this was just released... very cool. I'd like to see more..

3 weeks music alert

Remember the red heifer discovered on a farm near Lakewood recently? It made a splash int he Jewish world media and rabbis from all over went out to inspect it and declare it a valid heifer for a para aduma candidate.

The excitement was palpable - people thought it was a sign the arrival of mashiach was imminent and the Beis Hamikdash would be rebuilt before the end of the year. Herb, the farmer, even reportedly turned down an offer of a million dollars to buy it.

It turns out that the red heifer recently became invalidated as a para aduma. She gave birth to a little cute baby (not red but black), and that put an end to everything.
sources: Kikar News and COL

Somehow all these people, including professionals, missed that this cow was pregnant. Somehow, despite having the most important cow on the planet (not including any cow in India, to the Indians), they did not keep it isolated and protected or only with other cows of the same gender. It seems they guard wheat better than they guarded this red heifer.

I wonder if Herb regrets not taking that million dollars now...

I don't know what to do with this. Something about it, about the response - not the original, made me laugh and the entire story makes me cringe.

Linda Siegel-Richman , a teacher, was banned from the Kotel when she went, after a day of teaching at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, to the Kotel with a kippa on her head.

According to Ynet, Siegel-Richman had gone to the Kotel to daven and to put in notes from her students back home in Denver, Colorado. She says she was by the Kotel and nobody said anything to her or stopped her. She went out to the area of the Cardo to get herself a drink and when she went back to the Kotel she was stopped by ushers who did not let her in.

After describing what happened, Siegel-Richman said that she is able to go anywhere she wants in the United States with a kippa on her head, but only in Israel she cannot do so freely.

Today, Ynet reports, Rav Shmuel Rabinovitch, rav of the Kotel, apologized and said that while he does not know the details of the incident and has received no report of it even from the police, if it happened it was a mistake by the ushers to prevent her from entering the Kotel area. He also invited Siegel-Richman to come back to the Kotel for a visit.

Rabinovitch blamed the response of the ushers, if it even happened, on the Women of the Wall, who have created an atmosphere of suspicion as a result of their vocal conflict. They have created an atmosphere in which worshipers suffer, including Linda. Rav Rabinovitch said that the Kotel is open to every man and woman, and also to a woman with a kippa.

I think had she been wearing a black kippa, rather than a knitted kippa, maybe this entire incident would not have happened... :-)

It is sad that we have these fights. It is funny that Rabbi Rabinovitch has to say something like this.

After helping my son (3rd grade) with his homework yesterday, I now understand why Israelis pronounce things like "mudder" and fodder"... it is because they are taught to.

Yesterday I helped my son with his homework. Below you will see the page from his English workbook that we worked on yesterday.





The book explains that Hebrew does not have an equivalent sound to the sound of 'th'. However, there are two possible sounds that replace it in Hebrew - some words that have a sound like a  'weak tav' (e.g. in Hebrew "ת'ן" and "ת'ק" for the English words thin and thick), and other words that have the sound of a "weak daled" (e.g. such as in Hebrew "ד'ס" and "ד'" for the English this and the).

And as you can see in the exercise further down one of the words is written as "פד'ר" - being "father".

in English there is no difference in how the th sounds in the words "thick", "thin" "this" and "the". Yet in Hebrew they are specifically teaching to differentiate. I have no idea how they decide which words get the "weak tav" and which get the "weak daled".

While I always thought it was just a function of the Israeli accent the way Israelis pronounce "mudder", "fodder", "dis", etc.. now I know the problem is that, for some reason, they are taught to pronounce it that way, as if it is the correct way!

When Allan Sherman wrote the song "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah", who knew that he could very well have been Israeli rather than from Chicago....

To all the voices out there today, voices screaming that they sold the State to the Haredim: take [a look at] the coalition agreements.. we could have received double that had we recommended a government led by Yitzchak Herzog.

  -- Minister of Economics Aryeh Deri

Deri said this after defending the recent moves his party made to reverse government decisions from the past two years regarding conversion reform, kashrut law and authority over judicial appointments.

While I have no doubt they would have been offered the moon by Herzog just like they were by Netanyahu, I doubt they would have gotten double. If they would have, Deri would have signed with Herzog.

This Rabbi Berland guy is amazing.

He's been hiding out and running from country to country avoiding extradition to Israel to stand trial for  alleged sexual crimes for a long time now.

What is amazing about him is that one day the news reports have him sick and practically on his deathbed, while the next day reports have him once again missing and on the run.

Amazing that he continues to fool everybody, including multiple governments and security agencies.

Amazing that somebody reportedly so sick can be so mobile and crafty.