The Connections magazine, a local monthly magazine, was preparing the current edition and the main theme was going to be article regarding the recent escalation of tension between communities in Bet Shemesh. I was asked to write an article. The following is what I wrote and has been published in the magazine. Let me know what you think.

---

A terrible crime was recently perpetrated against the OROT school, the children that attend it, the parent body, and perhaps by extension the Sheinfeld community and the Dati Leumi community in general. That crime is the crime of indifference.

While the children of OROT Banot were being harassed daily for months, even with some brief periods of respite, most people were indifferent to the situation. Many people, very many people, got involved, both from the immediate community and from other parts of Bet Shemesh, but most people remained indifferent, perhaps watching curiously from the sidelines.

It hurts when Jews fight with each other. Everybody loses. In the portions of the Torah we have been reading recently, the brothers of Yosef fought with him, and that led to Yosef being sold, and eventually the slavery. Before that we saw Yaakov fighting with his brother Eisav. Before that it was Yishmael being thrown out of Avraham’s house because of his poor behavior towards Yitzchak. Going back further, even Cain and Abel fought, and there were just the two of them and their parents at the time! Sibling rivalry, and quarrels and fights, are clearly nothing new.

I believe that the Torah relates to us these incidents for many reasons; to teach us many lessons. One lesson is to teach us how bad it is to fight with each other. How it leads to division and strife and all sorts of bad outcomes.

Another lesson I think we must learn from these portions is that sometimes we must fight, despite the horror of fighting with a brother and a sister. Sometimes we must take a stand, we must reject evil, we must reject the bad.

Clearly we must work to mend rifts. It is a horrible thing when brothers are fighting, and we must do what we can to rectify the problem, and learn to respect each other despite, and possible even because of, our differences. At the same time we must reject the evil and intolerance.

My 5 year old son was having a “chazak chazak” party in gan the other day for sefer Breishis. He needed to bring a short dvar torah to say at the party. I suggested he say that there were 12 sons of Yaakov that were made into 12 Tribes. Why 12 Tribes – why not have them all under one big Tribe? I told my son (in different words) that we are 12 Tribes because each person is unique and has his way of serving Hashem. There is room under the umbrella of Judaism for everybody, and for everybody’s style.

Indifference is not an option. Too many have been indifferent for too long. It is time to step up and do whatever can be done to chase away the evil from our midst. The thugs who have perpetrated the violence and harassment of little girls and their families need to be banished, the way Yishmael was banished from Avraham’s home.

The mayor and the city council need to no longer coddle them and let them continue their ways in the name of dialog. The Haredi community needs to reject them and push them out, and no longer tolerate what they do in the name of Haredim and in the name of Hashem. The Dati Leumi community needs to keep up the pressure. The police especially need to do their job of arresting these criminals and not standing down to communal pressure.

We all need to realize that 99% of the people in Bet Shemesh are wonderful people who can live together peacefully, side by side. We are the 99%. In our situation the 1% is not the elite, upper-crust of society that is indifferent to our plight. In our situation, the 1% is evil, and needs to finally be dealt with.

We are the 99%.

Daniel Gordis Sokoloff Lecture What Israel has done for the Jewish people

Rockiah presents The Call

Rockiah made this great music video presenting the Jewish people uniting in our land...

Until January 31 You Will Be Able To Sleep Quietly

Interesting Posts #349

1. Were the Nachlaot Parents Negligent?

2. Ask The Rabbi

3. Building Tolerance - Even For Haredim

4. Biking in Israel

5. Milkman Predictions

6. How To Tell You have finally Become Israeli

National teams of countries that play in international tournaments are made up of the best players from the various internal leagues of any given country. Unlike a regular team in a regular league, where they can hire foreign players, as per the rules of the league, the national team is only made up of local players, citizens of the state, and not foreign players.

In a country like Israel, such a simple rule is not so simple. In Israel we have many people who live here, many of whom might have even been here for many generations, yet do not hold Israeli citizenship. The Druze in the Golan Heights are one example. Many of these Druze have chosen to not take Israeli citizenship, due to their familial ties with people in Syria or for other reasons. You can find similar examples all over the country, be it anti-zionists who are Arabs or Jews, or be it people who find it more practical to not be an Israeli citizen for either tax reasons, travel reasons, or other reasons.

