people think I am not machmir enough and rely too much on kulas. The truth is that personally I have many chumras I hold of, but I choose not to share them publicly, not to push them on other people and not to insist on them at the expense of other people. However, in the spirit of the holiday and to be magnanimous with all of you, I have decided to share just one chumra that I hold very dear and keep very strictly.

I am very machmir in eating bread made from flour ground after Pesach, before Pesach.

Yes, I am very strict about this. If you invite me in to your home today and offer me a sandwich, I will insist the bread must have been made from flour ground next week.

Just kidding. In recent years a chumra to be makpid after Pesach on eating baked goods made only from fresh flour that had been ground after Pesach. There is always a debate if this is necessary or not, but the chumra has become fairly popular in recent years. In addition, every year there is a discussion how right after Pesach some products are marked as having been made from flour ground after Pesach, but a few weeks later the labels disappear and the older stuff comes out of storage and nobody pays attention at that point. And then there are always the products labeled as such that are discovered to be false. And then there are always a few products found before Pesach being sold with stickers stating it was made from flour ground after pesach.

The following, though, seems the most egregious of all:

This load of bread, being sold 2 days before Pesach, is labeled as being made form flour ground after Pesach 5778.

You cannot get fresher bread than that!

looking for chametz?
this is the Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok Rebbe At The Tzion Of The Imrei Chaim On The Yartzheit

Rabbi Dov Halbertal, Former Head Of The Office Of The Chief Rabbi Of Israel And Rabbi Ariel Konstantyn, Founding Rabbi At The Tel Aviv Int’l Synagogue speaking at ILTV Studio about the secular groups that push back against chief Rabbinate's 'Religious coercion'.

spoofing Eretz Nehderet means spoofing a spoof. they do a pretty good job

Chief of Police Roni Alshich has called upon the rabbis and community leaders in MOdiin Ilit to discourage the local residents from bringing their cars for servicing and repairs to Arab mechanics from the nearby villages. According to Alshich using their cheap services encourages increased car theft - if I understood correctly because they need spare parts they send their people out to steal cars to create a supply of parts for them.

I do wonder if this is part of a sting operation in which they convince the rabbis to talk out against using the services of these Arabs and then the media flips out against these racist rabbis and the police are encouraged to arrest someone for something he said, official rabbis get fired for saying something racist, and the like.

As they say, just because you are paranoid does not mean they aren't after you..

I agree. I think the same about at least most, if not all, religious laws.

You have to have at least some respect for a person who puts his money where his mouth is and is dedicated to the cause he believes in.

Ahro Biale, a regular participant in the Peleg Yerushalmi protests, has become somewhat famous and a subject of regular Internet memes with a lot of fans. Biale is an American yeshiva bochur learning in Eretz Yisrael in Rav Shmuel Auerbach's yeshiva, and Biale has gone hardcore Peleg.

Last year Biale decided to make aliya for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the opportunity to be AWOL from the army and stick it to those Zionists. So, for 5 months now Biale has been AWOL. Now that he tried to leave Israel to go visit his parents for the Pesach holiday in Lakewood, NJ, he was arrested in the airport and will be spending 20 days in a military jail, though he has made a request for a lightened sentence that is being considered.

He definitely got what he wished for when he made aliyah. Only some new immigrants can say as much about their own aliya experiences...

A beis din has ruled that there can be two Uncle Moishys, thus leading the way to what could be a very confusing entertainment experience.

After some dispute over who owns the name between two entertainers using the name Uncle Moishy, the beis din decided they can both use the name.
source: Canadian Jewish News

Now, I don't know what Uncle Moishy could possibly be without singing songs like Big Gedalia Gumper and One is Hashem and all the other classics. This other Uncle Moishy is goign to deceive a lot of people when they come to his concerts expecting certain songs and he does not sing them. But if he thinks he can be successful at it, and the beis din (and courts?) allow him to use the name with no intellectual property ownership issues, hatzlacha to them both.

