Muqata/Rock Joint post

Jameel Rashid:

Exactly one year ago, we hosted friends of ours after they were evicted from their homes in Gush Katif. Having nowhere to go, we put them up for a bit, till they figured out which way to wander.

Today, we're very pleased to be hosting blogger friends of ours -- the Rock of Galilee family from up North. In this historic use of the JBlogosphere to connect Jews from around the world (well, from a Northern Settlement to the Muqatan Shomron Stronghold) -- we're pleased to present this dual hosted blog post. Over to you rock...

Watching a missile land on Haifa this morning as we fled from the constant bombardment of rockets on our galilean homeland I got to thinking about how fragile the situation can be no matter where you are living. When we lived in Michigan, we were concerned when the two airplanes hit the world trade center. My wife was very concerned about the threat of terrorism in the entire US and I explained to her that we were safest in Michigan. Michigan, for those who don't know, is the home to the largest arab population outside the middle east. My wife was positive that that meant that we were in more danger then anywhere else in the country. I explained to her that being in the Lion's den (quite literally in football terms) was actually beneficial to us because the FBI had most of their resources concentrated in our neighborhood. They wouldn't dare to do anything that would bring the full weight of countersurveillance into their living rooms.

In a similar vein we decided that the safest place during a Lebanese missile crisis would be in the Muqatan heartland, surrounded by hostile arabs. What better place to hide out and give our children a much deserved and needed rest without waking up every 5 minutes by the whoosh and the boom.

Back to you Jameel.

Jameel here. Wow...that was pretty inspiring to read (as it was being typed here in our Muqata bomb shelter)...and I just wanted to write how much we're enjoying the Rock of Galilee family's company -- we had a BBQ, and now the kids are nodding off to sleep. Granted the occasional shooting in the distance can be slight disconcerting, but it's nothing comapred to the whooosh and the boom. (And hopefully, we won't hear those either).

Well...I hope we can get together under slightly calmer circumstances next time, but overall, I think this is working out just fine.

A good night to all from the Muqata and Rock of Galilee (updates will be posted tonight as neccessary).

Jameel (The Muqata)
Rock of Galilee (Galilee Refugee)

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael

whoooshhhh

I believe we can hear the bigger rockets whooshing overhead on trajectories further south. It took two minutes from time I heard to a media statement of actual landings.

We're Clear

We are out of range right now but we watched a missile land in haifa.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

The Other Half

This is traintalk's wife.
The so called quiet night was very noisy. Booming all night long. Same thing now. But, that isn't what I wanted to talk about. On the last occasion that we spent prolonged time in the shelters our kids were little now they are teenagers and technology has come a long way. So the girls sat in the shelter watching movies on a litttle DVD player. Now, my 16 year old can express how she feels. She is under pressure and says that her "heart is hurting". That means she jumps every time she hears a loud explosion that is close by and is totally panicked. She is very concerned that we choose not to sleep in the bomb shelter. There are good reasons for that. Hubby is asthmatic and has an allergy to dust he would stop breathing before the katyushas hit. I just hate the feeling of being in a small room underground. The girls made sure that they have prayer books and psalms with them. In between movies they pray and read psalms. Crazy huh? But that is what life is all about here.

Good Morning Israel - "quiet"

One of the early morning news stations called last night "quiet" for northern residents. This can mean one of several things: 1) The military censor has kicked into play and we are not going to give away any more free intelligence to the enemy; 2) The opposite, but from a casualty or injury point of view no new statistics were created. Hopefully every rocket landing was monitored and there are no unknowns to the authorities, for whatever reason; 3) the barrages have so hardened us that now that over 1000 (I am approximating but not exaggerating) have landed , we can say no matter what happens that it is "quiet", read: under control i.e. Give us your best punch you crackheads - to borrow a Rock label - because tomorrow you will be history.
I would like to think that "quiet" will mean that there is a new national consensus in the making and now (as though we forgot) that we have a clear and certain foe there will be no need to continue unraveling ourselves in that proxy reality show we call Israel. All that is needed are some new facts on the ground we can all be proud of.

we're off

I have asked 2 people on the front to guest blog while we're away.
I told them they can post whatever they want, including politics, situation updates or whatever they want.
You will hopefully hear from galileedoc who is in the loop about the mdical situation in the northincluding people in the hospital etc.. and traintalk who has a unique perspective about everything.

May God be with you.

a loud night

The booming was loud at midnight and louder at 5 AM.
My children are very excited about going to a place where there are less booms.
Our neighbors are in Eilat right now, they'll probably be returning today at sometime because she is a nurse and has to open the medical center in case of emergency. He told his daughter that they were going somewhere where there would be no booms. The next morning, someone in the building slammed a daughter and their daughter looked at him accusingly and said, "You said there would be no booms."

I need to find an "I'm a refugee" shirt to alert everyone of our status while we are on vacation. I thought about wearing my US fatigues shirt, which is what I wore when I was homeless (when my house was sold and we were living at my parents for 3 weeks before we moved here).

I will try and find a guest blogger who can keep you updated on a regular basis.

Day 3

We're currently getting bombed, and we're going to sleep.
We haven't decided where we're sleeping tomorrow night, but it probably won't be here.

I'll update in the morning.

Booms in the morning, Booms in the evening - Day 3 of the 3 weeks.

what good can come out of this

I was just reading about the Lebanese people who are quite pissed off at the Hizballah terrorists who are causing their country to be destroyed. I was thinking that if we could get a peace treaty with Lebanon out of this that would be awesome. Lebanon is a country that I would actually visit. There is so much Jewish history there. We used to do major trading in the ports of Tzur and Sidon.
If we could just hop on the train for an hour of visiting the Friday souk right over the border, I would be there.

what good can come out of this

I was just reading about the Lebanese people who are quite pissed off at the Hizballah terrorists who are causing their country to be destroyed. I was thinking that if we could get a peace treaty with Lebanon out of this that would be awesome. Lebanon is a country that I would actually visit. There is so much Jewish history there. We used to do major trading in the ports of Tzur and Sidon.
If we could just hop on the train for an hour of visiting the Friday souk right over the border, I would be there.

bombing update

You know how you feel when a car with a lot of bass is playing down the block and you can actually feel the vibrations.
The is how I feel right now as every 30 seconds for the past 10 minutes a rocket has slammed down somewhere in the vicinity. It's not that close wecause we're not hearing a boooooooooooom. But we're feeling it.

Shaboos under fire

Shabbos is over and what a shabbos it was.
I got home from shul (prayers) on friday evening and sat down for an enjoyable meal. My eldest daughter was still awake, so she got to join us at the table. We were disturbed my an announcement on the loud speakers that said,
"all residents go down to your bomb shelters." My daughter and wife jumped and I calmed them down and explained that we will now when it is time to go down and if we go down every time they announce it then we would never come up.We didn't hear any close booms for the rest of the night, so that was goos. I also explained a little bit of Physics to them and in order for a rocket to actually land in our room where we are all sleeping,it would first have to destroy the neighbor's house. Since our neighbor just became a rabbi, we are certain that God will not let his house be destroyed and therefore we are fairly safe. They didn'tfully understand the physics involved, but my daighter at least believed me.
We look at the anouncement to go to the shelters as a warning that it might get loud soon. and when it gets loud we will go on down to the shelters.

In the morning there were a number of close booms and when I got back from shul (prayers) the wife and kids were in the shelter. In the middle of lunch the house started shaking again after a loud boom and we ran downstairs. It was ok, because the food wasn't that great. We have learned that food made with love is a lot better then food made under duress. even my cookies came out not so great and that is weird.
We went down to the shelters a bunch of times, but mostly we just relaxed. I let the kids go outside to play on the swing set for a little bit. The first time I let them outside they were too nervous to acually leave the porch. A couple hours later they actually went down the slide a couple times.

It looks like we will probably be taking a little vacation for a coupledays. We were thinking about camping at the kinerret but then we found out th Tiberias was heavily hit over shabbos. Now we're not quite sure what to do. I have heard that if we leave the house we have the official status of refugees, but don't know what the ramifications of that are.

I'll post again if something happens or before we go to sleep.
God bless and we thank you for your prayers.

day 2

have a great shabbos.
We'll let you know what's going on in another 25 hours.

BOOMS IN THE MORNING - BOOMS IN THE EVENING. DAY 2 OF THE 3 WEEKS.

blogging from the bunker

I finally got my computer set up in the bunker so I can do live reports without freaking out my children. There was just another announcement of additional information and please go down to the bunkers. So I set up the system with Internet access and I turned on a country music station and my daughters said to me, "can you put on happier music?"

There have been no booms since the announcement, so we'll probably go upstairs again soon. Since the house shook, it has been very easy to convince them to go on down.
but the kids can't handle being in such a tight space for so long.

life under fire

My brother from America just called and reminded me of a far side where there is a guy and his wife in his bomb shelter undeground and the world above him is destroyed and his bomb shelter is filled with canned food and his wife is yelling at him: "Idiot, I told you not to forget the can opener."

I moved the computer downstairs and the kids are watching a movie right now. They were brought upstairs one at a time to shower and bathe for shabbos. We are planning a normal shabbos with contingencies. My wife didn't make a chulent this week because its possible that the electricity will go out. We're going to keep the lights on in th basement and we have a mattress in the bomb shelter.

The neighborhood next to us, named after Yitchak Rabin the prime minister who brought us Oslo (we call it the Russian quarter) was hit and there were wounded people reported. There is the constant drone of the helicopters and we have the Internet on to keep us updated.

