Whoever tries to uproot us from the city of our forefathers will achieve the opposite. We will continue to fight terrorism and hit the terrorists with one hand, and we will continue to strengthen the settlement enterprise with the other hand.

  -- PM Benjamin Netanyahu, while ordering steps to be taken in order to resettle the Bet HaMachpela

the topic raises a lot of emotions on both sides, making it an entertaining discussion...

I hope that by now you have already built your sukka.. but if not, this might be for you!

There was a horrible head-on collision yesterday on Highway 38 that resulted in two tragic deaths. It once again raised the issue of why Highway 38 has not yet been upgraded and improved, considering it was originally designed to service a city of 15,000 residents that now actually contains 85,000+ residents, with thousands more on their way...

Besides for the fact that the upgrade project is almost underway - tenders have been issued and I think things should start to move within 4 months, even had the 38 already been upgraded to a beautiful road years ago, the accident would probably not have been prevented. This specific accident happened near Givat Yeshayahu. The upgrade of 38 is only supposed to be from Shaar Ha'Gay until Bet Shemesh and will not include the section of the highway past 38 - where the accident was.

While the 38 is really an inadequate and dangerous road, not all accidents happen because of the road. One can be a great driver, but if the driver across from you, beside you, behind you, or  in front of you, is not, you can still get into an accident. if someone falls asleep at the wheel and heads at you straight on, even if you are a very careful driver, there might be almost nothing you can do about it. If someone else is texting while driving, you can be a great driver.. There are endless types of scenarios in which anything can happen and there are no guarantees, even on the best of roads.

Drive safely, and be alert. Not every accident should be blamed on the road, as lousy as it is.

According to Kipa, if you are an esrog or lulav merchant you had better watch out.. Kipa is reporting that undercover tax officials are going to "4 species markets"  around the country and catching merchants who are not registered with the tax authorities and/or doing businesses without paying the necessary taxes.

They say the lulav-esrog market is mostly a black market, with nearly the entire thing being off the books. Tax officials have supposedly been going to markets in various towns and after questioning sellers about getting receipts for purchases are slapping fines on the sellers.

I remember a few years agon in Bet Shemesh the mayor decided to crack down on the black market, to a certain extent. People who would set up booths without paying the necessary fees to the Iryah would get shut down and fined. There was an outcry, but they still seem to do it. The other outcry that was ignored was  from the merchants who claimed it to be unfair - the ones with booths are being stopped, but many sell otu of their homes, and the ads are all over the neighborhood, but no supervisors go to those houses to shut down those merchants or to fine them..

So, watch out. Or register your business and give receipts.

Do you prefer to buy an esrog with a pittem? (I don't even know the proper spelling for pittem, if there is one..). Back in the USA, way back when, I remember, esrog with pittem was the standard. Here in Israel, esrog without pittem is the standard, and some people look for the esrog with the pittem, which is usually a bit more expensive and also a bit harder to find.

By the way,, another thing different today than back in the good old days is the horsehair wrapping. It used to be when you buy an esrog it would be wrapped in this amazing bed of horsehair. In shul you would unwrap it, and after shaking and doing what you need to do, you would lovingly rewrap it. Nowadays they almsot all come with foam wraps that just are not the same.

It used to be thought that people who bought the esrog with a pittem either did not have little children at home, or they were just big risk-takers. If the pittem breaks off, the esrog becomes invalid. After spending a lot of money on an esrog with a pittem, that could be a big loss for the pittem to break off...

If you are one of those pittem risk-takers, you now have a solution to your hedge against your risk. We used to joke about pittem-insurance, but now it is a reality, at least in New York.

The way it works is that the buyer of the pittemed esrog will pay an additional $10 to the merchant above the price of the esrog. That $10 is his insurance payment, in case the pittem breaks off. If it does break during the holiday, he will be given a brand new beautiful pittemed esrog.

I wonder how easy or difficult it will be to find the esrog merchant to cash in on the insurance, should it be necessary, once the holiday has begun..

The next stage is selling all sorts of complimentary insurance packages. Against black dots, against dry spots, against aravot drying out, against the tip of the lulav splitting, etc. all sorts of possibilities exist! And then investigators will be hired to look into fraud and insurance scams - did he break the pittem himself because he wanted a new fresh esrog? was he negligent? did his wife bite off the pittem too early? did his kid use it as a baseball?