Rav Shalom Cohen, President of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah (Shas) was asked by rabbonim from communities in which sunset is very late about the timing for eating afikomen. The problem is that with sunset so late, and presumably sunrise very early, kiddush is very close to chatzos, as the dark hours of the night are very short, making it difficult to have the pesach seder properly and eat the afikomen before chatzos.

Rav Cohen responded that they should eat the afikomen twice - once before chatzos in the middle of their seder and then a second time in its place at the end of the meal.
source: Kikar

It means eating even more matza, but it seems like a reasonable solution, relying on opinions in halacha that would make it work. I dont know how one can eat matza for the afikomen in the middle of maggid when one is not allowed to eat, and what would make eating matza in the middle of maggid be considered the afikomen rather than just eating matza or perhaps the mitzva of matza and then cause a problem for making the matza bracha later. Also, I thought you are nto allowed to eat anything after the afikomen. But I guess he is basing everything on opinions, even if we dont normally rely on them, in difficult situations it is possible to.

I do wonder what they have been doing in these communities until now about this situation.

pretty talented!

I just received the following letter in the mail:


very few people call me rabbi, even less use the "shlita" when mentioning my name, but many spell my name wrong.

So, this kollel was opened about a year ago, maybe a bit more. I am sure it is a wonderful kollel with the most studious of avreichim, and if anyone wishes to donate to them, the details for donations are at the bottom of the letter, though I know nothing about them personally.

As the opening sentences of the letter state, "...I would like to bring forth an urgent situation in our town." During the first few weeks we were here, the kollel situation proved to be quite impossible. Many young men simply could not find a kollel to learn in. From those who were fortunate enough, many needed to travel to other cities on a daily basis, costing them precious time and hard earned money."

If this letter taught me anything it is that Bet Shemesh has a shortage of decent kollels. That was not the impression I had prior to receiving this letter.

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz does tremendous work in the realm of child safety. He recently launched a child safety book "Let's Stay Safe", and more recently has been launching versions of this book in other languages, including one in Hebrew for the Dati Leumi community and another in Hebrew for the Haredi community (I do not know what the differences are in the book).



Personally, both for my kids and to support Rabbi Horowitz's efforts, I just picked up the Hebrew version of the book:



this is the Haredi version of the book, whatever that means..

you can get these books at any decent Jewish bookstore. In RBS I got it at the Judaica Center bookstore (under Yesh).

President of Israel, Reuven "Ruvi" Rivlin, has a nationwide musical program planned for this coming Yom Haatzmaut. Rivlin is using Koolulam to put together a mass singing event which will be videoed and broadcast on Yom Haatzmaut.


To that end, someone asked Rav Aviner about the Koolulam experience and how to relate to it from a halachic perspective.

Here is an example of the most recent Koolulam event, from the Shneider Children's Hospital in Petach Tikva:

and here is my favorite of the Koolulam events, their rendition of Matisyahu's One Day:


So someone asked Rav Aviner about Koolulam events. The initial question asked was if it is kosher, to which Rav Aviner replied it is definitely not kosher and the two problems with it are mixing and mingling of men and women along with mixed singing.

The follow-up question was if it is done in a shul, with men and women separated, is it ok then? Rav Aviner said that would take away the mingling, but would add a problem of doing something improper in a shul and damaging the kedusha of the shul. Regarding this question, I do not know why they asked about doing it in a shul rather than just a gender-separate event anywhere.

Q: What about if they sing "holy songs"?
A: Even worse. Any sin while connecting it to kedusha is worse.

Q: Men cannot hear women sing but what about if it is a lot of women together or many men hearing many women?
A: Even worse, as the sin is magnified by so many people..

Q: what about the fact that at the Koolulam events it is unifying people among the spectrum of Israeli society?
A: unity is good, but not through sin

Q: So how should we unify?
A: have separate Koolulam events for men and for women. And, real unity isnt created by a passing experience. Real unity is created through service in the IDF, mesirut nefesh for each other and for klal yisrael.