On shabbos, starting in 2 hours, we will go into shabbos blogging mode, which means that there will be no updates until shabbos ends, no matter what the situation. Our computers will all be turned off and if we hear booms we will know that something happened and not know exactly what.

A Texan who I have a business relationship with told me, "The country of Texas is friends with Israel."
Let us hope and pray that God is with the people of Israel this week.

I think we were hit

It's a good thing I was inside. There was a bunch of loud booms and suddenly the house shook. We made it safely into the bomb shelter in the basement with no injuries. After we were in the bomb shelter, I tried walking out and stepped on my son's hand. He know thins he is injured.

early afternoon in the galil

I can't even clear the weeds in peace. We let the kids watch a movie this afternoon since we aren't letting them run freely outside. Our village hasn't been hit yet, Thank God, and I am fairly confident that the angles aren't good for them because shooting at us puts Tarshicha, Jatt Yanuach, and a bunch of other arab/druze towns right on the target.

So I went outside to continue to remove the huge weed bushes that have grown up for the past number of years. I am making serious headway and pretty soon we'll actualy be able to walk all the way around the house. Suddenly I heard Boom. and I ignored it because it wasn't too close. Then I heard Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. 5 booms in all. I believe Nahariya was hit again and maybe Kibbutz Kabri. My wife doesn't like to me to be pulling weeds during missile atacks, so I came back inside to let y'all know what's happening.

The good news is that we are still hearing counter booms at regular intervals so we know that the Israeli army is working hard to protect our homes.

We were invited to a number of places in the center of the country, which is quieter, but we really felt that we wanted to be in our home. We also got invited to a bunch of settlements over the green line and we turned them down as well.We really appreciate the offers and next week if this is still continuing and my family is stressed out, we will probably go visiting for shabbos.

My sister wanted to come up this weekend and show support, but I asked her not to come. I don't feel that there is a reason to go missile chasing around the country, though she feels that showing support in endangered communities is not missile chasing. This is not the gaza strip or west bank, which need(ed) all the public support they could get. This is the Galilee and the entire country pretty much supports us.

fun morning at the park

We just spent an enjoyable hour at the pirate ship park. It is so good for them to get outside and just run around after being locked up inside for a whole day yesterday.

Yesterday I was talking to a guy in texas who said to me, "I hope you guys know how to take care of this problem like we should be taking care of our problems." We are a little close to the border for the nuclear option to be good for us, so it isn't even a good deterrent right now.

While we were at the par there were a couple loud booms, but since we were on our 3 hour free time, we decided it couldn't be that bad and continued playing.

all clear

We were given an all clear until 12 PM. The stores will all be open and the children will be able to dance in the street. Last night went by pretty quietly with one very strange occurrence. At about 9:30 PM there was an announcement that due to additional information we should go down to the shelters immediately. About 5 minutes later there was a loud boom. I didn't find any boom after 9:30 on the news, so we don't know where it hit. But I'm very curious to know what got hit. It may have fallen into an empty field or something, but they should really let us know.

Last night I skipped basketball because of the security situation. I wasn't concerned that our game would be hit but I decided to remain with the family.

After 12PM, I suppose they will give hizballah the all clear to start shooting again.

special for northern residents

I left work early today to go and be home with my family. They were a bit stressed out from the constant barrage of rocket fire that could be heard from our living room.
On the way to work someone told me I could probably take my kids to the safari for free while this was going on as well as other specials.
While I was on the way home, I was talking to Jameel and he told me that the army had issued "hanachiot" for everyone north of tzfat. I was a bit excited and I asked him what we get. He replied with a long list of rules, which I was unhappy to hear. I asked him about the discounts and he said what discounts. I said aren't hanachiyot discounts? He laughed at me and said, hanachot are discounts, hanachiot are instructions.

:-(

Anyways, I heard the road to Nahariya was closed and my wife was worried about how I was going to get home. So we agreed to meet in Karmiel and then we could go shopping before they closed all the stores in the region. (The stores here and in Nahariya are already closed). So we got full shopping done for our war rations and now we are good for a couple weeks.

Day 1 - 3 weeks

The children all slept in our bedroom last night. It wasn't much of an exciting experience for them because they were sleeping when I moved them, but better safe then sorry. Our bomb shelter is not big enough to fit all of the children lying down. We definitely need a bigger one. I was thinking something along the lines of a rec room bomb shelter, with a ping pong table, toys and a computer. That probably won't happen for another couple years though.

Central Nahariya got hit this morning by a number of katyushas on my way to work. The train station in Nahariya is closed so I took a sherut into Haifa. It was my wife's turn at the camp that she is doing with the other mothers and she cancelled it. Most of the other mothers thought that was a very good idea.

Our village hasn't been hit yet, Thank God. That might mean it is a very safe place to be or not. I don't know. I really don't have any experience with these sort of things.

The 3 weeks are starting and it looks like we're going to have a 3 weeks kind of 3 weeks.

It boomed all day and boomed all night. Day 1 of the War on the northern border.

its raining

I want to start with a funny story. If you're sensitive about security situations don't read after the story.
We went to the klezmerfest last night in Tzfat. The city was closed to non-residents and we drove past the city and parked in the parking lot. Then a bus too us to where the festival was. The parking lot cost 25 shekel. The bus cost another 3.80. We were sitting on the bus waiting for it to fill up when one of the parking lot workers walked over to the bus with a policeman and pointed at someone. The cop said to the guy, do you want your car towed? The guy yelled back, "either let me into the parking lot for free or I'm not moving." The cop repeated himself asking if he wanted his car towed. The guy said that there was no sign and no reason why he shouldn't park there. The cop said, if you leave your car there it will be towed. The guy laughed and said, that either they let him into the parking lot for free or he is leaving the car there because there is no signthat says he can't park there and therefore he is not moving it. The policeman walked away and the bus left. The entire way to the festival this guy was talking loudly about how they can't tow his car because there was no sign. I was thinking, "what a stupid person." When we got back to the parking lot at 11, his car was not there. I don't know if they towed it or if he came back before us, but I assume it was towed. I can just imagine this guy comingback to the parking lot at 12:30 AM after the festival ended and saying, where's my car.

"Mommy, if there are no bombs tomorrow can my friend sleepover" my oldest daughter asked my wife today. It started at about 8:30AM, or at least that was when I got the first call from my wife. It is now 11:30 Pm and the booms have not stopped yet. Most of the booms are us hitting them, you can tell the difference if you take the time to listen.
Today was a very rough day for Israel. A second front was forecably opened up by the Lebanese as they started shooting rockets over the border. 5 people were injured in Shlomi, which is just north of us. 2 more soldiers were kidnapped. I heard that they were Druze, which could make it very rough on the prisoners. A tank was blown up by a mine and the 4 soldiers in there were killed.
May we merit the coming of mashiach speedily in our days.

Tanach Festival

Last night was the annual tanach (bible) festival in our village. I got there a bit late, but the kids were having a great time. There were about 10 people from the community dressed up as:
King David,
Moshe,
Yehoshua,
Ben Sorer oo Moreh,
Og melekh haBashan and more.

There was a large variety of activities, and presentations. The kids got to make various Jewish themed arts and craft projects, including a mezuza cover and bencher holder. There was a Bikurim parade, including flutists. There were songs about eretz yisrael, biblically oriented.

There were also different raffles for different age groups. My kids had to run around finding the different characters and then they had to say something specific to them. If they said the right thing they got a sticker on their sheet. Everyone who had a full sheet was entered in the raffle. (my kids didn't win and they were sad).

There was even a little animal petting corner, including rabits and snakes and other fun creatures.

The mayor spoke and gave a bracha that our neighbor, Gilad Shalit (he's from the next village over), should return home safely as should all the soldiers fighting for us in gaza. A rabbi then spoke and had the kids all say shema out loud and hashem melekh.

It was a very enjoyable evening.

Tonight we are thinking about going to the klezmer festival in Tzfat. We've tried to go each year since we've been here and it hasn't worked out yet.

the religous american's place in Israel

In Washington DC a Jewish boy was killed yesterday by thugs who were interested in rape and robbery. The boy was an activist in the Israeli scene and will be missed by the Jewish people. He was found by a policeman named Joe Gentile. No, really. I assumed Ynetnews had made a mistaken so I did a google search for Joe Gentile. I came up with a ton of people with that name.
Suprised, I did a google search for Joe Settler and Joe Camel and only found only one each.

Yesterday we went to Tiverya to eat in honor of our anniversary (my MIL treated and even stayed home to babysit so it was a full treat). We decided to go to the Pagoda instead of Decks because we were at Decks the last couple times we ate in the area and wanted to try something different. My wife thought the service was horrible, but I didn't think it was so bad. We got a great table, in the corner facing the Kinneret and had a very enjoyable evening.

After dinner, we visited with a former rebbe of mine and his wife who were staying in the area. We spoke about aliyah and the place for Americans in Israeli society today. I think the problem is that Americans don't want to look at the broad picture and are too concerned with the titles and stereotypes that those titles bring to an American religious family. In America, Dati Leumi is associated with modern orthodoxy, which religious dati leumiers call "dati lite." In Israel, they have their own yeshiva world with all the same type of politics etc. that are inherent in the American yeshiva world. If you look at a product of the dati leumi yeshiva system, you will not see much difference from an American yeshiva guy who went to college and got a job. The only difference is hashkafically, how they look at the State of Israel. But if you discuss it with them and how absurd their beliefs are, you will realize that it is 99% semantics. We believe this is the end of the exile and they believe that it is the beginning of the redemption. However, we are both looking forward towards a better reality. The end of an era and the beginning of another era are generally fuzzy enough that we won't know exactly how to define this time period for another couple hundred years as we look back and reflect on history.

