Shas is announcing that Rav Ovadia Yosef and the Council of Torah Sages (of Shas) are declaring a rally of Selichos in light of the disastrous situation in which the nation of Israel finds itself. Selichos will take place today at 6:00 pm in Rav Ovadia's shul and be broadcast by satellite to various locations.

On the other hand, maybe the issue is the general political and security situation which is pretty bad, especially with what has been going on in Gaza the past few days. If that is the case, is it not ironic that Shas is largely responsible (not completely, but largely) for crowning as king the man, Shimon Peres, who is vastly responsible for the horrible situation in which we find ourselves? Peres is the architect of the Oslo accords, which led to everything that is happening now. Yet Shas felt he was worthy of being the President of Israel, despite his being a rabid left-winger.

Ahhh, the irony of pushing Peres as President and then declaring a day of selichos to daven for the situation.... gotta love it!

Keep your eyes peeled for details.

This is a series of ads that ran in the NY Times against the British Academics boycott of Israel.

Today Shimon Peres was elected President of Israel. That is a fairly prestigious position, despite the damage done by the previous president, albeit largely ceremonial.

The exact job description of the President of Israel is difficult to pin down. He will host the championship soccer team in his office and congratulate them, along with congratulating the winner of the hot dog eating contest. In addition, he will go out to pay condolence calls to the families of victims of terror. He will reach out to the various communities in Israel and try to foster unity, while at the same time reach out to the world and attempt to raise the standing of the Jews and Israel among the international community (in a non-political way). He will spearhead the fight against anti-semitism, while raising the level of Zionism and patriotism.

It is ironic that Shimon Peres has been entrusted by his friends in the Knesset to be responsible for all this.

An alert reader (YR) sent me this article. It turns out that this very week - at the same time that Shimon Peres is being elected to the position of President of Israel - the Peres Center for Peace - yes, run by none other than Shimon Peres, is involved in extremely anti-zionist activities.

The Peres Center for Peace has organized a conference of European NGO's where they will spend three days bashing Israel.

The keynote speech at this week's NGO event is being given by Avram Burg, described by the conference program as an “Israeli political personality,” despite Burg’s revealing interview with Haaretz (June 1) in which he calls for Israel to cease being a Jewish entity.

Each of the Israeli organizations invited – Betselem. Combatants for Peace, Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions, Machsom Watch, Parents' Circle, Rabbis for Human Rights and Yesh Din – carries a uniquely venomous message which describes Israel’s very presence in Judea and Samaria as a criminal violation of international law. One of those groups, the Israel Committee for Home Demolitions (ICHAD), goes so far as to compare Israeli law with Nazi law. In a presentation in March 2000 on a Boston affiliate of National Public Radio, ICHAD head Jeff Halper alleged that Israel's zoning and building regulations are not ordinary laws, and that Israel's legal system resembles the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. Halper has never retracted that comparison.

Arab speakers at the conference include Fatah leaders Yassir Abed Rabo and Jibril Rajub, who are unlikely to mention that Fatah continues to conduct terror operations against Israelis. No one at the conference will remind participants that Fatah's Al Aksa Brigades is defined by the US, the EU and Israel as a terrorist organization that has not renounced its ways.

We are in for a long 7 years, if Shimon Peres keeps up this type of work....

First round is over!

The vote count is:

Collette Avital: 21
Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin: 37
Shimon Peres: 58

The newscasters were talking very often about how it would be a big shock if Peres lost again....and they were asking MKs how they voted.

The most interesting I found was what they asked Shaul Mofaz. They asked him who he voted for and he answered for Peres. Then they asked him how it is possible that a year ago there was no way he would have voted for Peres who was part of Labor and he was part of Likud, yet now he voted Peres?

He waffled a bit and then said that what was a year ago was a year ago and things have changed.

It is a shocker how poor of a showing Ruby actually came out with.

Now it goes to a second round, but it looks like Peres will walk away with the vote...

UPDATE:
Ruby Rivlin withdrew his candidacy. Shimon Peres is now officially the 9th President of Israel.

Earlier today, Terje Larson, the EU envoy to the Middle East, expressed his concern over recent events in the region.

He expressed his concern that four situations in the Middle East are going to lead to a general war.

The four situations he mentioned are; Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and the infighting in Gaza.

Terje Larson is worried about war and did not blame Israel! He did not even include Israel in a list of problems!

Someone sent me this video clip and I thought it was pretty funny. It is in Hebrew, so I apologize if you do not understand it. It is pretty simple Hebrew, so you should be ok.

Basically someone went around asking people what they know Ehud Olmert has contributed to Israel in all of his 40 year career in Israeli politics. Watch and enjoy!

This morning at 6:23 am on my way to shul, I had the radio on to Kol Israel - the state run radio station. They were just concluding one of the morning news programs.

