This morning Deri made a campaign promise that would have the State giving every young man turning 13 years of age, ie turning bar mitzva, a set of tallis and tefillin. As well, he will force the Ministry of Education to allot an area in every school where any students who want to will be able to pray.

Deri says this is in response to harsh promises made by some (ie Yair Golan and others with similar ideas) that would be a threat to the Jewishness of the State of Israel - he says they want to turn Israel into a State of all its citizens [rather than a Jewish State]. Promises such as to remove religion from the public sphere or acting to remove Messianism from the schools...

Deri's promise is to pass this program he is calling "Tefillin for every child" - seemingly a spin on the old "a computer for every child" promise for imporving the educational system and giving children from lower socioeconomic families/communities a hand up to help them be less disadvantaged in relation to wealthier students. Deri says tefillin has been a symbol of the Jewish nation throughout the generations and this program will deepen our connection to Judaism and Jewish tradition, and will stregthen the security of Israel. The Torah says "the nations will see Gods name on you and will be afraid of you, and Chazal say that refers to them seeing the head tefillin. Tefillin is the spiritual power giving us the ability to defeat our enemies. The choice is clear, Deri says; either we strengthen the Jewish state ([in its Jewishness] and we deteriorate to a state of all its citizens, God forbid. 

Journalist Yoeli Brim has made a quick calculation of Deri's promise. According to Brim, if the current coalition parties win the upcoming election and will be able to form a coalition, and if this law or directive gets passed and goes into effect in 2027, the boys in 2027 who will be bar mitzva and get these sets were born in 2014. In 2014 there were 130,000 Jewish children born. Assuming statistically approximately 51% of them are boys that would be about 67000 Jewish boys who will get these tefillin sets. Assuming approximately 2000nis per set, that will require a budget of at least 135,000,000 per year. In five years that becomes more than half a billion shekels - pocket change.

State sponsored kiruv/religion always irks me the wrong way. We can leave that aside. 

I assume Der won't give tefillin sets to girls, but why should only the boys get stuff for fre from the State? Why can't the girls get anything too? If he only gives boys, and only Jewish boys, I see a discrimination suit potentially on the way. What would the girls get for their bat mitzva? A set of Halichot Bat Yisrael and/or Tzeea Ureena seems too small when compared to tefillin. Maybe girls get a free wedding dress when they get married? Maybe a free set of candlesticks to light for Shabbos?

And let's say we put aside a potential appeal to the courts for discrimination or whatever.

Why does the State need to buy tefillin for kids - why can't parents continue buying their kids tefillin as we have all done for thousands of years? Should the State also be paying for our Shabbos groceries? for our tzitzis? Holiday paraphanelia (e.g. lulav and esrog, sukka, seder plate, afikomen present, chanukah menora, etc)?

Tradition is meant to be passed down from father to son, not from legislator/politician to citizen. We should not be transferring our parental duties to the State, and we should not be passing our responsiblity for bearing the torch of tradition to the State. Some are trying to turn the State into one big kibbutz.

Truth is, I am just upset as I have no more boys coming up for bar mitzva... but on the bright side maybe my grandkids will benefit from this... 

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According to Rav Yosef, who signed a letter stating his psak, anyone encouraging others to ascend Har Habayit or who goes up is causing the public to sin and it is prohibited to vote for such a person. There are people, he says, who call themselves nationalist, from a variety of parties, who raise their hand up against God and His Torah and cause people to sin with the punishment of kareit, under the banner of nationalism.

Besides for the halachic problem itself of ascending Har Habayit, doing so also causes problems for us with other countries. Rav Yosef rejects the claim that it is needed for strengthening Israeli sovereignty and that, even if true that it strengthens sovereignty, is not any reason to permit an issur kareit..

Rav Yosef then says explicitly that it is prohibited to give such political parties any strength in the elections and to assist them or vote for them. ANyone who does will bear the sin of kareit and carry the collar of kareit around his neck.

source: Arutz7

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Minister Itamar Ben Gvir did a hafrashat challa event for the success of the right wing bloc and for Tali Gotliv to be appointed Minister of Justice...

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  -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at government meeting this morning

If you have information about them planning attacks, take them out now. But regardless, why does Hamas still have such capabilities that this is a serious threat after 3 years of decimation?

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Right after they, the leaders of Amcha Yisrael, announced their entry into the fray, they explained that they did not accept offers from the Likud to abandon their party and take reserved slots in the Likud, nor would they join up with other existing politicians and platforms because the people want something new, and they did not want to join toether with anyone connected to the failures that led to the massacre of October 7. 

That makes sense, and this is an apparoach I actually value and think is worthy of supporting.

I think it was the next day, maybe two days later, Vinter gave in to extreme pressure from Netanyahu and Smotritch and promised that he would support Netanyahu and only Netanyahu for Prime Minister. Netanyahu and pothers in the Likud were attacking Vinter and saying he would be "Bennet 2.0" and bring down the Right and support the Left and Eisenkot, etc. To counter that Vinter announced he would support Netanyahu and not bring the Left to power.

Now, it was kind of obvious that unless something unusual and unexpected would happen, Vinter all along was going to eventually support Netanyahu. nobody expects him to win enough seats to become Prime Minister, so eventually it would come down to making a choice, and Vinter is unabashely on the Right side of the map in Israel (from a security perspective - I dont know much about what thinks on other issues). I think it is obvious he would eventually choose to recommend Netanyahu for Prime Minister. But then he said it, and just a day after saying he wanted nothing to do with anyone connected to the failures of October 7. Later he clarified that a bit saying that he wont team up with anyone and run together on a list with anyone connected to October 7, Israel wants new and fresh faces, etc... but being on the Right, Netanyahu is his only choice for PM just because that's what there is available now. 

