Ha'Aretz is quoting (extracted from an interview with Israel Radio) Acting PM Olmert as saying, "Any Zionist, Jewish party is potential coalition partner".

Does that mean the Arab parties will not be brought into the coalition? Does that mean UTJ will not be brought in, as they officially do not accept Zionism? What about parties that decry Zionism as the cause of the problems, but have not necessarily denounced it, such as Meretz?

Reb Chaim HaQoton: הבל הבלים #ס"ג

Reb Chaim did a great roundup. I am linked to a few times.. I particularly enjoyed this one

I do not know how to link to it, so I will tell you how to get it. If you go to cnn.com and scroll down to the Entertainmen section, there is a video of a short interview with Matisyahu. Enjoy.

I overheard a conversation this morning between 2 people I know. It went like this: Reuven* asked Shimon* who he is planning to vote for. Shimon answered he is voting for kadima. Why? Shimon explained because I am merkaz (center, not right wing or left wing) and Kadima is merkaz, so it is the right vote for me.

Regardless of what you consider right wing, left wing or center, I do not understand what he said and what he thinks. He is voting kadima because kadima is in the center of the political map of ideas and ideaologies. And this guy is an intelligent fellow. What about Kadima is merkaz? That they want to give land to the Palestinians unilaterally? That makes them center? That is more left than even Labor is willing to agree to! What about Kadima makes them a party in the Center? Can someone please explain this to me? Why do people think Kadima is center of the road?

Kadima has been playing the biggest bluff ever (even greater than Ariel Sharon's bluff). They have so many people hoodwinked as to what they are. Amazing. the only consolation is that in the polls they are still slipping. Hopefully they will not end up the largest party and eventually its members will have a power struggle and they will eventually slip away into oblivion. If they do win the elections, at least they should be smaller than expected and wield less power than they thought they would have..

Take a look. You can see their videos if you click on the Jingles link..

Hilarious!! I can't stop laughing!!

Israel has said it will help the Palestinians deal with the latest outbreak of the deadly bird flu in the PA areas.

Hilarious!! Israel can hardly deal with its own problems of bird flu. Today they found the flu has spread to even more areas, such as the Jordan Valley, Kiryat Gat and maybe some kibbutzim in the center of the country. The Agriculture Ministry has announced that they are undermanned and have not been dealing with it properly. Yet we are going to help other countries deal with their problems!

Get your own house in order before you help others.

Last night in my daf yomi shiur, we somehow ended up in an interesting discussion. Somebody mentioned a story they had just heard on the radio. The story was about a secular (a.k.a. chiloni) jew about 15 years ago. This fellow wakes up one day in the middle of Pesach realizing he never had sold his chametz from his makolet. It was a result of miscommunication and confusion. Each of 2 different Rabbonim had thought it was taken care of by the other and somehow he fell through the cracks and his chametz never got sold. After looking for possible ways out unsuccessfully, including bittul which he had not done, they decided that there was no solution and all that chametz was assur and he would have to burn it. He said on the radio the value of the chametz was roughly 15,000 NIS (15 years ago).

A beautiful story of faith and dedication by a person we quickly call chiloni/secular, just because he does nto wear a yarmulke or perform mitzvos the way we do. The discussion turned to the idea that someone like that should not be called chiloni. I mentioned that had it been a religious jew with the problem, they would either have found a heter or he probably would have sold it to a goy or some other quiet way of getting rid of the problem.
I probably should not have said it and it was likely motzei shem ra on the dedication of religious jews. However, I still think that that is what would have happened. Obviously some people would do the right thing and burn it or whatever the Rabbi says he is supposed to do despite the great financial loss. However, most people would have whitewashed it, I think.

This turned into a debate between everyone in the shiur. Most agreed, but some did not. The main example used to argue against my point was the sheitel controversy. The scandal broke and everybody stopped wearing sheitels until things would get cleared up. The arguer said and look how everybody ran to burn their sheitels because the Rav said to.

My response was that only a number of people actually went and burned their sheitels. Most people waited and eventually heterim were found and most sheitels ended up on the list of ok sheitels and it was never really a real problem to begin with. No store owner went out and burned all his inventory of sheitels. My point, exactly. When it came to the religious public they found heterim and people ignored the initial statements and waited until things calmed down and cooler heads prevailed.
I do not mean this to be a condemnation of everybody religious. I am not really sure what I am trying to say, but some people have the emuna and the commitment to do the right thing, even if they are not "as religious" as we are. There is more to it than just wearing or not wearing a yarmulke, or eating mehadrin or regular rabbanut.

Below is the text of an email that went out today on my community email list (for privacy purposes I have xxx'ed out the names, phone numbers and email addresses):

Dear concerned members of our community שיחיו
We are appealing to you on behalf of Agudath Yisroel regarding the upcoming elections. Several parlor meetings, which will be graced by the attendance of AgudahKnesset Members, will be hosted in the Bet Shemesh area.
For more information please contact:
English: Xxxxx Xxxxx 9999999 xxxxxx@enativ.com
Hebrew: xxxxxxxx 0573xxxxxx, Menahel Agudat Yisrael in xxxxxx ,xxxxxxx @walla.co.il

With the blessings of the Gedolei Yisroel for health, nachas, wealth, vecholtuv.