Most of the more yeshivishe Americans don't necessarily fit in hashkafically with the Israeli chareidim, but they don't fit in at all with the dati leumis or with the Americans who left yeshiva to go to college and work. They would probably fit in well in a chareidi community and just be considered a bit modern.

aliyahed

My older brother made aliyah with his family this past Thursday. I'm probably the last blogger to write about it because I haven't been around until now. Wednesday night we slept in Tel Aviv at a friends house after visiting my BIL in the hospital (he seems to be doing better now, thanks for the tehillim. Keep them up he's not all fixed up yet.). Thursday morning, bright and early we headed down to the airport. We waited with hundreds of other people at the tarmac for their historic flight to arrive. Then we listened to a ton of speeches about what a great thing it is for Americans to make aliyah.

We are now 4 siblings of 7 in Israel. One is planning on coming with Mashiach and the other 2 will probably end up here on their own if he doesn't hurry up. God promised us this country, he gave us this country and then he took it away. Some bloggers feel that it was probably just bad politics that caused nebekenezer (sp?) to destroy the temple and exile the Jews, but we know better. Now that God has started letting us come back, this is the place to be. You can even get a job here As the 2 good spies said "the land is very very good." It takes some getting used to - the people here are of a different mindset, the language is hard and the pay doesn't compare. But once you overcome that, it is very rewarding and even enjoyable living here.

My aliyah advice is not to get too caught up in the politics. It's generally good to pick one side, but when things don't go your way don't get too worked up about it. There's nothing you can do about it anythng.

After the aliyah ceremony we went to the safari in ramat gan. We really enjoyed it, especially the ostriches. After you drive through the safari part, you can stop and go to the zoo before continuing on to the lions section and finishing the rest of the safari. We spent about 4 hours there and the kids had a wonderful time.

Friday morning we spent in the Chula - no there were no birds and we didn't even get to see a kosher water bufallo - it was an enjoyable walk.

alternate realities

This morning on the train I had a conversation with Train Talk about alternate realities. Not surprisingly, he completely disagreed with me and insists that there are no alternate realities, at least not in the way that I explained them.

In general I don't like telling personal stories about my wife, but I think this is pretty important so I will anyways. Also our anniversary is this week, so its nice to mention stories about your wife in honor.
A number of years ago, shortly after we got married, my wife was reading Roots by Alex Haley. Somewhere in the middle of the book, the little girl (I forget her name) was getting raped. My wife couldn't handle the book anymore and put it away to never read it again. I was aghast. What kind of person would let a poor girl be raped for eternity just because she couldn't handle the end of the story. After arguing with my wife about it for a couple days and pleading with her to at least finish the rape part of the book and put an end to her suffering, I finally picked up the book and read it through cover to cover and put an end to the story.

Train Talk, like my wife and a number of other people, feels that the little girl was not actually being raped even while she was in the middle of reading the story. Putting the book away doesn't force a continuum, it is merely stopping reading which is supposed to be an enjoyable or educational pursuit.

These people simply can't see out of the narrow confines of their box and may not even realize that they are in a box to begin with. When you read a book or watch a movie or invest any part of yourself in something, that forms a new reality. That story or action now exists in your sphere of existence and influences you and can even have a strong impact. In each person lies a number of actual realities. This is what forms the uniqueness of an individual. There is no such thing as hot or cold as a global definition, merely as a concept, because your personal reality defines whether something is hot or cold, not an arbitrary temperature.

When you read a book with Ted Nash as the enemy, to take a DeMille book for example, he becomes your personal enemy. He has the ability to harm you in ways that you can't even begin to imagine. It is only a person's reckless irresponsibility to understand the consequences that allows him to accept an occurrence without being able to place the blame on the root cause of the problem. This was one of the purposes of the choose your own adventure books that were popular in the 80s. each person had the power to determine how the book was going to end and therefore be able to actually compete on an even playing field.

The problem is that there really is no reality and everything that surrounds you is an alternate reality. The issue becomes whether you focus on one reality so intently that you not only ignore the other realities surrounding you, but are completely unaware of their existence.

People must open their eyes and accept that life is a prism and not simply a ray of light.

more tehillim

My BIL is back in the hospital.
Mass tehillim are appreciated.
benzion yehuda ben chana rachel.

Israeli Safari

Has anybody been to the Safari in Tel Aviv?
I'm thinking of taking the family this Thursday after we meet my brother and his family at the airport. They're making aliyah and will probably be exhausted tired when they get in, so we figured on doing something fun for the rest of the afternoon without them.
It costs 50 shekels per person, including kids.

Is it worth the cost?

Happy Fourth

The fourth of July represents freedom to Americans. Freedom from British tyranny, freedom from the extra U, freedom from tea, freedom from a class system,...
In Israel, we are hoping for the Freedom of the soldier who was kidnapped, Gilad Shalit.
In Israel, however, the fourth represents nothing. No BBQs and no fireworks, even though we got rid of the Brits and got rid of the U, they still like to spell k words with a q. We are still held prisoner to ourselves and to world opinion.

The deal that the palestinians didn't accept included prisoners freed, and another withdrawal from Gaza. They had to guarantee an end to Kassam rockets and return our soldier. They wouldn't agree to that.

Looking at the entire picture, it looks like they want/need the Israeli army in the strip. Since the day Israel left they have been doing everything they can to get Israel to take it again. The fact that there was not a welcoming parade upon the reentry is the most surprising thing of the whole ordeal. It was only after shooting nonstop rockets at Israel, which Israel had promised to retaliate for, but never would, did they go to the next step of kidnapping a soldier. If we hadn't entered the strip, which we almost didn't, they probably would have just invaded assuming that we must all be braindead with no capacity to defend ourselves.
We have no deterrent capability. Not negotiating over the soldier is not going to give us deterrence because next week we will let them get away with a thousand other things.

Has anybody ever heard the expression, "if just one rocket lands..." That's Israeli deterrence for you.

an ultimatum

An ultimatum has been given that Israel better release the arab prisoners by 6 AM Tuesday or...
Or what? Or they're going to kill our soldier? Why don't they tell us the or what? It's very hard to take an ultimatum seriously if you don't know what the consequences are for not meeting their deadline. They could have made the same demands last month without kidnapping a soldier. "Free the prisoners by Friday or we're gonna git you."

If it does have to do with the soldier then they should specify what we should be worried about.

That's one perspective.

On the other side, the Israeli leadership is taking the ultimatum seriously and are discussing it at the highest levels. Olmert and Peretz. Peretz believes that negotiations will always win. Of course, we might have expected the Israeli Jimmy Hoffa to destroy Gaza first and then say "lets negotiate." But no, unfortunately the tactics that he had no problem using against the Israeli people to try and get his workers fine leather duck boots are invalid when trying to free a soldier from the grasp of the evil palestinians.

Meanwhile Kadima is in crisis according to a Haaretz report. They still have not built any institutions or policies and are quickly losing the support of their mayoral infrastructure.

In government, also according to a Haaretz report, everyone is working on their own civil marriage bill. It looks like the final bill will only allow people who are not disallowed from marrying by religious law but still can not get married by religious law to get married. So from what I understand of this article mamzerim will not be allowed to get married but a Jew will be able to marry a non Jew or a kohen will be able to marry a divorcee or something like that. Howevr someone who can get married in the framework of Jewish law will not be allowed to use this register.

So if a couple wants to get married civilly because they hate religion they would have to first get married to someone else and then cheat with each other, thus violating Jewish law and forbidding each other to get married to each othr which will then allow them to marry each other civilly. Maybe.

lazy days of summer

Summer time is here and that means summer camp at our office. We have cable tv and 2 computers for the children. We also have arts and crafts materials available, such as papers, markers, cardboard and scissors. We haven't reached the point where we hire a counselor for the summer, but I figure that is only a year or two away. SO now we have a buch of kids in the office who are spending most of their summer locked in an office building watching movies and playing on the computer. The main problem that I see with this is that every time they want adult interaction, they are "bothering" the adults who are trying to work. How would you feel if everytime you wanted to talk to your dad, who is in the office next door, you felt like you were bothering him? That's why I don't like to bring my kids to work or do work at home when they are around. When I am working, I like to focus on what I am trying to accomplish. Any interference, especially a kid asking me how to turn off the vol!
ume of the tv while still having volume on the dvd (it's not so simple, I ended up just unplugging the cable), just increases the time that it will take to accomplish the task at hand exponentially.

The problem with summer vacation is that parents don't get a summer vacation. In two income families, parents don't have a lot of options for what to do with their children for two months. Even in single income families, the moms can't handle giving their children 100% of their time, no matter how much love they have.
My wife got together with 6 other mothers and each one is taking a couple days and providing a day camp for the kids for 3 weeks. Those moms that work are taking vacation days when it is their turn. Since we have two kids and all the other families just have 1 kid, then we get 3 days of being the couselor instead of only 2. Sounds fair to me. Our day camp is a midos mased camp and each day the mom-in-charge is supposed to work on 1 midah. I am not sure if that midah is supposed to help the mother deal with the kids better or if the kids are supposed to learn about the midah, but I think both would be positive influences on the kids.
My kids school gave them homework for the summer. Every day they expect them to learn 1 perek of chumash, 1 perek of navi and 2 mishnas of pirkei avos. I thought that was a great idea until I started doing it with them. It took me 1 hour to go through the first perek of bereishis, without rashi. Its not something they can do on their own yet, and I don't have 3 hours at home even if they had the patience to sit that long. I can read it to them like a story, but I think they will accomplish more if they actually read it themselves. So I think we're going to just do one track, and I'll give them the option of doing either chumash or navi.

