Sukkos is bearing down upon us almost as fast as a hurricane can hit the southeastern coast of the United States.

And speaking of hurricanes, the meteorologists are expecting some nasty weather over the holiday, though not exactly hurricane quality.

Here is the forecast for the first day of the holiday. Rain expected all around Israel. Depending on the weather site you look at, you will see different expectations as to how long the rainy weather will last - anywhere from 2 days until through shabbos chol hamoed.


Rain over sukkos in Israel is very unusual. It happens to be that this year, sukkos falls out fairly late in the "season", so normally these rains would be post-sukkos, but this year they are during sukkos.

The thing is that it creates a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, nobody enjoys rain during sukkos. it messes up sitting, eating and sleeping in the sukka. It messes up travel plans. it messes up the general enjoyment of the holiday. Along with the fact that the gemara considers rain during sukkos to be a curse, because it is as if Hashem is saying even though you are trying to do a mitzvah, He is not interested and He throws us out of the sukkah by sending rain.

On the other hand, we have such a serious shortage of rain (didn't the experts say we would not make it through the summer? what happened with that?) and water that every extra drop is really a blessing!

The real problem is that because it is such a rare event, most people are probably not familiar with the laws of how to deal with rain during sukkos, such as when you can eat indoors, when you have to stick it out and wait for the rain to stop or even eat in the rain, etc. It is time to review these laws that have not applied here in a very long time!

I have it on good word that the principal of the school that is currently employing the teacher under investigation for possible sexual molestation and pedophilia is willing to make a change to that situation. But it is dependent on certain things happening.

Whether he was right or wrong for hiring the guy in the first place is moot, because he has already been hired. He truly believes in the teachers innocence, and he considers him a very close personal friend.

The principal says he has not yet been contacted, either officially or unofficially, by the police or by social services regarding this case. He has not been told by them anything, let alone that the teacher is under a serious investigation or that he is a danger.

He is not willing to fire the teacher based solely on a post on a blog with lots of anonymous comments saying that it happened. He needs something slightly more official... (hmph!)

He would be willing to fire the teacher if any one of the following three things happen:

1. The police either send him an official letter, or even just call him, stating that the investigation is serious and the teacher is truly suspected of what he has been accused of.
2. The social services caseworker sends him an official letter, or even just calls him, stating that the investigation is serious and the teacher is truly suspected of what he has been accused of.
3. One of the families involved meet with him. As of right now it is just anonymous people saying we were a family involved. That means nothing to him. If he could see a face and name and that person would tell him the claims are serious and it happened to them, he would fire the teacher. He would be willing to meet the willing parent anywhere, and he would guarantee the continued anonymity of the person he talks to - he just needs to know it for himself.

Is this another delay tactic? I don't know. The person who met with him and heard this from him felt he was truly being forthcoming and not just finding another way to push it off.

You ask, what about the restraining order? Doesn't that tell him there is something going on, even if there was a mistake in it?
From his perspective it does not. As a matter of fact, he saw the restraining order and sees it as a way of the police avoiding telling him what to do. The police knew the school does not exist anymore, yet they wrote up the restraining order against that school alone. As well, anybody can get a restraining order against anybody just by their say-so with no proof of anything. If the order was serious, the police would not have written it against the original school only, and they would have fixed it immediately if it really was a mistake. So from his perspective, they had to give the order because someone requested it, but they did it in a way that they knew would not make the school get rid of him.

So, if any of you are involved in the case and want to make progress on this, be in touch with the social services or the police about getting them to notify the principal. Or consider meeting with him yourself.

Bet Shemesh politics has heated up this past week. As we get deeper into election season, it will continue to do so, but this week was particularly busy.

This week was the deadline for various parties to submit their final lists for candidacy for city council seats in the upcoming elections. People listed in the various parties lists will be competing in the elections for seats, and the positioning of the name on the list determines your spot in the party and whether you have a realistic chance to win a seat or not.