Q: And in our daily lives [how is unity created]?
A: helping others, doing chessed. that is true love.
source: Kipa

The main method of creating unity is through army service? Army service, like any difficult/challenging/dangerous experience will be a bonding experience and create some sort of unity, but is that really the main or only way to create unity, discounting all others? Especially when you don't want half the people (the women) to serve in the army, and many others also do not, such as Arabs and Haredim, among others. It creates a bond, and perhaps unity, but only among those serving together in the same unit.

I am not sure what the premise was for asking if hearing women is still a problem if it is many men listening to many women. Why would the number of men listening change anything?

I do not know why they did not ask about the common hetter of "two voices cannot be heard", meaning with so many people singing together, you aren't hearing anybody's voice, or anybody specific's voice, thus it is allowed and not kol isha. I also don't know why they did not ask about the men singing as well and thus not hearing the other women singing. Either way, Rav Aviner very well might reject those hetterim and say it does not matter, or he might say even if such a hetter could be valid (in some circumstances) it is still inappropriate and still mingling of men and women,but it still should have been asked. I think they are more relevant questions than, for example, asking about doing the event inside a shul.

Chabad has two (probably more, but I saw two) interesting Pesach ads...

1. this is a really good ad for handmade shmura matza. I really like it. the ad is a few years old


2. the following ad is current and is for a Pesach seder hosted by a Chabad House, anywhere in the world.



this is one of the many great things done by Chabad, around the world. So many Jews, some more affiliated, some less, all over the world, have a place to sit down on pesach night and experience a seder because of Chabad.

My only question is, and I have never been at a Chabad seder, do they really serve matza balls, as depicted in the ad? Chabad tradition is basically not to eat matza except the minimum required at the seder and nothing else except the minimum required on Shabbos or Chag for hamotzi. And then they eat it in a bag so as not to get any crumbs on the table to avoid creating chametz. They take the non-gebrokts minhag to an extreme. They definitely do not eat classic matza balls. Do they serve matza balls to other people, even though they do not eat it themselves? Do they make matza balls out of, perhaps, potato starch or something else?

interesting.. but if so many people prefer it with the cane sugar, why not use that all the time?

Jerusalem Kosher News has had its ups and downs for a while. In general Yechiel Spira provides a good service trying to educate the public about issues of kashrut in Israel. In general his policy is not to tell anybody what to do, what can and cannot be eaten, but just to educate about standards. Sadly the site goes through long periods of inactivity, though every now and again Spira tries to give it a jump start for a bit.

In addition to the website, Spira has started, a number of times, email groups and whatsapp groups for disseminating information and for the people to ask questions and share their own information. A number of these groups have already been started and stopped, as people tend to get off topic, the deluge of emails about every issue under the sun overwhelms people (including him), the complaints come in, and he pulls the cord on it. It is sad because the groups, just like the website, can be very useful and helpful.

Y Spira has once again restarted an email group for the discussion of kashrut. I hope it does not suffer the same problems and end quickly. If you wish to subscribe, go to Groups.io and find the JerusalemKoshernews group and do so.

After a few interesting kashrut announcements, the group was used to send out the following announcement by one of the members, and it is things like this that I assume will kill the group again sooner or later:

