They say inheritance is one of the main causes of families breaking up. It often even has the power to cause division in even the closest of families. 

In the past few years Israel has been moving more towards a cashless society in its efforts to make it more difficult for criminals to function, and to prevent money laundering. The entire Western world is moving in that direction, and Israel has been going with it. A couple of years ago Israel passed a law to limit the size of business transactions allowed to be conducted with cash. Israel wants to be able to keep track of the flow of money, which it cannot do with cash.

Cool story.

MK Ofir Sofer (Yamina) came up with an interesting idea to encourage people to get tested for CoronaVirus, in light of what they are saying is a drastic decrease in testing among the public. Sofer presented his idea to the Health Ministry, and to the Payis Institute, and they have picked up the ball - they decided it is a good idea and are rolling with it.

Behadrei has the story of a Satmar chossid, Avraham Rottman, who owns a couple of makolets in Bet Shemesh and Mea Shearim, who found money in his warehouse among the cartons of yahrtzeit candles.

A couple of years ago the State passed new laws to limit the use of cash, as the trend is going around the world to prevent money laundering and tax evasion, At the time I said cash is no longer king.

Well, now cash is no longer even a prince.

According to Globes, the Finance Minister, Yaakov Katz, has decided to further limit transactions in cash and cut the limits by a lot!

According to the new limits, businesses will be able to process cash transactions with a limit of 6000nis, down from 11,000nis. Individuals will be allowed to handle cash up to 15,000nis instead of 50000nis.

Katz's decision needs to be approved by the Finance Committee still, s we'll see what happens, but plan accordingly.

There has been increased talk about finding stricter ways to crack down on money laundering.

The main strategy is to minimize the usage of cash. The question is how to accomplish that.

One method being considered by the Bank of Israel and the Treasury Department is to create some sort of digital shekel.  I guess that would be something similar to Bitcoin, but to be used within Israel, that would replace cash.

Another method is an approach being advanced with a law proposal that would limit the amount of cash allowed to be used and require reporting for sums of cash greater than that. After some debate and compromise, it seems the law being advanced will limit cash transactions to a maximum of 5000NIS between consumers and bsuinesses, and to 25,000NIS between private individuals.

the main communities expected to be hurt by this are the Arab and Haredi communities, as a lot of transactions in these communities are done with cash - for a number of cultural and practical reasons. MK Gafni agreed to this after the initial proposal would have limited cash between individuals to much smaller numbers than what was finally agreed upon - I guess the 25k is acceptable enough to him.

Limiting cash will be a big deal. If they move to crypto and digital currencies, they will also have to take a lot of cash off the street and out of the currency, minimizing its availability. Even if they do not move to digital currencies, limiting cash will make it difficult for many in these communities to function. It might even hurt the country as less foreign currency will find its way into Israeli hands and move through the local markets.

the globalization of markets is moving the world towards big changes...

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When the Bank of Israel announced that over the coming years it would be printing new bills and the selected images to grace the faces of the bills would include famous female artists, such as Rachel the Poetess and Leah Goldberg, everyone joked about how in Mea Shearim (and RBS B) they will deface the bills by ripping them or blacking out the faces or simply refuse to use them.

And now the joke is becoming reality.

The Bank of Israel will be putting the new 20 and 100 bills into circulation at the end of this week. Actualic reports about how in Mea Shearim they are saying they will not use these bills and will refuse to accept them as payment. Yoelish Krausz says it is not such a big deal as many in Mea Shearim continue to use dollars rather than shekels anyway. He says if they get such bills without realizing it, they will simlpy pass them along to other people - i.e. they will use the money as it was intended, by passing it along and using it to pay for goods and services rather than hanging it on their walls and looking at it longingly.

Aryeh Deri is upset that there are no sefardim represented in the images on the new sets of bills (currency) that are soon to be put into distribution.

Boker tov, Aryeh Deri. The plan was in place for two years already, and they have probably been working hard to design the new bills and maybe they've already started printing them, but with less than one month to go until publication, Deri now expresses his complaints and wants the government to make changes.

