The saga of Ron Kubi and Tiberias continues. While it started off as interesting and somewhat curious, Kubi has gotten boring and uninteresting in recent months. That being said, I have no idea if he is functioning well or poorly as  a mayor - the only news I hear about him is regarding his fighting with the haredi politicians.

Kubi last chance via extension, as per the courts, to pass the city budget and run the city as mayor has come and gone. With his failing to pass the budget, again, Minister of Interior Aryeh Deri had scheduled a hearing for Kubi as required before relieving him of his duties as mayor and appointing a Committee to run the city in his stead.

Kubi appealed to the Supreme Court again and the hearing was today.

Before stating what happened, I would comment that I did not understand the purpose of their previous decision. They allowed Kubi to continue in his position, but also allowed Deri to reinstate the city council despite the fact that they had resigned (as they had been required to as part of their final vote against the budget). Giving Kubi another chance while placing before him the same impediment that he has had for the past year seemed pointless to me, and it turned out to be pointless as they continued to block him from passing a budget and forming a coalition. The court should have either removed Kubi in favor of a committee or let Kubi back in but with a replacement city council (replaced by a committee). What was the point in putting everything back the exact same way it had been before?

Anyways, today's hearing throws the ball back into Deri's court again. No decision has yet been arrived at, but the State was unimpressed with the fact that Deri has called Kubi names, such as a troll, and also concluded that the government has two weeks to explain why the Minister of Interior does not appoint a new committee to function in place of the city council that resigned. And, to explain why Deri should not recuse himself from dealing with this, s a conflict of interest due to personal animosity between the two parties, and appoint another minister to handle things in his place regarding the issue of Ron Kubi.

What will happen? Who knows - definitely not me. The saga that looked like it was coming to an end is going to continue now for at least a little bit longer...

According to Behadrei, a group of 5 yeshiva guys from an unnamed yeshiva in Israel recently flew to Spain to go to a football (soccer) game between Barcelona and some other time.

As happens during a game in any sport, the camera pans the crowd. At one point during the game, the camera picked up the group of 5 yeshiva guys. To their dismay, the game was being watched by some people back home, other yeshiva boys who often watch the games in local kiosks, who recognized them. Word got back to the yeshiva and the 5 boys were tossed.

Needless to say, it is unlikely the boys at the game, spotted on camera, were behaving similarly to the way Rav Zeev Leff recently was caught on camera behaving at a game in Scotland, though I haven't seen video of the incident. Not that I think people are expected to go to games and bring a gemara with them - God knows how many Cubs, Bulls and Blackhawks (and yes, also White Sox) games I have gone to without a gemara in tow.

The main issue is pretty obvious. I won't comment on it. Yeshiva boys should be learning, not traveling to games, the army does not give them deferments so they can go to Spain and watch games, blah blah blah.

The funny thing is that they were snitched on and publicized by other guys who were breaking the rules and going out of yeshiva (granted, they did not go as far as Spain) to watch the game... That breaks some sort of bro code, actually any decent human code, in my book..

We keep tradition and believe in God. At least I do. But we are not careful with the easy as with the difficult (the lenient as with the stringent). Those who keep Shabbos did not participate in Netanyahu talks on Shabbos.

  -- Minister Miri Regev, regarding the reports that Netanyahu had a tactical discussion with members of the Likud and the 55-bloc on Shabbos via telephone. This raised a bit of an outcry regarding the religious and Haredi parties lack of any response to Netanyahu's public desecration of Shabbos for politics. For their end, the Haredi parties responded sayign they know Netanyahu does not sit around on Shabbos reading Chumash and Rashi, but his telephone meetings yesterday were nothing unusual as he meets with Likud leaders via telephone every Shabbos - this time it was leaked out only because of politics.

After a number of recent motor vehicle accidents in RBS, and in Bet Shemesh as a whole, Cellular-E, a local cellphone repair (and sales) shop, in conjunction with Ezrat Achim, are running a campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of texting and driving.



Very important message.. don't use your phone while driving..

source: FB of חנה זורנו

a Palestinian child, 3 years old, was lost. He found his way to a checkpoint and told the soldiers. He didn't know where he lives, nor could he even say his parents' names. In the meantime, soldiers fed the child while other soldiers went on a search party to locate the parents, which they did successfully..

קטע משיעורו של הגרב''צ מוצפי שליט''א בעניין התפילה בשטיבלאך. חובת צפייה. pic.twitter.com/bhaRaZ0JLE

— יעקב מלמד (@ymelamed2) November 11, 2019

I am not quite sure what to make of this, Rav Bentzion Mutzafi in his shiur is making fun of how ashkenazim, or specifically hassidim, daven, and says that this is not tefilla

MK Omer Yankelovitch (Kachol Lavan) has proposed a law that would put an end to the exorbitant parking fees collected in hospital parking lots.

Yankelovitch is proposing that the Ministers of Health and of Transportation should, together I guess, set the maximum limit that hospitals are allowed to charge for parking. The Ministry of Health has previously determined that hospitals should charge no more than 20nis per day for parking, yet the hospitals ignore the unenforced directives and charge exorbitant prices. Her proposal is that parking fees should be limited to 15nis per hour and 40nis per day.

As the occasional consumer of hospital parking, thankfully not often, I concur that they charge ridiculously high parking fees, and are basically taking advantage of a captive, and often desperate, public that has no other choice.. 
source: Haredim10

sous vide is very popular so I thought this would be interesting and relevant to some people..



my questions:
1. it could be kashered, but does it need to be kashered? the sous vide machine never comes into contact, even indirect contact with the meat or its steams or anything. it is immersed in the water and what is being cooked is isolated in a sealed bag. So if you cook meat via sous vide, maybe there is no need to kasher it and you can then cook dairy.

2. he does not mention kosher and non-kosher, only dairy and meat, and Pesach. Is there a difference?

3. if you are doing hagala on a sous vide machine, how do you deal with the top of the machine that has the electronics? Do you only need to kasher the bottom half, only submerging the machine halfway, or 2/3, into the boiling water?