gan hashlosha

Mazel Tov. My sister got engaged on Friday afternoon to a nice Jerusalem boy (American born) named shlomo. This was the official engagement announcement, prior to that they had agreed to get married but would not call it engaged as my parents had not spoken to the boy yet and you can't marry a girl without asking a father for his daughter's hand. So they had a couple weeks of that awkward stage of being more then just dating but less then actually getting married.

This Friday we went to a place in the Bet Shaan valley called Gan Hashlosha. Gan Hashlosha is pretty much an oasis in one of the hottest places in Israel. There are huge pools of water and waterfalls that you can sit under. We spent 3 hours swimming there and the girls actually showed me that they know how to swim. We went into water that was probably 12 feet deep and we swam the length of the largest pool (Not all at once, we did stop at a number of places on the way).

I am reading Harry Potter 6 right now. I like to read what my daughter is reading so I know what she is up to and I don't think she is ready for this book yet. Book 5 started with the whole boy/girl relationship, and book 6 is not really taking it that much farther, but ... I have to come up with a good age that it would be ok for her to read about dating/kissing someone because you are mad at someone else.

tisha b'av

The 9 days culminates today with the 9th day of Av. The day that the bais hamikdashes were destroyed. The day that the Jews in the desert cried for no reason so God said (what parents everywhere have been repeating since then), "I'll give you a reason to cry."


For those of you fasting, have an easy fast.
For those of you saying kinos, try to actually read an entire one with the translation. Maybe it will talk to you.
(For those of you who don't know what kinos are it is the main cause for depression on tisha b'av Reading ancient depressing poetry that we don't understand.)

For those of you who are not doing anything for tisha b'av, please take a couple minutes and reflect on the state of Judaism as it exists today.

Day 4

Warning: Religious Post

Do bad things really happen specifically during the 9 days? I was discussing this with my brother who got into a car accident. He wanted to know what I thought about those people who got a "pass" during the 9 days and nothing bad happened to them.
Here is part of my general philosophy (I've heard bits and pieces of this floating around various rabonim, so it isn't completely made up) - If you include God in your life and attribute events that occur towards his presence then God makes his presence more visible. If you attribute events that occur to coincidence and you take a more natural approach to life, then God's presence is not as visible to you.
In other words, part of our freedom of choice includes whether we live a spiritual life or a natural life. One story that exemplifies this freedom of choice happened a number of years ago before we moved to Israel. We were in Toronto for shabbos and someone smashed my car window. It cost me $250 to fix and a bit of aggravation. We drove back home without further incident until we got to the border. My wife gave the border guard her temporary resident papers and he looked at it and said that it was expired. We talked to him for a bit and he said this time he would let us go, but normally it would be a $250 fine. I was struck by the fact that God had let me know in no uncertain terms that I had to lose $250 that weekend. It didn't matter whether it happened by my car being broken, bad paperwork or the refrigerator breaking.
However, it is just as easy (or maybe easier) to not relate the 2 events at all. Bad Luck on the car (what did you expect from Canadian hoolums), Good Luck with the border guards (they did admit that the immigration office was 2 months behind in their paperwork so there was no way for us to have gotten the current documentation).

I believe that if this time you say they are unrelated then you have chosen to diminish God's presence in your life and therefore the next time he won't make it as obvious. (ie the border guard will just let you pass without giving you a hassle and telling you how much you would have had to pay.) If you attribute it to God then you have chosen to increase Gods presence in your life. That lets you more easily see the connection between 2 events in a spiritual way.

During the 9 days, God spits at people, but only those people who have chosen to have God in their life will know that they got spat on. Not everyone gets spat on, but those that do got spat on because of the 9 days. Those that don't include God in their lives are more or less ignored by God. Personally, I prefer God to be involved all the time and I am willing to take 9 days of getting spit on in return for getting taken care of the rest of the year. We have lots of examples where things just happened to occur at exactly the right time or didn't occur until we absolutely needed them. (Like finding a job the week we ran out of money)

Day 3

I called a friend last night in California. They lived in Israel for a number of years, he joined a kolel that teaches kiruv and then they send the kolel families to places out of Israel in need of Torah. I actually hadn't talked to him since they moved away, though I have thought about them and wondered how they were doing. Last month his mother died, and I called during shiva to make a shiva call. The problem with making a shiva call to someone you haven't talked to in a while is that you feel like a real shmuck. It's as if you only call because you feel some sort of obligation, and then when you call you can't ask how he's doing or any of the other things you would have talked about if you had called at a normal time because the answer is he's feeling lousy and he thinks life sucks at the moment. So I called, spent an uncomfortable minute on the phone, offered my condolences and hung up. It's not the first time that I've made a shiva call to an oldl friend who I hadn't talked to in a while, s I decided on a policy that after a month or so I would call the friend back and talk to him about normal things.
I got his cell phone number and a good time to call him from his wife, who I saw online one day. Then I put off calling him for 2 weeks because I was busy until last night I decided that I was going to call. I waited until 11PM which is lunch time in California and I called him. I said hi and asked him how he was doing. He sounded a bit stressed and said, "You probably didn't hear the news" I asked what news. He said he was on his way to a funeral. His grandmother passed away that morning. Now I felt like a double shmuck, so I quickly said, I guess this is a bad time and I will call back another time.

Day 3 of the 9 days.

Day 2 and counting

I was talking to someone at work about the ways that we are sad during the 9 days, he had never considered things this way before so I thought I would share them with my readers as well.
1) We don't eat meat. This is to remind us of the korban shlomim, which was considered the ultimate happiness.
2) We don't listen to live music. This is to remind us of the levites who would sing in concert every day.
3) We don't go into water for pleasure. This is to remind us of the water that we entered to become spiritually pure before entering the Beis haMikdash (BhM).
4) We don't drink wine because of the wine that was poured on the altar.

Joe Settler wrote on the Muqata blog that he has a hard time with forced seasonal emotions, such as becoming sad during the 9 days. In a lot of ways he is correct because in our reality nothing has changed from last week to this week. There was no BhM then and there is no BhM now.
What we are doing by adding on these symbols of sadness is more then just making our lives less comfortable, we are putting the things that we are missing in front of us and saying, look this is what we used to have and we don't have it anymore.

With that you can begin to feel the loss, not because of an artificial forced sadness, but a sadness based on a reality check that we imposed on ourselves so that we remember what we lost.

8 dairy dinners

The 9 days before tisha b'av started last night. The past two years we had real tisha b'av experiences (as the deejays on the radio say "לא עלינו").
Last year, we got bombed. We lived as refugees in Jerusalem. Of course we did the refugee bit Jewish style, as friends and family took care of us pretty well.
The year before we were in Jerusalem for the fast and we decided to go back home in the middle of the day.
The first thing we noticed as we left the old city was our flat tire.
It went on from there.
This year we are hoping to have a meaningful, but uneventful tisha b'av.

Last night we went to a goodbye party for friends who are going to England for 3 years. I believe the concept is to help build the connection between Israel and out of Israel. I spoke of Jeremiah and exile and how appropriate this was to send them off during the 9 days. An Israeli spoke about what a great opportunity this was and how this is the best thing that could happen to anyone.
Different perspectives. I suppose if I hadn't lived in America I would probably want to experience the life outside of Israel. They are planning on coming back eventually, but 3 years is a long time and their kids will be teenagers when they are ready to return. It will be a tough adjustment both ways.