This could lead to so many new industries!

If you thought the kosher cellphone market was just to control usage and access, as well as making some people some money by deals for packages, supervision and unique devices, it turns out you were only partly right.

Ynet recently reported on, and Kikar has expanded on it a bit, a recent discovery that the Committee for holy communication, or whatever they call themselves, that cotrols and supervises the kosher cellular market, has blocked the ability to make phone calls, from kosher phones, to emergency hotline centers for reporting child abuse, violence, kids at risk and other similar national emergency hotlines.

The Ministry of Communication has passed off any responsibility for this, saying the law defines certain numbers as official emergency numbers, and those are all open on available on kosher phones. These other numbers are less clear in the law how these other emergency hotlines are defined, but they will look into it. As well, people sign up voluntarily for the kosher service, and the rabbinic committee does what it does with the agreement of the haredi community. There has not yet been a response from the representative of the committee.

What is lacking in this response of the Ministry of Communications is that people do not sign up for it necessarily voluntarily. While some do, many are forced to sign up for it, or risk being thrown out of schools, yeshivot, etc. As well, people probably do not know that they will be limited in these ways by signing up for it, and even if they do, when they sign up they probably don't think they will ever need access to those numbers so are willing to accept that condition. Only when they unfortunately need it do they find out they can't access it.

The kosher cellphone is not just blocking access to the internet and to SMS messaging...

I am not sure why this is news, but Mynet is reporting that the Jerusalem Light-Rail now has its first female driver. not just that, but she is also religious and covers her hair!

Another step in the path of society towards real equality and treatment!

As Virginia Slims has been saying for a long time.. You've come a long way, baby!

one thing I noticed that has bothered me is that Moshe Abutbol and the Chadash newspaper consistently attack Eli Cohen as being anti-haredi and they accuse him of running an anti-haredi campaign, or that he will soon raise an anti-haredi campaign in order to rile people up.

Eli Cohen is no Messiah. Surely he has faults. Surely there must be issues that Abutbol and Chadash could attack him on, points in his plans for the city that maybe Abutbol thinks are wrong or bad for the city. One thing he is not, is anti-haredi. I have heard him numerous times talk about fair distribution of funds and he is quick to point out that everybody deserves an equal part of the pie, haredi need their classrooms to be proper classrooms, they need shuls and yeshivot, while the hilonim need their heichal hatarbut and matnas and other things, and each will get what each community needs. I have never heard him say a bad word about haredim. He talks about respect for religion, he talks about how Bet Shemesh opened its doors to the haredi community with warmth and nostalgia. Surely he has faults, but he is not anti-haredi.

That being said, with Abutbol's repeated claims that Cohen is anti-haredi and is running an anti-haredi campaign, I decided to revisit the matter and take another look. For the past 3 weeks I have been paying attention to all articles about Bet Shemesh elections, no matter from what source - I have been getting all the local newspapers, along with articles in the national press, both haredi and not-haredi, and reading every article.

Here is what I found:

In the non-haredi media, there has been not a word about haredim from the perspective of the Eli Cohen campaign. Not anything negative and not anything positive. he talks about the city, proper administration, his plans, his "5 mems", his political activities, etc. Nothing about the haredim, nothing about the need to stop them, nothign about them taking over, nothing about closing their schools and stopping their funding - all those claims are fictitious, because he never says any such things. The people making these claims might be good prophets and are predicting the future, despite the lack of any such statements, but they are not based on the reality painted in the non-haredi media.

In the haredi media, there have been regular articles and interviews claiming that Eli Cohen is anti-haredi. Most of the time any "proof" is included, it is using quotes from Naftali Bennet rather than from Eli Cohen. Moshe Abutbol also regularly claims that he is connected to the people and running a clean, quiet campaign while Eli Cohen is anti-haredi and is full of hatred. The haredi media attacks Eli Cohen as being anti-haredi, and they attack him for his anti-haredi campaign and his soon to be anti-haredi campaign. Open the past 3 weeks of Chadash and see for yourself. Mishpacha has stayed away from the details, and focuses more on the haredi parties. Kol Hai and Kol BeRama interviews are full of such attacks with regularity.

