make it legal to discriminate against Sefardim (in the instance of Sefardim women in seminaries).

The interesting thing about this is while intended, I am sure that the final result is not what they want. They say, and I heard this on the radio from both MK Menachem Eliezer Mozes of UTJ and MK Yaakov Margi (Shas), that of course it is bad that it is no longer illegal to discriminate and they must deal with now. However, they explained that their goal was to rid the lawbooks of everything that had been put in by Shai Piron, Minister of Education at that time - whether it was something bad or good. They don't want anything from Piron on the books affecting them and telling them what to do or not to do.

לא מדבשך ולא מעוקצך 

Not from your honey, and not from your sting, as God told Balaam when he couldn't curse the Jews so asked permission to bless them instead.

The same attitude has been in effect in their work to reverse everything put in by Lapid.

I don't recall the same attitude regarding previous Education Ministers such as Shulamit Aloni and Yossi Sarid, or other Ministers like Avraham Poraz, Tommy Lapid, and others who were considered strongly anti-Haredi. I don't even think Yair Lapid is as anti-Haredi as some of those others, yet the approach to dealing with him is generally much harsher than I remember how the others were dealt with.

Is Yair Lapid seen as the most anti-haredi ever? Is this a new approach because whatever they did back then wasn't effective enough?

Another interesting thing I noticed is that while they each spoke about the issue and about how bad it is that the discrimination exists and that the problem must be resolved, neither of them said anything about formulating a new law to replace the repealed law. Much of what was legislated by Yesh Atid a couple of years ago has been repealed and replaced with new laws more to the liking of the Haredi parties. This they repealed without replacing it with a new law formulated by them.

Here is a news story that has me wondering why it is a news story.

In Kiryat Yearim a Sefardi went up to lead the services in a specific ashkenazi minyan because nobody else present wanted to. He davened with his sefardi pronunciation, though he led the services according to the asheknazi nusach of the shul.

The gabbai at some point decided this was unacceptable and against the custom of the shul and he went and locked the aron kodesh and said he would only reopen it when they would find someone willing to lead and read form the torah using the ashkenaz pronunciation.
source: INN

I am left wondering why this is a news story at all. There are many shuls that will not allow a chazzan to lead the services, or a baal kria to read from the Torah, if he uses the wrong pronunciation, and that goes in both directions - sefardi shuls that won't allow an ashkenazi pronunciation and ashkenaz shuls that won't allow a sefardi pronunciation.

We can debate whether people should be so dogmatic about the pronunciations and accents, considering we are all one nation and today we live together and speak Hebrew together (almost completely with the sefardi pronunciation), but until there is some consensus on the natter among the rabbonim and gedolim, people will continue insisting on their specific pronunciation. Nothing new and unusual happened in this shul, and it happens regularly in shuls across Israel, and probably in shuls abroad as well.

Aryeh Deri is upset that there are no sefardim represented in the images on the new sets of bills (currency) that are soon to be put into distribution.

Boker tov, Aryeh Deri. The plan was in place for two years already, and they have probably been working hard to design the new bills and maybe they've already started printing them, but with less than one month to go until publication, Deri now expresses his complaints and wants the government to make changes.

I would also assume Deri is upset that there are no women on the new bills. They too consist of 50% of the population of Israel, just as he complains about the lack of Sefardim.

And once we are giving out honors on bills by ethnicity, we should have bills bearing images of great Ethiopian Jews, Yemenite Jews, etc.. and if we want to break it down even more, we should have bills with Russian jews, Polish Jews, Tunisian jews, Iraqi Jews, American Jews, German Jews, Iranian Jews, etc..

We are going to need tens of new bills to keep everyone happy!

I agree, Sefardi Jews should be represented, as should others. The last minute before publication is not the time to deal with it.

I've said before that Shas, by its very existence and the work it gets involved in, perpetuates racism and discrimination against Sefardim. If there were not any discrimination, Shas would cease to exist, so Shas benefits directly from such discrimination.

An example of that, beyond the daily examples we have, is the current attempt to come to an agreement between the various religious parties to appoint new dayyanim to the beis din hagadol.

As reported earlier, there was a tentative agreement to split the appointments three ways equally between Habayit Hayehudi, UTJ and Shas.

As I pointed out, this agreement means the Haredim get one third ashkenazi haredi dayyanim and one third sefardi haredi dayyanim, and the dati leumim get one third DL dayyanim mixed between sefardi and ashkenazi.

According to a report on Radio Kol Hai, Shas is now objecting to some of the judges nominated by Habayit Hayehudi. Some are idealistic objections - dayyanim they think are too liberal or associated somehow with Tzohar, but others are because they are Sefardi. Shas has objected, and vetoed, all the Sefardi sayyanim nominated by Habayit Hayehudi.