Despite Vinter saying explicitly that he would only support Netanyahu for PM, Netanyahu and the Likud, and other Right parties have only attacked Vinter, trying to get him to drop out of the race. Even today, after Vinter submitted his official party list (with no "joint" arrangement), both the Likud and Smotritch have attacked him and are pressuring him to drop out.

So, Vinter announcing at the start that he would support only Netanyahu has not helped relieve himself from their attacks. I am not sure why he would even want to support Netanyahu considering the relentless pressure they are putting on him, and even blaming him for their eventual loss, if they will lose to Eisenkot or anyone else. But he is. 

I am not sure with Netanyahu's approach to Vinter. Some polls have him crossing the threshold and some have him failing to cross - I guess he is borderline according to the average poll. If Netanyahu takes the approach to ravage votes away from Vinter (as the reports say he is trying to do), Vinter will likely not pass the threshold and then the [tens of? hundreds of?] thousands of votes he does get will surely be a waste, but if Netanyahu would just let him run his campaign and maybe even encourage some to vote for him, he probably only needs a slight boost, and then Netanyahu has those mandates in his corner. Supporting Vinter seems to me to be a better move for Netanyahu, but he seems to be taking the opposite approach, which seems less sensible to me.

So even though it seems obvious, at least to me, that Vinter would eventually support Netanyahu for PM, I think he should have kept quiet about it for now and let it play out until closer to the elections or even until after the elections, and then he could have a stronger negotiating position for more influence in the government to be formed (if Netanyahu would win). I think a lot of the people who like Vinter want new faces in politics do not or will not like that he caved so early to support Netanyahu publicly, and will continue to not like that despite being attacked relentlessly by Netanyahu (et al) continues to support him publicly.

I think this was Vinter's early mistake, and I think it is a significant one, and I think it will hurt him.

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Today, Pollard reversed again, announcing that he has joined a political party and will be running for Knesset.

I guess the death threats stopped after he cancelled his initial bid. I wonder if they will start up again now that he is back to running...

Surprisingly, to me, the party Pollard is joining for his Knesset bid is the new party recently formed by Sharren Haskel. Haskel was a member of Gideon Saar's party. Saar went back to the Likud with a gauranteed slot for himself. Zeev Elkin ran in the Likud primaries and acheived what is considered  an unrealistic slot (though rumors are swirlign he might get a designated slot from Benjamin Netanyahu as a counterbalance to Avigor Lieberman for the Russian and Olim vote. Haskel was the third main personality of that party and she left the Likud and formed her own new party (Yisrael Techilla - Israel First). I happen to like Sharren Haskel and find her to be a responsible, well intentioned, good positioned, even measured, politician. 

So what is surprising to me about Pollard joining Haskel's new party is that I am surprised he considers her extreme enough for his positions. And I ams urprised she does not consider him too extreme for her party. If you heard any of his interviews in recent years you would likely consider him more extreme right than Itamar Ben Gvir, at least that's what it seems to me. He did say that he joined her party because of her loyalty to him throughout his years in American prison and that she is a responsible politician...

From Haskel's perspective she says this gives her a big boost and I am sure she appreciates the name recognition he brings to the party, and perhaps some hero celebrity power to some. Still, it does not seem like a good fit to me.

Good luck to them. I don't care much for Pollard but if he is her ticket to getting back into the Knesset, it will have been a good move.

Will I vote for this party? I consider myself undecided still and am waiting to see how thigns play out closer to the elections with several parties under consideration. Haskel's party was oen fo the parties I was considering. This partnership pushes it down the list a bit for me at this time, but we'll see what happens.

it'll be a relief to get to election day so we can start ragging on people again... 😂

I hardly know anything at all really about the party or its positions, but based on the website more than a handful of the candidates are from Bet Shemesh, including a friend of mine. It looks like no women were included, which is always an issue that comes up when talking about new Haredi parties (seemingly as a way of trying to differentiate them from the mainstream Haredi parties).

Personally they called me more than twenty times yeterday throughout the day to encourage me to vote in the primaries. I never signed up as a member of the party nor as someone interested in voting int heir primaries, so I am not sure how they got my number (not that it is a top military secret) or why they called me to vote. maybe they just called everyone in all haredi towns and neighborhoods or something like that. I answered a few times (because the calls came in from a few different numbers) and ignored most of the calls. I was not interested enough (and frankly was busy with work when they initially called) in listening to the long message or in the voting process so after hearing what they wanted I just hung up. 

I get that they are a new party and are trying to encourage people to participate in their process and gather support, but spamming people with 20+ calls over the course of a day is not a way, at least I don't think it is, to create endearment or support.

Haredi news groups and media are reporting that the heads of Hakahal are disappointed with the level of participation in the primaries yesterday. With only little effort required, voting was to be done via telephone and internet with no need to go anywhere for physical voting, only about 14000 people voted. They had claimed leading up to the primaries that 90000 had registered to vote.

Personally, for a new Haredi party where it can be socially and communally dangerous for people to participate in such a thing, I think 14000 is pretty impressive, though that is still a far cry from having any realistic chance of getting into the Knesset. Maybe people were frustrated by all the calls (I personally was upset at the chutzpah) or didnt like listening to long lists of names over the phone and figuring out how to vote for them. Or maybe not enough people are really interested in this.