The lazy days of summer have arrived.

simpolistic complexity

There is a Charlie Brown episode where they are taking a math test and peppermint patty asks marcie what she wrote for a certain question. Marcie replied with a number (I don't remember which) and peppermint patty says, "I wrote green" Green? Was the surprised response. She replied, "I thought it was a trick question."

People sometimes complicate simple things for no reason. It isn't because they are less intelligent or are missing something, it's because they think that life is more complicated then it really is.

On the other hand, sometimes people take things that are very complex and try to provide a simple solution that doesn't fully answer the need.

Therein lies the problem.

an evening of dance

One of the guys at work is part of a ballroom dancing performance and he asked everyone to come and watch. For 7 months he has been practicing this 3 hours a day 5 days a week. He first sent out an email which I ignored. He then walked around asking everyone if they were going to come or not. I told him that I had to think about it. Then he came around again asking if I was coming and I told him I had to discuss it with my wife. Finally he came around asking if I had discussed it with my wife.

So I agreed to go. I do have to work with this guy and I don't really want to insult him. Shouldn't there be some law about what co-workers are allowed to ask you? Or how many times? Is this the same thing as girl scout cookies?

My wife quoted a recent dilbert when I told her about it, which surprised me because I hadn't realized she kept up.

So we're making an evening out of it and got a babysitter, which is a story unto itself, and we're going out for dinner in Haifa, if we can find a kosher restaurant (apparantly not such an easy feat). Our babysitter said she really wanted to come but her friends were getting together at 10:30, so would we mind if she found someone to replace her then. Of course, she didn't know for sure that her friends were getting together, so she only wanted someone to replace her if she decided to leave. We needed a babysitter, so we agreed that if one of our regular babysitters was willing to replace her at 10:30 conditionally then that would be fine. Obviously she didn't find anyone, so we found another babysitter who was happy to stay the whole time.

God's role in tragedies

אני מאמין באמונה שלמה שהבורא יתברך שמו הוא בורא ומנהיג לכל-הברואים והוא לבדו עשה ועושה ויעשה לכל-המעשים.
I believe with complete faith that the Creator—blessed be His name—creates and directs all creatures; and that He alone made, [now] makes, and will [always] make all the works.

The first of the 13 declarations of Jewish faith is that God is running the show. People continuosly question "where was God" when certain events happen or they blame individuals or political philosophies for tragedies that happen on a national/global level. People think that God gives us freedom of choice so we can screw things up on our own. Therefore, if we vote Sharon into power and he decides that he is going to go against everything he has ever campaigned for, then obviously he is using his freedom of choice to screw up the entire country.
WRONG.

During the tsunami/hurricane/... you would think that people would finally say this is the hand of God, a completely natural act of destruction. Nope. The same people who blame politicians and people for events on a global/national level either don't understand how God could let this happen or say it is a completely natural event and has no spiritual connotations.
WRONG AGAIN.

I'll tell you where God was during the expulsion from Gaza - with tears in his eyes, he kicked them out with his own foot.
I'll tell you where God was during Hurricane Katrina - He was standing there blowing real hard.
I'll tell you where God was during the tsunami - He was spitting at the people who lived in the area.
And to go one step further (into the forbidden zone) God himself lit the fire in the crematorium and sprayed Zyklon gas on the Jews during the Holocaust.

Do you know why? Neither do I.

In the Torah when tragedies happened, it is made fairly obvious what the reason for the destruction is.
In parshas Nitzavim it clearly states natural desasters come from God for a very specific reason:
גפרית ומלח, שריפה כל ארצה - לא תיזרע ולא תצמיח, ולא יעלה בה כל עשב: כמהפכת סדום ועמורה, אדמה וצבויים, אשר הפך ה' באפו ובחמתו. ואמרו כל הגויים: 'על מה עשה ה' ככה לארץ הזאת?; מה חורי האף הגדול הזה?'. ואמרו 'על אשר עזבו את ברית ה' אלוהי אבותם, אשר כרת עימם בהוציאו אותם מארץ מצרים.
Because the Jews did not follow the covenant of God, who took us out of Egypt.
We see the Torah full of stories that describe what happens when Jews are bad: After the sin of the golden calf, a good portion were wiped out. After the spies, they had to dig their own graves and sleep in them at night because there were good odds that they wouldn't wake up. After Korach, aside from the ground opening up and swallowing them, there was another plague where people started dying until Aharon the kohen gadol burnt ketores in the camp of the people.

Jewish tradition is that the first Bais Hamikdash, the jewish temple, was destroyed because the Jews regularly performed the 3 big sins. It wasn't because the king wasn't strong enough and didn't have a good army. Does anybody remember the story of Micah who took the idol and caused the Jews to lose lives for the first time in a war?
The second temple was destroyed because people hated one another for no good reason, not because the politicians didn't live up to their promises.
It would seem utterly foolish of Pharoah not to let the Jews go, when his country was being destroyed. But God had other plans and hardened Pharoah's heart.

There are the good times as well. In the days of Purim the people returned to God, and the planned holocaust didn't happen. In the days of chanukah, the people returned to God and the enemies were chased out of our country.

That doesn't mean we should just give up. We have to do our part by voting for the right people and protesting decisions that we feel are bad the jewish people. That doesn't always work like we saw after voting for Sharon.
However, the most important thing we have to work on is ourselves. Find out what God wants from us and start doing it. Until that happens, the political and security situation is going to continue getting worse. The biggest problem that we have to overcome in our generation is that people don't really believe in God. Return to the first of the declarations of faith and the path will becaome a lot clearer.

Where does freedom of choice start and divine providence end? That is another post, another day, probably not in the near future.

guns aren't muktzah

Last night at the hilchos shabbos shiur we were discussing various
kinds of muktzah and weapons came up. There were two opinions brought
down that weapons were not muktzah.

Rav Goren, the first chief rabbi of the Israeli army, said that it is
a "kli shemelachto leheter", a vessel whose primary use is permissable
on shabbos, because it is a mitzva to shoot the enemy even on shabbos.

Rav SZ Auerbach also said that it is a kli shemelachto leheter. His
reason reasoning was because the primary use of a weapon is not using
the weapon. Rather, the primary purpose of a weapon is deterrence.

In the end the rabbis psak was it depends on the situation and why you
want to carry the weaon as to whether it is allowed or not. I just
wanted to share an odd bit of trivia with you.

lousy defense

In the wake of the kidnapping of Gilad Shlait, we must first and foremost assign blame. It is impossible for Jews to do anything without first blaming somebody for what happened. So the shin bet said that they told the army this was going to happen so it's the army's fault. The army said the shin bet gave them general information but nothing specific so it was bad intelligence.
Joe Settler and Jameel, along with countless others, blame the left wing for getting us into this mess. The left wing sees this as a success because the arabs are not being victimized in this instance and therefore they blame the right wing for instigating towards a response.
Shimon Peres says "kidnap shmidmap. Ron Arad was kidnapped years ago and we aren't doing anything for him."

One of the major problems is that Israel does not learn from history or rather when they learn from history they do do a half assed job. Historically to defend a castle or a city, you would build a wall around it. Israel has started to do this and it hasn't helped. The problem in this specific instance is that the terrorists went under the wall. If Israel had learned from history they would know that castles not only had strong walls to protect them but also a moat. If there was a moat surrounding the walls with alligators and snakes, then the terrorists wouldn't have been able to get under. I feel strongly that the moat digging should start immediately and that walls should only be finished after the moat completely surrounds us. After the moat is finished and the walls are completed we will be heavily fortified and we can continue to threaten to retaliate when rockets are shot at us.

After the blame we need to threaten. The government of Israel has declared that if we ever get that soldier back there's going to be hell to pay. Did anybody else fall off their chairs laughing at that statement? Here's the conversation between 2 Gazans:
Gazan A: We finished with the game of capture the soldier, should we give him back?
Gazan B: Are you nuts? As soon as we give him back they're going to play Kick Our Ass.
Gazan A: You have a good point. Pass the peanuts.

It's too bad Sharon isn't still in office so he can start firing people who are thinking that maybe the evacuation wasn't such a good idea.

Finally we get to solutions. Israel has asked Abu Mazen to return the body safely. His miltary wing responded by sayng, "we have chemical and biological weapons, come and get him." We then asked our international supporters to help get our boy back and they requested that we don't do anything to destabilize the region.

In the end nothing will be done because we are a people without a leader. A body without a head, running around in circles because we have no clue which way is up.

camping

At 5:30 AM my children woke up, and starting talking loudly, laughing and generally making a ruckus. I started laughing, revenge is so sweet.
We were at the kineret on a small camping trip Thursday night. We figured it was a good time to go before all the kids got off of school, because it would be a little quieter. We found a nice beach where they promised no midnight disco party and a family atmosphere, which was exactly what we were looking for. I set up the tents, while the kids played in the water with my wife and our friends (they had gotten there earlier and had already set up their tents). Then I went in the water for a while while the grill heated up.
We had a nice bbq and got the kids to sleep at a very decent hour. We actually climbed into the tents around 11:30 and were planning on actually sleeping through the night. At about 12:30AM a group of 9 Muslim Arab men set up right next to our tents and started their BBQ. They weren't louder then they needed to be, meaning there was no yelling or loud music. But when you have 9 men bbqing and having a good time, it is not quiet. I got out of my tent and walked around so they could see that peopl were asleep over there, but that didn't faze them. They kept going until around 3:30. I said to my wife, tomorrow we will get our revenge.
I probably drifted off to sleep for a couple hours before my children woke up and were out of the tent whooping it up. They weren't louder then neccessary, just as loud as children should be when they get up. Our friends kids also got up around the same time and they were playing very nicely together.
The best part was the expression on the faces of those arabs as they lay there thinking "we just went to sleep." They had brought mattresses or sleeping bags and weren't sleeping in a tent, so we got to see the shock registering on their faces. I didn't allow my kids to make unneccessary noise, and I asked them not to yell when they were yelling. But kids make noise and that's that.