I was planning on going to a meeting of the local tzedaka group because we really want to get more involved and they asked us to come. Dinner was scheduled for 8:00 PM and the meeting was at 8:45. I figured that it is an Israeli meeting, it won't start until 9:15 and if I get there before 10 I will be there for most of it. That would have been fine, except that dinner works the same way as meetings and the Israelis didn't show up until 8:30 and then the women didn't like the way the table was set, so we went for a walk on the beach until they got it all set up... we left at 1/4 to eleven because of our babysitter and I completely missed the meeting.
It was a nice dinner and I got an electric sander from the guy leaving. In Hebrew it is called a mishayefet.

disagreement

I had a fight with a guy at work on Thursday. He thought that it was entirely appropriate to ask me to do his work for him because he was very busy. Except that he didn't exactly ask me to do his work, he replied to an email that someone sent him that they should come to me to solve the problem and I would change the process if it needed it. I looked at the system from the perspective of the developer and it all looked like it was working. The problem was that the user didn't fully understand the process. So I said to the guy, the system looks fine to me and the user doesn't know what needs to be changed, if you would like any changes please send me a detailed change request specifying what you want. He replied to my email that he would expect that for small things I would know what to do on my own. I still had no idea what he was talking about, so I went to him and asked him to open up the screen and I asked him what I am supposed to know how to do on my own. It all looked normal. He said well if there was no problem then you should just explain to her how the system works. So I asked him if he had looked at this at all when she asked him the question. He replied that he figured there was a possibility that it was a system problem and even if it wasn't, at least I know how to use the system so I could explain how it works. I explained to him that I was also busy and that I would expect him to look at the issue and then decide if it is a bug in the system before sending a user to me. He failed to grasp the concept that we each have our own jobs and that I am just as busy as he is. If this had been the only time that he asked me to do his job that would be one thing, but its not. On previous occassions he has asked me to make sure the equipment in the conference room was working every time he had a meeting. I told him where the batteries were for the wireless keyboard, if he needed to switch them, and he sent back a nasty response. So I suggested that he should check everything an hour before his meeting and if there was a problem that he couldn't deal with then he could come to me and then it wouldn't be a problem in the middle of a meeting.
In any case, we yelled at each other for 15 minutes and then I went and discussed it with our boss. He agreed with me that it was inappropiate for the other guy to keep trying to pass off his tasks onto me. And today he had a 45 minute talk with him. At the end he said to me, it seems like he wasn't trying to pass off tasks to you, he just doesn't understand the line between your job and his. (We work in completely different areas.)

Tonight we are goin out to dinner with a couple that is going on shlichut to England for 3 years. Shlichut is when an Israeli family goes to "israelify" an area of "out of israel" and convince them to move to Israel. This family doesn't speak any English, so their absorption will be almost as amusing as ours was here. Because the 9 days starts today, we are going out for dairy :-(

anniversary

Apparently, my anniversary was on Shabbos. I found out Friday afternoon about an hour before shabbos (when my mother called to wish me a happy anniversary) and I couldn't even go out and get my wife flowers because all the stores were closed. In my defense, nobody bothered to remind me.
10 years.
I've been with my wife for almost 1/3 of my life.
One question that people ask married people is what they think is the most important aspect in a marriage.
The answers that I have heard include the following:

• communication.
• who controls the money
• individuality
• common goals
• food
• sex
  

What I have found most interesting is that husbands and wives very often come up with exact opposites of what is the most important. For example, I believe that the most important thing in a marriage is not to hate your spouse. My wife believes that it is love. (I am more practical.) I have heard wives say that communication is the most important thing while the husbands say, it's better when we don't talk. Personally, communication does not rank on my list of relevant things about a marriage.

Anyways, we went out to a fancy restaurant last night to celebrate the occasion, Decks in Tiberias. There we feasted on lamb ribs, lamb steak and lamb kabob. For drinks we had the lemonana slushies and for dessert the pancake. The drink and the pancake were more then 1/3 of the bill. I would recommend to anyone going, to forgo dessert and drink water. If you are still hungry have another piece of steak for 35 shekel.

After dinner we headed down to the kibbutz lavi hotel for what has become an annual tradition. No silly. We visited people there. We actually got 2 for the price of one, because while we were sitting down and shmoozing (My spell checker says shmooze has a c in it, but what does it know) , Rabbi J walked in and sat down with us, which was a big surprise for both of us.
It's always fun watching rabbis network.

daughter at work

Yesterday, I brought my daughter to work. I had a vry good reason for doing this, it was my wife's turn to have the 2nd daughter's friends over in the mother's camp she is part of and we didn't want the older daughter fighting with all of them and bossing them around.
We have stuff for children to do at work, we have 2 computers dedicated for children and YES, satellite television. As an aside, I read an article a while ago about how the russian olim relate to the television options. Russians read an H like we read an N, so from their perspective there are 2 options, "YES" and "NOT."
I didn't want my daughter using the children's computer, because it is in an office not near anyone and she likes to search the Internet. I'm not worried that she will look for inappropriate things, but I am worried that she will find them by accident. So I grabbed a spare computer and set it up in my office (one of the advantages of being the IT manager) and gave her enough desk space to color and do whatever she wanted to do.
It took her a couple hours before she got bored, but she was very good and we went out for lunch together. My wife asked her what I do all day at work and she said I write emails and talk to people (which is moistly what I do, I suppose) .

telemedicine

The telemedicine deal went through!!!!!
The work is part time and can be done concurrently with another job.
If you know any doctors who are licensed in the following states and would like
to augment their income, have them send their CVs and/or any questions to teledoctors@gmail.com

Feel free to post this message on your blog or forward it to your friends if you would like to help olim doctors.

You do not need to live in Israel to apply.

Immediate Needs:
Connecticut
DC
Hawaii
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
Oregon
Utah
Vermont

north american olim statistics

My brother called me up today and asked me hwo to figure out the average of olim from north america, given statistics he got from the Department of Absorption. I told him the average was 28. He still wanted to figure it out statistically, so I gave him a suggestion as to breaking down the categories and figuring it out with the numbers.
He called me 10 minutes later and said the average was 28 and he wanted to know how I knew. I told him that I made aliyah when I was 28 and since the world revolves around me, there couldn't be any other answer.

Next Sunday I'm meeting a future oleh in the high tech field so that he can network with me before making aliyah. I did this before I made aliyah, I met with a bunch of random people and I learned absolutely nothing. So I thought about what I could possibly tell this guy that would make it worth his time to come up to Haifa and talk with me. I realized that the only thing I have to tell him is that there are a lot of available jobs in Israel and that he can ignore anybody who tells him there aren't.

nice day for a picnic

Today is our company picnic, which should be a lot of fun. We had a company picnic 3 years ago and they made the whole thing treif, except for our family the caterer bought glatt kosher meat, special grill utensils and a separate grill, opened the packages in front of me and showed me . If I had known I wouldn't have gone. But I didn't know and we had a very good time, except for telling the children they couldn't eat most of the food and that they had to eat on paper while everyone else ate on china. (Why they would have fancy china in a forest picnic is beyond me, but they did).
This year we have 4.5 kosher people (minimum) and so they are making the whole thing kosher. We are also having the picnic before the 3 weeks start, which is also good religious-wise. Go Jews.

I didn't post yesterday before I left, so....
The picnic was very nice. We got there first (on time) so my kids got to run wild through the forest and claim it as their own before any other children got there. The activity was a competition between a number of groups in which we had to use team-building skills and intelligence to complete a number of physical and intellectual tasks. On example was we were standing on a rug (8 of us) and we had to turn it completely upside-down without stepping off of the rug. It included having everyone jump at the same time a number of times so we could pull out the part of the rug they were standing on.
The food was excellent.

Now that the President has resigned and we are stuck with peres as president it has been revealed that the main complainant consistently lied throughout the investigation. This is the reason the police felt that couldn't win on a rape charge and settled on a plea bargain. Why Katsav agreed to the plea bargain is beyond me, but he must have felt that they had something. Maybe he didn't want all his dirty laundry to become more public then it already was. Now that he will only be convicted of sexual harassment, he can become vice premier. At least that is the position being offered to Haim Ramon (according to a ynet report), who was recently convicted of sexual misconduct. At least they're not offering him anything important. It is the position Sharon created to get peres off his back.

gonjers

I just saw an ad for the sale of the domain name jurjy.com and jurji.com
If you're going to take a name that is not based on anything, why would you buy it from someone. Make up something else that doesn't mean anything and buy that domain.
As of this moment, gonjers.com is available.
Publish Post

going to jlem

We're having a hoedown tonight in jlem, well maybe without the fiddle and the square dancing. The last time we were supposed to meet the sister's boyfriend they broke up the day before. This time we're not waiting for him to come up and visit so we're heading down south to get with the rest of the local family for an introductory dinner.

