Nov 28, 2019

Facebook Status of the Day

this could also qualify for Pashkevil of the Day




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McDonalds to tbe the first kosher restaurant in Israel open on Shabbos

Big news in the kashrut world, and the chilul shabbos world. This can be the harbinger of significant change, whether you consider it for the good or for the bad...

For the first time ever (ever is a big word and I am not sure this is necessarily 100% true), the Rabbanut has given kashrut certification to a restaurant that will be open on Shabbos.

The Ben Gurion airport branch of McDonald's is the first restaurant to be in this, exclusive for now, club as a kosher restaurant open on Shabbos.

The restaurant in Ben Gurion is obligated to be open on Shabbos, to provide a food options to travelers, just like every other day of the week. This was a condition in the tender that they recently won for the right to sell in the airport.

The Rabbanut could have kept to its policy and said, if you are open on Shabbos you cannot be certified as kosher. Instead they contacted the Tzomet Institute and asked them to go in and analyze the branch from a halachic and technological perspective and see what is ok and what can be changed so the branch is not desecrating Shabbos in any way when preparing the food.

Tzomet took on the challenge and sent in their top people to look at the situation. Among the changes they recommended were to not install special thermostats on fridges and freezers that are installed in other branches. Also, the various warming drawers used should be set to remain on the entire Shabbos, along with changing other knobs and buttons to be covered throughout Shabbos so workers will not change temperatures at any time.

The Tzomet people said the situation is very similar to what happens in hotel kitchens.
source: Kipa (among others)

1. so it is true - when there is a halachic will, there is a halachic way...

2. This will open the door to many others to open on Shabbos. Many have already wanted to, with the Rabbanut refusing to allow them even if they are pre-cooking the food. They have compared themselves to hotels, that the Rabbanut allows to function on Shabbos, but the Rabbanut disagrees.

3. Why does McDonalds get this special dispensation when others have not?

4. One of the problems always mentioned in any discussion about restaurants functioning on Shabbos is that the mashgiach cant come supervise on Shabbos. is there going to be a mashgiach in the airport on Shabbos that can technically go in and check the McDonalds? If not, how can they give the hechsher, with the local branch manager knowing that on Shabbos he can do anythign and never get caught?

5. Thsi will also hurt the social argument against restaurants opening on Shabbos, turning Shabbos, using technology, into a regular weekday. If this is possible, restaurants and stores can open up anywhere, adjusting their procedures to meet halachic requirements, and Saturday can be almost exactly like Tuesday, but now the Rabbanut allows it, at least for McDonalds.

6. No mention was made in the article of the food being cooked before Shabbos and only warmed upon the customers ordering it. So, with all these technological adjustments, is Dave at McDonalds cooking the McNuggets when Rudolph places his order or is he taking something cooked yesterday and sticking it into the warming drawer? How will this meet the quality standards of McDonalds, serving reheated food, and how will this go down with the customers? And, if they are cooking it fresh, all the rules of Shabbos are meant to prevent cooking. The technological advancements we use are designed to prevent cooking and only warming, so if they meet all the Tzomet requirements, which they seem to, how will the food get cooked, if not before Shabbos?


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Proposed Law: Absentee voting

MK Zvi Hauser has proposed a law that would allow absentee voting in Israeli elections.

According to the statistics, about 550,000 Israelis have been living abroad for more than a year. That is besides for those living abroad less time than that, and not including Israelis abroad for short-term reasons such as travel, work, medical needs, studies, etc. Israel does not allow citizens to vote when outside of Israel - only diplomats and people working in the armed forces and on assignment abroad get to vote absentee. That means hundreds of thousands of Israelis are missing out on voting in Israeli elections.

MK Hauser says that most countries in the world now allow absentee voting, and it is time for Israel to adjust the Israeli law to take into account changes to society that have happened over the past half a century.

According to his law proposal, an Israeli abroad would be allowed to vote absentee if he registers in advance to do so, and he would only qualify for absentee voting if he/she has already voted in a prior election.
source: Haredim10

I am not quite sure who this benefits most, but I am sure Hauser feels it will benefit Kachol Lavan at least enough to be worthwhile and probably more than other parties.

I have no strong feelings about it. I get the reason to not allow it as why let people living elsewhere have an influence on your country, but I vote absentee in USA elections and I know the argument for it and the fact that we file or pay taxes also ties us to the country in a way that justifies it, so Israelis abroad also continue to have interests in their home country of Israel and are not just foreigners having an unfair influence.