So what do you do when one of those local residents but non-citizens wants to, and is good enough to, play on the national team?

While it has not been a problem until now, wait long enough and it is sure to come up. And sure enough it has.

A player from the Maccabi Haifa team, Weaam Amasha, a Golan Druze, has no Israeli citizenship, yet qualified for the Israel national team.

FIFA announced it would allow Amasha to play for the Israel national team. MK Michael Ben-Ari is appealing the decision. Ben-Ari sent a letter to FIFa urging them to disqualify Amasha.

Ben Ari wrote (source: Ynetnews):

that Amasha does not hold an official Israeli identification card in principle, because he does not recognize the existence of the state.
The member of Knesset noted that any other country would have regarded him as a fifth column, adding that there was no precedent for a player being admitted to a national team without holding a passport or identification card.
In the letter, Ben-Ari demanded that Amasha be allowed on the team only after he agrees to carry an Israeli identification card.

If he does not want to be considered Israeli, I wonder why he would want to represent Israel in the first place.  While Ben-Ari makes a good point about the need to be a citizen, one must admit that most countries do not suffer from the same situation in which Israel exists. In essence, FIFA has allowed this to be a national team of non-nationals.

Israelis in general wont care. If Amasha scores enough goals, they'll be happy he is on the team. If he does not produce, they will mutter how he should not have been let on.

A Guest Post by Dr. Harold Goldmeier

Many American Jews feel President Obama cannot be trusted to politically support Israel during a second term of office. They hope to put his reelection in jeopardy without the widespread and enthusiastic support of the Jewish community.

His sympathies lay with Muslim people; his roots evoke emotional ties with Arabs. The President has a political agenda as leader of a superpower, so he wants to curry favor with Arabs. Most worrisome is that the President will lean really hard on Israel to make life-threatening concessions to the Palestinians ensuring a two state solution and placating the Arab street. They argue to not vote him a second term of office. I contend Obama will corral the popular Jewish vote, even from Israel’s community of American sympathizers and young people, and he will do so in unprecedented numbers.

Individual Jews, non-Jewish supporters of the State, advocates and lobbyists, charge he is too easy on Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egyptian revolutionaries, and the Arab League. His sanctions on Iran’s oil sales and banks seem pathetically weak against a nation threatening to nuke not only Israel, but Iran repeatedly threatens America’s oil sources of Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. In a second term they expect him to go easy on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. The President seems publicly timid about Syria and Jordan as the Arab Spring spreads to the streets threatening the overthrow of their autocratic regimes.

Israel’s supporters still believe the President’s agenda was laid out in his Cairo speech, his reference to 1948 borders. Many still resent the maltreatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu during his White House visit. The President’s character assassination of Netanyahu in an exchange with France’s Sarkozy increased the animus. The CIA Director’s tool shed command for Israel to do whatever necessary to get back to the damn negotiating table without ever expressing his frustrations with the PA’s recalcitrance added more fuel to the growing fear of a second Obama term in office. Secretary Clinton’s caustic remarks on Israelis’ treatment of women by a sect of ultra Orthodox Jews as if this was government policy, and her suggesting that Israel’s democratic institutions are threatened and eroding, while completely silent about the abhorrent institutionalized violence against women in Arab countries where courts and judges and Islamic religious leaders condemn women to death by stoning or hanging for adultery and having been raped.

Israel’s supporters appreciate the dramatic expansion of America’s military aid to Israel under the Obama administration. Joint military exercises, the sales of the most advanced military hardware like fighter jets and bunker busting bombs to take out Iran’s underground nuclear facilities and stockpiles, and sophisticated intelligence gathering equipment and software cannot displace the uneasy feelings engendered by the administration’s words and gestures.

This uneasiness poses no real threat to the votes the President will get from Jews in the next election. He will get 80% or more of the Jewish vote, because in the end Jews know that a domestic policy advancing better lives for the American people will strengthen America. Jews and young people want a stronger economy and justice wrought on the financiers and bankers who financially ruined the country.