I would also assume Deri is upset that there are no women on the new bills. They too consist of 50% of the population of Israel, just as he complains about the lack of Sefardim.

And once we are giving out honors on bills by ethnicity, we should have bills bearing images of great Ethiopian Jews, Yemenite Jews, etc.. and if we want to break it down even more, we should have bills with Russian jews, Polish Jews, Tunisian jews, Iraqi Jews, American Jews, German Jews, Iranian Jews, etc..

We are going to need tens of new bills to keep everyone happy!

I agree, Sefardi Jews should be represented, as should others. The last minute before publication is not the time to deal with it.

Did you lose 18,000 NIS?

If you made a simcha recently at the "Troya" hall in Ashdod, you might want to be in touch with the management of the hall. During renovations they found an envelope containing 18,000 NIS and a note saying "mazel tov!"... Management is looking for the recently married couple that this might belong to.. if it is not claimed soon, it will be donated to an organization called "Rechashei Lev" that helps children with cancer..
(source: Ladaat)

There has been a US check cashing crisis of sorts in Israel for the past few weeks. There has been very little written about it, and I really have not been able to understand the problem based on the little that has been written. This explains it briefly and offers you a solution..

A guest post by John Benporath

In Israel, the banks charge high fees for converting your currency to Israeli shekels. They make their profit by charging retail rates that are less than competitive – often much lower than the exchange rates that you see listed - and charging additional conversion fees on top.

So what should you do if you are holding an American dollar check in your hand? Firstly, you should be wary of any service that offers to process your check electronically. The bank account on which the check is drawn will be debited by the money changer, and you will have limited control over the transaction, unlike cashing a check for the exact amount that is written on the face of the check, which involves no risk.

You need to choose a reliable money changer who declares all fees and charges up front and offers you a rate that is competitive against the interbank Shaar HaMischar wholesale rate as the independent reference point (see the Montrose Change website for an explanation of the different exchange rates), so that you know exactly what your check is worth. You may decide to hold it for a week and see if the rate improves – no one can predict which way the shekel is moving against the dollar these days - but that choice is yours.



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Donate to the Schneider Hospital so I can run the Schneider benefit marathon..

A little while back, a beis din ruled on a divorce case in which the kesuba was not present and had been written 40 years or so earlier, in a currency that no longer exists. The sum of money promised in the kesuba was under dispute, and the beis din ruled the husband had to pay 500,000 NIS to the [ex-]wife.

The husband has now appealed the ruling of the beis din. He claims that the amount in the original kesuba was 2000 lira, but had been altered using white-out and changed to say 152,000 lira, a sum that was 8 times the value of their apartment at the time.

Relying on the photocopy to determine the sum stating they accept that the kesuba was lost, when the wife only claimed she had not brought it with her and had left it at home (RG: why didn't they send her home to bring it it? or, why didn't they rule against her for refusing to bring the kesuba when she wanted to claim the value wriiten within?), along with the fact that they never called the witnesses to attempt to verify the value of the kesuba (RG: why would they remember the value of a kesuba from 40 years earlier?), nor did they appoint any expert investigator to determine if the kesuba had been altered or not, along with some other arguments, makes the ruling unacceptable.

Furthermore, the husband's lawyer claims, the husband had worked and paid for the apartment in full, while the wife did not work at all. As well, all that he has now in his old age is this apartment that he worked very hard for, and has nothing else to live off, and she should not be able to take his apartment away from him.

The husband demands in his appeal that the original ruling should be completely voided, that he does not owe her any severance because she forged the amount in the kesuba, and the original sum should not be linked to inflation or any other linkage.

The one thing he is willing to offer is that instead of determining the original kesuba to be 2000 lira, as he says it is, he should be told to pay a maximum of  12,000 lira which is the amount required to live on for a year.  
(source: Bechadrei)

If he is using the current Turkish lira when he demands to be told to pay the kesuba in lira, then it is worth 24,705 NIS.
If he is referring to 12,000 of the original Israeli lira, then that is worth today 1,200 old Israeli shekel, which is worth today 1.2 NIS.