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Top 5 street foods in Israel (video)

I would add either shnitzel or kabab (or both) in pita with the veggies and tehini





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Authorities: Bank robbery suspect arrested in Monsey; used threat of explosives (video)

whoa!




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Thanksgiving, explained by Israelis (video)







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RASTA WISDOM & MUSIC (video)







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Sruli & Netanel - Nechake Lecha (Nathan Goshen & Ishay ribo cover) (video)







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Nov 27, 2019

Quote of the Day

We have more support, and the President also thinks Netanyahu should be first [in a PM rotation arrangement]. If Kachol Lavan does not agree to this, we will go to elections as a bloc together.

  -- Minister Yisrael Katz


one can discuss whether in such a theoretical scenario the Haredim or other small parties would even agree to running together. It is one thing to form a bloc for technical reasons to negotiate a better position. it is another thing when the Haredi representatives are officially in a Likud-led party, or any other non-religious-led party...I have a hard time seeing them agree to this, where they have little say because they are a minor cog in a big arty, but it would be interesting to see play out.

But forget about that for the moment. The more interesting thing about this is that this very well might lead to a two-party system. If the entire Right runs together as one bloc, and the Left does similarly, this could have a radical effect on the electoral and political system. And. practically, how will they divvy up the parliamentary seats among the members?



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Men are not discriminated against in Israel

Recently, after the issue with the event to benefit Rav Firer's organization was canceled because of a public outcry against the "hadarat nashim" of not allowing female performers to perform for what would be an overwhelmingly secular audience, many pointed to an event that would be for women only by female performers, also for the secular public, and claimed hypocrisy that from the mens side it is considered discrimination while from the womens side it is allowed to happen. One person even petitioned the Ministry of Justice to weigh in on the event in question and offer an opinion if this is a problem of discrimination or not.

The Ministry of Justice has now responded that the specific event in question was not researched by them as the petition came in too close to the event to allow such treatment. That being said, the MoJ says that there is no discrimination against men in Israel, so an event that excludes men is not "hadara" - men do not suffer from being excluded. While men are not excluded or banned, from the public sphere, women do suffer greatly from this, so events excluding women are a strong offense. That is why female-only events can happen but male-only events (from public funding) are a problem.

Personally I think of this like affirmative action. African Americans in the USA, or Hispanics or other minorities, get priority in hiring or acceptance into schools, because they have been discriminated against for so long and have suffered from the discrimination. Whites do not suffer from such discrimination, so occasionally they get the short end of the stick but have to live with it. In Israel, the Haredi askanim fight for affirmative action for hiring Haredim in government jobs, Arabs get affirmative action in acceptance to universities and specifically medical school. The average Jew (male I guess) in Israel is not discriminated against, so even though affirmative action means occasionally the average jew might get the short end of the stick, that is not discrimination, or hadara.





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Malchuyos Shel mata: Episode 1, season premiere: The Revenge of Sender (video)

this show is a look into the world of hassidim..







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The Year of Ishay Ribo (video)

(yes, in English he writes his name "Ishay")





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Synagogues of Kazakhstan (video)







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Meir Gafni - Avinu Ase: in memory of the Victims of the Terror Attack of Har Nof (video)







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Nov 26, 2019

Proposed Law: changes to the electoral process

MK Miki Zohar (Likud) has presented to law proposals to the Knesset today for voting. One law is to shorten the amount of time required from the time elections are called until the date elections are actually held. The current law says elections will be held 90 days from the date elections were officially ordered.

Miki Zohar says considering the current circumstances with two elections having passed and still no government is functioning, we need to lessen the amount of time it takes to get a government back up and functioning. Zohar has proposed that elections be held in just 45 days from when elections are called, cutting the campaigning time in half.

I think he could cut it down even more. Most campaigning is done in the last two weeks before the elections anyway. In addition, he should propose cutting down the amount of time given the different nominees to try to form a government. Time and again we see them just wasting a lot of time and playing hard to get and only talking serious in crunch time, in the last few days.

The second proposal Zohar is submitting is to cancel the national holiday status of election day.

Zohar says this is too damaging to the economy, especially when we have had two, and possibly three, elections in one year, and has not been proven to push up the voting percentages.

In actuality, Zohar probably is basing this on the historically higher turnout among Right voters and lower among Left and turning it into a regular workday will discourage people from voting (they will be busy, at work, etc) and the Left might be hurt (in his assumption) more than the Right, giving the right an advantage.

