I understand the need for a booster - for the 3rd dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine starts to wear off eventually, providing decreased protection over time. How much time and at exactly what point does it become necessary are details for the scientists to work out, but the concept seems normal to me. For those of us who were vaccinated 5, 6 7 months ago, it seems reasonable to get the booster shot now, if deemed necessary by the experts. Initially they expected the vaccine would be good for about 6 months, pending further review, and it seems they were pretty close on mark to that estimate. That's al fine by me. 

Minister of Transportation Merav Michaeli caused quite a stir today with what was a very personal announcement last night.

Technically right now in Israel shuls are open according to the Green Passport guidelines - only people vaccinated or recovered are allowed in. And in shuls numbers of people are limited, with the requirement of distancing and mask wearing.

The Ministry of Transportation has issued a new directive that will require, as of August 1, 2021, all cars used in the transport of children below the age of 4, to be fitted with some sort of warning system to prevent children form being forgotten in the car.

Behazit is reporting on a major psak just issued by Chief Rabbi Rav Yitzchak Yosef.

In their report on the Red Cross getting involved with the Jewish pilgrims stuck on the border of Belarus and Ukraine, YWN has difficult pictures of men and children in what is quickly becoming a humanitarian crisis. Last night the Red Cross showed up and distributed blankets along with food and hot drinks.

The City of Tel Aviv has decided to prohibit stands for PR and stands for prayer (basically for putting on tefillin) within 100 meters of schools, kindergartens and any other public institution meant for the use of children...

There is somewhat of an outcry about this, calling Tel Aviv leadership anti-Jewish, anti anything with a Jewish flavor, and leading a competition among cities trying to wipe away anything that seems Jewish.
sources: Kikar, Srugim, Kipa

It is sad, and troubling, that Judaism is so scary, and threatening, to so many people, especially in Israel. 

On the other hand, children are easy targets. They should be off limits. I understand parents who raised their children a certain way - they don't want someone coming along and trying to sell a different lifestyle and different messages to their children. Children are often impressionable. Wait until they are adults. The people putting tefillin on these kids would not like it if a group of people went to their kids schools and targeted them with messages of anti-shechita under the guise of animal cruelty, or anti-circumcision or humanistic messages such as loving people of all faiths or pro-LGBTQ messages. Nobody wants their children targeted with messages against those they imbued in their children. Wait until they are adults and then try to persuade them to put on tefillin.

This is different than the booths in train stations that recently came under attack. That was targeting adults, for the most part. This is targeting children.

A rav in Tzfat, Rav Bistrisky, issued a psak telling the community that they should not be bringing children to the mikva.

I have said many times that the hospital is not a place for sick people and the mikva is not a place for children. When I first saw the headline, I assumed it was validation of my opinion about mikvas. But then it turned out that Rabbi Bistrisky has a different reason you should be keeping your children away from the mikva, other than the one most people are probably thinking of.

According to INN, Rabbi Bistrisky said the mikva is a dangerous place for children and there is a dangerous threat of drowning, though he did add the other form of danger as an implied issue he did not want to expand on..

Rabbi Bistrisky pointed to a recent incident in which a child was drowning in the mikva and a nearby adult saved him. With other similar incidents around the country occurring recently, in mikvas pools and even in a bucket, this is a danger that we must pay more attention to.

A little while back the State of New Jersey was considering a law that would ban all marriages under the age of 18. This is a trend in the USA, meant to protect underage women from being taken advantage of. Last year the governor decided to not sign the new law because it did not include an exception for religious reasons, or with parental consent. The governor of New Jersey has now decided to sign on the law, with no exceptions. It is now illegal in new Jersey to get married under the age of 18. Full Stop. No exceptions.
sources: Hamodia, Behadrei, Washington Post

Considering that so far only two states have adopted this law with no exceptions, the solution it seems, for people wanting to marry under 18, will be to go to a nearby state, such as New York or Pennsylvania... though they are the closest states to NJ - I do not include Delaware as that is the other state banning such marriages with no exceptions - it is still a far drive and would be difficult for many to make weddings so far away and to expect guests to participate.. 