So all the various parties submitted their lists this week. There were some interesting developments.

• UTJ's local party is in for a tough fight. Lots of people have been upset at them for some time. Add to that a number of people who were upset because they were being left off their lists and they wanted spots. Some of those people have opened their own splinter parties, most of which have absolutely no chance of getting more than a few hundred votes each (if that much). The most notable of these are TOV (which was announced a while back), a "general chassidik" party, and a party of people from the Mishkenos Yaakov of RBS. UTJ I am sure will be fighting to have these people drop out of the race. All that will happen is that they will waste a few hundred votes each, thus weakening UTJ.
• UTJ settled their fight, it seems, about placement on the list. The Gerrer candidate for mayor, Ehrenreich, is heading the list at number one, with Shmulik Greenberg at number 2, and Moshe Montag at number 3. All three would be considered realistic spots, but they really have to get some of the splinter parties to disband and support them. If not, the number three spot could be in danger.
• The most unusual move of the week was I think Natan Sheetrit being convinced to abandon his candidacy for mayor under the Ichud Leumi party list, and join up with current mayor Danny Vaknin. Vaknin secured the number two spot on the Likud list for Sheetrit, and promised him to be appointed in charge of education after the elections. This is an unusual move because Sheetrit has very little support of people behind him. I am not sure why Vaknin was even interested in him. Perhaps it was just to be able to show he has people behind him. The most unusual aspect of it, to me, is the fact that Sheetrit's whole selling point why he should be elected mayor is that he is the only one who has fought local corruption. The way he fought it was that after the last election in which he lost to Danny Vaknin, he appealed to the courts to overturn it. That was his big anti-corruption fight. But considering that he has campaigned on the line that Vaknin is corrupt and he is the "anti-Vaknin", it is unusual that he has now joined forces with Vaknin.
  
• A few parties submitted some very well developed lists, refreshing their ranks and putting very hard working and impressive people on their lists, even if in unrealistic spots: Mafdal, Shalom Lerners party put together an impressive list of people, including our good friend David Morris in the number 5 spot. TOV put together a nice list, including Rav Alon, which will pretty much guarantee their passing the threshold and make their fight really for the second seat. The list is headed by Eli Friedman, Rav Alon and Mendy Newman, with other spots going notably to Ari Rosenstein at number 4, and Rav Raviv Shaked at number 7. This list is pretty good and should make their fight for the second, or even a third, seat on the council. The next one is what i consider the best, and perhaps most surprising, move in local politics this week. It therefore will get its own bullet, even though it really fits in this category.
• CHEN submitted its list for the upcoming elections, and they made a brilliant move. CHEN pretty much had no presence in RBS in the last elections, and since then as well. Losing Rav Alon (to TOV) could potentially have been a big blow to CHEN. They made a brilliant move and somehow convinced Ephrayim Naiman to officially join CHEN (he had been working with them for a number fo years unofficially) and include his name in the number 2 spot on the list. The list is headed by Zvi Wolicki, Ephrayim Naiman and David Geudalia. In my eyes, getting Ephrayim Naiman on board is the most brilliant political move of the week. he is a powerhouse here in RBS. Everybody loves him because of how much he does around the neighborhood and because he, and his whole family, is just a great and positive person. They should surpass their expectations because of signing up Ephrayim.

Election season should keep getting more interesting, but I hereby give the award of "Brilliant move of the Week" to CHEN for getting Ephrayim Naiman on board.

Gmar Chasima Tova

May your tefillos be accepted.

The metro newspaper 24 Dakot today reported on a psak by Rav Weiss from Kfar Ha'Roeh. Kfar Ha'Roeh is a religious yishuv near Hadera and Rav Weiss is the rav of it and is also a popular rav for kashrus and many other things in the National Zionist community (or at least used to be - I have not kept up with him and his standing in recent years).

