This is big news for Israels, and especially for Olim Chadashim. We all love to order items from abroad, whether online stores in the USA, such as Amazon or others, whether NEXT form the UK, or Ali Express in China, for example. Yet we get tracking notice that the order is in Israel and it can still take weeks until we get that notice that a package has arrived.

Israel Post is working on a new system that will have your package delivered to you within 48 hours of it having arrived in Israel.

They are putting together an automated sorting system that can handle tens of thousands of packages every hour. The new location will be staffed by 250 employees and will be located on a site in Modiin that is 18 dunam large.

Until now sorting was a long tedious process. The package would arrive at the airport and then get sorted multiple times, by hand, at various sorting centers. The sorting process alone took 5-7 days.

Now the packages will go straight from the airport to the new sorting center and from there straight to your local post office branch.
source: NRG

I hope it works. This would improve the process a lot!

Israel’s High Court won’t hear man claiming to be ‘Messiah’

  -- Times of Israel

this is weird.  Thsi Mashiach guy should have said something against the Rabbanut or connected it to the yeshiva draft and then they might have agreed to hear his case....

Now here is something I do not understand.

MKs and askanim from Shas are going to the rabbonim who spoke against Guetta and said he should be thrown out. They are going to ask that they reverse their call and allow him to withdraw his resignation.
source: Actualic

I do not get it. It this is a Haredi party and what the rabbonim say goes, why would they ask the rabbonim to change their minds? That is not very Haredi of them. Do they not accept the rabbonim's opinion for what it is?

In Habayit Hayehudi they state openly that they do not follow the rabbonim and only take the opinion of their rabbonim under advisement, not as decisive. Shas is not even doing that - they are just trying to tell the rabbis what to say!

I am impressed with, and sad because of, Yigal Guetta's announcement that he is resigning from the Knesset.

I am impressed with his announcement because it deserves respect. He is resigning because of a personal "scandal" in which he did nothing wrong but publicize some behavior not consistent with the party he represents. He chose to resign from the Knesset instead of sell out his family. He deserves respect for this decision.

On the other hand,, it is a sad day that he is resigning. Guetta was a good politician for the people he represented. he was loyal to his party and to the people who brought him into politics. While he was a bit of a bully and a bulldog to protect his "masters", he was also entertaining and seemed pretty straight. His resignation is a sad day for the Knesset.

The Supreme Court made a couple of important, and controversial, decisions yesterday affecting religious life in Israel.

One of those decisions caused another chink in the monopoly of the Rabbanut over kashrut in Israel.

The Supreme Court decision was basically the allowance of a food establishment to present, even in writing, the halachic standards it follows and that it is, if it is, supervised by some agency regarding those standards, as long as it does not use the word "kosher" - unless it is supervised by the Rabbanut. The Supreme Court believes that a restaurant owner has the right to tell its customers and potential customers what its standards are, regardless of the Rabbanut supervision - they just cannot use the word kosher in doing so.

So, while the Supreme Court upheld the Rabbanut monopoly on the word, and on the use of the word, "kosher", they went further than ever before in allowing restaurant owners with no Rabbanut supervision much more leeway in what they are allowed to tell the public about their kashrut.

The Rabbanut is understandably upset about this and considers it a breech that will allow "fake" kashrut organizations to flourish. They say the public that is undereducated and under-informed about the complexity of the relevant kashrut issues will not be able to make such determinations based on a statement of standards and whatnot and will easily be deceived about kashrut they are interested in keeping.

Good or bad, the Rabbanut is losing its monopoly and control, little by little. They really know this already, from other decisions in the past couple of years. In Jewish communities in countries around the world there is no central authority that has ultimate control and there is no reason to think Israel must have one and without it kashrut will suffer. it also does not mean Israel cannot have such a central authority, but if it wants to keep its control it will have to be far more forthcoming and cooperative than it is. At the end of the day, monopolies are almost never good for the final consumer. The Rabbanut has not yet made the case that it is an exception to that rule.

a guest post by Moshe Burt

Zehut Party in Israel and the First Ever Home/Office Computer/Cellular International Primary Vote

Mark Burt‏ @BloggerFool

2day the Zehut party https://zehut.org.il/ members in Israel/Intn’l held the 1st ever, anywhere, home/off computer/cellular primary vote.