We went swimming and were in the water from around 6Am until around 10. Everyone had a lot of fun.

Ask Shifra wrote about being judgemental the other day when she saw some possibly modern orthodox kids and modern orthodox adults walking on shabbos, filthy and sweaty after a strenuous shabbos afternoon football game.
When I'm at the beach, I generally keep my glasses off and since I can't see 5 feet in front of me there is not as big of a tznius problem as there could be. (I'm not saying that there is no problem, it is just minimized.) Anyway, for some reason my glasses were on at one point and I saw a religious lady with her hair covered wearing a bikini walking around with her husband. She kept her hair covered when she went into the water. I turned to my wife and asked her what she thought about nude sunbathing with hair covered. She didn't think that either was very appropriate.

So we tried not being judgemental and made up stories about them, though in reality we were judgemental and felt that she was a crackhead. Either show off your body or be tzanua, but covering your hair and very little else seems a bit strange.

Toning down your resume

People have to learn how to tone down their resumes instead of building them up. I just got a resume from someone who put down he was the Director of sales and marketing for a company and President of another company, etc.. He's 27 years old and graduated from college in 2002.

When I asked our HR person what she thought of him for a sales/support coordination position, she looked through his resume and said he's probably overqualified. When I explained that he was 27 and probably just built up his resume she said that if he thinks he did all of these things then he will be bored at our job and will probably leave after a year or so.

I'm not saying that he didn't do what is on his resume, but there are a lot of different ways to present it. We have all been president of our own consulting firms. We have all been the VP of something or other because we were one of two people working in the company and we could be VP. We have all worked summer jobs as interns through which we can claim title to king of the world.

But a company does not want to hire a CEO for a sales position. A company wants to hire a salesman for a sales position. You should never have a higher position then the one you are looking at on your resume. If you are looking at IT Manager, your resume should have IT Manager at the highest level of what you have done. That is called a parallel move. If you write that you were the CIO and now you are willing to accept IT Manager, they will look at you as over qualified. In a 5 person company, the salesman is the assistant sales person as well as the Sales Manager and the Director of Marketing and Sales, as well as the Vice President of Sales and the Deputy Director of the company. However those titles are not going to get you a job, because everyone is looking for a lateral move and are not willing to pull someone above or below his experience.

I recommend before sending in a resume to find out what the requirements are and reading your resume from their perspective. If you were looking through the 100 resumes that you've received, would you consider this one to be a perfect fit for the position?

computax sucks

I went to the CompuTax show yesterday at the Tel Aviv exhibition center and I was totally disappointed. My goal was basically to meet vendors and see what was out there.
The vendors who were there weren't interested in talking business, they were interested in selling products to individuals. However, we aren't talking about retail stores, these are distributors. There were a few vendors who were interested in finding out what I was interested in, but when I asked questions I mostly got a response to look at their website. And if I leave my business card, someone would get back to me.

There were a couple of interesting things to see, but it certainly wasn't worth the time and effort of going.

I had signed up for an IT strategy lecture before the show to make a full day of it, and that was partly fairly interesting. The guy tried to bring a proof that managing IT strategy correctly was the key to success because in a PWC survey companies who align their IT startegy with their business strategy are much more successful then those that don't.
I suggested that maybe the companies that don't align their IT strategy don't understand business as an entity and that's why they are less successful. He said he knows a lot of people who are good at business and don't align their IT and aren't as successful and I explained that those people might be good at sales or other aspects of business, but they don't understand business as a whole. At which point he said exactly right and kept going.

The point is that IT isn't the cause for business success, rather if you don't understand how to manage your operation as a congruent entity then you obviously won't do as well if you did have everything going in the same direction.

CompuTax

Tomorrow I'll be off blogging (and work) to spend a day at the
CompuTax exhibition. CompuTax is supposedly the only computer show in
Israel and it occurs once a year. All of the big vendors are supposed
to be there and everything should be on sale.

Back in the states, I used to go to computer shows regularly and pick
up good equipment dirt cheap. I've heard that they do have great sales
here, but I am assuming that means the prices will be only 20% higher
then what I could find retail in the US.

If anybody else is planning on being at the exhibition tomorrow, let
me know and we'll hook up.

settlers are enemies

The Yisraeli newspaper is a recent newspaper phenomena in Israel that is competing against the mainstream press. There are two editions, morning and evening and it is given away for free at the train and bus stations. Advertising costs 20,000 shekel per day for a full page ad and they are getting advertisers. (what that means is that I can't afford to advertise in the Yisraeli, which I was thinking about doing.)

That is all just background information for those people who would have said,"I've never heard of the Yisraeli, it must not be a real paper"

This morning I read an article that the soldiers stationed around Psagot have been banned from visiting with the residents of that city. The unofficial reason given was because they don't want friendly relations to hamper the upcoming expulsion. In other words, the residents of Psagot should be looked at as enemies. It is dangerous to visit with them, as they may destroy the mission.
One resident says that that he has been hosting soldiers for the past 25 years and now he feels like they are treating him like a Palestinian. He doesn't feel that being friendly towards Israeli soldiers is bad for Israel.

Last Thursday night, Jameel's wife hosted Israeli soldiers for a BBQ at their Muqatan settlement. If this keeps up, those might be the last settler steaks those soldiers get to eat.

The army gave an official "security" reason for the ban on Psagot, but sees it as a weak excuse.

maybe realignment is good for Israel

A new perspective just hit me as I was reading through the daily news. The right wing uses the Gaza example showing one reason why the convergence plan will be bad for Israel. Bad for our morale, bad for our security and bad in all other aspects. Thinking through it rationally, there have been no positive aspects to the diengagement from Gaza from any perspective. From the looks of it, there will be no positive benefits to retreating from the West Bank. There will be nothing positive about giving the Arabs Jerusalem.

Obviously we are missing something here.

Israel has had numerous enemies over the past 50some years. Some of them blatantly hating us, others not so blatantly. Jordan has a peace agreement with us, as does Egypt, but there is nobody foolish enough to think they they won't join in the next war against Israel, tacitly at the very least. The British have made their hatred of Israel very well known, from the time before the modern State was created through today, as they are trying to put our officers on trial for war crimes. I don't even think we need to mention the French.

Looking at Sderot and the security situation since the disengagement, we would expect the British to stand firmly behind Israel and say, "Do it again." Jordan certainly has the ability to keep the Palestinians at bay for a couple of months while they silently encourage rockets sent at El Al planes leaving Ben Gurion international. Egypt should be smiling and saying, disengagement sounds cool, that will show the Gazans that they won and they should keep fighting on that side of the border. The French should be ecstatic at the prospect of more chaos in Israel.

I only wonder what we are missing here? What could possibly be so bad for the Jews in Israel that would make a convergence seem like a good thing for us? The convergence plan is based on giving the palestinians 90% of the West Bank. We already gave them 100% of the Gaza Strip. Is it practical for anyone to think that in negotiations they will receive 100% of the West Bank? Isreal is saying we won't negotiate anymore, here is 90% of what you want and the other side is saying "no, we will only accept it after we negotiate."

One possibility is that it will greatly empower Hamas and the rest of the Islamic brotherhood, which will then be bad for the rest of the world. Remember what happened to France a couple months ago, when the country was trashed by a bunch of muslims? Egypt and Jordan are barely holding onto their thrones amidst a sea of Islamists. Britain is being taken over by the brotherhood as well. (can you say terrorist wearing sneakers).

When your enemies don't like your plans, that generally shows that they think it is better for them without your plans. This is a rare case where what is bad for Israel will be infinitely worse for the rest of the world. There is no other possible explanation why our enemies would be against our suicidal plans.

the moth

We have a number of lizards running around our house. They are little and cute and everybody likes them, so we don't even try to get rid of them. I'm not convinced that if we tried to get rid of them they would leave without a fight, but that's a different story. I've heard that lizards eat bugs and that they are actually good to have around.
On Friday night we were eating our shabbos meal and we noticed that there was a little lizard on the wall standing very still. There was a big moth flying around and every once in a while when it landed the lizard would move slightly.

As we were watching, a small moth landed near the lizard. Suddenly, it moved very quickly and snatched the moth with into its mouth. The moth was beating its wings trying to get away, but the lizard wasn't letting go. This was savagary at its finest. Beast against Beast. Survival of the Fittest. The lizard slammed the moth into the wall a couple times. After a couple minutes of fighting, the lizard nodded his head and swallowed the moth whole. You could see the lizard's body shaking as the moth was still alive inside it mouth desperately fighting for survival. Finally, the lizard swallowed the moth and it was never seen again.

