Check out this interview Gelf Magazine held with Tamir Goodman, once dubbed the Jewish Jordan.
Goodman is probably the first Orthodox guy to play basketball professionally in Israel. He has served in the Israeli army after he became a citizen. he was featured once in Sports Illustrated, which made him fairly famous and he hit the scene with a splash.

I personally have not heard updates from him in a while and this interview with him was interesting. He mentions God a lot, as he speaks humbly.

So said PM Ehud Olmert upon his return from Turkey.

Hmmm. Let's see how successful it was.

Olmert went there stating that his goal is to convince the Turks to help get Syria to release Eli Cohen's body from captivity.

Olmert then said he will be trying to muster support against Iran.

Those were his two stated goals in going to Turkey.

And what did he come home with? Eli Cohen's body? A strong multi-national coalition including Turkey against Iran?

Nope.

Olmert came home with Turkish inspectors to supervise an engineering and archaeological dig that we have every right to perform with no need to ask anybody's permission. He has sold us out to foreign supervisors. We now have to get the approval of the government of Turkey before we do anything? Is that the position Olmert has now put us in? Has he sold us down the river again?

They did not know each other. Yet they had a few things in common.

It is now being revealed base don documentation that Anne Franke (her father really) had petitioned the United States to be let in as a refugee. They were refused entry visas.

This story seems to be making the waves in the news sites and various blogs. It is big because it makes the US look bad, as it ignored the situation of Anne Franke.

The latest revelations in the Anne Franke legacy fail to impress me. I have letters of correspondence (I have actually given them to Yad Vashem so they are not in my possession any longer) between my grandfather and the United States government. he was trying to get visas for his parents who were stuck in Germany. The US refused on a number of occassions. His parents went up in smoke with much of European Jewry.

Am I supposed to be more touched by Anne Franke's story just becasue she became a celebrity? It is horrible what happened to her and how she was clearly refused entry when she could easily have been saved. However, in perspective, the United States was keeping in line with their general policy.

They did not let Anne Franke in. They did not let my great grandparents in. And they did not let in thousands of other Jews who tried to get in.

Update to previous post -
here is the video of All Franken anouncing his candidacy.. he gives over a lot of very interesting background..

It turns out that Ohad uses the choir of the Black Hebrews of Dimona for a lot of his background vocals. They sing on has latest album, along with performing with him at some of his "gigs".

I even know some of them from the softball league..

Here is a short clip of them singing with him at a bar mitzva.. you only see the Hebrews, not Ohad, and it is a short clip.. enjoy.

Rav Elyashiv yesterday released a new ruling.

This is the latest in a series of rulings that generate a rash of blog postings and newspaper articles criticising the Haredi world.

For example, we recently heard about his ruling that anybody in possession of an unapproved, "non-kosher" cellphone cannot be allowed to have his kids in the Haredi school system (talmud torahs/heder).

Prior to that we heard about his ban on higher learning for Haredi women. This despite the fact that the higher learning referred to was in the Bais Yaakov school system and was for the purpose of teachers having higher degrees to a) be better teachers and b) so they could earn more money with which to support their husbands in kollel.

Prior to that was temporarily banning El Al, no matter what the enormous cost was to travellers who had to cancel tickets and buy new tickets on other mechalel shabbos airlines.

Prior to that was [name your item of interest here - from wigs to Zebu meat to Slifkin to Kaminetzky to who can remember what else].

The latest, which I bring to you here, was announced yesterday in the Yated Ne'eman (Hebrew edition).

There is an organization called "U'K'Tavtem". This organization finds a nice way to provide a little extra cash to kollel yingerleit. They provide examinations for the avreichim and those with qualifying grades on the exams receive a stipend. Sounds great. What kollel guy does not need every extra shekel he can get. Add that to the benefits of testing which causes one to study harder and generally increases one's retention of the material studied and it sounds great.

Yesterday Rav Elyashiv announced that any avreich in possession of a "non-kosher", unapproved cellphone will not be allowed to receive a stipend from these exams and therefore his exams will not be reviewed.

Here is the clipping:

Just the latest in the list of choke holds applied by the Haredi leadership over their own followers.

Al Franken has finally announced his intentions to run for Senate.

After much consideration and thought, he finally made the leap and announced his candidacy.

He was great on Saturday Night Live. He is a hilarious comedian. He is an insightful and inspired person. He has written some great books. He has been running Air America to combat the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

And he's a Jew, so help out a brother.

If you are from Minnesota, consider voting for Al. If I was, I would. We need more colorful politicians anyway.

Talk about an appropriate name!!

(HT: DaveBarry blog)

Sorry, but I could not resist...

Shooting in Utah!
Another disgruntled teenager (this one 18 years old) shoots up a bunch of random people.

Good think an off-duty cop was in the mall having dinner with his wife. He confronts the guy then teams up with another police office and they put an end to the kids miserable life.

CNN brings us the story of the cop who was off-duty but still carrying his gun who got involved.