Jews and young people with whom I have spoken extensively about the upcoming election, except for the most right wing conservatives who are in the minority of these populations, give no quarter to discussions about abortion like overturning Roe vs. Wade, limiting the civil rights of gays, or gutting Social Security as proposed by Obama’s opponents. Forget it. Jews and young people and members of the middle class under siege want the focus to be on jobs, getting the economy back on track; they want to stop the gutting of social welfare and health care programs; they are mad as hell that one-quarter of the children in the country go to school and to bed hungry, have no access to preventive and regular health care, and that more than half the children live below the poverty line. They want institutional change rather than focus on group conceptions in respond to social issues much like in Depression times described by Charles H. Stember in his classic, Jews in the Mind of America. They don’t blame Obama for these conditions, but for not fixing them. They want structural changes in governance of our finance and banking institutions, and they want financiers and bankers who brought ruin to the country to be punished.

But they will vote for him, because other Presidential contenders cannot get past issues the nation settled on a decade or more ago. Foreign policy does not make a strong America if there is cancer spreading in her stomach and bowels. A sick America is not a strong America, and America can only be strong again if she has two healthy legs to stand on. Only then will America’s foreign policy take a front seat in the next election.

Eli Yishai has taken today's role as God's spokesman and explaining why things happen, and in the process upsetting many.

Whenever someone claims to know why something happened, and attributes it to blame other people for not doing something you would have wanted them to do, it understandably upsets people.

Yes, we believe our prayers help, can move mountains, can overturn heavenly decrees, can persuade Hashem to help us. The issue is not whether or not Eli Yishai is right or wrong about the efficacy of prayer, though sometimes we pray and don't necessarily get the answer/response we hoped for. The issue is how dare Eli Yishai assume to know what spiritual reason caused a physical action, and blame that on other people. One can always look at a failure and take a spiritual lesson for himself (or herself) on how to improve, for example, one's own prayers or charity. The problem is when someone has the gall to look at the failure and explain how someone else is at fault, and ow someone else has to improve.

What did Eli Yishai say?

At some sort of conference, organized by Rav Reuven Elbaz, Yishai spoke and said

In the Six Day War all the Arab countries fought against Israel. For every Jewish soldier there were at least hundreds, if not thousands, of [Arab] soldiers. For every tank there were hundreds of tanks. For every plane there were hundreds of planes. And see what great miracles and wonders there were. Then we were the weakest army in the Middle East. We did not have a chance to win. Suddenly everybody ran away and Israel won.
In the Second Lebanon War we were the strongest army in the Middle East, not like during the Six Day War. The strongest. There was no Egypt, no Syria, no Lebanon, No Iraq, no Yemen, no Lybia. Just 2000 "Hezballonim". And look what happened in the Second Lebanon War.
Do you know what the difference is? In the Six Day War every Jew that went to war and went to the front lines, lifted his eyes to Heaven. But in the Second Lebanon War we said "Kochi V'Otzem Yadi" - we are powerful and strong. So Hashem said to us you are so strong? let's see how that works out for you.
Gentlemen, this is a tremendous lesson - when all the Arab nations oppose the Jewish nation, what saves the Jewish nation is those who learn Torah and serve the public and bring people back to Torah."

Eli Yishai might be right about what the reason the Second Lebanon War was not a resounding success, to put it mildly, or he might be wrong. I do not know. Either he is simply a demagogue, giving the crowd exactly what they are looking to hear, or he is a fool.

The first question to ask Minister Eli Yishai is with so many more yeshiva students learning and davening in the time of the Second Lebanon War than the number that existed and were doing the same in the time of the Six Day War, why were the results so vastly different, skewed in favor of the Six Day War?

The second question to ask Minister Eli Yishai is who's job is it to pray and learn for the success of the army? Sure, the soldiers (religious and non-religious alike) can/should offer their own prayers, but they are supposed to be fighting. the self-professed argument of the yeshivas is that the soldiers fight, and we are the division that protects via prayer and learning Torah. If there was not sufficient prayer in the time of the Second Lebanon War is that not something to criticize the yeshivas about more than the army?

Yishai could have used his analysis of the failure and exhorted them, those who came to hear him speak, to improve their prayer, or to strengthen their own faith, to learn more or better, to give more charity. Instead he simply spoke about how other people did not do enough.

I would recommend that in the future we look at failures, and successes, analyze them, and apply the [spiritual] lessons first and foremost to ourselves and to our communities, and not point the finger at other people.