A Note from JKN: The letter below is from Rabbi Wikler, as you will see. I have been holding this for a number of days, permitting time to decide if it will be rejected or forwarded along to you, the reader. I have decided that despite the fact some of you will yell "this is political", knowing Rabbi Wikler, his reputation, and comittment to kashrus, I feel that while there may be a political air to the message, the matter is indeed 'urgent' as he puts it, an effort to save the state kashrus built by Rav Kook as well as all the other religious services provided by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.  You may act or ignore Rabbi Wikler's message, but I feel he is correct and I know he is motivated strictly out of concern, void of any and all political agendas. Yes, the Chief Rabbinate needs much work, and no one argues this is so,  but as the rabbi points out below, Tzohar in this case has naively teamed up with enemies of Orthodox Jewry who are using this fight to destroy the Rabbinate and the religious Jewry's control of deciding who is a Jew, marriage, divorce, kashrus and burial. 
The rabbi's appeal to readers follows
I think it is urgent for this group, over 3,000 strong, to send emails to the appropriate leaders in Israel and to the Chief Rabbis on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate continuing as the exclusive authority on kosher in israel, and calling on Tzohar to give up its direct attack on the Rabbinate's control. 
For those who have not kept up with the issue, Tzohar, a religious group bent on changing the certain values in Israel to their philosophy, is currently attempting to certify businesses and establishments as kosher (without actually using that word) IN PLACE OF kosher certification by the Chief Rabbinate, the only  legally authorized group to grant kosher status. This is a direct attempt, backed by non-Orthodox movements, to replace the governmental system of kosher with private business. In the diaspora we see how poorly an unregulated private system of kosher certification operates."Can I use this hashgacha" one asks when seeing in the supermarket a display of over 1,396 kosher symbols (as per the latest issue of Kashrus Magazine's Kosher Supervision Guide).
This is a crucial point in history. If we do not support the Chief Rabbinate of Israel now, we will have to answer for the consequences. When the Chief Rabbinate is stripped of its powers, and replaced by private businesses, or, worse yet, it is opened to non-Orthodox "rabbis", it will be too late.
This next idea is mine alone. I believe that women must come out strongly now and oppose Tzohar's efforts to use women mashgichot to give its challenge a universal appeal, claiming that their goal is to work for for the rights of all people. Everyone in the field of kashrus is open to women mashgichot, but to use them as a shield, and to hide the true purposes of this disrespectful challenge, is a mistreatment of the many dedicated women in kashrus and beyond.
Rabbi Yosef WiklerKashrus Magazinewww.kashrusmagazine.com

A discussion quickly began, with initially the responses supporting the petition against Tzohar. It did not take too long in coming when the responses included those who opposed such a petition, for whatever reason. Of course, I could not resist and joined the fray. Here is what I had to say:

1. I think this list should steer clear of politics.2. once it is not, I think you could do a better job explaining the problem. Why is Tzohar such a threat, especially if it is true as someone wrote above that most people on this list dont rely on Rabbanut anyway and would only use one of the many other private hechshers?
3. Why is the American hechsher system so bad? I never heard such a thing before. I heard exactly the opposite, and generally a private system with competition will almost always be better than a government system and one that is based on a monopoly
4. to the main point, I do not understand why Tzohar is doing anything different than what any of the private mehadrin hechsherim are doing and I do not see why it is any more or less of a threat to the Rabbanut.
5. If I think the Tzohar hechsher is not reliable or up to my standards I will not eat from it, and if it is up to my standards and reliability I will [possibly] eat from it. Why should their being a threat, if it is a threat, to the Rabbanut interest me?
6. and last, maybe in other words, if I only eat mehadrin hechsherim anyway, why should I care about a fight between 2 hechsherim that do not interest me or effect my eating habits or those of my community?
kol tuv
Rafi Goldmeier

To be brief, if this, kashrus, not specifically Tzohar, is a topic that interests you, you should join the group now, before it gets shut down again, to at least learn more about it while it lasts. There is almost always good, and even important, information being posted.

To me there are 2 interesting aspects of Nir Barkat's announcement today about deciding to not run for re-election as Mayor of Jerusalem but to run on the Likud list for Knesset.

And they are:
1. that he has always refused a salary for public office and has taken just 1nis per year as mayor and will continue to do so when serving the public in national office. His decision to only take a salary of 1nis per year as mayor is well known, adding future offices to it is interesting. Barkat by law has to take a salary, which is why he takes 1nis, but he should also donate that 1nis to charity so he can really say he has taken nothing from the public for his service.

2. What happens next in Jerusalem? The recent fake fighting between Avigdor Lieberman and Aryeh Deri and other Haredi representatives put Moshe Leon's chances in question, even though they officially made up immediately after the "fight". Will a Haredi rep recapture the votes of the city residents? Will another secular representative take over where Barkat left off? The mayhem and fighting for the spot will surely keep things interesting for the foreseeable future.