Even using the Turkish lira it is difficult to see that amount as enough to live on for a year, but maybe under certain conditions it is doable. Using the Israeli lira, it is not even enough for a stick of bubble gum.

I was once told by a rav involved in the beis din system in Israel, in various capacities, that nowadays the ketuba is rarely looked at during the divorce process. Despite the fact that the ketuba lays out what the husband is obligated to pay to the wife, in case of divorce or death, it has become a largely irrelevant document, in these times of divorce settlements. Because the courts divide up the money of the couple fairly evenly, in the case of a divorce, with no connection to the ketuba, there is no longer even a need to look at it, let alone use it as a basis for deciding how much he must pay her upon divorce.

That is not always the case. In a recent divorce down south, they each disputed how much had been written in the original ketuba, 35 years prior! They were arguing about it because the ketuba was lost, a long time ago. It did not disturb anyone until now, even though a couple cannot live together if the ketuba is missing,  because the husband had run off 15 years ago, leaving his wife and 4 kids behind.

She claimed that the original ketuba had promised her 152,000 lira, while he claimed that he had only promised 2000 lira in the ketuba.

Israel's currency was the lira until 1980, when it was replaced by the Shekel. The conversion rate from lira to shekel was 1 shekel for every 10 lira. That too was eventually replaced, in 1985, with the New Israeli Shekel, at a conversion rate of 1000 old shekel to 1 new shekel.

That means, his claim of owing 2000 lira meant he was saying he owed her from the ketuba obligation the grand total of 20 agurot - 2000 lira became 20 old shekel, which became 20 agurot in new shekel.

Her counter-claim was that the original ketuba promised her 152,000 lira. That would be a claim of 15,200 old shekel, being 15.20 new shekel.

The power of devaluated money.

The bigger problem was that when one is claiming money from the other, the burden of proof as to how much is owed is upon the claimant. With the original document missing, that was going to be a problem. Even though it looks like they were only fighting over 15 shekel, at this point.

The beis din decided that because the dispute is regarding what amount was stated in the original document, finding a copy would be good enough proof for clarification (it might not be good enough to stake the entire claim, but for clarification alone it is fine). Eventually a copy was located in the Rabbanut archives, and it showed that the woman's claim was correct - the scoundrel had promised her 152,000 lira in the ketuba.

The beis din evaluated the debt at a current price of 500,000 NIS. I am not sure based on what calculation, but it included inflation, which over a period of 30 years in Israel was probably pretty high for a large percentage of the time.

Beis din added that because he left the house and abandoned them, he is considered to be rebellious, a status that obligates him to pay the entire sum of the ketuba with no discounts - unless he could prove that she had destroyed the marriage. They did not accept his claim to that effect, relying on police reports of  complaints and testimony from the children that he had been violent..

The final decision was that they would sell the apartment and split the proceeds between them. She would receive her ketuba  payment in full, and his half of the apartment would be deducted from what he had to pay her from the ketuba, which ended up giving her nearly the entire apartment.
(source: Mynet)

I am a bit surprised he was not obligated to pay her mezonot for the years he was missing, but maybe that was included in the 500k decision. So, the ketuba is not a document that can always be discounted as irrelevant... and the compounding of inflation is staggering!

"In God We Trust" is the motto of the United States of America and it graces the currency on both paper and coins.

In Israel there is no such statement on the currency. in Stanley Fisher's previous term as Governor of the Bank of Israel, there was a movement to start including the same phrase, in Hebrew of course - "בה' אנו מאמינים" - In God We Trust.  Fisher opposed the idea, and it was rejected due to that opposition.