Yom Kippur has come to be known as the Day of Bicycles, because many of the non-religious people refrain from driving on YK, but they go out in droves riding bicycles. As a matter of fact, there was an item the other day in the paper about the increase in sales of bicycles for Yom Kippur.

Rav Weiss wrote a psak, that he sent to the religious council of the area, along with being hung in the local shul, in which he added rollerblades to the list of things that should not be done on YK. The article quotes him as writing,"It seems there must have been a sale on them recently, and [the kids] ride them near the shul. When the small children come with the bikes with training wheels, that is something else. But from the age of chinuch, 9 and up, we should expect our children not to ride and shabbos and holidays with these various "rollerim". Obviously, by us we do not ride bicycles on Yom Kippur, and better to also not ride with the rollerblades."

How many answers do you know to the age old question "Why did the chicken cross the road?"?

There are plenty of answers, and you can find oodles of them just by typing the question into Google...

But we now have a new answer... To get away from the Shochet!

Some chicken was used for kapparot at one of these kapparot stands in Upper Nazareth. Before the shochet could whack it, the chicken made a daring escape. For three days he eluded the search parties, and wreaked havoc around the neighborhood waking local residents with his cackling.

After three days they finally caught it, and brought it to its executioner to meet its fate. This time, there was no escape.

one positive result of this incident, is a new answer to the above question..

(thanks to Jameel for pointing me to the story..)

The train from Tel Aviv to Bet Shemesh also has a regular minyan. It is not quite as famous or as popular as the minyan from Bet Shemesh to Tel Aviv, but a minyan there is nonetheless. The minyan I am talking about is the mincha minyan (soon to be maariv, as sunset gets progressively earlier).

So I go to the car where the mincha minyan meets, because I had not yet davened. Sitting there is a sefardic fellow with no kippa talking on his cellphone.

Some background before I proceed. The minyan meets in an area between the last two cars. At times there are other people there as well. Sometimes they leave when the minyan starts and move to a different part of the train, and sometimes, more often actually, they stay there. Most people know the minyan is going to be there, and it does not bother them. The minyan asks nobody to move, even when at times there are women there, and at times they are inappropriately dressed. As well, the minyan asks nobody to stop talking.

So the minyan starts and this sefardic fellow is sitting there talking on his cellphone. As soon as we started shemoneh Esrei, he disconnected his phone call, stood up, covered his head with his hand, and waited. When we said the kedusha, he answered along with us. When davening was over, he made his phone call.

On the other hand, in the middle of the repetition, at the other end of the minyan, a Russian gfellow appeared because he had wanted to scream at somebody on the phone. I guess he did not want to do it in his seat, so he came to the area of the minyan to scream at his friend. From about halfway through the repetition until the end of mincha, this Russian fellow was standing there screaming(in Russian) into his cellphone at somebody.

There is the difference between a sefardi non-religious person, and a Russian non-religious person. The Russian comes from no background. he probably had no idea what we were even doing, nor that he was possibly disturbing us.
The sefardi, while also not religious, knew what we were doing, and felt it important that he should be respectful during the services even though he was not part of them.

Rav Mordechai Eliyahu is famous for having been one of the students of the Baba Sali. He was considered the best of the students and is known to be a brilliant kabbalist, along with his other qualities.

(Rav Eliyahu should have a refuah shleimah)

There is a story that is clouded in mystery. Supposedly, before the Baba Sali's death, the Baba Sali gave to Rav Eliyahu a gold watch and told him that this is the watch of the mashiach. He supposedly said that when the watch would strike 12 the mashiach would come.

The watch was obviously not a regular watch and its hands did not move at the speed of a regular watch. Over the years, every once in a while, it would advance by some time.

Over the past few years, rumor has had it, that the watch, which remains locked up in a safe in Rav Eliyahu's home, had hit a minute to 12. If true, it is meant to be an indication that mashiach is close. But it stayed at 11:59 all this time and did not advance any further.