I expect the local and national Orthodox Jewish, and probably some Christian and Muslim, organizations to lobby hard to get some religious exception added to the law.

the following video taken by Yaakov Lederman is of a mob in RBS B being aggressive in the presence of two Haredi IDF soldiers. It turns out this was a sting operation and it was undercover police who then turned around and arrested some of the ringleaders.

We have "gotten used to" these types of mobs. I don't mean we find them normal and acceptable, but we are not surprised by them any more.

As I was watching the video, it struck me that what bothered me more than the harassing of Haredi soldiers, as bad as that is, and more than the violence (only verbal in this video and not physical, though that happens as well on occasion) is that children have been trained to be disrespectful to adults. With no sense of perspective there are children boldly telling adults how to live their lives and what is right and what is wrong.

For that I grieve.

We suffer from what might be considered a plague. A rash of incidents in which a child was forgotten in the back seat of a car and left to bake on a hot day.

A recent law proposal to deal with this has been under discussion, and after some initial support it looks like that probably isn't going to pass. The main opposition to the bill is that it is not right to move the responsibility of the children from the parents to the day care center and teachers. Also, it is not right to move criminal responsibility to the teachers when they aren't even with the kids and it is the parents who forgot them - if the law is placing the onus on the teachers, it will also place the liability on them. And  if they can't get hold of the parent, if he or she doesn't answer the phone, or the line is busy or whatnot, and suddenly the ganenet is on the hook for the parents distraction and forgetfullness.

So it looks like that law won't pass, and another law is needed in its place.

MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin (Hamachane Hatzioni) has proposed a law that would require all cars to have a sensor installed that will beep and alert the driver at the end of the ride that there is a child in the back seat. The sensor will continue to beep until the child is taken out of the back seat.

Nahmias-Verbin's proposal comes after her participation in the NRG-sponsored trial placing 7 Israeli public figures in hot cars for 10 minutes (video posted earlier).

Nahmias-Verbin compares this proposed requirement to the requirement of keeping a yellow vest in the car.
source: NRG

Anything that might help is worth trying, and a sensor is probably the best overall solution. Details would have to be worked out, such as requiring all new cars to have it factory installed, along with some stage of requiring cars already on the road to have them installed by a certain deadline. Obviously the annual test would have to look for the sensor and check that it works as part of their inspection.

MK Yofat Shasha Biton (Kulanu) has submitted a law proposal by which educational institutions will call parents of kids who did not arrive at school. The law would be relevant for children from day care ages until age 6. Teachers or other employees of the institution will have to call one of the parents to find out how the child is doing within one hour of the school beginning its activities.

Shasha-Biton adds that this law will not relieve the parents of their responsibility, but it will help prevent such tragedies from happening.
source: NRG

obviously this is not a full solution. Children are not in school all year round, and not always is a child left in the car and forgotten instead of going to school. However, it is a significant portion of the year, and probably of the cases that do happen.

Will schools need to hire another employee to make these calls? If a teacher is supposed to be teaching, how will she make the calls? Will the teachers update the main office in real-time as to which children have not yet arrived and a secretary will then begin calling the parents of all those children?

If it passes and saves even one child it will have been worth it.

A few months ago, with UTJ demanding, as per coalition agreements, an increase to the child allowances distributed by the State, and the Finance Ministry objecting, a deal was worked out that instead of distributing the increases, which would require a lot of money now, the State would invest the money on behalf of each child and make it available at the age of 18 for withdrawal.

The deal has finally been worked out, and passed in the Finance Committee of the Knesset.

Basically, the State will increase the child allowances, retroactive to May 1, 2015, and will deposit the money - just the increase - into a new savings plan to be created.

One of the nice additional benefits of the new plan is that parents will be able to add money to the account under a "matching" plan - they can deposit up to the same amount the State deposits, and the child will benefit from the same terms.

At 18 years of age, the child will be able to withdraw the money, no questions asked, with the signature of his/her parents. If the child waits until the age of 21 (interest will continue to accrue during this period), he/she won't need the parents signature any longer.

Another benefit of waiting until 21 - upon withdrawal at 18, 500nis will be added by the State to the available monies to cover the taxes. If you wait until 21 to withdraw the money, an additional 500nis will be added, totaling 1000nis.