We now have one less moth in the house and are happier because of it.

canada is magog

I've picked up a small ice coffee habit recently. I don't drink coffee and I'm off of coke, because of my diet (which is going very well, thank you for asking) so when I don't sleep well at night I am very tired in the morning. Ice coffee is the perfect answer between coffee and coke because it is like a slurpee, (but not, don't ever confuse any frozen drink in Israel with a slurpee. you'll be disappointed) and it doesn't have coke in it, but it does have caffeine. I guess it tastes like coffee but it is cold and doesn't bother me so much. It's a 10 shek once a week habvit right now, so I'll survive.

I learned something interesting in the daf yomi yesterday (yoma not rosh hashana). We all know that the masicah is supposed to come in the aftermath of the great war between gog and magog. We don't really know who these nations are and people have often suggested that the world warss have been between gog and magog, or it was the cold war between the US and Russia etc... It turns out that magog is the son of yafes, the son of Noah. The gemara discusses who each one of yefes' kids are. Magog is listed as Canadia.

Now we know half of the participants in the war and we can say with absolute certainty that Gog is going to win.

What sucks about Quiddich

I've been reading Harry Potter recently. It's an enjoyable clean read and it keeps me in the ballpark of my oldest daughter's imagination. I read the first in English, the second in both English and Hebrew and now I'm working on the third one in only hebrew. One of the nice things about reading these stories in Hebrew is that it really contains a lot of conversation, which is what I am looking to learn, so it is increasing my vocabulary and knowledge of the normal ways to say things (Hebrew is not a direct translation of English.)

For those non-Harry Potter readers, Quiddich is a game played by witches and wizards on flying brooms. It is kind of like that game that you play in bumbper cars where you try to catch a ball with a net and throw it in the hoop, but a lot more complicated. (My sister just reminded me the name of the game is whirlyball, and she doesn't know if it is played outside of the great midwest.)

Harry gets a brand new broom so that he can go faster then everyone else. This is what sucks about Quiddich. The winners are the people with the best equipment, not necessarily the best players. Every good sport regulates the equipment so that equipment is not a factor in winning the game. In baseball, for example, players are not allowed to cork their bats because it makes the ball go farther. In hockey, the sticks have to be regulation size. You can't play with a stick that gives you a two inch advantage over the other players. I actually was at a game where they made someone switch sticks. In basketball you can't wear shoes with springs in them to make you jump higher. Quiddich, on the other hand, is stacked so that the guy who can afford the best equipment has the best chance of winning.

Until this problem is fixed, Quiddich will never, at least in my mind, be a real sport.

manipulation

Some people hear the word manipulation and are instantly repulsed. Its 12 letters simply makes it 3 times as bad as a 4 letter word. I will agree that there are manipulative abuses, but call a spade a spade. Lets be honest, everyone manipulates and it is not a bad thing when done properly and correctly. To put it simply, manipulation is the act of specifically doing something that will increase the chance of other actions being performed (my own definition). A teacher promising no homework to students who are quiet during the class is manipulating them. A wife who puts the garbage bag in a place where her husband will see it is manipulating him.
God himself, according to Rashi, puts a high value on manipulation. When moshe was taking donations for building the temple he refused to take the mirrors of the women because they were used for sexual purposes. God told moshe that it was the best donation of them all because the women used them to manipulate their husbands who were not interested into being interested. The mirrors were then melted down and used to make the laver.

I'm not saying that all manipulation is good, but it can be a very powerful tool to get people to do what they should be doing or really want to do anyways, just don't know it yet.
In short, if you want something from someone figure out what will get them to change their minds. Then apply the right sort of pressure or modify the situation until they feel on their own that this is exactly what they want to do.

The innocent, terrorized people of sderot are currently on a hunger strike to try and manipulate the government into doing something about the daily barrage of rockets that are falling on their town.

As Dr. Seuss says, "It's easy to win you just have to know how."

mondail or mondale

My wife took me out for dinner the other night to Morgenfelds for my birthday. Morgenfeld's is a South American steak house in moshav Liman, a small moshav approximately a 5 minute drive from Rosh Hanikra. While the restaurant is not kosher lemehadrin, some of their meat is glatt and they will be happy to tell you which one if you ask. Of course you have to know who to ask. We asked the waitress if she could ask Marcell which meat was chalak (the hebrew word for glatt). She said they all were. I told her that Marcell said that some of them were and some of them weren't, so could she please go and clarify. She came back and said that the sinta was and the others weren't. That made sense because the other times we had been there the sinta was glatt, though the last time the Asta was too. We ordered the special, which is an antipasta plate, a specific appetizer and a main dish for 100 shek. If you order them separately it would come out to 125 shek, so it is a good deal (but yo!
u have to get antipasta instead of wings, which everyone would most likely order if they were just ordering an appetizer).

Sitting next to us was a bunch of English people, not just English speakers but real britim. They were a funny group and it seemed like they had a special relationship with the owner of the restaurant, and I surmised that he married into the family. My wife didn't think that it was nice that I was talking about them the whole time, even though they didn't hear me.

The mondail was on the big screen tv the whole time, I think it was brazil against some other team. Mondail, for those that don't know, is the guy who lost to Reagen in the 1984 presidential elections. He not only lost, he lost badly. The only 2 places he won were Minnesota (his home state) and Washington DC (not a state). Europeans, who have a habit of loving things that Americans hate and vice versa, chose Mondale to represent the soccer championship. So they took the guy who America rejected and used him to represent the sport that America rejected. Very appropriate. Though Walter Mondale doesn't spell his name the same way the Europeans do, that is because Europeans don't know how to spell. Even in England, the country where the English language evolved from, they throw in the letter U in random places. Note: That the canadians also do this just shows that their language has not finished its evolutionary cycle yet, though it is light years ahead of the British. As an asi!
de, Walter Mondale has Norwegian ancestry and is very proud of that.

After dinner we walked around the beach for a little bit. All in all it was a very enjoyable evening.

israel train accident

Snickers in Israel are not kosher. You read it here first 3 months ago. I don't know if it's because of the triangle k or for some other reason, but my assumption is that the rabbanut reads my blog.

Every morning I take the train to work, well at least part way to work. I have to take a sherut, shared taxi, from home to the train station and then a taxi meets me at the next train station and takes me to work. But as they say, that's neither here nor there. Yesterday at about 12:30 PM I got an email from the guy I take the train with (an infrequent commenter named traintalk) that there was a train crash.
The train going from Tel Aviv to Haifa had hit a car on the tracks and 3 of the cars flipped over. 5 people were killed and over 80 people injured. ברוך דין אמת. It turns out the driver of the car was hit and pushed onto the tracks by another car and was unable to get off. The driver escaped just in time.
Now the story gets a bit fuzzy. The driver was on valium at the time of the accident. According to drugs.com people who are on Valium should use caution when they are driving, operating machinery or performing other hazardous activities. That means that it is ok to drive as long as you do it cautiously. Apparantly, the drugs people don't see any reason for people not on valium to drive carefully. Also when you use Valium you shouldn't use alcohol. As everyone knows, when you use alcohol with drugs that say do not use with alcohol they work better, so we can assume he was drunk.
So now we have a reckless, drunk, drug addict who is driving around and parking on the tracks.

There was obviously no way to stop this accident from happening. The only real question here is would we feel better if it was a terrorist attack so we would have an enemy to blame or does accidental friendly fire in some ways comfort us?

kiruv?? no.. Look a bird.

Ynetnews has just published an article that will convince a number of Israels to go to Sweden and commit crimes. This is not out of hatred for Swedes or protest against an unfair foreign policy, such as writing on every product made in Jerusalem that it is made in an illegal occupied territory. The story is actually about what great living conditions prisoners in Sweden get. Private television, Steaks every Saturday, a shopping trip every half a year and sex once in a while in a luxury apartment. I can imagine some of them turning down the offer of probation.

We were at a sheva brachos on shabbos afternoon for some people we don't really know. I think we still get invited on the oleh who's new in the community ticket, because a large percentage of the community was there, but nobody our age. I was talking to Don who used to run the local chapter of Elul, an adopt a chiloni program. I used to go to the program but the timing was bad for me so I dropped out. I asked him how the program was going and he said he stopped it because the main office in Jerusalem put out too many requirements. I said that was too bad and he said he didn't like the program anyways. Elul is a group of religious and not religious learning together, but it is supposed to be a from a "your ok" perspective. More of a culturally jewish learning then a religious jewish learning. So for sefiras haomer, he had to get poems written by secular jews and discuss what the meaning aside from also throwing in some traditional jewish texts. I remember one session that I went to where a woman said that she loved doing certain mitzvot because they made her feel good. I explained to her that those weren't mitzvot, she was doing it for herself and not because God told her too.

The word mitzva means commandment, not feel good social behavior. If you only do the ones that you like, then you didn't do any because you are not doing what God wants you are doing what you want.

Don is now working on another type of kiruv where he has performances with mostly chinolical groups and they tell and act out stories of "Jewish History", mostly stories of holy rabbis with Jewish messages. He says as long as you don't put a religious context on it then the message penetrates deeply. He also told me a story of a univrsity in Israel, I forget which one, that had a Chinese philosophy class. It was the most popular class in the university. The professor made up names for the philosophers and taught them pirkei avos. At the end of the semester, he told them that it was really pirkei avos and explained who the philosophers that he talked about really were. Jews love hearing about other nation's cultures, but it is very hard to get them to pa attention to our own.