Rav Yisrael Greenberger, rav of the Vizshnitz communities of Petach Tikva and Elad, has paskened that brushing one's teeth on Erev Pesach to remove any chametz is not enough preparation of one's mouth for the holiday but one must brush his/her teeth to remove any bits of chametz stuck there and then fill the mouth, as much as each person is possible, with boiling hot water and then spit it out.

In addition, according to Rav Greenberger, 24 hours prior to the time listed as the final time for eating chametz one is prohibited from eating any hot chametz, the problem being the hot food leavign traces absorbed into your teeth and the difficulty it causes in removing it. You would not be allowed to eat hot soup with bread or croutons, for example, or a hot pastrami sandwich, or hot pasta such as macaroni and cheese. You could eat the chametz cold, separately, and the hot soup separately, but the hot chametz can't be eaten within 24 hours of the final time. If you are eating a hot pastrami on rye, or a hot dog, separate the meat from the break - eat the hot pastrami separately and the rye bread separately, though I am not sure where you would put the mustard in this example. No dunking your donut in your coffee on Thursday.
source: Kikar

I admit, when I first saw this article I thought I must be reading a comedy or humor page or maybe it is a late Purim edition, or that I landed on a spoofed satire site. Interestingly it actually seems real.

it does remind me of the old discussions regarding braces and if they need to be kashered for pesach or not. But Rabbi Greenberger is talking about everybody and anybody's mouth, even with no braces, even with no silver fillings.

His premise that the teeth absorb, need to be kashered, and that it is a problem, seems new to me. Why do we not have this problem daily with milk and meat? If you eat a hot meat meal, you would not be allowed to eat a dairy meal for 24 hours, not the 3 or 5/6 hours we actually wait.

Why does the shulchan aruch not talk about this problem - whether for meat and dairy on a daily basis or for Pesach? It seems it would be be a far more serious problem that the kashrus of pots and spoons of the wrong gender falling into a pot of the other gender soup.

Since when is the mouth, or any body part, considered a vessel that absorbs and has to be kashered?

I hope Rabbi Greenberger plans on taking responsibility for the people who listen to him who get injured with second degree burns, or worse. I hope he was talking pilpul and rejected the suggestion in his conclusion and made it clear to everyone that this should not be done.

If not and if this is this year's crazy chumra, next years will have to be an extension of this - you cannot touch hot chametz within 24 hours of the final time as your hands might absorb the chametz. Everyone must toivel in a boiling hot mikva before pesach to do hagala on their hands and other body parts that might have come into contact with hot chametz. Not just the mouth, but the entire cavity of the body, especially the tongue and the entire path down - the esophagus, the stomach, the intestines and the rectum must all be kashered for Pesach with boiling hot water. And coming soon will be telling everyone to also get a colonoscopy before Pesach.

I dont get it. There might be good reasons to get married younger, or even just to consider it, but is a boring bein hazmanim one of them?

these Peleg protesters are pretty stupid. In yesterday's protests they escalated the conflict by attacking police with pepper spray and tear gas. I don't really have a problem with that as they are fighting with the police, the police spray them with "boash", which I am not sure how to translate but is some sort of skunk fragrance spray, and water cannon and use other methods of aggressiveness, so the protesters act in kind. It is part of the process. Even though I would not condemn it, I do think it is stupid.

They may think they are cool right now and they got the upper hand on those cops, at some point escalating and attacking the cops will cause the cops to escalate. I would not be surprised if at some point we see the police start shooting rubber bullets into the mass of protesters, and maybe even eventually live fire. It seems to me to be the natural progression of such escalations.

these are Peleg protesters being arrested and kept in temporary "detainment center" which is really a hitchhiking station for soldiers sponsored by the Agugah Lemaan Hachayal organization. Oh, the irony!

the news today is all about Israel striking and destroying a nuclear reactor in Syria ten years ago. At the time everyone "knew" but now that it has been officially acknowledged, everyone officially knows.

I have been thinking about what I can say about this matter. There are all sorts of angles worth discussing. I have decided to mention just one aspect of the story.