I'm starting to build up my professional network on www.linkedin.com if anybody would like to join, shoot me a message. It is more professional then facebook.

If at first you don't succeed...

I have been working on a business idea for over a year and a half now. As I listened to katyushas slam down last summer, the other CEO told me "The country of Texas stands with Israel." I've given up on it at least 3 times. Two weeks ago their CEO told me that he didn't see it happening. Yesterday he sent me an email saying, that maybe we can actually work this out. This is pretty much the last chance and I'm very excited about it.

Our former President admitted that he sexually abused the women he was accused of abusing. Now they are working out a plea bargain so that he doesn't have to go to jail. As I said before, we should not judge him until he is proven innocent or guilty. If he is admitting that he committed indecent acts, then we should throw him in jail for a long time. Plea bargains for political criminals are bad for this country. Now that he's admitted it, he can run for head of Likud.

shekel and terrorists

When writing a price, is the shekel symbol before or after the number? I asked my secretary this question when I had to add a shekel amount to a report. She told me it goes after the number. So I put the symbol after the number. I showed her the report, she looked at it and said, "I told you after the number, not before the number." I looked at it and said it is after the number, I had put it on the right side after the number. She said that in Hebrew after the number is on the left side. I explained to her that the symbol is part of the number, so after the number would mean that it goes on the right side. In any case, all of the Israelis disagreed with me and said that after the number is on the left side, which is before the number from all other perspectives.

MK Rabbi Yitzchak Levi announced today that he would not have any problem freeing the prisoners who killed his daughter if it would bring Gilad Shalit home. He then qualified the statement in a letter he sent to the prime minister that any release of prisoners must be conditioned on them not returning to live in Israel, including the west bank/gaza strip.
On one hand, I am against this kind of idea. Letting people out of jail who have attacked you in the past and have no intention of stopping sounds foolish. Getting back one soldier, which is extremely important, for the price of a lot of terrorists who will try, as soon as they are released, to kill/maim more Israelis is not in this country's best interest. Sending them away tells arabs that the price for terrorism is a free ticket out of the west bank to a nice European country, where they will not sit in jail. They can still attack Israeli interests from their host country, including spreading hatred for Israel (in essence giving the PA hundreds of new ambassadors) and physically attacking Israelis who are traveling.

On the other hand, maybe we can send their wives and children with them and slowly emtpy out the west bank and gaza strip.

I would take a very hard look at where all the released terrorists from the last deal are today and what they are doing in exile. I'm sure someone must be keeping tabs on them.

shema

This morning I got into my car a minute early and I got to hear the announcer recite Shema Yisrael, as is appropriate to say before the morning news. The rest of the news wasn't that great.

It seems like our prime minister has decided that now that Hamas has taken over the gaza strip it is the perfect opportunity to accept the failed abu as our returning peace partner. Now that we have seen that he has absolutely no control over what goes on in his land, we know that it is the perfect opportunity to offer him guns and armored vehicles. There is a slight chance that those weapons will not be used against Israel, and the prime minister is prepared to take that chance.


Does anybody know anybody who works in the Israeli Treasury department? I'm looking for a little free proteczia.

just another day

I'm busy working on my new software for home care doctors. If there are any home care doctors who are interested in hearing more about the software, please drop me a note. The plan is to open source it, and charge only for the service I'm providing. I think we can provide a strong viable service for the home care industry, based on the software and including billing, marketing and business management as well.

I read in the news today that there was a car bomb in Hilla. One of our kidnapped soldiers is from that moshav. That kind of shocked me because Hila is a 5 minutes drive from our house, right in the back of Miilya, a village that has existed since the time of the crusades (with a crusader castle and all). After reading the news again, I realized that the Hilla that had been car bombed was actually in Iraq and our Hila is still safe and sound.

An older couple (in their 60s) from Las Vegas just moved to our village last week. They are not religious, though they do keep kosher and part of shabbos. He's originally from Oklahoma so he wanted a place that felt like home. I asked him, "Isn't Oklahoma kind of flat?" He said, "yea." They didn't know anybody when they moved in and for some reason they never emailed me to say they were coming, as most people who consider Maalot do. So we heard there was a new American couple so we brought over some cookies. Nice folks, and its good to hear proper English again.

My neighbor did his reserve duty last week and the report we got back was that they didn't feed him very well. I guess the Winograd report didn't make that much of a difference.

A sunny day

If anybody knows anything about or where I can find information on gambling laws in Israel, such as if a charity organization wanted to have a raffle, please let me know.

Ynet had an article that makes sense for the situation in Lebanon. It is along the lines of what commentor Bella Who was suggesting in that we give them a strong warning, while at the same time it is a warning with teeth and a demand for action against the perpetrators.

It seems to me that Israel is going to ignore it, which will just bring about more rockets.

In other news, the people of homosexual orientation (gays) are still planning on marching in Jerusalem. The last time they planned to do this there were a lot of threats of violence and then a war broke out. In an about face, the head rabbis of the black hat world have called on their people to refrain from protesting against the parade. They are afraid of what the police will do to their students. That is what is being said publicly. I believe that they want their students to be far away when the ground opens up to swallow them alive or if a large explosive happens to be planted on the path of the parade. Or something like that.

Syria has offered to allow the Jewish residents of the Golan stay there after it is returned. Someone just told me that a law in Syria forbids Jews from owning telephones.
On that note, I was talking to someone at lunch about the proposed State of Judea which was explored during the Gazan expulsion. I reminded him that one of the great tragedies of Jewish history was when the kingdom of Israel broke off from the kindom of Judea. It would be a mistake to try something like that again. Jews need to live together.

The weather is hot in the Galilee and the kids spent an hour in the pool today. Thank God and the parents for the pool.

tremping boys

Yesterday on my way home from work I gave a ride to 2 teenagers from Acco to Nahariya. We're talking as we're driving and one of them asks me if I know where Khanita is. I told him it is right on the border. He completely starts to flip out. What, they think I'm a fighter, are they crazy, there's no way. After he calmed down he explained that they told him he was doing gaurd duty on Khanita, and he had no idea where it was. Apparantly, he is in the army and not in a fighting unit. He wanted to know which border it was on. I asked him if he knew where Nahariya was? Because we were 15 minutes from the border at that time. He answers, how am I supposed to know? This is a completely Israeli kid, sefardi, wearing a kippa asimon, and he has no idea where in the country Nahariya is. I dropped them off and told him that the border was getting hot and he should enjoy his time in Khanita. Poor kid. I laughed the entire way home.

a nice hike

I had a very enjoyable day today. By Thursday afternoon I knew that I was going to have to work late on Sunday because I was reworking the telephone and network infrastructure and that can only be done on Sunday evening. So I told my boss that I was going to be coming in late on Sunday and he obviously didn't have a problem with that. My wife graciously agreed to accompany me on a hike this morning (canceling her other plans) and we went down to nachal kziv, because the place I wanted to goto in the Golan was too far away if I wanted to get to work at a decent time. The kids were all in school and we went with the littlest, who went in the backpack for the first time.
We brought our flashlight because I was thinking of going into the cave, which I have been planning on exploring for a long time and haven't had a chance yet. But when we got to the natural springs (where the cave is), we decided to continue walking because we had never really been past the springs. It's a half hour walk without the kids and with the kids by the time we get there there is no desire to continue onwards. So we walked on for another hour. The forest was green and full. We saw a bunch of fig trees and a couple grape vines, though none of the fruit was ripe yet. The river was full of water and there were some pretty large fish swimming around.
Definitely something that should be done more often.

Tonight there were 2 katyushas fired at kiryat shmona, about an hours drive from us. The apologist government, with Ehud Barak as defense minister, have decided that it was a rogue palestinian group shooting them, not the hizballah or the lebanese so that makes it ok.
When will they wake up and figure out that any rocket coming from Lebanese soil is Lebanese responsibility. Lebanon allows groups to have rockets. If they can't control their population then we will have to control it for them. Any attack on sovereign Israel from Lebanon must be answered with attacks on Beirut. The people there will have to demand that their government prevent militants from using weapons.