Our Land

Picture this:
You are walking in the hills of the Galilee enjoying nature in God's own country. You walk for about an hour and you don't even see one bear. The birds are chirping happily and flying around playing tag with each other. You sit down on a log in the middle of nowhere and watch some Persian fallow deer drink from a stream, unafraid. Mountains on the right and mountains on the left, the path goes straight through the middle. You can climb the mountains and explore. Other people have been there before. There is not an inch of virgin land anywhere in Israel. You may find something interesting, but you probably won't. You can play in the stream if you'd like, fresh cold spring water. There are fish swimming around, though if you try to catch one you'll probably just get wet.
This is your home and your land because God gave it to you.

I like to tell my children stories of tzaddikim who may or may not have walked right where we have walked. They generally don't believe me, which is good because I'm generally making up the story. I feel that most of the stories of tzaddikim are generally exaggerated and untrue in any case.

My brother-in-law survived his surgery yesterday and I had a very enjoyable vacation day. A friend just happened to be in the country with his fiance this week, so we planned on getting together. The timing worked out perfectly because I had already scheduled a day off to watch the kids when they got home from school while my wife went to watch her brother.

Then my friend didn't call me back, so I decided that it would be a totally awesome day if I went to nachal yehudiya by myself. If I left at 8:00 Am, after dropping the kids off at school and I could find someone to watch the little one when he got off at 1 there should be no problem getting back on time. But then my friend called back and said that they would be on the 10:30 train getting in at 12. So we decided to go to rosh hanikra, which is pretty close by, or to our local nachal and go explore the cave that I've never been in.

A weird thing happened in the morning before I went out. One of the neighbors who I hadn't met yet came by and told me that he has a very small yard and I have a very large yard and he has a swing and all i need to do is put a cushion on it. It took me a while to figure out what he wanted, but in the end he wanted to use the space the swing was taking up and he didn't want to throw it away, so we got a real nice metal A-Frame porch swing.

My friend never called and by the time he answered his phone it was too late to go to the golan. He pretty much overslept, with some sort of excuse about a brother's wedding and not getting to sleep until very late. So they didn't come up.

I decided to have a fun day anyways, so I went to the bottom of rosh hanikra, where I had never been and climbed around the white mountain face. There were a couple signs up that said anybody who goes in the water will go directly to jail and put on trial (in that order), so I decided to play it safe and not go in the water, but there were some pretty funky stuff there to explore. A number of arab fishermen were standing on the rocks fishing and they may have thought I was trying to steal their stuff because they kept looking at me funny. They were probably lousy fishermen because I didn't see them catch anything the whole time I was there. History has shown that lousy fishermen make good disciples, so if I ever Jesus out, I'll probably go there first to get them on board.

After I had my fill of the mountainside, I found a nice, quiet, private beach area and played in the water for a little bit. I put on suncreen but still got burnt up.

There is nothing as refreshing as doing some nature all by yourself

Double kudos to the neighbors who picked up the little one from gan and watched him until I got home and then called at night to see if I needed a babysitter to go get my wife and in-laws. I had already found a babysitter, so we were good, but it is so nice having friendly neighbors.

PA referendum

Abu Mazen, otherwise known as Abbas, is trying to call a referendum of his local arabs to determine if they are interested in accepting a call to peace. Well actually it isn't a call to peace. It is a call to temporarily accept the '67 borders as the borders of a Palestinian state. Hamas opposes any declaration that will show them of having moderated at all.

Lets go to your local joe camel in East Rafiach.
Interviewer: Do you think the palestinian people should accept the '67 borders as a palestinian state and have a lasting peace with Israel?
Joe Camel: No way. We kicked them out of gaza. Next we're going to kick them out of jerusalem and then we're going to return to our homes in Jaffa and Haifa.
Interviewer: Don't you believe in peace?
Joe Camel: I believe that when all the jews leave our homes then there will be peace.
Interviewer: Did you vote for Hamas in the last election?
Joe Camel: Duh. Just like everyone else did. The Hamas kicked the jews out of our gazan homeland and they are currently getting them out of the entire west bank.

In the last election, the vast majority of the people voted against peace. Why does mazen think that this time they will change their minds? Because a bunch of prisoners, who just want to get out, have said that they should give up on their national aspirations? I think not.

If abbas had any intelligence, he would not have even suggested a referendum, in the same way that sharon did not want a national referendum on jewish gaza after he saw how badly he lost in the Likud referendum.

lights out

Well the boys at the Electric Company decided to show Haifa just who was really running the country and they shut off our power without any warning. It's probbaly a warning to the whole country. Yesterday, our power at home was shut off for an hour and someone told me that downtown Haifa was off as well. Today it was Technion campus that got hit without warning.
At least I got to find out what some of the problems with my network setup were. Our UPSes didn't all work, so they have to be fixed, it did give me some down time to go around plugging things in that needed to be plugged in without requesting a couple minutes for a shutdown from everyone.

It was an enjoyable break, but now back to life.
My in-laws have come in to visit, which some people may consider a bad thing but I personally enjoy. I'm just a little concerned that after they leave the a/c will remain on and that is hugely expensive. I don't mind turning it on in August but June? We're just getting used to the heat.
Anyways, the reason they're in is because my brother-in-law is going under the knife to have his heart fixed on Wednesday. Everyone say tehillim. benzion yehuda ben chana rachel.
I decided to take a vacation day so we wouldn't have to go crazy trying to workout where the kids go and everything after school. Then I found out a friend came in from the states so I might be able to get together with him that day as well. So I was thinking of findiong a babysitter for my littlest who finishes gan at 1 and going on a mad hike and getting home by 3:30 when the other kids are finished. It sounds rational to me, but my wife thinks that going on a pleasure janut while her brother is being cut up might not be in the spirit of the day. Obviously, I don't agree.
In the end it will depend on whether my friend has time to come all the way up to our end of the country or not and if I can find a babysitter for the little guy.

I'm looking forward to Yehudiya.

company vacation

Our company vacation was just announced.
At the end of October we will be flying from Haifa to Eilat on a Thursday evening, staying in a nice hotel with kosher food, having group activities and flying home Saturday night after shabbos is over. It is 100% paid for by the company.

On shabbos we wouldn't join in any group activities that included shabbos violations. Last year, the kids got to watch part of the magic show that was done on Friday late afternoon after they promised us that there would be no shabbos problems with it. They kept their words and the kids got to see a good part of it.

Last year we went to the Dead Sea with the company to a hotel with kosher food and had some real problems with the children. A hotel with kosher food in Israel is not by any means a kosher hotel. All shabbos the hotel guests were in the pool with loud music blaring. There was no eruv, so it was difficult to go outside and we had to figure out a "method" for the kids to get their free popsicles from outside without violating the laws of carrying on shabbos. We explained to the kids how important shabbos was and why it was better for us to be in the hotel then outside in the pool. But they were very disappointed and wanted to (at different times) yell "it's shabbos" at the other guests who didn't understand how important it is to keep shabbos and go into the pool anyways. We try to teach our kids that our way of life is correct and better, but when you put a child in front of a candy store, they don't really care how candy is going to rot their teeth.

I can't imagine that it would be any different in Eilat, no matter how many things we brought to entertain them all shabbat.

Another option is to figure out somewhere to leave the kids for shabbos and go by ourselves. By that time my wife will be in her 8th month and might actually appreciate the weekend away. Of course there are logistics involved in this and we've never really left the kids for shabbos before, but this is not unsurmountable.

A solution to the problem may have been found because the flight back to Haifa leaves at 7 PM and you have to be at the airport an hour beforehand. According to hebcal, Shabbos ends that week at around 6 PM in Eilat. I don't know how far away the airport is from the hotel but getting there with 4 kids the minute that shabbos ends is a practical impossibility. I told my secretary we had a problem and let her know that, in any case, we haven't fully decided if we are going or not. Now we'll have to see if they find a way to overcome this problem, and if not we might get to decide on an alternate vacation spot for the religious families.

Persoanlly, I prefer to go on the vacation with the rest of the company, to show them that religious people can be semi-normal and will be happy to be a part of things if they can be done in an acceptable way. However, putting young kids through that is a completely different issue.

Israeli accounting

Yesterday I went to Petach Tikva (the same one that was for sale on EBay) for a meeting with an accountant. Some of you may be surprised that I would travel such a distance to meet an accountant when there are plenty of accountants in the north. I have found a problem with a lot of Israelis and especially Israeli accountants that they only know how to think horizontally. I am an out of the box person and I only think laterally. This comes into play when I try to explain to an Israeli accountant what I want to do and he looks at me strangely and says you can't do that.
So I got a recommendation from a former petach tikvan that if I want to talk to a creative accountant then I need to speak to his guy in Petach Tikva. So I called the guy up and set up an appointment and went down to Petach Tikva, which happens to be in the middle of nowhere for those of you thinking of going.

I started off by telling him about my diaper venture that I never followed through with because of the Israeli accountant's advice, which is the reason I was looking for a person who understood the way things really work. I explained to him that I was probably hiring a bunch of doctors soon and I could either do it the standard way by having the parent company pay them on US W-9s or I could start a company here, bill the company for the entire amount and pay them as Israeli employees.

He started off by explaining what kind of headache I would be getting into if I opened a company here and how much simpler it would be if I did it the standard way. I told him that was the advice that I would expect from an Israeli accountant and what I was thinking was more along the lines of how much money could I save the doctors by doing it in Israel, along the lines of tax benefits, pension plans and so on. Because if we could do that correctly then I could take an administrative fee off the top and everyone would win. The doctors would take home more money, I would earn more money and the parent company would be paying the same amount. Only various governments would lose out.