I like the national vacation day. It would be a shame to lose it. Israel has a pretty high voter turnout, so maybe the vacation day does help. Another option would be Liebermans proposal to require citizens to vote, though I am not sure how that works and what happens if someone does not vote and how enforceable this is.

The golden rule is that if a politician wants to make changes to the electoral system, it is somehow only meant to benefit him and his party. Whether my guess/assumption is right or wrong, I am sure Zohar is asking these proposals because he thinks it will help him and the Likud

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is the system corrupt?

I have said it before, and I will say it again.

The systems might be corrupt, or the systems might not be corrupt. Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over the systems as Prime Minister for the past ten years, and then before that as well with some gaps. And the Likud has presided over the systems for many of the past 35 years or so even when Netanyahu was not at the helm.

So the system, which might be corrupt, was largely appointed and overseen and administered by Netanyahu and the Likud. Many of the people serving in top positions in that supposedly/possibly "corrupt" system are direct appointees of Netanyahu.

So even if it is corrupt, Netanyahu and the Likud are either to blame for fostering a corrupt system or for doing nothing to fix it until it affected them personally, now. They were happy for it to do its magic when it was bringing down political opponents such as Ehud Olmert (and other lesser politicians), but when it turns on Likudniks then it is corrupt.

And no, it is not just Netanyahu and the Likud. Israel Hayom did some digging and discovered that in the past when the issue of passing a law allowing a Prime Minister under indictment to continue serving was on the table, it was MKs from the Labor and Meretz parties, along with Tzippi Livni, Rubi Rivlin and the Arab parties, that supported it.

So all the politicians, or many of them if I would not be cynical, just do things and support bills that will help them and their parties rather than what is good for the country. But that is not really a new revelation.

So, is the system corrupt? I do not know. It might be, but if it is, Netanyahu is as much, if not more, to blame as anybody else.






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A Non-Jewish Brooklynite Visits Hasidic Crown Heights (video)







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Sivan Rahav Meir behind the scenes of the Chabad shlichim picture (video)







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Israel Torah - Rebbetzin Shoshi Nissenbaum - Bring Them Home (video)







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Synagogues of Japan (video)







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Itzik Orlev - Lo Nishbar (video)







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Nov 25, 2019

11/23/19 - Show 247 - “Broken Engagements” in Halachah, Hashkafah and Psychology (audio)







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Palestinians: What do you think of Bashar al Assad? (video)







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ADL International Leadership Award Presented to Sacha Baron Cohen at Never Is Now 2019 (video)






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Shmuzik Episode 4: The Life of a Jewish Musician: Ft. Danny Flamm, Mark Fineberg & Gal Gershovsky (video)







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Shmor - Gad and Benny Elbaz feat: Saul Dreier, of the Cecelia Margules Project (video)







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Nov 21, 2019

cutting down elections

MK Oded Furer (Yisrael Beyteynu) wants to quickly pass a law changing the election period from 90 days down to 60 days, considering all the recent elections makes 90 days really unnecessary.

Personally, I would suggest cutting it down to 30 days, since anyway 80% of the campaigning is done in the final two weeks before elections. Even 30 days is more than enough time for the politicians to prepare.

As well, as part of any reform, they should do away with the final 21 days of coalition forming. If two months was not enough, the 21 days seems unnecessary to me and just more wasted time.

Too bad it is likely other MKS wont cooperate with Furer and push the law through. Right now his party, Yisrael Beyteynu, is the one everyone will want to punish...


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MK Abutbol wants to give out free cars!

Chadashot Bet Shemesh is reporting that Minister of Transportation Betzalel Smotritch recognized National Road Safety Awareness Day by holding a Knesset meeting about road safety issues.

During the meeting, MK Moshe Abutbol (Shas) presented an original idea, out of the box as he described it, to encourage people to be safer drivers.

According to Abutbol, millions have been spent in the past decades to fight against bad driving and traffic accidents. Coming from an educational background, Abutbol says, there is a concept of "sur mera v'aseh tov" - turn away from bad and do good. We have been working with a point system for a long time - use a phone while driving and you get points on your record in additional to a fine, drive without a seatbelt and you get points, etc. Now it is time to change direction and try a more positive approach.