If a group of Israeli militants tried to harm another country they would be hunted down with the full force of the Israeli military and police. There would be no excuses that it was a rogue group and there was nothing we could do about it. A government is responsible for anything that happens on its soil. If they can't handle the heat, they should ask someone else to do it for them.

its getting noisy

I've taken a hiatus from blogging because I really have no time to write anymore. Work is keeping my overbusy right now. I have been taking on more responsibilities and I barely have time to breathe, let alone post.

The skies of our village got pretty loud tonight. We had dozens of low flying fighter jets overhead. I can't tell you which direction they were flying in because the military censor would be unhappy with me. Nothing is being reported in the media yet, so I don't think we bombed anyone. There were no loud booms, so we haven't gotten bombed. This might just be an evening out for the airforce boys. The wondows shook a little as one flew close by, but at least there was no sonic boom. That would have freaked out the kids.

In any case, the almonds are almost ripe and taste delicious. The girls school put on a nice performance for the parents last night and the principal announced that the school won an award in traffic safety. I think I'm going to talk to the principal about going for an academic award. If we start working on it now, we can probably get in good enough shape in 2 years to take math or science.

We are getting ready for shmita next year. Trying to learn all the laws involved.

I'll try to keep posting on a semi-regular basis. Obviously if the security situation heats up, I'll be letting you know.

Update

Ynet reports that the air force is just training, and there was no security incident. It was 10:30 PM here, a good time for practicing flying in the dark.

shmita

My sister called me with an ethical question the other day. When I read Dilbert today, I felt that Scott Adams was listening in.
We had a very nice bonfire on Lag B'Omer. I didn't want to join the community bonfire because I didn't want to fight with my kids when they were done and everyone else was staying up longer. So we built a nice little bonfire on the edge of our cliff next to a neighbor's house. We had all the right ingredients for a good bonfire: marshmallows, hot dogs, potatoes and onions. The kids actually lasted longer then I expected and we left the bonfire shortly after 11.
The traditional/chareidi approach to lag b'omer is that Torah is light and rashbi represented torah so that is why we have a bonfire and he was such a tzaddik that there was never a rainbow during his life (to signify that the world should be destroyed, if not for god's promise). That seems to be a classic case of anti-zionistic revisionist history. The reason the romans forbade learning Torah upon punishment of death is because the leading rabbis at the time, especially Rabbi Akiva, were teaching Toras Eretz Yisroel, which was that only Jews should have governance of Israel and should not be subjected to foreign rule. When Rashbi was heard saying that everything the romans did was for themselves, he was not just talking politics. Rashbi was actively involved in the war effort. In other words, Lag B'Omer is a Yom HaAtzmaut type day in which we celebrate the battle to throw the Romans out of our land. Bonfires were used as military signals and the bow and arrow was the weapon of the day. Obviously this doesn't fit into the hareidi world view even though Rabbi Akiva and rashbi are both considered role models by the hareidi institutions.

Today I signed up for the shmita fruit and vegetable program. There is a 50 shekel registration fee and you get the hilchos shmitta book upon registration. Then every month during shmita they charge you 50 shekels and send you a 50 shekel coupon for use in their store. The food that they will have will be:
a) from the 6th year
b) otzer bais din
c) stuff grown not in or on the ground
Everything will be labeled as to exactly what type of food it is.

They have committed to having food within a 1 hour drive of us, though they believe that there will be a store in our village.

I believe the way otzer bais din works is that our farmers sell their fields to bais din and then bais din pays them to pick the fruit. Bais din then sells the fruit for the cost of picking it. The fruits have kedushas shviis on them and therefore you have to read the accompanying book to figure out exactly how to deal with them. It will be a fun and educational year. We have almonds, pecans, lemons, pomegranates and grapes if anyone wants to come during shmita and eat our fruit. We have 2 new cherry trees as well, but they will be orlah until the year after shmita, so you will not be allowed to take from them. I believe the law is that I have to put up a warning sign to protect people from eating orlah cherries.

war report

We have a spot for our bonfire Saturday night. I cleared away the weeds yesterday with the kids and it should be a nice evening. My cousin is coming up to visit because she wants to be part of the happening at Meron on Saturday night. 300,000 people gather on the little hill to celebrate the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai and the loss of the Bar Kokhba rebellion. This is a holiday that I have never understood.

The Winograd report is causing quite a stir in the political arena. I haven't finished reading it yet. I'm only up to page 17, which is the middle of describing the mandate of the commission. The report started ff with a pasuk from Yirmiyahu and a dedication to a girl who died in the war. Olmert has decided to stick it out instead of resigning. His claim is that he will learn the report and implement it. As far as I understand the report says that the leaders are egomaniacs who don't know how to lead and are too involved in their petty self-interests to be of any benefit to the country. I think the only way for that to be implemented after it is learned is if the entire Knesset is hung and new decent people are brought in.

Tzippy Livni, the 2nd in command asked the prime minister to quit so that she could be in charge. I heard an interview with someone who said that she couldn't quit because if she did there would be no one to take the prime minister's place when he resigned. That is the sad state of affairs.
Meanwhile the defense minister is making comments in the press, like , "wow. I did a great job" and completely ignoring what was written in the report.

There is a huge protest in Tel Aviv tonight asking for the resignation of those who the report calls "miserable failures." I'm not going because I didn't know about it until just a bit ago and I am busy tonight. Also I don't think he'd quit if all of Israel asked him to. He is insisting on being thrown out.

Azmi Bishara is being investigated for giving Hizballah information during the war. While we don't know the exact details and we are sure that most things mentioned in the media are not true, he did flee the country and has no intention of returning. With that, Balad will probably pick up another seat or 2 in the next elections.

Rhonda is in town, we haven't seen her in forever. She is coming to visit us with her new husband Nachman of Breslov and we are very excited to see them.

Last night I made a shiva telephone call to a friend who's mother very unexpectedly died in the US. I felt I should call, so I did. I didn't want to ask him how he was doing, because I knew how he was doing - lousy. I didn't want to ask him how his wife and kids were because the focus of shiva is on him and it isn't a social call. I couldn't exactly say, "man, this just sucks." Basically I said, I'm sorry I couldn't be there to comfort you in person and I said the traditional phrase of comfort, "May God comfort you amongst the rest of the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem." and then I hung up.

lag b'omer

In 15 minutes the interim report for the Second Lebanese War is due to be released. The prime minister received his copy almost an hour ago and was supposed to review the entire thing before it was released to the media.
I am actually planning on reading the report. I would like to know what Winograd thinks of the fact that my family spent our summer traipsing around Jerusalem. I wonder if he will quote my blog. I doubt it, but he might.
In any event, the prime minister is too seasoned a politician to go down with the ship. He's the kind of guy who will tell the women and children that the rescue boat is on the other side of the ship so they wouldn't crowd him while he tries to survive.

Also in the news today, Yossi Beilin contradicted the PM who said that he had the Knesset's full backing. Beilin sent Olmert a letter with all of Meretz votes during the course of the war. Of course, Meretz wanted to vote on Israel bending over voluntarily so Hizballah could not be accused of raping us.

We're trying to decide if we should have our own bonfire (and get the kids to sleep at a decent time) or join the community bonfire (and have the kids up all night). The problem is that our normal bonfire location has been taken over by weeds. To do the bonfire ourselves, we will have to clear the area and then go gathering wood. We'll probably make the decision tonight.

insults

Today I insulted someone at work accidentally. His computer wasn't working and my technician reported it was because of viruses. In the follow-up email I sent him, I said that his computer was full of viruses and that he should use the anti-virus software (that he should have been using the whole time) from now on. I also included a damage report which , because there was no other damage just included the time that everyone who worked on it had to put in.

Apparently, when you tell an engineer that his computer is full of viruses that is one of the worst insults that you can lay on him. It says that he doesn't know anything about simple computer use and that he is a complete idiot for downloading all types of garbage without a thought for computer security. I found all this out because he went to my boss and told him how insulted he was and how he was upset because I said that everyone wasted all of that time because of him.