He took a second and then came up with social security tax. If you are self-employed in Israel and report to the US government, which is a good idea if you ever want to see the motherland again especially when you are paid on a US tax stub, then you have approximately 15% social security tax, which you don't have to pay if you are an employee of an Israeli company. So off the top, before anything else I saved them 15%. There is also keren hishtalmut, which is a savings plan that lets you put money away tax free and at the end of 6 years you get it as a lump sum, tax free. Then there is kupat gemel (pension fund), which I still have to learn about, but basically it sounds like if they decided to take a year vacation, they would be able to get "pitzuim" and take a salary, which they can't do as self-employed people.

After we finished talking he was excited about the idea and he's going to charge me a lot of money to write it up and give me some spreadsheets so I can convince future employees that I am right.

In short, if you are going to receive $1000 on a W9, which would leave
you with $600 after everything, it might be more worth it to become an
Israeli employee and receive $900 which would leave you with $650 and
a lot of extra benefits. I still have to get the exact numbers before
I decide whether it is 100% worth it and how many employees I need to make it more worth it then headache.

Mashiach (A Religious MEME)

My sister in law put up this meme and tagged the world
1. How will he arrive?
1) We're expecting a white donkey, but some modernists have translated that to a white Cadillac with tinted windows.

2. Under what global circumstances will he arrive?
2) I'm expecting he will come in the midst of a very serious threat to the existence of the Jewish people.

3. Will everyone believe in him?
3) I think there will be the skeptics, but the difference will be who the believers are. In the times of the false mashiachs (such as shabtai tzvi) most of the rabbis denounced them and the lay people supported them. I think here the rabbis will support him and there will be a korach type story where a bunch of people get swallowed by an earthquake.

4. How will we all go to Israel, or will we?
4) Definitely by plane. It's much too far to walk. I think that the majority of religious Jews will come (except for maybe yak), some of the non religious will immediately want to become religious and come also and the rest will be lost amongst the nations.

5. Will all our enemies be destroyed?
The real question is who are our enemies. I think religious muslims will respect the outcome and join our side. The enemies will then become the previous apathetic who see this as a threat to their lifestyle.

6. Will a lot of us die in the process?
If you consider the Holocaust part of the process, it's already up to 6 million.

7. What about revival of the dead?
I think revival of the dead is something that we cannot fathom, especially because of the concept of gilgulim, so there's really only 100 people and everyone else is recycled. The last mishna of the 4th perek of peirkei avos indicates that the final judgement day will be after the dead come back.

8. Will we still have to work?
I think we'll have to work.

9. When Mashiach (who is human) dies, who will be our leader?
The son of mashiach. We believe in the kingdom of David and Mashiach will be the first of the new dynasty.

10.Will there be a King of Israel, a Beit HaMikdash, and a Sanhedrin?
Yes. They are actually working on the sanhedrin now, Mashiach will be king and the Bais Hamikdash will be built. The Temple Mount institute is building the objects used in the bais hamikdash according to the exact specification so they will be ready when it is time to use them.

happy brithday

It was my birthday on Friday and my wife made me a very nice birthday party shabbos afternoon. We had 6 couples over with their families and the kids had a great time beating each other up. From what I gethered, they were playing cops and robbers - boys against girls. It took me a while to figure that out while watching the much bigger girls throw the little boys on the ground and then into the fisher price house while kicking and screaming. (All of the girls are bigger then the boys in our crowd.) A nice time was had by all. I got one present, someone gave me a book that he wrote on education in Hebrew called, "Even parents need to grow up."

To reciprocate I let him read my book on Labor and Delivery which he had a hard time with because it was in English. I couldn't give him a copy because only 10 were printed and they've all been given out. If anybody is interested in reading "Labor and Delivery" leave a comment with an email address and I will send it. I wrote it from the woman's perspective and it is all in rhyme. It is appropriate to read after the first one is born, but can be read before the second one.

As a second birthday present, the Hizballah decided to send some rockets our way. The last news report said they hadn't gone farter west then manara, which is about 45 minutes from us, but my wife says she can hear the explosions. It looks like we're not going out for dinner tonight, though I am not clearing out our bomb shelter because there isn't enough room in there for all of us for more then 15 minutes. I should probably put building a bigger bomb shelter higher up on my priority list.

The doctor initiative is slowly gathering speed. We've gotten a number
of resumes so far, with minimal advertising. If I wasn't clear before
we are working with a company that does telephone medicine. It's an
exciting opportunity for doctors in Israel who are interested in part
time work to help supplement their income. If you know of any doctors who are licensed in the US and would be interested in supplementing their income, please let us know at: physicians@technologism.com

what a view

This morning it was bright and sunny at 6:15 AM when I walked out of the house and got into the shared taxi to take me down the mountain. We start driving down and I see an amazing view. Normally I can see all the way from Haifa, the part that juts out into the sea, all the way to Rosh Hanikra, the northern border with Lebanon. Today all I could see were clouds from an airplane perspective. There was a huge cloud bank (not smog) stretching the entire way across and I was looking down at it, it was unreal. These weren't dismal clouds, we're talking real white and puffy.

We didn't get to drive through the cloud bank because the road cut down and underneath it before we got there, but I noticed that as we got under the cloud everything just turned dark.

Israel Job Opp: Physicians

Any US licensed physicians in Israel who are looking for a new part
time opportunity (may become full time), please send your resume to
physicians@technologism.com

This is NOT an Internet medicine program.

If you know of any physicians in Israel who are looking for a new part
time opportunity, pass this along.

Doctors must be licensed in at least one US State. Board Certified
physicians have preference (doesn't matter what the certification is
in).

We currently have a need for doctors who can be primary care
physicians such as Pediatricians, General Practitioners, Emergency
Medicine, Internists,...
If you feel that while you have a speciality you are still qualified
as a PCP, send in your resume with that fact noted.

We are trying to expand our program to include specialists as well,
but that will depend on how many doctors we have available, so if you
are interested in a future opportunity, please let us know you exist.
Send all resumes to physicians@technologism.com

Disengagment punishments??

I have decided to answer the content of the insulting commentor who was banned. She had some interesting questions, which I am happy to discuss, I simply refuse to allow an insulting diatribe in my comments section. If you don't understand where I am coming from, you can ask a question or you can disagree. If you want to simply bash what I am writing you can start the antirockofgalilee blog or publish your comments on your own blog. I only read the blogs of people who I am interested in what they have to say. If I think they're off the wall and I find their content insulting to me I don't go to their blog and bash them, I simply don'y read them.

Q) Do I speak for God?
A) No. But when there are a number of seemingly disconnected events that happen "coincidentally" at the same time, I feel there is room to connect them. I think that history has shown us how God operates and that it is not problematic at all to say that if you feel that something was done incorrectly and bad things happen to the people who did it, that they are connected. Can you imagine what would have happened in the Purim story if the Jewish people had not listened to mordechai and esther's call to repent. They could have said this anti-semitism has nothing to do with the way we are behaving and the party was an irrelevant factor. It doesn't take any imagination to see what would have happened, it happened in 1939-1945 in Germany.

Q) Does that mean that I think that everyone who died in the Holocaust was a bad person?
A) No. If you remember from the Purim story, the first person who was supposed to be killed was Mordechai, the tzaddik. When God decides to punish the Jewish people, he does not differentiate between good people and bad people. The entire nation is guilty. As an aside, this is the reason why the Jews in Egypt had to put blood on their doorposts. They needed extra merit so they wouldn't be killed in the plague, because plagues do not differentiate between different people.

Q) Am I saying that everyone who gets sick is a sinner?
A) No. There are different reasons why people get sick. I don't know the reason why people get sick, each situation is between man and God. When it happens publicly immediately after the person did something that you consider inappropriate, then you can tie them together. If more then one thing happens soon after then I am more confident tying them together.

Q) Did my brother-in-law have a stroke because of the disengagment?
A) I don't believe he did, but I also don't think it was a random occurrence. He had nothing to do with the disengagement, and nothing that I know of that he did would cause God to punish him this way, so I will chalk this one up to an unknown cause.

Q) Was God involved in Hurricane Katrina?
A) Yes. God caused the hurricane to happen for a specific reason. It very well may have had to do with the disengagement. As I posted at the time, the percentage of US residents who were evacuated during the hurricane is the same percentage of Israeli residents who were evicted from their homes in Gaza. Coincidence, I don't believe so.

Q) If God was invloved, why do all of these things look natural? The PM didn't listen to his physicians advice, was under a lot of stress and in bad health. The police have been criticized for a long time. The moshav was near arabs who have bird flu. There has always been talk of sex at army bases. Shouldn't it have been hail and brimstone?
A) God takes care of things in a natural fashion. That is the entire miracle of Purim, that seemingly disconnected events coincidentally happened in an unordered fashion and caused other things to occur. Haman just happened to show up at the moment that the king was thinking about rewarding mordechai. The prime minister could have had a stroke the week before the disengagement and plenty of people live with his bad health for years after. The police investigations have never gone anywhere in the past, for example in the bus 300 case all the people involved got promoted. There were other moshavs where the bird flu could have started in Israel that are also close to Gaza. The army sex scandals which have been going on for years are all coming to light now, giving people a very low opinion of the army.
Is any of this absolute evidence? Of course not. But there are enough coincidences to allow inteligent people to draw conclusions.

Q) If this happened 5 years from now, would I still say that they were linked?
A) Probably not. Though that doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been. It would mean that God does not necessarily want us to draw those conclusions.

I would appreciate it if the banned commentor does not comment. I don't read her blog because I don't care about what she has to say. That is a better method then showing how "smart" you are by posting sarcastic insulting comments on blogs of people you disagree with.