1. What I saw during Pillar of Defense

2. A post on Cross-Currents by Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz about reacting to the Weberman case while Dov Ber asks if it is possible Weberman might be innocent 

3. Digging up Arafat proves there is no rest for the wicked while Shaul claims he killed Arafat

4. There is a major scandal going down in England, and these two posts about it are worth reading: It's Friday and I dont know what to do along with Chaim Halpern

5. Rav Ovadia Praises Ashkenazim

6. The smartest isnt always the best

7. Gangnam or Gam Gam

8. how a blog can impact a life

9. flipping out and flipping in

10. The price of resilience

11. rejecting the extremists in our midst

12. Rav Aharon Kotler vs Yaakov Avinu

It couldn't hurt to try, but using the incoming Kassam and Grad rockets as an excuse to try to get out of a speeding ticket did not work for one taxi driver.

According to Ynet, this driver was caught speeding 51 kmph over the speed limit. He was caught by the police using a laser gun reading his speed, and his driver's license was immediately suspended for 30 days.

During Operation Pillar of Defense, this taxi driver was driving in between Red Alert sirens. You can imagine how harried he must have felt, along with so many other people, trying to get to cover every few minutes with tens of rockets shot at Israel, the majority of them in southern Israel, every day.

When the driver went to court, he asked the court to take into account the special circumstances that everywhere he went there were sirens and he was scared. He says he even knew that on the road on which he was caught there are regularly police, but he drove there anyway, and he drove fast, because of the pressure he was under due to the incessant sirens.

He asked the courts to take that into account and to cancel the ticket and give him his license back.

Unfortunately for him, the prosecutors pulled out his records and discovered that this driver has had plenty of  speeding tickets in the past, and was involved in a traffic accident a couple of years ago. Considering his many tickets and four serious speeding tickets along with three accidents in the past 15 years, the judge rejected his petition.

You can only use the rockets as an excuse if you were a fairly safe and patient driver prior to the rockets.

I have been thinking about going back to school, and have been looking at my options. I think I found the perfect fit - it's not one of the MBA programs I had considered, nor is it a school of technology. It is a brand new school that is going to be teaching prophecy. The "Beit Sefer L'Nevuah Al Shem Kayin v'Hevel" - "the School of Prophecy named for Kayin and Hevel" - is looking to train the coming generation of prophets.

If you think I am joking, I kid you not. the only thing I am joking about is my considering possible attendance  though I am curious...

Srugim has the story of this new school opening its doors today..

If I was setting up such a school, the natural locations I would first consider for the school would be either Jerusalem or Tzfat, or maybe elsewhere in the Galil.  The school for prophecy is being opened up in the southern side of Tel Aviv, in the Florentine neighborhood, rather than what I would have considered the natural place for this. Actually, thinking about it, opening it up in Tel Aviv makes some sort of sense because in Tel Aviv pretty much anything goes, whereas in Jerusalem something like this might be chased out of town.    Tzfat still seems like a good spot to me, but maybe they have to go where the people are...

Shmuel Portman Hapartzi (I wonder if he is related to Natalie Portman) is the founder of the school and considers himself a chassid of Chabad. He says he is convinced the time of redemption is here and therefore prophecy has returned.

His goal in opening this school, he says, is to give, to the young generation of prophets, the sources by which they will be able to direct their spiritual experiences to the straight and true path.

The school will be teaching a syllabus that includes the following topics:

• "wisdom of the face", a topic that includes form of limbs, signs of walking and voice, and others
• wisdom of dreams
• intro to ruach hakodesh and prophecy 
• intro to wisdom of angels

all prophets will graduate with this certificate

Yesh Atid, the political party led by Yair Lapid, held his official event yesterday announcing his party list and introducing the candidates. Rabbi Dov Lipman from Bet Shemesh was introduced as the candidate for the 17th spot on the Yesh Atid list.



I am not a big fan of polls, and at this point in an election they are very unreliable, but even with the best polls Yesh Atid received when they first joined the marketplace of political parties 17 was only borderline realistic.

I don't know if Rabbi Lipman will make it into the Knesset or not, but we wish him the best of luck. Bet Shemesh can use every MK it can possibly get. Bet Shemesh, as far as I know, has never before sent anyone to the Knesset, under any party platform. Rabbi Lipman joins a number of other local Bet Shemesh people running, or rumored to be running, for Knesset. Bet Shemesh might send 4 locals to the Knesset, under the best of circumstances (though that depends on how you define "best of circumstances"):

1. Keti Shitreet, 24th on the Likud list. Definitely a realistic spot, but it could depend on how the final unified list with Yisrael Beiteinu will be formed.
2. Rabbi Dov Lipman, 17th on Yesh Atid's list.
3. Rabbi Moshe Abutbol, his patron, Rav Reuven Elbaz, is supposedly pushing for Abtubol to be added to the Shas list. I have heard the slots considered for him, if at all, are anywhere from the 8th until the 11th slot. If it happens, it could be realistic for him to get in to the Knesset. 
4. Moshe Montag, rumored to be considered for the 3rd spot on the Degel list, which might translate to 7th on the unified UTJ list. Again, not really realistic, but possible under the right circumstances. 