-- UPDATE:

as a result of the ruckus that this issue made, Minister Eli Yishai said his words were misconstrued and misunderstood. he said:
Haughtiness is the worst crime. In the Six Day War we saw tremendous miracles. How could such a simple text be turned into a political axe? Unfortunately, they quoted portions of a Torah lecture in order to present me as a public enemy.

At a drasha in front of baalei teshuva from yeshivat Ohr HaChayim, all of whom have served in the army, some of whom served in elite units, I spoke about the calamity of haughtiness.... I added that when we, the people, lifted our eyes to heaven. to hashem, we merited great miracles and salvation. The Six Day War was proof of that. These are basic concepts that every Jew understands. The army itself established a prayer for the soldier for when he goes out to battle.

As someone who served in the IDF, and as someone who's family is one that is part of the bereaved families, it is shocking to me that words of faith that are so basic have been turned into an axe.

As I evaluate my words, I am shocked from the partial quotes, and especially from the added commentary and the misleading headline [that led the article]. Still, because the announcement hurt some bereaved families and those who serve, I wanted to express the pain I feel and explain my words.

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I add, the words quoted above are what he said - Yishai's explanation is that the headline used by Channel 10 to present the article, and their commentary along the way about it, were what caused the misunderstanding of what he meant.

The following article was printed in the recent newsletter, called B'Shaar", of the extremists group of Bet Shemesh. I normally would not print their stuff, but I found the article so interesting, using such warped logic, that I felt like sharing it..

I am only going to partially translate it, for brevity:
The spitting incident was successful in upsetting the whole Bet Shemesh and the entire country. That tells us that if a a simple spitting incident could upset the entire country against the haredim, how will we answer to the question that if a simple spit could do so much how much more so we should be acting to upset the city [for more serious things] for bringing a girls Dati Leumi school into a haredi neighborhood, for destroying all rules of tzniyus, for bringing the "Mafteach" organization into the haredi neighborhoods... for that we must go through introspection to understand why all our actions conclude with a simple spit and other small things. Do we not have real mesirus nefesh beyond that to uproot all the breaches (play on words of "pritza" and "prutza"). We must learn from the ways of the enemy that if it has hatred and action based on such small things, how much more so we must act regarding things of great importance.

I just thought that was warped. Thanks for listening.

PM Netanyahu Wishes the Chinese People a Happy New Year of the Dragon

Who knew Bibi could speak Chinese???

MK Ketzaleh Sides With Meretz In No Confidence Motion

Ketzaleh always provides a unique way of looking at things..

Shocking. Jerusalem Center, Homeless lying unconscious and no one cares

Does this guy look like he is unconscious and needs help? Does he look like he is sleeping/resting, a sight not uncommon on the pedestrian walkway of downtown Jerusalem? Does he look like he is trying to pull a scam on people? He looks to be moving, so I am not sure he is as unconscious as the title claims. The video only shows him from the back, not the front, so tt could be people didnt offer help for very good reasons that are not shown in the video.

Interesting Posts #348

1. Owning The Rabbi

2. Secret Identities and Blogging

3. Religious Jews Are The Worst Kind

4. Nachlaot Pedophilia

5. The Hazon Ish and Rav Shlomo Goren

6. Haagen Dazs Not Kosher Enough For Israel - I think he overreaches his argument a bit, but he raises some interesting points of discussion.

7.  Tag Machmir

8. Bashert in Other Religions

Picture Of The Day

burning tires on Nehar HaYarden st in RBS B to protest recent arrests

I am sure that the local residents of the buildings in the immediate vicinity appreciate the protest that will have them sucking in all that black smoke and smelling the pungent smell of burnt rubber for a few hours.

Israeli companies could be producing solutions that will cure both cancer and diabetes (and other diseases) in just a few short years.

One Israeli company claims to have produced a vaccine that would prevent about 90% of cancers from returning, after fighting them off.

From Ynetnews:

Vaxil BioTherapeutics, a biotechnical company based in Ness Ziona, near Tel Aviv, has produced a ground-breaking therapeutic vaccine for cancer patients which could prevent about 90% of cancers from coming back.