Rav Eliyahu has been sick and recuperating in the hospital recently. Reports now have it, or perhaps it is just rumors, that the watch has advanced to 12. In the article about it, some of the details are different than those I have heard over the years, but they are insignificant differences (such as I heard Baba Sali gave it to him but in the article linked it says Baba Sali's son gave it to him. I heard 11:59 and article says 11:55).

It is worth noting that Rav Shmuel Eliyahu says nobody has seen the watch recently and nobody dares to go check it out. They are waiting for the rav himself to feel better enough to go home and look at it himself. That being so, I do not know how rumors could have started that the watch has struck 12, if nobody saw the watch recently.

Halevai that the rumor should be true and the arrival of mashiach should be imminent!

No, I was not there. But my friend was. He is a Breslaver and just got back from his trip to Uman for RH.

I have no problem with going to Uman for Rosh Hashana. I think in the past I did, but I have reconsidered and decided it is ok. That is, I understand why Breslavers, or other people who somehow feel the connection to Rebbe Nachman as, would go to Uman. It is like any chossid leaving his family to go to his rebbe for yom toc, or yeshiva alumni going back to their yeshiva for yom tov. And that happens all the time. The fact that Rabbi Nachman is dead does not make it much different. And then there are the people who go for the experience of being there. Looking for inspiration perhaps. Perhaps some just want to be where the excitement is.

I asked my friend to tell me something from Uman; something that happened there. He told me there were something like 40,000 people there for the holiday. Many of the people who go are not breslavers, and many are not religious or knowledgeable in these things and how it works to go daven by a kever.

He told me there were some people there who were screaming out that Rabbi Nachman should save us all in the merit of Hashem!

Now, I should reiterate, he told me these were some people. Not the standard peson who was at Uman. Not the breslavers, not the regulars. But some people were praying like that.

This is not a frum problem. This is not a Haredi problem. This is not a Jewish problem. This is simply a human problem.
In every society there are people who have all sorts of problems, some of them including sicknesses and inclinations that prod them to molest children, or other inclinations. Some people with such inclinations control those urges successfully and function normally, and some do not. It happens in every community, in every society, in every country. It is not a frum or haredi problem.

As well, in every society there is also the tendency to not act on information that brings these cases to attention. Not just in the frum community, but you can see examples of this throughout the world - the cases of an alleged molester being immediately dealt with are much more rare than the cases where he retained his employment.

Perhaps the employers are reluctant to believe the accusations. Perhaps in some cases they have external pressures and reasons why it is difficult for them to remove the alleged molester. perhaps in some cases they really do not believe it with good reason. Perhaps they have seen enough cases where the accusation was baseless and brought out for other reasons and not really truthful.

Nobody wants to protect a child molester, and nobody is doing what they do because they think he is molesting kids on their watch and they are ok with that. I really think the school that does not remove such a teacher is not doing it because they are willing to take the risk, but because they really do not believe the accusation to be true. Believing it to be true means they made a bad, a very bad, decision in the first place. That is something that is not easy to own up to and face.

The new revelations in the case are a natural progression of events. The police have given a tzav harchaka, or a restraining order against the teacher. There seems to have been a technical glitch, and they issued it only against his teaching in the old school that no longer exists. I am told they are correcting that.

On the one hand, this is a natural progression of the investigation. He was finally questioned, which was also a natural progression of events, not really a breakthrough in the case, and this is a result of the questioning. The restraining order is a breakthrough because it means the police have "concluded" from the round of questioning that the claims have basis and are not just mistaken or a misunderstanding or false accusation.