As part of the release, it became known that the politicians (Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Tzippi Livni, and others) making the decisions sent Eli Yishai to Rav Ovadia Yosef to inform him and to give the mission his blessing and prayer. In addition, the IDF Chief of Staff asked Rav Shmuel Rabinovitch to daven for the success of the mission.

All these people, secular politicians and generals, leaders of a secular army and a largely secular state, none of them known for being even somewhat traditional, went to rabbonim for brachas and prayers prior to engaging in such a critical mission.

Maybe they don't talk about God and His part in modern State affairs as often as we might like. Maybe we accuse them often of forgetting God's part and being too focused on "my power and my might" - kochi v'otzem yadi - but at the end of the day, when the going gets tough, when it comes down to anything important, they value and ask for the blessings and prayers of the religious leaders and value their part in affairs and consider them as crucially necessary as any other aspect in preparation for critical missions.

The following flyer has been tossed and passed around Haredi areas in Jerusalem..



The flyer complains about the lack of tzniyus, especially in the summer months, on the light rail lines in Jerusalem. It calls upon the Haredi community to have a self-imposed segregation on the rail with people boarding and riding specifically in one car of the train, the first car of the back half of the train. The flyer calls for people to not cause any chilul hashem but to do this pleasantly. By doing this and having all the bnei torah there, automatically there will be more tzniyus and purity.

As long as this is not being imposed and remains voluntary and each person decides to do this and participate, there is nothing wrong with it. I hope they won't start shouting at other people that they need to switch cars and this is the Haredi car and things like that. As long as it remains voluntary, all is good.

It also does not say this car is for men only or women only and the other gender should go to a different car. Hopefully it means this will not be forcing gender segregation.

One time I was walking past a synagogue and a man came out and asked me to adjust the thermostat since they couldn’t do it because it was the Sabbath and that would be considered work. So I’m gonna go ahead and say Jews do not control the weather.

— Kristin Autry (@WonderCo_op) March 20, 2018

Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.

  -- Albert Einstein

A great example of Einstein's thought is in the news right now. Two separate news items that show good things being killed by bureaucracy.

It was recently announced that IKEA will be building a new branch near Eshtaol, just outside Bet Shemesh. Besides for the increased shopping opportunities, this will also provide many jobs for the people in the entire area.

Sure enough, this has hit a snag with Moshav Eshtaol locking up the progress with a lawsuit claiming the first rights to buy the land. You can get all the details of the real estate dispute in the Globes article on the topic.

It was also recently announced that the USA will be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 14 of this year, as part of the celebrations of Israel's 70th birthday. This is really symbolic as they will be converting the US Consulate in Jerusalem to the embassy while they begin planning construction of a new embassy building. The current embassy building in Tel Aviv will become a consulate.

Israel has been looking forward to such a gesture fr such a long time, and it is finally here, only to be held up and possibly delayed by red tape. As TOI reports

According to the report on the Hadashot TV news outlet, the Americans want to build a three-meter wall around the site and pave a new road from the site, among other changes. However, the site’s current zoning status does not allow for such changes.
Foreign Ministry Director General Yuval Rotem reportedly sent a letter to Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, warning that if the construction work was not granted an immediate exemption and the red tape wasn’t cut, the planned embassy move on May 14 would be at risk.
“The process of requesting an amendment to the existing outline plan is expected to take a long time, and will not allow completion of the work on the date set for the embassy’s move,” wrote Rotem. “Without these works being completed, the compound will not meet the mandatory requirements of the State Department for the American Embassy.”
Approving the zoning changes requires a meeting of the National Council for Planning and Building. However, the proximity to the Passover festival, which begins on March 30, may make it difficult for the body to convene.

Melech Zilbershlag recently announced that after dealign with a number of medical issues he is finally joining the IDF and being drafted. He is now producing a web series of him training prior to the draft in order to get into shape...

this one is all over, declaring most cigarettes as containing real chametz and therefore cigarettes cannot be smoked on pesach unless you clarify that your cigarette does not have chametz mixed into the cancer stick contents.

Smoking chametz on pesach would give new meaning to the definition of kares as a punishment..

