There seems to have been a serious increase in the number of professionally produced parodies put out by Jewish choirs and groups. The latest is this:

Shtuyot! Who are we to bring the korban pesach?

  -- Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, when asked about the possibility of us bringing the korban this year..

I am not sure why you need to be someone of any specific level of greatness to be able to bring the korban pesach. The Torah obligates it upon every Jew, great and small alike. If we are not able to bring the korban due to external factors, that is a hindrance, but the obligation is the same. If we would be able to bring it, I am not aware of any invalidation simply due to not being great enough.

The IDF is playing some psychological warfare by broadcasting in Arabic..

spotted in Geula. The only place where someone might actually expect the meter maid to come looking for them to tell them to move the car instead of giving a ticket

Is Bet Shemesh looking at good times?

According to Mayor Moshe Abutbol, in his first two years he has accomplished all his goals. His goals being 2 specific items:

1. Making the conditions off all children in the city equal, i.e. to cancel discriminatory practices that were in effect against haredi schools that gave them less funding
2. To renew residential construction throughout Bet Shemesh

Yesterday was the annual pre-Pesach sale in RBS run by Keren Lev Yisrael.

This is a massive project that in the past was a management disaster. Last year lines were long, people were upset and frustrated, many items did not come or came in lesser amounts than ordered. It was not good.

They streamlined it this year and turned it into a success. They prepared better, they dropped the list of goods for sale to a more manageable size, and they planned the lines and the drive-thru better.

And it was a success. This sale, that saves the average family hundreds of shekels from their Pesach shopping list, was pleasant, even fun at times, it was efficient, and it did what it was supposed to do. People worked very hard to help a lot of people, everyone from the organizers to the volunteers and to the customers.

It was nice to see, and help, so many people. I saw people I know, I saw people I don't know, and I saw people I have never seen before. There were people of every stripe - haredi, dati leumi, tradition/secular, Anglo, Israeli, French, Russian, Ethiopian, and many more, and every stripe from each of those groups, benefiting from the sale.

There were lots of photographers and video people capturing the interesting moments on camera. Here is one person's look at the KLY sale:

With Daniel Viflic's medical situation worsening, someone has started a Tehillim ring on his behalf. Feel free to join and say a chapter or two..

And here is Paul Robeson:


And Louis Armstrong:

The OU printed a booklet of articles related to Pesach for distribution in Israel.

One of the articles was about the various issues related to hand matza and machine matza, and why some prefer one over the other.

The article concluded quoting the Belzer Rebbe explaining why machine matza is no good and one should only use hand baked matza. The Rebbe's reasoning is that no matter how good they made the machine matza, no matter how well they cleaned out the machinery, and no matter how strict they were regarding the process, at the end of the process an angel comes and drops a little bit of chametz into the machine matza. So machine matza cannot be good for Pesach, and one should only eat hand matza.

I have no complaints against the Belzer rebbe. chas v'shalom. if he wants to believe something so ridiculous like that, it is his prerogative. No hard feelings. However, I think the OU should have used more discretion and not included such a ridiculous claim in their article. They should have stuck to how hard it is to clean the machine properly, the issues of whether a machine can be considered lsheim mitzva, whether than hand matza can be done properly or fast enough, etc. and they should have left the heeby jeeby claims alone. How many people will now be afraid to buy machine matza because of the fear of some angel dropping chametz?

More earthquakes, on a fairly regular basis, that are at major levels. Tsunami warnings, More nuclear problems.

Japan just cannot get a break. I feel horrible for them.

And it is amazing how the news there got so "boring" that it is hard to find updates (well, until the latest nuclear warning that is). You have to search them out, as the news media have all moved on to fresher stories.

A 16 year old teenage girl from a Mamlachti-Dati school registered to partake in a beauty contest for the region in which she lives. When she won the beauty contest, she found out she lost everything else. She was thrown out of school, harming her potential for the future (if school helps you for the future, which is not clear), as she will have problems with the bagrut and her draft in the army.

the school found out about her participation, and decided it was inappropriate. The family is appealing. She says she first checked to make sure there would be no swimsuit contest and that she could wear tzanua clothing, and only when she found out everything would be ok did she register to participate. The school's response is that when the issue first came up they told her it is inappropriate and they could not allow it, and she went ahead with it anyway. A final decision has yet to be made. (source: Ynet)

What do you think? Are they right to throw her out or should they let her back in?

It does seem inappropriate, even if she was careful about tzniyus, and all school's have rules and boundaries. If they told her in advance, and she ignored the defined boundaries, maybe they have the right to lay down the law. On the other hand, they could use this as an educational experience and teach the kids why it is inappropriate, what is wrong with beauty contests, what's wrong with religious girls being in them, why teens should not be doing that, or whatever angle they want to explore. Then again, they can still make it into an educational experience, even if they do expel her from the school..

What do you think?

I have found this song to be hauntingly beautiful..

Today is the 50th anniversary of the start of the Eichmann Trial, on April 11, 1961.

Here are some dramatic clips of the momentous trial:

The Opening Session (hard to hear as the Hebrew and English translation are simultaneous):


Opening Speech by Attorney General Gideon Hausner:


The first witness, Yosef Kleinman (he was interviewed in Mishpacha Magazine (Hebrew edition) this past week):



Combinations of the 6th and 7th sessions of the trial:


The verdict:

Ynet has a piece on the fact that the Badatz Eida Haredis gives a hechsher, for Pesach, on many items that are not food, and do not require such a hechsher. Specifically the topic under discussion is cleaning supplies, such as bleach, that are not edible, even poisonous, yet they bear the banner of being kosher under the supervision of the Eida.

The Eida openly admits that there is absolutely no need for a hechsher on such items. It is a chumra that is absolutely not necessary. Yet they continue to charge companies, thus in effect raising the price of the items, for the hechshers on these products that have no need for such hechshers.

the Eida passes the blame for the situation on to the people. They say that people do not realize they don't require a hechsher n cleaning supplies, especially poisonous ones such as bleach. The people, in an attempt to be extra careful, have asked the companies about hechshers on their products, and the companies turn to the Badatz to obtain such a hechsher, Because the people want it, the Eida supplies it. the companies use it as a marketing scheme, the Eida charges money for a hechsher that is not necessary, just because people are ignorant, and the people feel good because they think they are being frum by having a Badatz on their bleach.

It is a win-win situation in our generation of, what I call, "Feel-Good Judaism", where we do what feels good and right, even if there is no need, or if it is not correct. Here, everybody comes out happy. The company makes money off our ignorance, the Eida makes money off our ignorance, and our ignorance makes us happy because it makes us feel frum. Of course, the people who are not ignorant and realize they are paying more "just because" are the only ones not happy...