Rav Amar paskened, describing it as a claimant in court against the defendant (God), that God must send Mashiach to us...

Singer Jake Owen has been working on an exciting new project. Many Jewish singers, songwriters and musicians have released Christmas albums. But never before has a non-Jewish entertainer released an album of Chanukah songs, until now.

After a long break, Hakol Haba, The Next Voice in Jewish Music, is back, picking up where they left off, at the semi-finals of season 1.

I was a bit underwhelmed with the candidates in this episode. they were ok, but none of them had a great performance. I'd expect better at the semi-finals.

I dont get it.

The Moetzet Gedolim agreed to allow the vote on the budget to pass despite the draft law not yet being completed, because Netanyahu promised to pass the draft law (amendment) after the budget passing. He signed a paper committing to it, and had heads of the coalition member parties sign as well.

Didn't they already have a promise from Netanyahu about passing an amended draft law, i.e. the coalition agreements? Why did they need another promise and commitment? If they don't trust his first promise, why is his second promise any better? And if they do trust it, what does the new, second, promise add?

The PM of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has said that he will be continuing to implement his plan to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year, and the attack in Paris will not alter that in any way.

All I have to say is "good luck, Canada".

I don't know why the local post office (not just local, but I'm only talking about local because I have seen it firsthand) is in such a difficult situation, but it is.

It has come to the point that they have piles and piles of mail bags filled with mail and packages that they simply do not have the time or manpower to sort through and organize.

I would guess that they are responsible for too broad of an area with not enough staff. It does look, to me at least, that there has been a significant increase in the number of packages people are getting delivered by mail.

If anyone thought the postal service was being killed off by email, due to people no longer sending snail mail, it is the significant increase in online shopping that is going to save the postal service and keep it in business.

Or, as you can see in the images below, maybe it will drown them.

Here are a few images from my trip to the post office this morning..





There is more than what you see here, but this is what I photographed. When these two guys (1 shown in picture) came delivering more mail bags and boxes, I pointed to the piles and asked if they don't already have enough backlogged. They laughed and just continued to go about their business of dropping off the new mailbags..

Maybe a yeshiva, a seminary, or a youth group (or anyone else) might consider volunteering to spend a few hours a week to sort through all those bags and get it organized as part of their chessed programs... It would be a tremendous chessed for the community - so many people must be waiting for packages or mail that are just sitting there in the mailbags waiting to be sorted!

looks kosher to me.. any objections?

There is a lot of talk in the news nowadays about giving back the Golan.

I cannot always tell if they are referring to giving the Golan Heights to Syria or giving Golan Telecom to Cellcom...

It is official. There is no chance that the amended draft law will be worked out before the budget has to come to a vote next week.

So, what happens now? MK Gafni (UTJ) threatened that he will not allow the budget vote in his Finance Committee until the new draft law is passed. As per the coalition agreements.

Now that this is impossible, does Gafni back down? Has his bluff been called? Will he bring down the government next week by not allowing the budget vote or by voting against it?

Note: this is only one of the multiple threats to the budget vote, and to the government, in place right now, though it is the one that seems to be the most immediate.

The Israeli government is the most extreme it has been since Shamir, it's so extreme that Bibi is the moderate ...The most Netanyahu can offer Abbas is far from the minimum Abbas can accept ..

  -- MK Ahmed Tibi

looks like they should have accepted the better offers that were made to them previously by other prime ministers... the folly of holding out for a better offer - that offer might never come...

Anyways, is there any Israeli that could ever offer them enough that they could accept it?

this is the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich.

I don't know the background to the picture - why he is playing basketball, nor do I know with whom he is playing. Nor do I know if he made this shot or if it was blocked by the defender.

What I do know is that in Israel we would never see such an image of a rabbi, let alone a prominent rabbi, playing ball. In the USA it happens, probably not as commonly today as it used to be, but it can still be seen.