I always wonder how nowadays, with all our knowledge that is not disputed about the dangers of cigarettes and with all the big warnings of death and poisons put on by the surgeon general, anybody in today's day and age can start smoking. I can understand someone older who is addicted and has not been able to stop, but I cannot understand people who start nowadays.

Mr 1 died in a car crash, and left his wife a widow with no children. Mrs tried to persuade her brother in law to come to the beis din and perform chalitza so that she can move on with her life and find someone to spend the rest of her life with and have children, etc. Brother In Law refused and she could not persuade him otherwise.

Eventually Mrs found someone anyway, despite never having had chalitza performed to release her bond. When beis din refused to allow them to marry, Mr 2 and Mrs went to Cyprus to have a civil wedding, and then returned to Israel. Eventually they had a couple of children.

And now they wish to divorce.

Mr 2 and Mrs went to beis din to take care of the gett, even though they had only married civilly. When they went to beis din, the beis din decided to look into the kashrut of the two children and determine if they have the status of mamzer or not. The question is does the child of a woman who had not had yibbum or chalitza performed for her have the status of mamzer - is she considered still married, thus an eishes ish, or not. While she is not technically married to anyone, she is also not single and available, as she has a bond connecting her to the dead husband and his brother.

The beis din in Netanya worked on this unusual case and came to the conclusion that the children are kosher and when they get older they will be able to marry any other kosher Jewess, like anybody else in the Jewish community - they are not mamzerim, neither mideoraisa or drabanan.

Haredim10 brings the case and the psak but what is sorely lacking is that the site does not enlighten us as to how the psak was arrived at. I think the logic behind the psak is probably the more interesting aspect of the case.

It seems to me that her lack of yibbum/chalitza does not keep her as eishes ish and even if she did something wrong by living with Mr 2 as husband and wife. Also, the fact that she married civilly and nto halachically should have no bearing on the matter. Even had they not married, a single man having children with a married woman, those children would be mamzerim, so it seems to me the civil marriage is irrelevant and is not what saved them in this case.

But I would really like to hear the logic and proofs employed by the dayyanim in deciding this case.

oops. these Asian tourists were told to go down to the Wall and say some prayers... I guess nobody told them specifically which wall!

somebody posted this first clip to Facebook and then  I went looking for other clips and confirmation

does this song sound familiar?

when I first played the clip I said, hey, we dont dance like that in shul!

here is Kuma Echa with the words


and here is the history of the song and it seems clear the tune to "Kel Adon" came much later and was from this song...

the pashkevil makes some interesting points. It talks about nude and skin colored tights and stockings being prohibited and causing the shechina to leave us, yet it has been spreading among us. As well, manufacturers are now using thinner threads so you cannot rely on the listed denier measurement. One must ensure that the stockings completely block out any skin and skin color from being visible, and that is not a chumra but is the basic halacha. The warning is also for store owners selling stockings, not just the women buying them.
And the final interesting part, at the bottom of the poster, says that the seminaries are ignoring the issue. It says the seminaries are forcing the students to wear specifically skin-colored stockings and claiming that the black stockings are immodest. This is the opposite of intellect, the opposite of logic and the opposite of Torah.

Minister of Labor, Welfare and Social Services Chaim Katz has approved a new labor directive shortening the work week to 42 hours and the work month by four hours from 186 hours down to 182 hours. This comes as a result of agreements with the Labor Union in a attempt to bring Israel's workforce more in line with OECD standards.

The new work hours will go into effect in April 2018.

Workers salaries will not be lowered as a result of the change in hours, meaning the salary rate per hour is going up a little bit.
source: Globes

I am in favor of lessening the load of workers in Israel. Employees tend to be overworked and underpaid. What I am curious about is how this will effect employment. Meaning, if employers now have to essentially pay more money, as for the same monthly salaries they are paying out they are getting less work hours in return, will they fire employees to save money? Will they move more to automation?

Also, this might work well for people who already have jobs and are now cutting four hours out of their month and keeping the same salary. Will new employees be offered lower salaries because the same job is for less hours than it used to be?