As they finish the discussion about if Shimon Peres would win the presidency who would replace him in the government, they were about to break for commercials. The host of the program then announced a request. This is one I do not remember hearing on the radio ever before.

The host of the program announced, "We ask everyone to daven for the child Bilhaa bat Rivka to be healed from her illness." (they did not say what was wrong with her).

I do not know who this girl is. Maybe she is the daughter of the station master. Maybe she is the daughter of a supporter of the station. Maybe she is just a random child who is very sick and her parents sent a letter to the station asking them to make such an announcement. I do not know.

But it shows me how Jewish of a country Israel is, even with all the politics and fighting and religion wars and whatnot. When it comes down to it, Israel is a Jewish state. The state-run radio station asks people to daven for a sick child.

There will be a Israel Real Estate fair in New Jersey and then New York next week, specifically June 17-19.

After reading all those great reasons for living in Israel, both on my blog and on the various other blogs, you should be chomping at the bit to move here.

If you live on the East Coast of the US, this is a great chance to get a head start on meeting people, meeting builders, finding a home and whatnot.

Take advantage, head on over to any of the three locations hosting the fair and actualize the Jewish dream to settle the Land of Israel.

If you live anywhere else in the United States and do not want to fly to NY for this fair, there will be other fairs coming your way... Keep your eyes peeled for info..

For those of you learnign daf yomi, you will probably enjoy this video. It has been going around by email so I uploaded it to Youtube to share with you...

It is looking more and more like Shimon Peres actually has a decent chance to win his first election ever in the presidential campaign this week. Whether he does or does not actually win remains to be seen, but his chances look good.

On an optimistic note, a good aspect of Shimon peres winning the presidency will be the fact that he will not be able to become Prime Minister when Kadima is forced to remove Olmert in order to avoid new elections. Peres will be stuck as President and we will not have to suffer with him as PM.

Haveil Havalim #120 is up at Soccer Dad. He included a lot of the posts from various bloggers about the 12 reasons for living in Israel. I helped him rounding up those posts. I included as many as I could find. If I missed your post, or a post you know about, feel free to send it to me (by email or in the comments) or to Soccer Dad and he will try to include it..

Go check it out...

There is a great parsha paper that gets distributed in shuls in Israel. It is called Torah Tidbits. It is full of all sorts of interesting articles and features. One of these articles is a weekly piece by Catriel Sugarman on some aspect of the Temple service or the physical construction of the Temple. The piece he writes is generally fascinating and very informative of events and processes we (many of us) have little understanding of.

In this week's article, Sugarman did something a little different. He gave us some of his background as to having grown up Conservative. He described the Conservative belief that there will not be a future Temple, rather the study of the subject is solely for the past, and not for any future relevance.

I was not aware of that belief among the Conservative, so that was an eye opener. He discusses how the Conservative edited the text of various prayers to indicate that belief that there will not be a future temple. He then presented a question he received by email and asked what the readers think about it.

I am reprinting the letter here:

Dear Rabbi (sic) Sugarman,

I am an ideological Conservative Jew and as you know, we do not believe that the temple will return. I download your column weekly from the OU website because the whole subject of the temple has always fascinated me, BUT ONLY AS A PART OF OUR PAST AND NOT AS A PART OF OUR FUTURE.î

Excuse me for saying it but I think the Orthodox movement is, for the most part, intellectually dishonest with itself and others on a central question of belief. This is the area of your expertise, the Temple, animal sacrifices and their reinstatement. The truth? How many Orthodox Jews in the 21st century really want these things?

Let's be for real. You pray three times a day for G-d to restore them to the Jewish people, but do you really want them? Do you really want to slaughter sheep and bullocks and goats by the tens of thousands, toss their blood on the altar, and burn their bodies? Do you really want to tie a red string around the neck of a goat and push it over a cliff so the sins of Israel will be forgiven?

I will not go so far as to call you hypocritical, but I honesty can't believe you people are serious...

Naomi

This is what I sent Catriel Sugarman by email...

Dear Catriel,

I read all your articles with great interest. This week's article was especially intriguing because of it touching on whether we really want the mikdash we daven for, and the future we daven for, or whether we are simply paying lip service but do not really want such change.

I have discussed the topic a number of times with people. I have found that in Israel there are more people who really want the mikdash and the mashiach and all the changes that will ensue because of them than there are in the Diaspora. Yet, even in Israel it is still a minority of the people.

I have asked why more people do not put on the tcheilet (for example). The halachic risk is negligible, and the halachic gain is great (if it is correct than one is fulfilling the mitzva d'oraisa properly). The response I was given is that the frum community generally pushes away anything that has a taste of being messianic.
For some reason, whenever something is deemed as having a messianic flavor, people push it away and reject it. The Rav who told me that also suggested the reason to be because of our long history with false Messiahs. He suggested that any time something quasi-messianic comes along, we automatically reject it because of our bad history with false messiahs.