My conclusion is that the anti-haredi campaign is one that is being fictitiously made up by Moshe Abutbol and the haredi media in order to rile up things in his favor, to motivate haredim to not be complacent, and to try to prevent haredim from supporting Eli Cohen.

An example of this is this most-recent interview on Radio Kol Hai with Moshe Abutbol. Watch and listen for yourself. On the one hand I am not sure what he means when he calls himself a "street cat", and I am unimpressed when he denigrates degrees and management experience as if saying that is a fault - true it might not be necessary for public service, but it is not a fault. On the other hand, Kahn asks about whether the campaign will deteriorate to anti-haredi attacks. Abutbol says it definitely will, and the other side will rile things up to vote against the torani candidate... Funnily enough, shortly after that in the same interview Abutbol goes on to talk about haredi rabbonim supporting him and it being a chilul hashem to support a secular candidate - he himself becomes divisive about the issue, after he attacks Eli Cohen for being the one to turn it into an issue!

Eli Cohen has not made this election into an issue of haredim vs general. Eli Cohen has only spoken about the issues - how his opponent has failed on various aspects of city management, and what his plans are for the future of city management. Moshe Abutbol has.mostly spoken about haredi vs general, he has accused his opponent wrongly of doing just that, and only recently has he started talking about his plans for the future/

Again, surely Eli Cohen is not perfect, and surely his plans for the future are not perfect and could be debated. He is not anti-haredi. I have no problem is someone wants to vote Moshe Abutbol because that person likes him, thinks he has done a great job, thinks he will do a great job, or for any other reason that might make a person want to vote for him. Don't just vote for him though because he says Eli Cohen is anti-haredi.

And you do not need to take my word for it. You can meet Eli Cohen yourself, ask him all your questions, question him on his plans and what he will do or won't do for the haredi community and for Bet Shemesh in general, and decide for yourself. Find a chug bayit to go to, and see for yourself if he is anti-haredi or not. Contact me, and I can try to arrange a meeting, if you prefer to talk more privately with him. Go to one of his events where he is talking to tens or hundreds of his non-haredi supporters and hear him not say one bad word, and even a few positive ones, about the haredi community - I have heard him say such things to non-haredi crowds many times.


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Not to create a panic, but over the years I have been asked this question many times and never had an answer until now. So, I decided to post it, thinking maybe it will help some people, maybe it will make it easier for some people to decide to visit Israel and enjoy calmly their visit.

In light of the recent rush for gas masks, many people here cannot get them and feel frightened that they are being left unprotected. Whether it is tourists here for a short visit or people who live here without Israeli citizenship. When Israel gives out gas masks to the public, they only give out to citizens. Tourists are the last to receive them, and then only at the last moment, when war actually breaks out, and then they can't necessarily be counted on to get the information out well (based on what i remember from the Gulf War).

tourists dont wait in line, but they do have to pay

So, tourists or non-citizen residents, looking to buy gas masks privately, here is some helpful information for you. Thanks to the people who went to get their gas masks from these places and were able to then give me the information..

Shalon Chemical Industries, 2 Kaplan st. 10th floor, Tel Aviv. 03-695-7191. look for Riki (spoke English).

The have a factory in Kiryat Gat, which is is a bit more complicated to find, but they also had masks for people with beards.
Address: 35/2 Israel Pollak road, Kiryat Gat. name of factory is Shalon (it is near the Sugat sugar factory - there are a number of locations on that road). 08-687-9111. speak to Adi. if going to Shalon in Kiryat Gat, you have to call in advance to make sure they have it, and you have to tell them to put it on the side for you, and tell them you are coming. (they dont normally sell from there to to the public).

if you need the one for people with a beard, you have to be either old or say you have asthma. they  seemingly dont just give them out for people with beards.

The gas mask costs 400 NIS, the one for beards cost 800 NIS.

There is also a place in Netanya called Fire Center, located at 1 HaMelacha st. in the new Industrial Zone of Netanya, phone number 09-8355212.

I am told they are more expensive at Fire Center, but Fire Center will mail the masks to you, which Shalon will not do.