Obviously they still need to finish the investigation and get conclusive proof, and that is usually not easy or a slam dunk in these cases. More often then not, these cases are closed with not enough proof. Does that mean the alleged offender did not do it? No. It is like saying if a tree fell in a forest and nobody was there to see it, it did not happen. Or if you stole a diamond ring from someones bedroom, but they have not pinned it on you and proven their case, does that mean you did not do it? No. But if the case fails to be proven, as happens more often than not, he will be allowed back to teach and be presumed innocent. That is the way the system works. At other times innocence is proven and then he is rightfully allowed back in, but usually it is the lack of proof of guilt, and not the proof of innocence.

The police have confirmed that there have been 3 solid complaints from children (there were others that were "withdrawn"). The police feel that there is something strong here. The problem is that in court the testimony of 7 year olds doesn't always hold water. All of the complainants have been informed and the police have asked to publicize this.

They have made public the order so that:
1) he is kept away from children that might have been his victims
2) to encourage other kids to come forward (knowing now that it is a solid case)
3) keep the kids safe as long as possible..because the school is a private school there is no Misrad Chinuch jurisdiction, they are limited in what they can do to keep him away from the classroom, and the tzav harchaka is basically there only option right now.

So, again, this is not a haredi or a frum problem. It happens all over and there are sick people in every society and community. Yet we, the frum community, purport to be of a higher moral caliber than others. We claim to be living the correct and more moral way. Being the am segulah and being the part of the nation that considers itself the elite does not just allow us to hold our noses high and look down on the other communities. It also gives us an obligation. It also means we have to hold ourselves to higher standards.

So yes it might, it does, happen in other places as well. But we have to deal with it differently. We are not like them. We do not consider ourselves like them regarding anything else, and we cannot therefore allow ourselves to react like them now either.

Now is the season in which we hear Jews become carpenters. Everybody is banging away with a hammer on sukka boards. Some of us wait until after Yom Kippur, but plenty of people have already begun.

The construction of the sukkas can be heard, in religious neighborhoods, at all hours of the day and night. There is always someone invariably banging away at midnight or even 1am. I can pretty much sleep through a nuclear war, and if I was asleep that early on any given night, the noise of the hammer would not bother me. But it bothers other people.

The law says all such noise must be stopped at 11pm. The rabbonim of Kiryat Sanz have decided that 11pm is also too late and have said that people in their neighborhood should not make noise constructing their sukkahs after 10pm.

The reasoning used in the psak is very honorable, as it disturbs the elderly, sick and the children from their sleep. Even Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between man, so gezel sheina is very serious. Sukka should not be a mitzva achieved via a sin.

While these types of stories generally happen with Christians finding images of either Jesus or Mary in various items, such as grilled cheese sandwiches or oil spills, it has now happened with Allah and a mango.

This has led me to wonder what such a story would be like for a Jew. Whose name would we find in our kishke or potato kugel? What image would we spot in our latke oil?

Would we find Moshe Rabbeinu's image? How would we know it was him - would it look like Charlton Heston? Would we find Theodore Herzl, Vlad Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion or Menachem Begin peeking out from our cholent bowl? Perhaps the Rambam, the Ramchal or the Chofetz Chaim would be spotted in the shabbos candle wax?

I don't know - it just does not seem as impressive as Allah in a mango or Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich...

While I was out running last night, I had the opportunity to pay attention to some election campaigning by Shas candidate for mayor of BS, Moshe Abutbol. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a sign on the back of a bus that I happened to be running behind for a few minutes.

The sign said "There are no secular, there are no religious, we are all Jews. Vote Moshe Abutbol".

It is actually a brilliant approach. He knows that many of the old Bet Shemesh secular and traditional (really the traditional more than the secular) residents would not vote for a Haredi candidate for mayor. They think of the haredim as having stolen their city from them, as the haredim have moved en masse to BS and have nearly become a majority in the city over the past 10 years or so.

Even though Abutbol is haredi, he makes absolutely no mention of it in his slogan, and he had no picture of himself on the sign. He did not say "no haredi and no secular". He said "no religious and no secular". He does not want the old BS people thinking about the word haredi in his context.