According to the report on Kol Hai, Habayit Hayehudi claims that Shas has done so because it wants to retain control over all sefardim. Shas wants to be known as the only group that looks out for and takes care of sefardim. If Habayit Hayehudi appoints sefardim to the beis din positions, Shas loses that edge and control in the Sefardi community. People might see that Sefardim can get by without Shas.

To be fair to Shas, according to Srugim, Shas has responded by denying the allegations saying it is not true, as they do not even have a representative on the appointments committee.

Shas can appoint judges without having a rep on the committee but they somehow cant object to other appointments?
Even if they do not have their own representative, do they not have the ability to file objections through a proxy, like UTJ perhaps, that does have a representative on the committee?
Is Habayit Hayehudi making such a claim as a red herring - meaning, they dont want to appoint any sefardim but know they have to. So they say they want to but Shas won't let them. Is that possible?

When I first saw the article on Srugim, I did not know if it is worth even asking the question. It sounds like a "he said, he said" argument, and I have no way of knowing who is fudging the truth more than the other. Once Kol Hai writes the report, without even letting Shas give the same response, then it sounds more like the report on Shas is more reliable, considering it is now Haredi media making the accusation against Shas.

For a haredi sefardi girl in Israel today, getting into a haredi seminary is probably harder than getting a Green Card to live in the United States of America!

Actually it is very similar, according to a recent story, as reported on by Walla News and Kol Hazman.

According to the report, a 15 year old girl in Bnei Braq got engaged to an Ashkenazi man. In order to get accepted into seminary.

Reportedly she has already spent a year at home, rejected from all seminaries due to her being of sefardic lineage. While she was accepted into a seminary, it was supposedly a low quality one, whatever that means, and her family's rabbonim told them she shouldn't go to that school because it was not good.

An unnamed gadol the family consulted with recommended she start shidduchim.

The person speaking to the journalist said "she is a tzaddeikes of a girl. she does not even know what a computer is."

I like how that how we weigh the level of righteousness of a person nowadays.

Two points:
1. this is illegal. Both the rejection of her, assumnig the details reported are correct that it was for no apparent reason other than her being sefardi. And her getting married at this age (Walla says married, Kol Hazman says engaged) is illegal. I wonder if the "lower quality" sefardi seminary is worse for her spiritually than jail
2. neither of the articles say if after marrying the ashkenazi fellow did she then get accepted into the elite school of her choice, because now she is ashkanazi, or not.
3. In the USA there are federal agents that look for fraudulent marriages that are solely for the purpose of getting a green card. Here the police would need to look at her fraudulent marriage for the purpose of becoming ashkenaz.

Anyways, I wish them mazel tov and bracha, and with them a long and happy life together. Considering she won't even have a high school education I do wonder how she is going to support him.

From the latest revelation in the Deri-Yishai spat I think we can all learn that politicians, specifically Deri and Yishai in this case but it is probably true of most, if not all, politicians, treat their public like idiots to be used.
see Kikar for details of the above

All is good as long as the politician can keep it under wraps that he thinks his voters are idiots to be used.

Once it gets out and the people know what their beloved politician actually thinks of them, there is no guessing what kind of fallout there will be. In this case, it should be exciting, and painful, to watch over the coming days...

After the surprise letter in the Yated in which the Sefardi rabbonim seemed to be parting ways with Rav Ovadia's psak and their own personal halachic decisions in the past, it is important to clarify the retraction (not really a retraction, but for lack of better word).

The rabbonim signed on the new letter denouncing hetter mechira have denied that they ever signed such a letter. In their opinions, as they have stated, nothing has changed. The hetter mechira is a full-fledged hetter based on proper halachic process and has gedolei olam to rely upon. That being said, the rabbonim qualify their allowance of using hetter mechira by saying that that is proper for the general public, but "bnei torah" should buy mehadrin products, i.e. not rely on the hetter mechira, as they do every year, even spending a bit more money.

They issued a new letter printed in both Yated and Yom lYom. The letter was worked over so it would not mention anything about allowing the use of hetter mechria, but it talks about bnei torah consuming mehadrin produce as they always do.

I am happy to say that what I wrote the other day is no longer relevant, and they have remained consistent with their psak halacha of previous announcements, and consistent with Rav Ovadia's psak on the matter.

That being said, it is disturbing to me that those people who are working to denigrate the hetter mechira and influence people to not rely on it are resorting to using lies, forgeries and falsehoods instead of using halachic arguments.

Based on comments from the Chief Rabbi, Rav Yitzchak Yosef, it seems that the law proposal to cancel one of the chief rabbi positions and only elect one in the future must be a done deal, even though it has not yet been finalized.