I apologized for saying it was full of viruses, I should have been more precise and mentioned that there were only 2 viruses. I also explained that the purpose of a damage report is to explain that even though he didn't lose any information and there did not seem to be any real damage, we still consider time to be very valuable. By the end of the conversation, he was much happier that we had talked and that I had explained myself. Sometimes I hate email, but I always prefer to have the written record.

I was thinking about Jews and Judaism recently. One of the things that slavery in Egypt was supposed to have done to us was forge us into a nation. Looking at non-religious Jews being proud of their Judaism, while hating the religion, makes me think that the Holocaust may have reinforced that. I think Jews were at a point where if they didn't want to be Jews anymore they were just slipping away. Judaism was a religion in Europe, not a nation. There were no secular Jews, Jews who didn't want to follow the religion just faded into society or joined other religions. Today secular Jews blast the country for the few religious institutions that are part of modern society (read weddings and no chametz on pesach). These Jews would never consider giving up their Judaism, rather they want to be Jews without Judaism, in other words a nation with no religion.

Apparently this is a good thing from a religious perspective, though without the religious aspects of our nation we would just fade away as history has proven time and again.

yom haatzmaut

Yom Hatzmaut was a lot of fun. One of the highlights of the celebration is the candle lighting ceremony, in which someone who represents some group lights a candle and says who they are and why they are lighting a candle. I've never seen it but the ceremony at Mount Herzl is supposed to be all that. Anyways, this year is the 50th anniversary of our village and they asked me to light a candle as a representative of all the olim, past and future, who have and will come to build the village into the great town it is today. I thought it was pretty silly, but I got a lot of comments from people that actually consider it to be a big thing.
The first part of the evening was the special prayer which is culminated by the blowing of a shofar. There were a lot of presentations and speeches before we finally got up to the candle lighting ceremony and by the time I finally lit my candle it was 10:30PM. The next day at davening, most people were dressedin their yomtov finest and we sang hallel and heard the special haftorah.
I was asked if I was really participating because I come from a less Zionistic background and we generally don't say hallel on Yom HaAtzmaut (or listen to live music for that matter, because it is a time of mourning). I replied that we always pasken like Hillel and this day should be no different. (אבות ב,ה) .

My aunt was in visiting from Arizona and she enjoyed both Memorial Day and Independence day.

In the morning we went with 2 other families on a nice 5 hour hike around the base of mount meron. The kids did excellent, though they would have preferred if it was an hour or so shorter. The other two families both brought color-coded books on the flowers of Israel and when we saw interesting looking flowers we stopped to find out what they were.

We finally got back home around 4ish and started preparing for the big mitzva of the day - BBQ. We had about 30 people (including children) and tons of meat. Each of the participating families brought a lot of food. We had hot dogs, steak bits, chicken bits, steaks, bigger steaks, lamb chops, chicken wings, shnitzels and so on. The kids ended the eating by roasting their marshmellows over the grill.

Now life is back to normal until the next big holiday - lag b'omer.

memorial day

Talk about a busy day at work, I didn't have a minute to breathe and I am in the middle of a dozen projects. It is much better then when I was sitting at work with nothing to do, and I threatened to quit, but there should be some sort of middle ground.

I just got back from a memorial day ceremony. Growing up in America, Memorial Day was the beginning of spring, a day to BBQ and big sales. I never really thought about it as a day to think about the soldiers that fell to build the nation and to keep the nation safe. I think it would really benefit the youth of America to understand what Memorial Day really means. Maybe now with the war being close to home and our soldiers losing their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, people will take a minute to think about it and educate their children on May 28.

The chief rabbi of our village spoke at the ceremony and talked about the Israeli professor in Virgina who gave his life to save his students. There was a prayer for the dead, the kel malai rachamim, and a video in which each person who died in the Israeli wars with a connection to our village had a picture shown and his name announced. At the end they announced the names of the people who were killed during the war last summer, including the arabic people from our sister village. We left when the boys started really complaining in the middle of the speeches.

the lebanese

BTW, I've started facebooking now. So if any of you are on facebook, you can add me to your list.

The Lebanese are planning on taking Israel to court for reacting inproportionately to their kidnapping of our soldiers and firing missiles at us. The fact that Lebanon still exists after I had to spend the entire summer in Jerusalem tells me that we did not act proportionately enough. One of the raison de etres of a state is to protect its citizens, worrying about the enemy should not even come into the picture. They aren't even saying that Israel attacked them unprovoked. They are simply saying that 2 of our soldiers and a couple missiles are not worth the destruction that we caused.

I have some advice for the Lebanese. If it isn't worth the damage, don't start up. If they felt it was worthwhile for them to attack us, because we would only respond with what they felt was fair then there would be no such concept as Deterrence. The only way to keep people from attacking you is by making them assume that if they do they will pay for it a lot more then they want to. The only way to make them assume that is that when they actually do attack you, you make them pay more then they wanted to.

In any case, a friend of mine just came back from his reserve duty and told me that this summer's war will most probably be in the Gaza strip and they aren't really concerned with the northern border. I don't know if this should make me worry more because they will not be prepared on the northern border again or relax me because maybe they actually have decent intelligence.

new york to london

I generally ignore email forwards, but I glanced at this one and thought it was good enough to share with you.
Take 60 seconds to do this, I guarantee you will show someone else, it's too funny not to.

1. go to www.google.com <>
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type "New York" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
6. scroll down to direction #23

Now I also tried going to Jerusalem and it wouldn't calculate the driving directions. If everyone will please email google and tell them that you consider them racists and anti-semites because they didn't include driving directions to Jerusalem from the US even though they included driving directions to Europe I would find that amusing.
Dumb, but amusing.

holocaust day

My son came home from gan (nursery) today wearing a yellow star that said Jude on it. In fact, all of the kids were wearing the star except for one little russian boy and the other children were all throwing things at him yelling "sheigitz,sheigitz." Ok, that last part didn't happen, but it probably could have. When my wife tried taking the yellow star off of his shirt he got very upset and said, "but my teacher said I have to wear it."

Yes, it is once again Holocaust Day in Israel. This morning at 10AM a siren sounded and we all stood quietly for the 2 minutes that it went off for. Except in Sderot, where the children screamed and hid under their desks for the 4th time this morning. Ok, that last part might not have happened, but I don't know for sure that it didn't.

On the radio yesterday they were playing sad, dlow songs to get people in the mood of the day. In Israel if you want to know how you are supposed to feel on a given day you can always listen to the radio and the songs they are playing will let you know.

Yesterday I heard an interview with a Polish minister in which he complained that Israeli youth come to visit Poland and all they do is go to death camps. He felt that it gives a very negative impression of Poland to Jewish teenagers. If I'm not mistaken, Poland is the same country where a number of air force pilots got caught a couple months ago inspecting the local culture in their hotel rooms and were dismissed from their duties. That being said its probably better if we only send our teenagers to look at the death camps instead of introducing them to Polish culture.

My little brother had a baby boy today and I'm not going to write what I was just thinking.
You're all welcome.

In any case, as I've mentioned in the past I am not very pro holocaust day. We already have a Jewish holocaust day, Tisha B'Av, which is an all-inclusive Jewish tragedy day. I do think that it is great that Israeli culture keeps it in the public conscience. We must always remember that as Jews we will only be safe under the protection of God himself, in our own land when we are following the Torah as we are supposed to.

"May God avenge their blood", as it is said, so it is written and so it shall be done.

long day

It's 9:45 PM and I'm still at work. I guess this is my own fault because my application screwed up the data. I just finished the function that went through the logs and put all the data back in the place where it is supposed to be and I'm waiting for the production supervisor to go through the numbers with me to make sure they are all right.

Anyways, back to Pesach. I didn't finish all my beer beforehand and I threw out a couple bottles. I wanted to burn them, but it wouldn't have worked. In the olden days we used to have a pre-Pesach beer party with a couple friends to finish them off.

I just heard that Dan is in the country. If anybody has a phone number for him, please send it my way.

Finally finished fixing the problems and I'm going home.
Have a good shabbos.

I'm UpBeat

According to survey results my typology leaning is : Upbeat. I think that's a good place to be.