As long as they do not associate him with haredi, he has a chance of getting their vote. he is one of them in a sense - he is sfardi, he has been in BS for a long time - over twenty years. As long as he does not remind them that he is haredi and represents a haredi party, he has a chance at getting their votes.

What is really slick about it is that while he is playing down his being haredi as much as possible during his campaign, he comes to the other haredi party, UTJ, with a complaint how can it be that they have not come out supporting the haredi candidate. He runs portraying himself as not haredi, but just another person, but then attacks UTJ for not supporting him.

The truth is that he is probably better off, for now, without their support. When they come out in support of Abutbol, he will start losing his support from the old BS people. It is not Shas that has taken the city from old BS - Shas has always been a power in BS, since its formation. It is UTJ people who have moved to BS the past 10 years making it nearly a haredi majority.

So, Abutbol should really stick with his current slogan, and hope that UTJ continues to take its time coming out in support of him.

Here are some random things that happened on Rosh Hashana that stuck out, some of them funny, some of them not..

• During the Torah reading, the ba'al kriya mistakenly said "Zareich" instead of "Zar'acha". Both mean your child(ren), but "zareich" is the feminine usage (children of a woman), while zar'acha is the male usage. When the mistake was made, my 7 year old immediately laughed (I was surprised he even noticed it), and said "he said Avraham is a girl!"
• We woke up the second day to find a bird flitting around the house. I could not find an open window, and could not figure out how it got in, but I opened the door and tried to chase it out. The poor thing flew into a ceiling fan and hurt itself. It then hopped out of the room and then flew (at low altitude) out the door I opened for it.
• Kids enjoyed tashlich as we went down into the fields, with many others from the neighborhood, on the edge of RBS to a well/spring (that doubles as a mikva) in the middle of a field. It made it seem like a tiyul, so that was fun.
• We all enjoyed the simanim, from the carrots and beans to the sheep's head, all except for the fish head. Highlights were, of course, the apple in honey and the fish candies.
  
• I am not really sure that getting the exotic fruit for she'he'chyanu (this years was a gauva rather than the quince) would really qualify, on its own, for the bracha. Nobody really likes any of these fruits they sell for Rosh Hashana, and we seem to eat it in nibbles. It is a good thing we are making the she'he'chyanu anyway and not just for the new fruit.
• During my post-Rosh Hashana run (I know, these were supposed to be thoughts from Rosh Hashana, but I think motzei also counts), I noticed a big difference between RBS and BS. RBS is pretty much a dead town. The streets were quiet after the holiday - I guess everyone is washing dishes and taking showers. In BS things were happening. People were out all over the place. Burgers Bar was jam packed, the pizza shop nearby was busy, other food establishments were getting ready to open, people were milling about, etc.

Rosh Hashana is now behind us. Many hours spent in shul, with invariably, some high points and some low points.

Here are my top three high points of the davening:

3. Kee K'shimcha - this is sung with a haunting tune and points out and reminds us of the frailty and fragility of our lives and of our existence. This is especially powerful juxtaposed by the next tefilla "Ayn Kitzva" which is sung with a hippy and skippy tune pointing out the the awesomeness and infiniteness of God and demanding (?) that He act (in forgiving us?) for His own sake.

2. B'Rosh Hashana Yi'Kaseivun - this tefilla is powerful for me in the sense that it invokes the realization that the judgement we are facing is not just a simple you will live or you will die, but there are so many choices and options and different ways to how we can be judged.

and what I considered my top point in davening - the tefilla that really got to me...
1. Areshet S'Faseinu - each time after we blow the shofar during the repetition we said this tefilla. It is not enough that we blow the shofar and arouse the remembrance of the akeida, that we wake ourselves up to do teshiva, and all the other symolic meanings of the shofar. Not just that, but we then say a short tefilla, with a powerful tune, asking that Hashem actually listen to our tefillos, as He listens to the shofar, and accept them with mercy.

What were your high points?