Also, while this may work well in the unionized jobs, will this be enforced in the private sector?

Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation. And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.

  -- Trayon White Sr., Washington DC Council Member, commenting on a light snowfall in mid-March, blaming the Jews as we control the weather...

I sometimes wish we had the powers they say we have..

Shloimy Bluth and Company bring you a high energy version of "Im Eshkachech" as only they can; this rocked out version coupled with the new 360 panoramic technology is sure to get you fired up and off your feet...

A divorced couple were fighting over who would get custody of their child for the upcoming Pesach holiday.

This case is not like some other cases where we heard arguments based on one parent being religious and the other not. In this case both are religious - both are Haredi. And both the mother and the father want the child for the Pesach seder.

Why this was not worked out in the custody schedule I do not know, but it seems to not have been, and the beis din says their decision includes the considerations of custody arrangements (details of which are not mentioned) and the fact that the mother left the home, along with the following...

The beis din in Yerusahlayim decided the cased based on the mitzva of "vhigadta lbincha" - the father has the main part of the mitzva of retelling the story of thee exodus on the night of Pesach to his children, and this is not the obligation of the mother.

They go into great detail regarding the importance of the mitzva of every father telling the story of the exodus over to his children and concludes based on that and the fact that the father in this case says explicitly that he wants his son with him in order to be able to fulfill this mitzva properly, they are granting the custody for the first night of Pesach, with the seder, to the father, and the mother will get the child for the last holiday of Pesach. They do define the mother's part in the mitzva of retelling the story of the exodus as being very important, specifically in regards to transmitting her faith to her children, and specifically in the preparations in ridding the house of chametz and the preparations for the holiday in advance of the holiday including the cooking and the cooking amazing foods...
source: Behadrei

note: I only reviewed the psak briefly.. for more details see the behadrei article linked above.

Without knowing specific details of the arguments and of the custody arrangements and just assuming objectively equal arguments, I do find the decision based on the mitzva to be insulting and even degrading to the mother. She has to lose out being with her son because her ex-husband's mitzva is deemed more important? Don't we say in Pirkei Avos that we should not weigh mitzvas against each other as we do not know the reward for any specific miztva and do not know which is really more important than the other?  She gets the mitzva of cleaning and he gets the mitzva of sitting back and being with his son? Since when is the mitzva of ridding the house of chametz only on her? does a single mother not have a mitzva of retelling the story of the exodus to her children?

Ehud Olmert gave an interview yesterday in which he had some interesting things to say. I havent seen the full video and full interview, and when I do it will be posted. So far I have only seen clips and excerpts in articles.

Of the various topics discussed in the interview, the part I have found most interesting is his discussion of why he was "taken down" - why he was investigated and put in jail.

Olmert claims that he was very close to making peace with the Palestinians and that is why Adelson and Netanyahu had him brought down. He says he freed himself, I presume he means of his previous opinions, and went where nobody before had been willing to go and was very close to achieving peace because of it.

This goes against the narrative we have heard, from both right wing and left wing sources, about why Olmert failed to make peace despite his willingness to go further than any other prime minister in what he was offering to the Palestinians. The narrative says that he made the offer but the Palestinians did not even get back to him about it - they rejected it by not even responding.

Just because he made an offer does not mean he was close to making peace, considering the Palestinians did not accept the offer, did not make a counter-offer or counter-claim, and did not even bother responding to the offer in any way. It means he offered more, but it does not mean he was close to making peace.

I have heard that basic narrative over the years from both right wing and left wing sources discussing what happened back then. They may argue on defining it and on what it means for the future and for the integrity of the parties involved, but I have never heard a different narrative about what happened.

Yet comes along Olmert, the main player of the time, and says he was close and was brought down because of it. Is the basic narrative we have been fed all these years wrong? Was he really close? Is Olmert simply delusional and was not actually as close as he thinks he was. Was he so caught up in making peace that he did not see, and still does not see, that as interested as he was the Palestinians were not? Did the Palestinians really get back to him and the proposal just needed a little more tweaking?

at least he didnt say "the kitchen"..

shabbat shalom