A lot has been going on that I have been wanting to write about, but life is so busy these days, especially at work. (I'm one of those strange people that actually works at work)

Upbeat

Based on your answers to the questionnaire, you most closely resemble survey respondents within the Upbeat typology group. This does not mean that you necessarily fit every group characteristic or agree with the group on all issues.

Upbeats represent 11 percent of the American public, and 13 percent of registered voters.

Basic Description
Upbeats express positive views about the economy, government and society. Satisfied with their own financial situation and the direction the nation is heading, these voters support George W. Bush’s leadership in economic matters more than on social or foreign policy issues. Combining highly favorable views of government with equally positive views of business and the marketplace, Upbeats believe that success is in people’s own hands, and that businesses make a positive contribution to society. This group also has a very favorable view of immigrants.

Defining Values
Very favorable views of government performance and responsiveness defines the group, along with similarly positive outlook on the role of business in society. While most support the war in Iraq, Upbeats have mixed views on foreign policy – but most favor preemptive military action against countries that threaten the U.S. Religious, but decidedly moderate in views about social and cultural issues.

Who They Are
Relatively young (26% are under 30) and well-educated, Upbeats are the second wealthiest group after Enterprisers (39% have household incomes of $75,000 or more). The highest proportion of Catholics (30%) and white mainline Protestants (28%) of all groups, although fewer than half (46%) attend church weekly. Mostly white (87%), suburban, and married, they are evenly split between men and women.

Lifestyle Notes
High rate of stock ownership (42%, 2nd after Enterprisers).

2004 Election
Bush 63%, Kerry 14%.

Party ID
56% Independent/No Preference, 39% Republican, 5% Democrat (73% Rep/LeanRep)

Media Use
Upbeats are second only to Liberals in citing the internet as their main news source (34% compared with 23% nationwide); 46% also cite newspapers. No more or less engaged in politics than the national average.

chol hamoed

It's been a busy pesach. Having only one seder and one day of chag gives me more time to go on tiyulim during chol hamoed. Early Wednesday morning we piled into the car and headed Southward towards the Negev. We had reservations for the night in a Sde Boker motel. Sde Boker is the kibbutz where Ben Gurion lived and was buried. There is an interesting custom associated with visiting Ben Gurion's grave, but we did not partake (the kids were with us).
We did some nice tiyuling in the crater (mikhtash) itself and went to an alpaco farm. We ended off the trip with a bbq at the dead sea and then drove on home.
Our seder was multi-ethnic. We had a sefardical family and they did some strange things. We did tell them that they could not slaughter a goat at the table because it would make a mess, so they compromised on that custom.

I bought sticker sheets to keep the kids happy but I only got 2 spiderman sheets and there were 3 boys, so there was some crying. but all and all it was fun.

chomesh

My nephew, Baby Boy Blue, is having his pidyon today in Jerusalem, so we'll be heading down south later on this afternoon. I called my brother to give him some advice about what not to speak about. Some people might speak about the 2 times that you would do a pidyon, when your wife has a boy and when your donkey has a boy and then they would try to compare it. Women sometimes misunderstand the vort and think that you are referring to them in the same way you refer to a donkey. My brother agreed not to use that vort for the sake of shalom bayis. (He said he wasn't going to anyways, but sometimes you have to warn your little brother)

This week the settlers are trying to resettle the Shomron village of Chomesh. Chomesh was destroyed 2 years ago during the with Gazan Rezoning project, where they zoned all of Gaza to be prohibited to Jews. Unlike historic Miami, the zoning laws do allow dogs to remain.

I have very mixed feelings about what is going on in Chomesh. On the one hand, it is part of Israel and we should have the right to settle it. On the other hand, it says in pirkei avos, "pray for the welfare of the government, for if people didn't fear it man would eat his friend alive." The point is that we have a system of laws that we accepted and even if we don't agree with the laws there is something to following them in any case.If the law was against the Torah, obviously you have to stand up against it. But in a case of settling the land, you are not violating any commandment if you live in your own piece of Israel and don't try to settle another part. One of my big problems with the concept is that these people will run to the Israeli court systems to solve their problems, but if the court system rules against them then they call it illegitimate and biased against them. If that were the case, then they should take the road of not recognizing the court system and not running to it to solve their human rights problems. That being said, I think we need a dose of reality here and recognize that we do live in a system of laws. While we can protest the law and try to change it using political and diplomatic means, we should not resort to violence and vandalism to gain our objectives.

That the police and army use violence to disperse people who are breaking laws and refuse to stop peacefully is acceptable in every part of the world. There is no other option other then to allow the people to break the laws. I don't think they should be over-violent, but that happens when you push them to resort to the violence. As an example, if someone came onto my land and refused to leave, I would expect the police to physically remove him. If the law is that you can't be in a place and you go there I expect the police to physically remove anybody who breaks the law. When you force someone to use physical means to gain an objective, unexpected violence can happen.

The answer is to change the law. If we are such a small minority that we cannot, then that basically sucks for us.

happy brithday mrs. rock

Everyone wish a happy birthday to my dear wife, who has gotten one year older today. We will be celebrating the occasion tonight at Morganfelds Steak House in Moshav Liman, about 5 miles from the Lebanese border.

I heard that the rest of the country had a air raid drill this week. Apparently they decided that our systems had already been fully tested this summer and there was no reason to test them again. The girls school did have their own drill, but without any siren.

1 KG= 2.2 lbs

In honor of Pesach someone was selling 10 KG boxes of meat in various cuts, a fixed price no matter which cut you got. The boxes were supposed to contain 10 1 KG pieces of the different cuts. We wanted 2 boxes and some friends wanted a box, so we ordered 3 boxes. When we went to pick it up, the boxes were not 10 KG each, so we ended up taking a box of 18 KG and a box of 14 KG and we had to pay for the extra 2 kg. The first box my wife opened was pretty much what we expected. A variety of 7 different kinds of meat of various shapes and sizes. The second box we opened had 12 pieces of meat, but 7 of them were the same type. Then we had to divvy up the meat with our friends. This wasn't as simple as we thought it would be when we had planned on giving them a whole box. So he brought over a scale and we divided the pieces of meat accordign to type and then started weighing and figuring. It was a bit confusing because we were taking 2/3 and they were taking 1/3 but we didn't want to start cutting the meat. So we weighed and traded and tested and thought until finally our friends had 11 KG and we had 21 KG and everyone was happy.

In offices around the world there is a simcha tax, someone has a baby you give 20 shekel and buy a present from the whole office. I've seen this custom in all the various places I've worked. It comes around. When we had our baby we got a nice present from my co-workers. Today someone came into my office and said that I hadn't paid the simcha tax for International Russian Women's day from 2 weeks ago and he wanted 25 shekel. To be fair on International Russian Men's day, I received a chocolate bar from the Russian women. Obviously I paid because that is how you stay in good standing with the other people in the office, but I thought that maybe it was a bit much to be taxed for someone else's international day. Maybe I should go around collecting for Kwanza.

First of all look at today's dilbert to gain some real perspective.
He's been waxing philosophical recently. Yesterday's was also spot on.

One of my children took Huckleberry Finn out of the library in Hebrew. I told her she couldn't read it.
There is just no possible way that Hebrew can do justice to Mark Twain. I read the first paragraph out loud in both Hebrew and English and the translation was worse then laughable. This is the first paragraph from the original

" YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before."

It's like trying to translate Uncle Remus into Hebrew, you lose 99% of the book because there are no words in Hebrew corresponding to the lack of good English that they use.

Maybe Harry Potter can be translated, but whoever even thought about translating anything that Mark Twain ever wrote should be hung from the nearest tree. That is just pure vandalism. I'm trying to get my eldest to read more in English now. We are slowly learning it together and she's making good progress. Number 2 just started lower case letters and numbers 3,4 and 5 have to learn to read in Hebrew before I will start them on English.

Pesach is coming.

Rafi G, if you're reading this - how much does it cost to buy a cow and shecht it? For those who missed the action, you can watch Rafi G (in still pictures) shecht a big red cow.