MK Abutbol suggested that we should take a few million shekels and buy 20 new cars with that money. These 20 cars would then be raffled off among all Israeli residents that did not get a single traffic report during the previous year.

This would be similar to insurance companies lowering rates to drivers with good records.

Obviously this would be in addition to many other ideas being done on a day to day basis, such as improving the road infrastructure (Abutbol pointed to improvements in Bet Shemesh roads, specifically 38 and 10, that have lessened the number of road incidents as examples).

According to the report, Minister Smoritch appreciated the suggestion but said he prefers not giving out new cars but maybe Rav Kav cards instead, as he prefers less cars on the road and greater use of public transportation. Even if this specific suggestion is not implemented, the idea can be used in other ways by finding other positive ways to encourage drivers to drive safely.

So you might not get a free car by driving safely but hopefully they will come up with other benefits to encourage drivers with rewards. Or, with the government still in flux with no end in sight at this point, it does not seem unlikely that someone else will soon be Minister of Transportation and maybe the next one will like this idea and we will get the shot at a new car!



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Ezras Nashim, First All Female Volunteer EMT Team, Wants An Ambulance (video)







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Israel Torah - Rabbi Shalom Gold (video)







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Synagogues of India (video)







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Devorah Schwartz & Esty Morelle Covering Beri Weber’s Riboin (video)







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Nov 20, 2019

Quote of the Day

Whoever has been watching the past day of the Finance Committee that Gafni opened singing the praises of Ahmed Tibi, and today Tibi sang the praises of Gafni, this is the partnership we are talking about. This is an anti-Zionist coalition fooling with both blocs. This is the real danger...we have gotten to the point that just 22% of the working-age population is paying taxes. There are 150,000 yeshiva students learning Torah. Just as there are 1500 students in the academic atuda program, we do not need more than 1500 yeshiva students. It is not reasonable that 150000 yeshiva students are not working. We cannot raise a generation of needy people...

    -- MK Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beyteynu)

this did not go down well







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will the Har Nof Synagogue Massacre soon be forgotten?

I saw this article, remembering the victims of the Har Nof Synagogue Massacre. The yahrtzeit is around now, the secular date was November 18 with the Hebrew date approaching on 25 Cheshvan.

It reminded me of a comment I recently heard regarding the possible name change of the Har Nof neighborhood from Har Nof to Naot Yosef.

Some people are opposed to the name change, or at least cautious and disturbed by it. They are concerned that if the name of the neighborhood is changed, in 10 years or 20 years or at some point people will not even remember the name Har Nof and won't know what it is. The massacre that has come to be known as the Har Nof massacre, or Har Nof terror attack, will not be remembered or identified by people, as they won't even know what Har Nof is.



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Israelis: Would you invite a Palestinian to Shabbat or Passover meal? (video)







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MKs Moshe Gafni and Ahmed Tibi (video)




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Israel Torah - Rabbi Pinchas Winston (video)







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GAD ELBAZ - We Are Rachel’s Children of the Cecelia Margules Project (video)






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Nov 19, 2019

The Satmar Rebbe can come visit Israel. or not. Who cares?

The Satmar Rebbe has come to Israel.

And I don't care.

The Haredi press is making a big deal about this, and the Haredi community is talking about it, and debating the visit, non-stop. Who is going out to greet him, who is not, is it good he is coming, is it bad, is it true to his ideology or is he selling out, is he benefiting form the State of Israel or is he not... blah blah blah...

Some people like to keep fighting the battles of history. The Satmar Rebbes lost their fight. The Jewish community overwhelmingly supports Israel, in one capacity or another. The vast majority of Haredi Jewry supports the State of Israel in some capacity, whether a lot or a little. The Satmar ideology is irrelevant today, except to the tiny number of Satmar chassidim out there, and even to many of them it is irrelevant.

Many of us like to argue about Israel as if the issues of 70 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 50 years ago are still relevant today. They are not. The fights are history, as are the ideological opinions of Satmar.

the Satmar Rebbe can come and visit and spend his good money in Israel while denying he is supporting the State if that is what makes him happy. Or he can stay home in New York and visit London instead when he wants to travel. I really don't care. He and his opinions are irrelevant to almost everybody. He is just another tourist.


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Vil Nor Gaon commemorative coin

The Vilna Gaon, Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, was born in 1720. To commemorate 300 years since his birth, the Bank of Lithuania is going to be issuing a commemorative coin in 2020.