Money can be withdrawn earlier than 18 by parents only with the written confirmation of a doctor verifying that the child has urgent medical needs requiring the funds.
source: Kikar and Bechadrei

It looks like they put together a good plan and that it will be the kids actually, eventually, benefiting from the money... albeit that the original purpose of the money was to help parents cover expenses for the kids - tuition, food, diapers, clothing, etc. Now [some of] the money will be used instead for weddings, traveling around the world, higher education, buying a car, or whatever. It might go for very good purposes, but it will not be going towards what the original intention of the child allowance was.

A kid in Elad was riding his bike in the street while talking on his cellphone.. or maybe he was talking on his cellphone while riding his bike.... either way, he got pulled over by a policeman as this is against the law.

The cop wrote him up and gave the kid a ticket with a fine for 1000nis!

In the ticket the policeman writes that the kid was talking without an earpiece or speaker, endangering cars in the road.

The kid refused to sign the ticket, and he stated that next year he would be bar mitzva. Maybe that means next year he will pay with the money he brings in from bar mitzva gifts?
source: Kikar

I am not quite sure how this works. How do you give a kid a ticket? How does he identify himself - children do not bear identity cards.. how does the cop know the name he gave them was his true name and not made up on the spot? How do they enforce payment of the fine?

conditions, conditions, conditions.

Sometimes conditions are good, sometimes bad, and sometimes hypocritical.

subsidies, subsidies, subsidies.

Sometimes subsidies are good, sometimes bad, and almost always they are used to promote agendas.

Child allowance subsidies in Israel used to be there to promote and encourage couples having more kids, as well as ensuring a minimal amount of financial support to keep people above the poverty line and to ensure the children get some food in their bellies.

When the government decided they wanted to encourage couples to have fewer kids, or to encourage people to seek employment instead of relying on subsidies, they cut the allowances.

And sometimes subsidies are just used as political bribes. And that's ok too, as it is part of the political game.

The recent coalition agreement to increase the child allowance subsidies seems to be both to promote an agenda, and as a political bribe. Just this time it is that way from two different sides of the coin.

Kikar is reporting that while UTJ and Likud negotiated and agreed to an increase in child allowance subsidies, as a political bribe, as part of the package that would allow UTJ to join the coalition. Yaakov Litzman, in his authority as Deputy Minister of Health with the power given to him in the coalition agreements, will be establishing that parents who do not vaccinate their children will not qualify for the child allowance subsidies. Litzman didn't want the condition to remain, but he did manage to be granted the authority to set the criteria.

I find it hard to believe that most anti-vaxxers will give up their strong belief against vaccinations just to receive a little bit of money in child allowance subsidies, but maybe some will need the money badly enough that they will decide to vaccinate their kids.

While I happen to like this condition, and think it is a good use of a subsidy to promote an agenda (vaccinations in this case), it does seem hypocritical, to me, that UTJ did not make a big deal about this and agreed to it without making a stink.

The problem with this condition is that it is collective punishment. in the view of UTJ, based on past arguments they have made in favor of the subsidy being increased, it is not the child's fault for decisions the parents made, bad as they might be. The children do not need to suffer increased poverty, which leads to less food in their mouths and less of everythign in general, because the parents made a decision.

In the past this argument was used to say that the government wants to ensure kids get food and clothes and education and whatnot, so just because parents decide not to work and to live a life of poverty, it is not a reason to make the kids suffer and take away the subsidies that would ensure they get some nutrition.

To apply that here, it is not the kids fault that their parents decided to not vaccinate - why should they suffer and not have enough food to eat because the parents did not vaccinate them.

If the subsidy would potentially sway parents to vaccinate, that might be one thing. However, I do not think it will. Anti-vaxxers do not vaccinate on an ideological basis, and a small subsidy is not going to change that in most cases.

Photographer James Mollison put together a project with an idea for engaging with children's rights. He considered how important a child's bedroom is to his childhood and identity. So Mollison traveled the world photographing children and their bedrooms.

Interestingly, 3 of the children (and their bedrooms) are from Israel - 1 from Beitar Ilit, another from the West Bank and a third from Hebron.