We had lunch on shabbos with some friends and they were telling us about other friends who went to the neighboring village, bought a sheep for 900 shekel, got it shechted for 100 shekel and had someone cut it up for them for another 100 shekel. They had to kasher it and cut it into meal size portions themselves, but then they got an entire sheep for 1100 shekels. They will hopefully make a shofar out of the horn, a jacket out of the skin and use the wool for clothing.

I think that the best meal comes from an animal that you feel close with. It should have a name, and preferably you should ride it or take it for a walk before you kill it and eat it. The more connected you feel to the animal really adds flavor.

We are currently trying to make plans for Pesach vacation. We have 2 days of chol hamoed for tiyuling and I have taken off work. Some friends (the sheep eaters) are going down to mizpe ramon and staying in a field school (like a youth hostel). Last year we ended up staying in a youth hostel with them after our camp ground flooded and they found us the last rooms in the place.

2 years ago I had an argument with someone as to whether charcoal needed to be kosher for Pesach. I heard from a third party that the posek in Detroit said it did. The star K's website says it does not. It is certainly not fit for a dog to eat, but you are cooking on top of it, so maybe that makes a difference. In any case, the posek I asked said it was fine (I didn't need to negotiate at all). He did tell me I needed a new grill for Pesach, which I completely disagreed with. However, he wouldn't budge from his original position, so I sold my grill and bought a new one (which I put away so it is available this year). The reason I disagreed was because I burnt any chametz that was on my grill (during use). After you burn chametz it ceases to be chametz and therefore you should be able to use it. Unfortunately, I lost that argument though I don't see how you could see it any other way. The mitzva itself is to burn the chametz. ARGH!!

Remember 30 days before the holiday it is appropriate to learn the laws.

A thought from this weeks parsha.
The midrash brings down an incident when Moshe asked the people for donations for the mishkan. The women wanted to donate their copper mirrors.Moshe refused to accept them because he said that the mirrors are objects that women use to make themselves look pretty. They are therefore to be treated as unholy. God spoke to Moshe and said "you are not correct, Moshe. These mirrors are dearer to me then any other donations because the women used them in Egypt so that their husbands would desire them and keep the family bond strong." Moshe accepted the donation of the women and made them into a kiyor, the sink from which the Kohanim washed their hands and feet before doing the avodah.

We can learn a lot from this story. One thing we can learn is that sexuality in Judaism is not only appropriate, but that effort put into keeping you marriage and sex life healthy is very important to God.

A second thing that we can learn from this, that commentaries generally don't bring down (at least I haven't seen it) is that rabbis can be wrong. Moshe could have jumped up and down screaming, "Torah Lo BaShamayim hee" (Torah is not in the heaven, but should be adjudicated by the humans it was given to), he could have said, "That is very nice God, but we are more machmir." But instead he accepted that he was wrong and accepted the gift of the women.

The midrash is teaching us that just because someone is a great person, a big talmid chacham or someone who speaks directly with God doesn't mean that everything he says or thinks is correct. While we have to weigh what great people say very heavily, we still must realize that they are people and not Gods.

The way my dad will look at this is that it took God himself to tell Moshe that he was wrong. The answer to that is look at who told Amram (the leader of that generation) that he was wrong about leaving his wife in wake of the Egyptian slaughter of all newborn males. A little girl.

Stupid Jews

I was speaking with my father-in-law about the story of Korach and he didn't understand how people who saw har sinai could let their personal ambitions get in the way of the obvious.

I thought about this for a little bit and it applies to all of the problems the Jews had beginning in Egypt until the end of the Torah.

Suddenly I had a revelation. Everyone says that Jews today are very smart, a large portion of the leaders of art, science, math... are and have been Jewish. Maybe what happened was the stupid Jews got killed in the stories such as the Golden Calf, the Spies and Korach,... the only gene pool left was the smart Jews and as everyone knows smart jews make other smart jews. This is why we are so afraid of assimilation, we don't want to let stupid genes back into our people. There are some Jews today who are stupid (such as our current PM) and I think that is we call a genetic malfunction.

Another opinion is that this is another case of Woe, for you have listened to the voice of a woman.

We had a very nice shabbos with a lot of hoopla, my parents, in laws, older brother and family, sister amd BIL with family all came up and we made a kiddush in shul for the baby. I gave a nice speech about names and why we gave our child an English name that sounds like the Hebrew name but means something slightly different with an English pronunciation. I didn't want her to think that the one name I gave her was 2 different names, as it is pronounced differently by us and by them. Shabbos was very nice, hopefully one day we'll see the whole family together again. (J22, you left first).

A new phenomenon in the anonymous blog world is occurring, in what might be considered a new evolution of the blog. Anonymous bloggers are generally known to a few select people, such as spouses. As such it is impossible to complain about your spouse or about something you don't want your spouse to know about on your own blog. Shifra wrote about her MIL's dish washing ability at the Muqata, while PyschoToddler went over the conversation he had with his wife about his planned HDTV and XBox 360 on Ask Shifra.

Of course this only works if the people you are complaining about don't read the other blogs that you can write on. Otherwise you will need a new anonymous name for your anonymous self. It only gets more confusing.

anonymous blogging

For those of you following the blogging lawsuit against Orthomom demanding her secret identity because an anonymous commenter called the plaintiff a bigot and anti-semite. (BTW the woman is Jewish or black (she has a Jewish name) and it seems to me from the comments I have read she is more anti-Orthodox then anti Jewish though there are those that don't differentiate. It also seems to me that if the Orthodox would put their children in the cesspool public schools then she wouldn't have anything against them either, but I've never heard anything about her aside from the blog. That being said I probably wouldn't vote for her if she ran for a public office that I had the right to vote in.)

I am personally pro anonymity in blogging, though I myself am only a little bit anonymous, most of my readers know who I am. There is real harm that can be done to people via anonymous blogging and posting. For example, Salon.com has a story about female law students who are being anonymously posted about. The postings would probably constitute sexual harassment and would have even been a thought if not for anonymous blogging. These discussions, which often include the full names and pictures of female law students, are generally of a sexual nature and hinder the prospects of these students from getting jobs after they graduate. If a potential employer googles a candidates name and finds a discussion about her breast size or various exploits that will color the way he looks at her, whether or not they are true or not. I feel that censorship has its place and it is the responsibility of the forum administrator to determine if the discussion requires censorship or not.

Censorship is applied here at the Rock of Galilee. I erase any comments that I decide are unfit for my audience and I only post items that I feel are readable. I have erased/modified a number of articles that I have posted because I have agreed with someone who told me they were inappropriate.

Anonymity is important when there is a good reason for no one to know who you are and no one is getting hurt by your comments, for example to vent. There was a blog called reasons I hate my flatmate on which a reason was posted every day until the flatmate moved out. Nobody knew who it was or where in the world they lived. It was completely anonymous and it was good.

In the case of Orthomom's politics, it is possible (she feels it is probable) that she would be victimized if her identity was known. However, she has to be careful to keep an open tone so that she is not sniping at people behind the veil of anonymity. I am not a regular reader of hers, but it seems to me that she has not crossed the line very often. Her commentors have crossed the line on a number of occassions and I feel that it would behoove her to censor her comments.

Government Censorship = Bad.
Self Censorship = Good.

If it is your forum, you are the boss.

goodbye Julia

Julia Casterton passed away 2 weeks ago and I only found out today. Let us all have a moment of silence in her memory.

Julia was 54 when the angel of death came for her. She was a poet and a teacher and she had touched the lives of a lot of people.

I would like to say that she hadn't touched my life at all, but then I wouldn't be writing about her at all. Ms. Baroque is also feeling a bit down. Please go to her blog, if you have a chance, and leave your condolences. It mentioned that she was dead so I checked the obituary, linked above.
She had 3 husbands, though probably not all of them at the same time.

Julia, Rest in Peace.

I have written a poem in her memory that I am sure she would have appreciated.