The commemorative coin will bear an inscription that is a play on words of "Vilna Gaon" - that is vil nor gaon, meaning if you will it you can become a gaon, a genius.

The back side of the coin will bear an image of the Hebrew letter "shin", whose gematriya is 300. As well, the shin is symbolic of the famous picture of the Vilna Gaon wearing tefillin with the shin on the head tefillin standing out. I did not know this, but that significance of that image is that the Jewish year has 300 days devoted to prayer, not including Shabbos.
source: Lithuanian Jewish Community website

1. very cool
2. It seems Europe does an awful lot to commemorate its rich Jewish history. They do little to cultivate the current Jewish presence and its future...which is probably not a bad thing..


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Kosher Wine - The Rise and Fall of Manischewitz (video)







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Kosherfest 2019 - Day 2 Videos (video)







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Two Bubbes Translate Science - Episode 5: Autonomous Driving Research (video)







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WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY? (video)






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Hanan Ben Ari: Mah Ata Rotzeh Mimeni, Live Performance (video)







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Nov 18, 2019

Quote of the Day

If it would help, Lapid would wear a streimel, put on tefillin twice a day and maybe even circumcuse himself again

  -- PM Netanyahu, scoffing at Kachol Lavan's attempts to try to get the Haredi parties to join a coalition led by them..





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which is the kalla and which is the mother of the kalla?


mazel tov. Adele Shwekey is very cute in this picture, and Mrs Shwekey is very handsome..




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eating kosher and being pro-Israel

According to reports, a student union in the University of Toronto has decided that having kosher food available means one is pro-Israel, and they therefore refused to support the Hillel initiative to make kosher food available on campus.

Satmar, and others, will surely be happy to know that because they eat kosher they also automatically support Israel and the Israeli government.

I do wonder if they also think that eating non-kosher food means you are not pro-Israel, maybe even anti-Israel. If so, much of the Israeli government would be fine with them.




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dairy chocolate labeled as pareve

A big deal has been made about a recent kashrut labeling mistake, and kashrut mistakes are always a big deal, regarding a bar of chocolate.

The item in question is a bar of bittersweet chocolate with 60% cacao with no added sugar made by Elite. The chocolate is dairy, which is generally somewhat unexpected with bittersweet chocolate. The package was labeled with the hechsher of the Eida Hachareidis on the front of it, and they labeled it as dairy (not for Pesach0, while on the back of the package it was labeled as pareve under the supervision of the kashrut of Beit Yosef.

Pareve or dairy? Eida or Beit Yosef? So the actual correct hechsher on this chocolate is Eida and the chocolate is dairy, but the mistake is problematic - both for allergens of people who might eat it thinking it is pareve, and for kashrut of people who think it might be pareve and eat it after meat. After the mistake was caught, Elite removed the product from the shelves to correct the error.

Everyone here is to blame, including Elite, the Rabbanut, the Eida and maybe Beit Yosef. People are especially upset at the Eida over this, even though they got it right, because they always check the labeling and withhold kashrut if they don't like something on the label so they too should have caught this.

Personally I think that all kashrut organizations make mistakes. Yes, even the Eida. Everyone makes mistakes. The tragedy is NOT that a mistake was made, as bad as it could have turned out. The tragedy would be if no lesson is learned from the mistake - if no new process is put in place to help them avoid similar mistakes in the future.



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What did the Rambam look like? Not as you think (video)







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Israelis: Should BDS supporters be banned entry into Israel? (video)






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The Rabbi Orlofsky Show: Episode 65: The Lone Arranger (feat. Lenny Solomon of SHLOCK ROCK) (video)

great episode





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Synagogues of India (video)







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Beinoni: Rebel (video)







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Nov 17, 2019

Ron Kubi gets another life, for now

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...




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yeshiva guys tossed from yeshiva for going to game

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..




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Quote of the Day

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.





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Don't Text and Drive

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..




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Picture of the Day


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..




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11/16/19 Bais Din - Should they allow Toanim? (audio)







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Israelis: Do you want to conquer Jordan? (video)







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my father is Rav Aviner (video)








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Synagogues of India (video)







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Eli Herzlich - Nishmat (Official Music Video)







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Nov 13, 2019

Tweet of the Day







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





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Proposed Law: Hospital Parking Lots

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






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Trump mocks Israel's political stalemate, highlights embassy move in speech to Orthodox Jews in N.Y. (video)







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Can a Sous Vide Machine be Kashered? (video)

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?