Rav Yosef commented that if one position must be voided, it should be the Ashkenazi rabbi, and the Sephardi rabbi should remain as Chief Rabbi.

Besides for obviously preferring his own, he explained that the Rishon LeTzion position is 380 years old. When Rav Kook established the Israeli rabbinate, he went to the Rishon LeTzion at the time and asked if he would be ok with an Ashkenazi rabbi at his side. The Rishon Letzion agreed, to keep the peace, and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi position was established. So, Rav Yosef says, if we have to get rid of one of them, get rid of the newer one and leave the one with the longer tradition.
source: NRG

Having a specifically Sephardi chief rabbi is not quite the point of canceling one of the positions, but ok. It looks to me like he thinks the law is a done deal.

Are Sefardim healthier than Ashkenazim? Do they have less serious health problems?

I have no idea if any scientific study has ever been done on this topic, but I would be curious to see the results of such a study.

Rav Chaim Kanievsky sees, on a daily basis, masses of amounts of people - tens, hundreds, thousands, who come to ask for advice, get a bracha, discuss medical issues, etc. According to Kikar, Rav Chaim Kanievsky recently mused that from what he seems to have noticed, from all the people he sees he has noticed that while everyone has problems and concerns, it seems that the Sefardim have less health issues and less of the serious problems that Ashkenazim suffer from. Rav Chaim Kanievsky confirmed that they do have problems and concerns, but generally they are more to the tune of getting a child into a certain school or other issues like that - but not the really serious issues.

Rav Kanievsky pointed out that the reason this might be so is because the Sefardim say SHir Hashirim on a weekly basis, every Friday night, while the Ashkenazim do not.

Rav Kanievsky's musings do not make a scientific study, and it is possible he is not aware of it because maybe the Sefardim with those more serious issues go to Sefardic rabbonim instead of to him with those issues. It is an interesting question though, and I would wonder what other sociological influences might affect such a thing, if it were true at all.

The Bet Shemesh municipal elections continue to make headlines and provide drama.

While all around the country (except Elad as well) municipal coalitions have been worked out, deals have been made, revenge has been taken or forgone, here in Bet Shemesh the drama continues. On two fronts.

On the one hand, the Attorney General today announced that he is considering ordering new elections in bet Shemesh. It seems the police investigation has discovered far more than just the initial finding of 200 fraudulent identity cards but seems to think there was much larger scale fraud in play.
(source: IBA)

On the other hand, the mayor, Moshe Abutbol, has not yet even been able to form a narrow coalition with his natural partners, the Haredi parties, let alone a broad coalition with other parties. The ashkenazi parties have been fighting over the important jobs and have not been giving in to each other. Each thinks it deserves the bulk of the spoils of war. And weirdly enough Shas is upset at Abutbol and is threatening to not join the coalition.

Sounds weird? Yes it does.

Moshe Abutbol is the head of the local Shas and his own party might not join his own coalition. I don't even know how that works. Will Moshe Abutbol vote against his own proposals?

The problem with Shas is that they are upset that Abutbol has given all the important roles in municipal government to the Ashkenazi parties. Rav Dovid Benizri, one of the leading rabbonim in Shas Bet Shemesh, and an influential rav in Bet Shemesh, has ordered Shas to not enter the coalition. he says Abutbol hasn't even sat with them to work out what roles they will be responsible for. I heard [part of] his interview on the radio this morning, and he is also featured in this Kikar article, using very harsh terminology to complain about Abutbol being easily pressured, he sold us out to the ashkenazim, etc. A Shas representative also complained about them being treated as secondary and given nothing important to be responsible for. In the Kikar article it talks about a Shas rep being offered the "revacha" department - social welfare, but it is a scaled down department with all the important parts of it having been stripped away and given to the ashkenazim.

On the radio they also asked Ashkenazi reps about the complaint of the Sefardim. The interview I heard was fairly dismissive of the complaint - he said they have the mayor and he is responsible for everything, so they have the most important task. As if that means the Sefardi reps have no right to think they deserve any other responsibility. He even said that if they want, we will take the mayorship and give them the other jobs. He said if they feel slighted and discriminated against they are welcome to come to his office and all issues where they feel discriminated against will be resolved. Again, no jobs, no responsibilities, but come to us and we'll provide you with what you need.

It might all just be posturing for a better negotiating hand, as often things are in politics. Still, over a month after the elections, 3 weeks since results were announced, and Moshe Abutbol has not been able to form even a narrow coalition with his natural partners.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian, once famously said "people get the government they deserve"... Moshe Abutbol offers no surprises. He was the incumbent, he has been in city politics for 20 years. Everybody who voted for him rather than the alternative knew exactly what they were voting for and what they would get - they should not complain now when they see he is the same person he was when they complained about him during the previous term.