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Bilal, 6, Wadi Abu Hindi, The West Bank


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Tzvika, 9, Beitar Illit, The West Bank



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Douha, 10, Hebron, The West Bank





Now, besides for it being interesting that he chose 3 children for his collection from this area, what really struck me is comparing these pictures, and especially that of the Jewish child, to the pictures of the other children and bedrooms in the collection.

If you look through the collection, you will see the abject poverty in which the selected children live. The lack of cleanliness and sanitation.

Comparing the pictures, I looked at the picture of the boy from Beitar - definitely a low-income neighborhood and one that is low on the socio-economic scale (though not everyone in Beitar is poor, and maybe this childs family is not) and saw a clean, orderly room, with neat beds, clean closets, painted walls, a clean floor... look at the other kids bedrooms and you will see kids bedrooms being a beat-up couch, a  thatch hut, dirt floors, filth, decrepit conditions, nowhere to put belongings...

What struck me in noticing these differences is that even with all our complaints of poverty, and I am not putting down the seriousness of poverty in Israel, to me it looks like we are still doing pretty good, in comparison to the rest of the world. Even our poor are living under much better conditions than so many others in other places.

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and besides for that, the strangest image in the collection is that of the kid from Kentucky..

Joey, 11, Kentucky, USA


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check out the full collection of images

interesting interview.. a bit surprised she is willing to speak out publicly like this..

this is so disturbing and difficult to watch, but if it helps save even just one child it will have been worth it.. Forgetting children in the locked car is not an Israeli "thing". It happens in the US, for example, with far more regularity, unfortunately, than it does in Israel. It has happened in Israel too many times recently as well. Wherever you are, find some way to remind yourself about your child int he car - whether it is by installing a sensor or if it is by putting something valuable like keys or your cellphone in the back seat, or by putting phone calls into your regular routine to ensure kids were dropped off where they were supposed to be...

Back in February an incident occurred which just came to the light of publicity. A family flying from Colorado to Baltimore caused the flight to be diverted to Chicago. All because of the in-flight movie.

The family was shocked during the flight when the movie began. It was a PG13-rated movie, and once that is  described as being very violent (name of the movie is Alex Cross). After the first scene, they could not bear to have their kids exposed to it. They asked the stewardess to disable the screen in the area where they were sitting, and the others would watch on the main screen. Eventually, the pilot decided to divert the plane to to a disturbance, and they landed in Chicago. In Chicago the airline put this family on a different flight.

We experienced something similar once, when we flew on Alitalia through Italy. The in-flight movie was shown on a central screen. There were no personal screens on this flight. And it was a very inappropriate movie for a public showing where those who don't want to see cannot turn off the screen. Complaining to the stewardess did not help, and we suffered through it the best we could. I am told the culture is different in Europe to the point that the type of nudity on screen was not something they considered inappropriate, so they probably did not even understand what bothered us.

We are now in the middle of 2013. There is no acceptable reason why any airline is flying airplanes that do not have personal screens. The central screen on a flight is so outdated that it should no longer exist. The FAA, or whoever is in charge, should force the airlines to install personal screens and get rid of the central screen systems. With a personal screen, one can change the channel to a different movie or music station, or even turn it off. I get that showing only G-rated movies on a flight might be boring for the adults, but showing violence and/or nudity is inappropriate for the kids - giving an option via personal screens is a perfect solution.

And, if an airline refuses to, there should at least be some policy in place regarding appropriateness of in-flight movies. I would prefer people suffer with the boredom of a boring movie than the inappropriate viewing of a child of violence and nudity. But this should never happen as airlines should all have personal screens installed in their airplanes.

After I walked with my little boy past a wall of many election posters, mostly for UTJ and for SHAS, our discussion went like this:

S6 (son, 6 years old): Dad, we are Gimmel, right?
Me: ok
S6: Who is the kadosh (holy one)?
Me: That was Rav Oavdiah.
S6: Which one is the kadosh with?
Me: Shas
S6: What's Shas?
Me: The party for haredi sephardim
S6: what's Gimmel?
Me: The party for haredi ashkenazim
s6: maybe we should be with the kadosh... the tzaddik
Me: Maybe. Good idea. Its always good to be with a tzaddik...