Vaxil was founded in 2006 by Dr. Lior Carmon and the vaccine is now in clinical trials at the Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem. The vaccine could be available as early as 2017 to administer on a regular basis, not only to help treat cancer but in order to keep the disease from recurring.


The vaccine is being tested against a type of blood cancer, ‘multiple myeloma’. If the substance works as hoped, its platform technology, VaxHit could be applied to 90% of all known cancers, including prostate and breast cancer, solid and non-solid tumors.


“In cancer, the body knows something is not quite right but the immune system doesn’t know how to protect itself against the tumor like it does against an infection or virus. This is because cancer cells are the body’s own cells gone wrong,” says Julian Levy, the company’s CFO.


“Coupled with that, a cancer patient has a depressed immune system, caused both by the illness and by the treatment.” The trick is to activate a compromised immune system to mobilize against the threat.


A traditional vaccine helps the body’s immune system fend off foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses, and is administered to people who have not yet had the ailment. Therapeutic vaccines, like the one Vaxil has developed, are given to sick people, and work more like a drug.


The new vaccine works by activating the immune system by “training” T-cells to search and destroy cells with the MUC1 molecule, typically found only on cancer cells. More than 90% of common solid tumor cancers bear the MUC1 molecule, as well as many non-solid tumors, including lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma.


Advanced-stage cancer will still require chemotherapy or surgery to remove a large tumor, Vaxil CEO Julian Levy noted, but if the cancer is brought down to size, the body will then be able to fight it, with ImMucin seen as a long-term approach to prevent recurrence.

The second medical breakthrough is being worked on by a team from the Technion and from Rambam Medical Center.

From No Camels:

For the first time in the world researchers at the Technion Institute of Technology and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa in Israel created new blood vessels using embryonic stem cells that were programmed in advance.


The team, headed by Prof. Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor, head of women and maternity department at the Rambam Medical Center and Dr. Ayelet Dar-vaknin, produced new cells named Pericytes, that have a crucial role in building blood vessels and ensuring their functioning.


The experiment simulated the treatment for damaged muscles or tissues, as a result of disruption in the blood supply. The research was conducted in the laboratory for stem cells research at the Faculty of Medicine at the Technion Institute. Over the course of the study, the researchers cultured the Pericytes in the lab in large quantities.


These cells were then injected into the leg muscles of a mouse with bad blood circulation. The injected PericyteS blood cells produced new blood vessels which rehabilitated the muscle cells damaged by lack of oxygen supply.


These new Pericytes blood cells were produced from donated embryonic stem cells, as well as genetically modified adult cells. This means that the cells can also be produced from human patient, reducing the chances of rejection by the body.


The results of this research help to understand vascular development processes and to learn how to treat common diseases with damage to the blood supply to the heart, limbs and other organs. These damages may result from complications of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, for example.


“It is a breakthrough research with broad implications in many areas,” said Prof. Rafi Beyar Head of the Rambam hospital in Haifa, Israel. “The applications on patients are still making progress, but I see a great potential here that can be implemented in a few short years .”

That would be really great, if these horrible diseases could finally be solved. And it's great that it is Israelis who are leading the way in finding the solutions! Who said there is a brain drain here?

Bechadrei ran a story from Rebbetzin Kanievsky showing what she thought about all the recent mistreatment of women.

The story was told over during a hesped given by Rebbetzin Kanievsky's son-in-law in her memory in modiin Ilit. He told over that one time she was returning home from davening in shul and she had a group of women with her. One of the women in the group was dressed immodestly.

A fellow who was by the house saw the immodestly dressed woman and started screaming at her in front of everyone else.

Rebbetzin Kanievsky screamed at him immediately telling him that this is not proper behavior and that he is not welcome in her house. She said, "this is not our way. Our way is to be an influence on people by ways of pleasantness and not by shaming them."

The son-in-law added another tidbit saying that one time Rav Chaim was leaving the house, and in the entranceway there were a large number of women blocking his path as they were waiting for the Rebbetzin. Somebody accompanying Rav Chaim screamed out that the women should move away as they were in rav Chaim's way. The Rebbetzin, hearing that, came out and told him off saying "here we do not scream at people. We talk pleasantly to others."

Sometimes things seem obvious, like how to behave properly with other people, but they aren't always as obvious as they should be. Some people need to be reminded.