The deadline for submitting final party lists is I think this Thursday, so we will see who the final decisions will include and who they will exclude, but Bet Shemesh can use every patron and voice it can get at the national level, so I wish all of them the best of luck. Even being in unrealistic spots, it just means they respectively will have to work all that much harder to make their spots realistic.

A "Mitzvah" at 11 thousand feet in the Colorado Rockies! from Kivi Bernhard on Vimeo.

I was watching this clip of a prank pulled by Improv Everywhere of setting up a long line for Black Friday outside a dollar store, and there was a peek-a-jew involved...

I don't know what they were thinking, or smoking, when they put up the statue of a female surfer into a central fountain in Yehud last week. Did they really think Shas would not object to it, and have it removed/replaced, thus wasting thousands of shekels?

surf's up, dude!

The Shas representatives, according to the article on Mynet, are upset and think the statue should have been made of a male surfer, as that would have been more reasonably tzanua.

Considering that the statue is of a female surfer that is in a full bathing suit, the Shas reps specifically explained that what upsets them is the way the statues tuches sticks out, though unless the statue is wearing a burkini I dont see why the full bathing suit should not itself be a problem for the Shas reps.

The artist himself claims the statue is tzanua. He says the if one were to look at the statue he would see that it is in a full bathing suit up until the knees (note: I guess it is in a burkini). He says he took into account the issue of tzniyut, and the instructions he received form City Hall also included to take care about the issue of tzniyut. He says no limb is exposed, and there is nothing to complain about. I guess he took everything into account except the tuches.

As a result of the protest, an agreement was reached in which the statue would be replaced with that of a male surfer.

The Rabbanut is busy finding ways to improve it's system of kashrut approval, with a new system that will make it more difficult to forge kashrut certificates.

The Rabbanut has created a new type of kashrut certificate in which the certificate consists of a QR code that can be scanned by a smartphone with internet access. The QR code will take the viewer to an image of the actual kashrut certificate on the Rabbanut website, along with all details regarding kashrut of the establishment.

The first placements of these new certificates was this past week in Ashdod. I heard heard it on the news on Friday morning, so I guess the first placements were on Thursday.

A sample of how it works is this QR code hanging in the restaurant...


and scanning that code leads one to this image of the certificate:

found at this URL.

The head of the Religious Council in Ashdod praised the new system and also said it gives them the ability, if it should be necessary, to publish warnings about places that will easily be distributed to the public.

The Rabbanut said that with the successful implementation in Ashdod, they plan to push out the program to other cities around Israel.
(source: Ashdod Net)

The only thing I don't understand is that if the certificate with the QR code will be replacing the normal certificate, and from now it will only be online, what will people without smartphones do regarding knowing the kashrut of a food establishment? And if the actual certificate will be hanging there as well, what's the point of the QR code? After an initial period of curiosity, I doubt people will bother scanning the QR codes if there is also a full certificate on display, so they won't notice the warnings that might be on the website. On the other hand, if there is only a QR code, how do they ensure people will actually bother to check the kashrut and not just assume it is ok because there is a QR code hanging there?

I have seen in Bet Shemesh, already a few months ago, a QR code at the bottom of a kashrut certificate - though not as a replacement for the certificate.

Itzik Elrov, the haredi fellow from Bnei Braq who led the "cottage cheese protest" against Tnuva, uploaded the picture above. It is of a haredi woman in Bnei Braq shortly before Shabbos rummaging through the trash and picking out some tomatoes. The image has created some ruckus about social policies and the level of destitution in some places...

Olmert's behavior is scandalous and irresponsible. On US soil Olmert chose to praise Abu Mazen and defend him after the hateful and anti-Israel speech he gave in the United Nations, and after he violated the signed agreements with Israel. And at the same time he chose to lash out at Israel and at its leader. Even Olmert's far-reaching offers, those that included even dividing Jerusalem and giving its heart to a foreign ruler - the Palestinians did not agree to because they have no interest in finishing the conflict. 

  -- Minister of Education Gideon Saar, responding to Olmert's comments while visiting the USA about Israel's first response to the Palestinian unilateral move in the UN

Straight out of the parsha...

ever wonder how bakery challah is made?

Let's start the week with a clip of Ohad and Shai Abramson singing Hatikvah at the recent Emunah gala concert...