That being said, I think most people (again, most people is most in the Diaspora and most in Israel as well, but the percentages in Israel will be lower) do not really want that changes that will happen. I suspect a lot of it has to do with fear of the unknown. People worry they will have to give up the luxuries they are used to and their lifestyles. We do not really know what the future will be like when mashiach comes, at best we make suggestions and guesses, so we have a bit of fear of the unknown.

I recently heard a story about a class in a frum school. The teacher asked the students to raise their hand if they want mashiach to come. Everybody raised their hands. The teacher said to keep their hands up. The teacher then asked if they know they have to move to Israel when mashiach comes do they still want mashiach. A few hands went down. The teacher proceeded to mention a few things that will likely change and little by little all the hands went down.

So in general, I believe, most of us do not want mashiach to come or the mikdash to be built. We want to keep our fancy cars, our fancy lifestyles and we do not want anything that might harm them.

That being said I think in Israel there are more people who do want it. I think people who make aliyah clearly want it, at least to a certain extent. They have already shown their willingness to give things up for what they believe. There are people in the general community (settlers, general frum, etc.) who really do want it. But still, even in Israel it is a minority.

What do you think? Do we really want the Beis Hamikdash to be rebuilt? Do we await the return of the korbanos? Do we really want mashiach?
Or are we just paying lip service but don't really look forward to that day?

What do you think? The comments section is open for discussion. And tell us what you really think - do you really want Mashiach or not. Do you really want the mikdash or not. Comment anonymously, if you must.

tnspr569 says lehitraot as he heads back to the US after his year in Israel...

Lehitraot. It was nice getting to know you, and I had a great time on those nighttime adventures, I hope you did as well...

Good luck in college and in the US. Hopefully you will make it back here soon....

The day began with Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset and a former head of the Jewish Agency, along with a former leader of the Labor Party and son of Yosef Burg, one of the founders of the National Zionist Party, granting an interview to the Ha'Aretz newspaper.

The interview was on the occasion of the publication of his newly published book, "Defeating Hitler". Burg was pretty much tossed out of Israeli politics when he lost his position near the top of the Labor Party. He chose not to fight to get back on top and instead left Israel and went into international business, basing himself in Europe, specifically France.

He spoke about how anybody who can possibly get himself a foreign passport should do so and leave Israel. He criticized the hanging of Eichmann, he compared Israel to Nazi Germany and more...

All this seemed inappropriate especially on the eve of the reading of the Torah portion Shlach, in which the story of the spies is related. The spies spoke ill of the Land of Israel in an attempt to dissuade the Jewish people from wanting to continue to travel towards the land. As a punishment, the trip was lengthened and all the people of the generation had to die in the desert before the Jewish Nation could enter Israel.

I found out that day that that night (Thursday night) the IDF would be opening the gravesite of Yehoshua Bin Nun to Jewish visitors. The grave of Yehoshua (and Calev and Nun - Yehoshua's father) is located in the middle of an Arab village called Kifl Harsa, in the Central Shomron, right across from the Israeli town of Ariel. The IDf only opens the location to Jews twice a year. Once on Yehoshua's yahrtzeit and the second time right before the reading of Parshat Shlach, due to Yehoshua and Calev having been two of the spies and the only two that tried to convinve the people to trust Hashem and enter Israel.

I went about two months ago, the first time they opened it up this year, and I decided I wanted to go the second time as well. If you do not remember, the previous time was a very spontaneous trip, and I barely made it. I ran to Jerusalem at 2:30 in the morning and managed to get on the last bus to Kever Yehoshua. This time I decided I did not want to do it like that. I did not want to waste all that time going to Jerusalem and waiting for a bus and fighting to get on, etc. I decided this time, for the first time, I would drive right up to the Arab village and go right in.

Kifl Harsa is different than Shchem (the site of Kever Yosef). When going to Shchem, one has to go to the Jewish areas nearby, park and get a bus in. There is no other choice. Shchem is a city and a very dangerous one to boot. One cannot just go right in. With Kifl Harsa, it is an Arab village and supposedly fairly dangerous if one were to wander in on his own, but when they open it to Jews, one can generally park on the outskirts of the village and walk in, as the army secures the area. It was still a bit tense, as I had never done so before and was not sure how easy or hard it would be to find.

So, at about 11:45 pm, after finishing my shiurim and chavrusas for the night, I went to pick up my partners in crime, Eliyahu (who has gone with me together a number of time to Kever Yosef) and tnspr569.