The Director of the lobby for Jewish Values, Ofer Cohen, who had led the movement back then has now explained Fisher's opposition. Fisher had said he opposes it because he did not want to see God's name [on currency] that might be thrown out in the garbage, or mistreated.
(source: Bechadrei)

Though, it must be noted, that the document displayed on Bechadrei's website (see link above), signed by the Minting department, gives other, more official reasons, for having rejected the idea. Despite that, Fisher's reason for opposing the idea, so as not to see God's name on a surface that might be defaced or mistreated, is a more Jewish reason...

One never knows what he or she might do when faced with any specific challenge, but one can hope that he or she would respond or react a certain way, each according to his beliefs. For example, I always wonder and imagine what I would do if I were to win the lotto (I am willing to be tested, God). We read in the news and in stories about the challenges of sudden wealth, how many people who won the lottery ended up wasting their money and even ending up in debt for going overboard with their excessive spending, and some who became mean or haughty. Occasionally there is the story of the people who came into sudden wealth and did not let it get to their heads.

A recent winner of 16 million the Israeli lottery showed that they are up to the challenge, they are good people, and at least initially they have good intentions and plans for what to do with their winnings.

Globes reports on the recent winners, describing them as a couple in their mid-60s with 8 children. He was up late and decided to check the lottery numbers on the computer. He had filled out an automatic lotto card for 58 shekel, and he almost gave up when he had checked most of the card line after line with no winnings. The last line of numbers on the card was the winner, and he says he checked and rechecked the card because he could not believe it. He then went and woke up his wife to tell her about it.

They said that thank God they have not been lacking for anything, they have money, and therefore will be giving some of their winnings to local people in the town where they live who have nothing and need help. They also said they are not going to tell their children about their winnings, which also means they will not change their lifestyle in any way, so that they will not stop working, so they will learn that nothing comes easy. They said they already give to their kids, and they will continue to do so, and at the end of the day, everything of theirs will eventually go to the kids, as they will not be able to take it with them.

They have no dreams they are looking to blow their money on, as they have already fulfilled all their dreams. The most important thing to them, they say, is to take care of their kids and that they have the opportunity now to do gemilut chessed with their winnings and help some people in great need.

And, Globes continues, there was another winner, of 8 million NIS, who spent 81 NIS on his lotto ticket. A divorced fellow in his 60s, with 2 children. He plans to buy for himself and his kids an apartment, to get a new car, and, he says, most importantly to buy a sefer torah and donate it to the shul in memory of his grandparents.

The stories of discovered money usually have the money discovered in either a mattress or in the freezer, maybe in the cavity of a frozen chicken. And, the sum of money is generally in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The following is a cool story, but the money does not reach the tens of thousands of dollars, and it was not found in a mattress or frozen chicken.

NBC reports on a story in which an elderly lady was going through her old home movies to convert them to DVD. After turning in her movie reel canisters, the Walmart clerk discovered the money inside the canister. And, it turns out that the money was being saved for a trip to visit Israel, a trip that never happened due to her husband's death.

Reviewing old home movies proved to be a richer experience than one southwest Florida woman expected.
Evelyn Weiner hadn't seen the 16mm movies in the dusty metal canister for at least 60 years. After a niece suggested getting the film transferred to DVDs, the 90-year-old Englewood woman dropped off the canister at a Walmart.
Second Minnesota Otter Attack in a Month
Ten days later, the manager of operations at YesVideo called Weiner to tell her that $3,100 in cash had been found in the canister, and they wanted to send it back to her.
Weiner tells the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that her husband must have hidden the $100 bills without her knowing. The couple had been saving for a trip to Israel after he retired in 1996, but he died before they could make the trip.

1. cool story
2. don't throw old things out without looking through them first. You never know where you or your spouse might have stuffed some money.
3. The clerk went beyond what he needed, or perhaps would ever have been expected, to do, returning money Ms. Weiner probably never would have even known was missing. Good work.

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Is this what the kollel system leads to, after two generations, a global economic crisis, and not nearly enough money to go around?