This shows a hypocricy within the ranks of UTJ. They are behind the "Internet ban" the gedolim have pushed. Even if you think they are not exactly behind it, as it is other askanim pushing it, they should at least be the first people to be beholden to the takkanos of the gedolim. Their representatives are clearly using email for comunication purposes, and likely internet as well.

While personally I bless their initiative of using email and possibly internet, as it will bring them closer to their constituents and provide easy and fast methods of communication, it does present a problem. These are the people representing the proponents of the Internet ban. If they themselves do not adhere to the ban they push on others, why should the rest of the people adhere to the ban.

All in all, the fact that they are using it shows how ridiculous the ban is.

The funniest political statement I have seen in a while: MK Ran Cohen from Meretz today said not to vote for any of the small parties.

The funny thing is , by all accounts Meretz is a small party! No poll puts Meretz larger than 5 seats. He obviously meant don't vote for smaller parties than Meretz. Nonetheless, it is still funny.

Oh yeah, and don't vote kadima!!

Obviously these guys are upset because they are losing all the flocks of chickens and turkeys they raised. Maybe their opinion should be discounted. I do not know.

Ynet is reporting that the farmers and heads of the affected moshavim are blaming the government for working inefficiently and allowing the spread of the virus. Obviously nobody, including Ehud Olmert or anybody else in Kadima, want this flu to spread or birds to get infected. The question is just whether the people running the government are competent and capable of dealing with the situation. If they cannot deal with it, they should resign. At least, nobody should vote for them.

The fowl industry in Israel has been destroyed by this. It has spread quickly unabated. Millions of shekels down the drain, and it happens right before the busiest season - Pesach. There will be an unprecented shortage of fowl for the holiday with skyrocketing prices (this is if anybody will be willing to eat chicken anyway). People will have to buy beef and/or lamb for the holidays, which normally is more expensive, so many people will not be able to afford it for the holiday. In addition, meat prices have been going up because of a supposed shortage of beef due to hoof and mouth disease in Argentina.

Voting Kadima is assisting in bringing disaster on Israel, in every facet of government. Don't vote Kadima! They represent inefficient and corrupt government!

I hope the Bird Flu does not spread, because I have not culled my goose. Last night I shechted and disposed of my neighbors 2 ducks. They were not infected, but the neighbors were nervous and wanted to get rid of them. At this point in time, we did not want them (we have taken ducks and chickens from people in the past), as we have enough to worry about with our goose.

So, I shechted them and tossed them in the garbage for the cats to eat. B'Teavon.

I don't know what to do with my goose. The deadly Bird Flu has hit Israel. In case you did not notice the headlines, after thousands of birds have died, they are pretty certain it is the bird flu H5N1 or something like that. It is either that or Bird AIDS.

That leaves me in a dillema. What to do with my goose. On the one hand, we are not in an area where the infection has been found, so the goose is fine. On the other hand, I do not want to be exposed to it, nor to expose my family and neighbors to it, should it spread.
So, I can shecht it now while it is healthy, rather than deal with it after it gets infected. Or I can do nothing and hope it stays healthy and the virus does not spread to our area.

In addition, somebody nearby with 2 pet ducks dropped them off today for me to shecht tonight, because his family wanted him to get rid of them before the virus hits our area. I guess he took the overly pessimistic yet overly cautious route.

What should we do with our goose? It is a shame to kill him just for the chance that it might catch it. The vet said in the meantime there is nothing to do and no reason to kill it. They have the virus contained to certain areas and if you are not in those areas you are not being instructed to kill your birds.
But they thought they had it contained before it got to Israel too, and it sort of just snuck in..

Oh, what to do?

TheMarker has an article with some ideas for the country to save money, with examples of where it can cut some excess wages. There are four examples in the article. The last example is to have only 1 Chief Rabbi.

I am not (at this time) going to debate whether we should have 1 or 2 Chief Rabbis. My issue is not with that part of the article. The article is entitled, "Reduce poverty? Take one chief rabbi". They chose the title in an inflammatory fashion to push their agenda of budget cuts.

The Chief Rabbi example is one of four they chose to write about. They detailed that example in the least possible fashion possible. The other three examples were detailed and explained as to how much they cost the public (in general terms) with comparisons. The example of the Chief Rabbi was bare bones. There were no comparisons, no information, no details as to the costs and/or savings. The previous examples all show how we would save the country buckets of money by canceling whatever it was. This just says get rid of one Chief Rabbi with no explanation. Yet the title was chosen pointing to that example.

Sometimes an article is worth reading for the information contained therein. Sometimes the author has nothing to say or has not put enough research into the article, and for lack of quality writing has to come up with a headline that will draw people in. Here TheMarker has chosen a headline purely for its inflammatory capabilities, as the article could have been researched and written much more thoroughly.

I just heard this joke --

There was a costume contest yesterday in the Knesset. Shimon Peres dressed up like winner #1. In the end he came out in second place.

I am not going to write too much about Purim. I am sorry, but there is simply too much to write and not enough time. Now it is time to move forward.

I will just write that Purim was very nice. It was a fairly calm day with beautiful weather. We got everything done in a timely fashion and had our seuda with friends. I did not get quite as drunk as I usually get. I got almost there, but stopped drinking before I went over the top this time.

Now it is time to start preparing for Pesach.

That day will soon be here..