We first ran into the big accident you might have heard of in which a hatzala member was killed in a car accident in Bet Shemesh. They had shut down the road to clear the accident, so I had to drive around the other way. They had needed ambulances, firetrucks (to peel open the cars) and helicopters (not sure why). It was a high speed head on collision and two people were killed and one seriously injured.

Anyways, we get on the way and drive about 45 minutes to Kifl Harsa. This time I had a full tank of gas, so we would not have that aspect of the excitement that we had last time when we tried to go to Kever Yosef.

It was pretty easy to find. It was right off the side of the main highway. We pull into a dirt lot and park the car. It was already showing signs of being a busy night, with about 50 cars there and a couple of buses. They only opened the site at about 12am to Jews, and now it was about 12:45 or so.

We park and walk in the 3 kilometers or so through the village. It was pitch black, but there were a lot of people walking through and there were IDF soldiers stationed at every point the road curved. When walking in from the external parking lot, one first encounters the grave site of Calev Ben Yefuneh. We went in. The floodlights were off, so it was dark inside. People were using cellphones for illumination, so they could read from prayer books or special pamphlets passed around with special prayers for the site.

It got pretty crowded. The crowd was pretty mixed. Often the majority of people on these trips are Breslaver chassidim, with a lot of "settlers" and then a few yeshiva guys and random people (like me). This time there was just a big mix of people. A lot of "settlers", a lot of chassidim, some breslav but many other types as well, and a lot of yeshiva guys, and regular people (like me) as well. Isn't it amazing how I remain the "regular guy" no matter what the crowd is??

We daven by Calev for a bit, then it is time to move on. We move on and go up through the village to the site of Yehoshua's grave. The big crowd is there. The grave of Yehoshua is not demarcated, rather it is under the wall of the building marking the grave, so some people daven outside at the wall and some go inside.

The site of Yehoshua's grave is generally defaced with Arab graffiti. The IDF, before they let the Jews in, whitewashes over the graffiti with a fresh coat of paint. The paint was only about 90% dry, so people were coming out with whitewash smeared all over the jackets and hats. Inside the building is two small rooms, One is open-air (no roof) and the second is enclosed with a domed ceiling. They were both full of people praying and reading from the Torah portion about the spies and from the book of Joshua. Another prayer, aside from general tehillim, being said was the prayer of Aleinu, which was written by Yehoshua.

After davening for a bit there it was time to move on. We walked further through the village on to the site of Nun's grave. Nun was the father of Yehoshua. I know nothing else about him, but he is buried nearby, so went there as well.

Nun, in contrast to Calev and Yehoshua, has his grave right on the side of the road, with a big headstone (rather than in a building). We davened there and then went back to the grave site of Yehoshua. People were putting out refreshments, so we had something to drink, and then it was time to go home.

Just as we were leaving, the commander of the IDF unit securing the site drove up. I said thank you to him for making out entry possible. I also asked him why they do this at night. There is so much noise and disturbance, that I can't imagine why the Arabs only agree to let us in in the middle of the night. It must disturb their sleep. So why do they not get smart and let us in by day and not make trouble and then they can sleep at night. But instead of that, they don't want to see us, so they only let us in at night and then their whole night is disturbed!

People were making so much noise. Cars honking, people singing and dancing in the streets, general talking and prayers. A lot of noise for 2 in the morning in the middle of a village!

The commander told me they considered it but the one time they did so the Arabs stoned people, so the army decided even with agreement it is still safer at night.

We hike back to the car and head off back to home to catch some sleep. I had intended to run over to Hebron for sunrise morning services, but just could not get up with only 45 minutes of sleep (especially after having had only 2 hours of sleep the night before because of a late work night).

According to the news the next morning, I was one of (or we were three of) 1300 people who visited the site over the course of the night. As well, the news reported that a few people had desecrated a nearby Muslim cemetery. I did not see details of what they did in the cemetery, but it is wrong to desecrate any cemetery, even that of Muslims. The organizers of the event were quoted as to decrying the defacement, and declared it was just a few people who did so, while most people were respectful and did not make trouble.

At the same time that I say this, while our media make a big deal about how a few people desecrated the Muslim cemetery, no word is mentioned how the Arabs desecrated Jewish cemeteries. There was no mention of the graffiti sprayed all over the grave site of Yehoshua, that had to be painted over by the IDF before we got there. There is generally no word of the other Jewish grave sites in Muslim areas that get desecrated. There is generally no word and for sure no public outcry regarding the horrible desecration of Kever Yosef, which was burned down multiple times and demolished to rubble by the local Arabs.

Despite all this, it is wrong to desecrate a cemetery, but I wish the Jewish/Israeli media would be just as concerned about Jewish cemeteries and grave sites as non-Jewish ones...