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Kosherfest 2019 (video)







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The Most Mysterious Gate in Jerusalem (video)







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Menachem Toker: The keyboardist: Episode 2 (video)







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Nov 12, 2019

Panel at Social Cohesion Summit about Hadarat Nashim (video)

the interesting part of this conference (interesting for the purpose of this post) is the panel discussion at the 5:14:00 mark. The panel is made up of Yishai Lapidot, Rabbanit Adina Bar Shalom, MK Merav Michaeli, and Mayor of Ramat Gan Carmel Shama Cohen. The panel discusses the issue of "hadarat nashuim" and the standing of women in society and the issue of separation between men and women.





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Palestinians: Who do you support, Saudi Arabia or Iran? (video)







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Bring Them Home - Aliyah Now: Rabbi Zev Leff (video)







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Top 5 beautiful roads in Israel (video)







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Sruli & Netanel - How we rebuilt Bein Kodesh Lechol (Music Studio Vlog) (video)







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Nov 11, 2019

Quote of the Day

If Gantz and Netanyahu would form a government together, I would give them my 8 mandates and vote in favor of the government even if they won't bring me in to the coalition.  Netanyahu and Gantz should take a Tanakh and performt he Goral HaGra between them [to decide who should be Prime Minister first]

  -- MK Avigdor Lieberman



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Grow Bet Shemesh!

According to a report on Globes, among the larger cities of Israel, that being any city with 100000 residents and above, Bet Shemesh is the fastest growing city in Israel for the past decade.

10 years ago, in 2008, Bet Shemesh had a population of 72,780 while the end of 2018 found the population count of Bet Shemesh to sit at 118,676 - growth of 62.3%.

The big cities are mostly in the region between Tel Aviv and Haifa and population statistics show the cities growing, with more cities near the 100k mark expected to break through it in the near future, indicating the preference people have for cities over small towns, and indicating the increasing gap between the cities in the center of the country and the towns in the periphery.








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Book Review: The Lions' Den: Zionism from the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky

A Guest Post by Dr Harold Goldmeier


I was on a speaking tour discussing "When Zionism Became a Dirty Word."  My wife warned me that I will be walking into a lion's den.

Susie Linfield was at a pleasant, tony New York dinner party until she realized she was in the lion's den as the only Zionist present willing to speak up.  The experience inspired her book, The Lions' Den: Zionism from the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (Yale University Press, 2019).  The book is a brilliant, intellectual, sociological exploration of eight popular, prolific thinkers and writers.  Her focus is on their ideologies regarding the modern Jewish people; our track-switch from religious faith to political and military creeds; and the great love of our life, the inamorata State of Israel.

Israel was conceived, founded, and remains in stewpots of controversy and derisiveness.  At the dinner party, one guest disparagingly dismisses the work of a particular journalist because, "oh, he's a Zionist!"  Condescension fills the air.  Then Linfield retorts with, "'Well, so am I.'  A frozen, stunned silence ensues ... [as] they shoot pitying glances at my partner."

Linfield's subjects are not all consumed by anti-Israel ideology.  Maxime Rodinson, Albert Memmi, I.F. Stone, and Fred Halliday intellectually and ideologically struggle about Israel's right to exist and the behavior of the Jews and Arabs.  "Rodinson was acutely aware of and unsentimental about, the consequences of the Arab world's underdevelopment, which is part of the realist Marxist tradition."  The book "is not a general survey" of the Left's relationship with Zionism or the relationship of Jews with the Left.  It is a series of portraits uncovering a rich, fraught, sometimes buried intellectual history, tackling "the Zionist Question."  The points of view of her subjects are meticulously researched.  There are 34 pages of footnotes and an equally long bibliography.


I find Linfield's scathing assessment of Noam Chomsky's unwavering commitment to internationalism and his  pattern of thought daring in her world at NYU.  "His loyalty to principle has morphed into a crippling ideological rigidity that prevents him, time and again, from apprehending what is happening in the world around him.  He views the reassessment of ingrained ideas as a betrayal of principle rather than as the wellspring of intelligence ... in a very real sense, he has fallen asleep ... [like] the dreaded Rip Van Winkle."  Chomsky and other anti-Zionists oversimplify their ideologies and arguments about the Palestinian-Israel conflict.  Amos Oz was moved to say in an interview, "[T]o a certain degree I envy these people.  Theirs is a simple world."
Stone is presented in a buttery fashion.  Stone has become "a beacon for me.  He has so much to teach: about how to be a journalist, an American, a Jew, a defender of freedom, a person of courage."  Too many other leftists appear contradictory and calcified. 