1. The other day someone advertised in the Yated that they are selling the rights to name their baby, in order to cover their debts.
2. Mevaser ran an ad yesterday of a family in Yerushalayim, an avreich, his wife and 10 children that can no longer afford the rent, cannot afford to buy an apartment, and are not willing to move out of Jerusalem. They advertised that they are looking for someone to donate an apartment to them.
3. The worst, and perhaps the saddest, of these stories is a report yesterday in Ladaat of an avreich in Brachfeld - Modiin Ilit who was caught stealing Materna - baby formula - from the local store. This has been going on for a while, and it took the store some time to catch the perpetrator of the theft. The avreich confessed after having been caught, and explained that he has 5 children at home to feed and cannot afford it.

Just when it looked like the Bank of Israel had come to a simple and easy decision, and there was not much to fight about, the decision on the new bills, and what images would grace them, has been put on hold.

Turns out, nothing is an easy decision.

Menachem Begin's family, his son Benny Begin and others, oppose his image being used. he was a very private and modest person and would not want his image on the bills.

The haredi reps said that while they would not turn it into a crisis, they oppose having the image of a woman on the bills.

A new proposal, put forth by many, is to have a religious leader's image grace the bills, and that would be the image of Rav Mordechai Eliyahu zt"l.

So, in the meantime, the decision has been put on hold while all these issues get debated and worked out. As they say, it ain't over till the fat lady sings...

The new bills have been decided upon. The Bank  Of Israel decided that it was time to refresh the currency of Israel with new images, images including both statesmen and people of the arts, and a woman.

There was much debate as to who deserved the honor to have his and her images grace the Israeli currency, with many good recommendations.

Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fisher made the final decisions this morning, getting the approval of PM Benjamin Netanyahu and soon to bring his decisions to the government to vote upon.

And the winners are:
Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Rabin who both signed peace treaties with neighboring Arab states, Author Shay Agnon, and Poetess Rachel the Poetess (a.k.a Rachel Bluwstein Sela).

Surprisingly, Rachel the Poetess beat out Naomi Shemer.

An article in Newsweek about how the recession is affecting the Jewish religion attributes the "wild success" of Chabad to their emulating the Christian model to bring unaffiliated Jews in.

Funny how that can easily be understood as they believe a dead man is the Messiah and missionize unrelentingly. Yet it means, in the context of the article, that they stand out there and try to bring people in and don't ask for money in advance.

I would argue otherwise. In 2008, 2.7 million Americans called themselves religiously Jewish, down from 3.1 million in 1990. Wouldn’t the central challenge of American Jewry be to encourage the broadest range of people (including the intermarried, like me) to identify as Jewish and to raise Jewish kids? Costly barriers to entry need to be taken away, or, at least, reimagined. “We have this very bizarre pay-to-play philosophy,” says Jay Sanderson, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Christian churches, Sanderson points out, begin with an invitation to prayer; they ask for money later. “The Jewish community’s first instinct is ‘give us money,’ instead of ‘come in.’ ” Sanderson points to the wild success of the Chabad movement, the black-clad proselytizers who stand on street corners worldwide, extending invitations to Jewish passersby. Come pray with us, they say; come eat with us. “Chabad,” says Sanderson, “is working on the Christian model.”

It would be a mistake to assume that Jewish success depends on emulating Christians. Throughout the 20th century, as Jews became prosperous, they built massive synagogues and community centers. Many looked like churches, with stained-glass windows and organ pipes; their pews were full of Jews who had, in a very real sense, nowhere else to go. The country clubs wouldn’t have them; their community, religious, and social life revolved around the temple. Today, American Jews have all kinds of choices about where to spend time and money—Jews no longer need a Jewish pool to swim in—and the buildings have become a burden. “The bills are very high,” says Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who paid $4,000 this year in temple dues. “People need sacred spaces, but when you’re looking at budgets, you’re looking at heat and air conditioning.”

Eisen believes that money questions will force a painful transition in American Judaism. He agrees that the “middle group is in play” and so is seeking to reduce costs to families through something like corporate downsizing: making alliances across denominations, sharing spaces, rabbis, and staff. “Jews have been around for a long time,” says Eisen. “We’ll adjust.”