The funny thing is, when I hear stories like this, such as reading them in the Hamodia hashgacha pratis article, I tend to roll my eyes, nod/shake my head, or mouth a cynical 'wow'. Yet when CNN prints a similar story by a non-Jew, the cynicism is gone and, at least my initial reaction, I am impressed.

Why am I, or why are we (if you do the same), more cynical about these things when it comes to frum Jews? Or am I just an aberration?

If you are a blogger and are interested in participating in this years Purim Extravaganza, check out Jameel's post and contact him.

If you are not a blogger but are curious or follow it, you too can head over to the Muqata. Just make sure you are wearing your bullet-proof vest...

Was Abraham Lincoln Jewish?

I doubt it, but there are such theories.

Hamodia ran a piece last week about Abraham Lincoln possibly being Jewish. They raised all sorts of circumstantial evidence which, they say, indicate his affiliation to the Jewish people.

Such evidence includes letters of correspondence between him and people of the Hebrew faith, assistance he provided as President to issues of concern to people of the Hebrew faith, the lack of any clear religion in his background, and a town in England named Lincoln that at some point had a sizable Jewish population.

They offered no real proofs to the suggestion.

They did not claim that Abraham Lincoln hailed from Lincoln, England. They simply mentioned the town in England with some of its Jewish history.

They did not show that Lincoln assisted and tried to solve requests by Jews any more than requests by other people. They simply showed examples of Jews having made requests of Lincoln and his responding positively.

They did not show that Lincoln corresponded more with Jews than with people of other faiths. They simply mentioned that he corresponded with Jews, and brought some examples of such correspondence. I will assume (rightly or wrongly) that he also corresponded with people of other faiths. If he corresponded with a Mormon would that prove (or even indicate) that he was a Mormon? Would correspondence with Muslims make him a Muslim? etc.

As President of the United States of America, and preceding that as an aspiring to the presidency, it is likely there were plenty of people of all faiths who sent letters to him. Many of these letters would have contained requests of assistance on various matters of concern. Like any politician he would have tried to help when he could.


To use such baseless evidence as possible proof of Lincoln's Jewishness is a disgrace and an embarrassment. The Hamodia newspaper is treating its readers as morons and people lacking intelligence.

Despair. The market is quiet.

A supplier called me up a short while ago. This supplier asked me why I have not called them in a while for quotes and equipment.

I did not really have an answer other than to say I have not really needed anything recently. It has been pretty quiet.

My supplier responds with a sigh and says, "by you too?". I say "What do you mean? is it quiet in general? Your other customers are also quiet now?" Suppliers sighs again and says yes.

I ask what is going on? why is it quiet by everybody? What's happening in the marketplace?

The answer surprised me a bit. Supplier says, "If we had a normal country with a normal prime minister who knew what he was doing, the market would be better. But we have a screwed up prime minister who just causes trouble so the market is bad. People can't do business because they don't know what is happening."

And this is from someone who is (at least) not a right wing or left wing fanatic. I am not familiar with this persons exact politics, but he is a secular, albeit traditional, Jew and probably votes somewhere in the middl3e of the political landscape, possibly even for Kadima in the last elections.

It is not just the people on the extremes of the left and right who are disenfranchised with what is happening, between all the corruption and failed leadership. The folks in the center feel the same way.

So for the second time in as many days, El Al has had a near miss. Today an El Al plane had to make an emergency landing due to a technical malfunction. Before shabbos an El Al plane just narrowly missed crashing with an Israir flight.

During the recent crisis between El Al and the Haredi public, with the Haredim nearing a boycott of El Al, we heard an interesting statement in the name of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, which was then supported by other gedolim. I do not remember now the exact wording (and am too lazy right now to go look for the quote) so I will paraphrase. He basically said that now that El Al does not have the shabbos protecting it, as El Al flew on shabbos, anybody who flies El Al would be putting himself in danger. When the crisis was resolved, word went out that now it is again safe to fly El Al since they have committed to keeping shabbos, so they will have the protection of shabbos.

Shortly after Rav Kanievsky made the initial statement questioning the safety of El Al, there was an incident in which a plane had some sort of emergency and had to make an emergency landing. The frum world went into hysteria about how Rav Kanievsky was right and El Al is not safe to fly, look what happened right after he said what he said, blah blah blah.

So now, just a few weeks after the crisis is over and El Al has committed to keeping shabbos, we see a number of incidents in which an El Al flight experienced similar levels of danger and emergency. So what happened? Isn't the shabbos protecting El Al now? Didn't El Al commit to keeping shabbos? According to what Rav Kanievsky said, these latest incidents should not have happened!!

Or maybe the earlier incident was not out of the ordinary and every airline has a certain number of incidents of this nature and statistically there is nothing to do about it.

Hmmmmm....

Yet another indication that the whole crisis was an exercise in muscle-flexing and they had to manipulate the public in order to get them to go along with it...

Jack links to a bunch of great posts... go check it out..

I don't think I have seen this one before. It was only recently uploaded to Youtube... enjoy