The Lion's Den is not a roadmap to peace.  It's a sagacious exposé about "the crux of this conflict" and offers tremendous insight into many of today's other contentious issues: BDS, reactions to refugees, the occupation.  The reader feels that the author is sensitive to the Left, but she has a supercilious response to their downplay of what Jews see as existential threats.  The intellectual Left pays short shrift to the cumulative impact on the mind of the Jews from the expulsions, pogroms, the Holocaust, and how nations sealed their doors to prevent Jews from entering after escaping from Nazis.  Some of the Left justify as acceptable strategies Arab wars launched against Israel, their intransigence against normalizing relations with the Jewish State, and terrorism that has morphed into pay-for-slay of Jews.

Linfield, however, is no sycophant.  She upfront expresses her criticism of the State's policies and actions, including settlers in Hebron who do not represent "Zionist values," but "they have re-created the despised, endangered, and ghettoized position of the Jews that Zionism was designed to eradicate.  Talk about the return of the repressed!"

She wears her sympathy for a two-state solution on her sleeve but asks the Left: what kind of state will the Palestinians create?  A free, democratic state respectful of gays, women's rights, minority rights?  Or will a Palestinian state be more in the fashion of repressive Hamas in Gaza, Hezb'allah in Lebanon, and the ayatollahs in Iran?  She concludes with a warning to the Left, Jews, and Arabs: "The opposite of realism isn't principle; its pathology.  To reject realism makes you — and your children — into slaves of the past and strangers to the future."

My warning to readers draws on the caveat of sociologist Andrew Chrucky: "not [to] confuse influence and popularity with importance."  The intellectual leftists are popular but hardly important in defining the actions of adversaries.  Israel will not just disappear.  Palestinians are unlikely to become Democrats.  The timely question in this age of conflict denouement is, how far will the new Jews with nuclear weapons go when facing utter calamity?

Dr. Harold Goldmeier is the manager of an investment fund, a university teacher, business consultant, speaker, and writer for many sites and newspapers.  He is a graduate of Harvard and was a research and teaching fellow.  He can be reached at Harold.Goldmeier@gmail.com.




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Amazon now offering free shipping to Israel

Heads up everybody.... Amazon is now offering free shipping to Israel!!!

Amazon is now offering free shipping to Israel on many qualifying items, not everything, on orders above $49.

that means you can qualify for the free shipping an still keep your order under the $75 limit for no import tax or VAT. Just note that if you go crazy and order a ton of stuff to take advantage and surpass the $75 mark, you will still have to pay the VAT and any relevant import taxes.

Qualifying items will have a note in the description that it qualifies for free shipping to Israel, and when you checkout and pay you will have to select the free shipping option.

I do not know, and have not seen it mentioned anywhere, if this is just a temporary promotion for a few days or weeks, or if it is a "permanent" arrangement... Hopefully they will find it worthwhile enough to continue long-term.

The purpose of this promotion seems to be to compete with the big annual 11.11 promotion by Ali Express, and then also with the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. It is entirely possible that after this shopping season passes, the Amazon promotion might also go away, but nothing official has been announced.




The Ben Shapiro Show: The Poop-Flinging Begins | Ep. 882 (video)

Ben Shapiro recently vacationed in Israel for the holidays, and he continued broadcasting his podcast while here. In this episode he starts off talking about Israel, and even if you have no interest in his show, the first ten minutes or so are about Israel...





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Palestinians: Why do you wear the hijab? (video)






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Ateret Shlomo visits Telshe (video)

as an alumnus of Telshe Yeshiva, I have a soft spot for anything Telshe.. I just found this video after listening to an episode about Telshe on the Jewish History Soundbites podcast... the video is really a fundraiser for Yeshivat Ateret Shlomo, but much of it is about Telshe...




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Meet the 'Best Shofar Blower' of the Modern World (video)







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Isaac & Rubenstein - Shalom Aleichem (video)







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Nov 10, 2019

Quote of the Day

Netanyahu would not have dared to come to me with a request to be flexible about religious issues

  -- Deputy Health minister Yaakov Litzman, after reports publicized that Netanyahu asked Deri to be flexible on the religion-state issues that would allow Lieberman to find his way back to a Netanyahu coalition..





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