Keep it coming, on the wings of a kite
Flying so high till you are out of sight
Like an eagle chasing a lonely sparrow
The skies suddenly seem all tight and narrow
Raining down upon a village so green
ordering the lowest about like a queen
To look up high and continue running
Or sitting on the beach and sunning
Like a turtle trying to just get there
but dragged forcefully to the lions lair
hiding in his green bowl shell hoping for no eviction
The time has passed and the wind has blown
What is will be and soon will be shown
For the end is upon her lying there so sweet
Put into the ground as her creator she'll meet
Down below the poeple still scurry
thinking that they need to hurry
to get somewhere but where that is
not even a little bit of your biz

Goodbye Julia.

bar mitzva

A Hebrew lesson to start out with:
In Hebrew if you don't know someone (or you do know someone) you should say you do/don't recognize them, otherwise biblical knowledge is implied. The first time I found this out was at a sheva brachos a year ago where I spoke and said I didn't know either the chosson or the kallah and everyone started laughing. But I forgot and said it again.

Our purim fun actually started Wednesday night as we headed down to Jerusalem for a Taanis Esther bar mitzva. The grandson of one of our regular wartime writers, Doc's Wife, was flying in from Toronto with his family to accept his place in Judaism. It is very appropriate and symbolic to accept the yoke of mitzvos in Israel, where God expected us to do those mitzvos. The first time that you say in birchas hamazon (and it counts), "Thank you God for giving our fathers a fine, good and wide land" should be in that fine and good land.

Wednesday evening and Thursday morning we spent with family, and even saw the new baby whose bris was on Purim morning. Thursday afternoon at 2:00 PM the festivities started. 2000 years ago on that day our ancestors in Iran were crying about what Haman wanted to do to us. In reality they were crying over the bais hamikdash, the Jewish Temple that was destroyed by Nevuchadnezar, king of Bavel. We stayed with the program and the same line of thought and went to the place where they are actively working to bring back the bais hamikdash, the Temple Mount Institute. They are hard at work building all of the vessels used in the Temple according to their specs and will actually be kosher for use in the third temple. We saw a number of presentations and heard the explanations of how it all comes together.
After that we headed down to the kotel, the wailing western wall, standing in sorrow with a gold dome over its head. We headed underneath the plaza into the tunnels and heard the story of the wall and walked alongside its entire width. Apparently the reason we are allowed to go up on part of the Temple Mount today is because when Herod enlarged the temple plaza he forgot to perform the holiness ceremony and it was left bereft of holiness (for our benefit). My chavrussa, the boys uncle, gave the tour which was mostly excellent, and some of it just very good.
We had to wait until it was fully dark outside before finishing the fast and we davened maariv at the kotel. As the stars came out, the bar-mitzva boy came of age and he lead the tefilla (probably very well, though it was very hard to hear him).
After a full day of bar-mitzvaing him, it was finally time for the celebration and we headed up to the Cardo for a fun and delicious meal. The boy and his father made a siyum on mesechas megilla (very appropriate for Taanis Esther, I'll be finishing it in a couple days myself). We then donned togas, as is appropriate at the Cardo restaurant, and ate. The Cardo restaurant is a very interesting place where you can dress in costume, eat good food and play with the various ancient Greek accessories lying around. There is a greek helmet and a large (sharp) sword. There were axes and shields...

The children made a spice bag for havdala, they actually beat the ingredients with a wooden stick until they were fine enough, while the adults watched a video presentation on the history of the bais hamikdash.

After all was done we headed back to our northern village, getting in just after midnight. Shabbos is another story as we continued celebrating the bar mitzva. I sold aliyahs in shul, in what seems to have become a custom. I was expecting them to ask someone else because I don't speak the worst Hebrew anymore, but what can you do. They certainly had what to laugh at. Hopefully that will be in another post.

I thought the father's name was very interesting, in Hebrew it means either (according to Babylon) Slow God, Sluggish God, Leisurely God, Laggardly God, Phlegmatic God, ... (and a lot of other interesting possible pronouns.) When I met him, he was very excited to finally meet the Rock of Galilee and I was excited that I actually had a reader I didn't know.
Remember, if any of our readers are planning a simcha in Israel it is appropriate to invite the Rock of Galilee family.

Talk about an exhausting Purim and I didn't even have a bit to drink. It's a good thing Purim sheni is coming up soon for those of us who were driving on regular Purim. We know about Purim sheni because of a gezera shava between the 15th of Nissan and the 14th of Adar. As everyone knows, gezera shava can be one off.

Starting from the end of our Purim, we somehow arrived safely after a thoroughly exhausting day. The last Purim thing we did was give Shalach Manos to Jameel's brother-in-law. Rumor had it that Jameel was spotted in the village where we were eating so we rushed over after we finished the meal with our shalach manos and digital camera to see if maybe he removed the big yellow smiley face for Purim. He must have heard the paparazzi was coming and he left 5 minutes earlier. The guy who answered the door was Jameel's brother-in-law so I gave him the mishloach manos and wished him a happy Purim.

The seuda was great. My wife made EssigFleish (which means eat meat in yiddish) a combination of meatballs and a stringy meat roast cooked together. My sister made spicy steak poppers that were delicious. If you want to try it, post on her blog asking for a date (boys only). If you make it to the third date you may even get it cooked for you. (Past performance is no indication of future results.) There was plenty of other food going on, but those were the highlights. I successfully passed the merlot challenge when I was easily able to tell the difference between Petit Sira and Merlot, though that was the only thing I had to drink :-(.

Before the seuda we spent some quality time with a friend from high school (and his family) who was dressed as charvorna. I had to give 2 shalach manos according to the law so before heading over to his house I went over to fellow blogger Rafi G's house with a basket. He isn't so hard to find. Just drive around his village asking people where Rafi's house is. Everyone knows him. (In Hebrew you would say "Aifoa Rafi?" But since nobody there speaks Hebrew they would just look at you blankly)

By this time we were all quite exhausted. The children could barely stand and I was driving with my eyes closed. (don't worry, we have the new auto pilot system in our car.) They weren't ready for us at the seuda so we decided to go deliver our mishloach manos. I had planned on giving 3, which ended up being good because the last one wasn't delivered until after Purim was over, so it didn't count. I had thought about going hiking because there are some caves in the area that we haven't been in yet, but when I suggested it my children gave signs of revolt.

My brother's kid's bris was a lot of fun. It was a multi-cultural affair which included the great uncle singing piyutim or something and everyone getting a leaf.I think the leaf was to symbolize the fact that God gave Adam a leaf to cover himself when he realized he was naked and its a sign that this baby should not walk around uncovered. The baby was given a fairly settlery type of name which might have deep kabbalistic meaning. The first name is actually a biblical name and is mentioned in the birchat Yaakov for Yehuda. The second name is also mentioned in the Torah in a number of places. My family, Airtime's family, my sister and the father of the baby were the only ones who came dressed for Purim in costumes, which the mother of the baby had said was appropriate, and the grandmother of the baby wanted to know if we were dressed that way because we had just been on a tiyul.

We made it to Shacharis in Modiin and my children were very excited because was davened in the shul where the Macabees heard the Megilla (or somewhat close by). To get there on time, we left our village at 5:05 AM. The plan had actually been to leave at 5AM, but due to some compromising we were 5 minutes late. Those 5 minutes were critical as we got to the shul exactly 5 minutes late. But still 30 minutes before megilla.

We missed our community Purim party because we were planning on waking up at 4:30 to leave. We ended up setting the alarm clock for 4:35. While I was sad to miss the Purim party I was happy that I didn't fall asleep on the road. My dear wife brought along a large hot chocolate in a Dunkin Donuts travel mug, so I would survive the trek.

I drank coffee in Modiin and it was horrible.

Today, Shushan Purim, I'm back at work. I'll leave the pre Purim story for another time.

strike

One week until Purim, the big question is what costume am I wearing. Traditionally, I wear a cowboy hat and go as my real self. This year I am thinking about going as a shochet, but I doubt I am actually going to.

Number 2 is in a concert tonight. This is her first concert, so she will now be a concert pianist. It is actually only 1 song, but we are very excited that she has agreed to do it. She's generally very shy and we wouldn't force her, but we were able to convince her.

I gave a lift this morning to the guy who had asked me for help in fund-raising for our girls school. We hadn't talked about it in a while, so I asked him what the story was. He said there is no need anymore because we got a ton of money from the foundation that was giving out money to fix northern institutions in the aftermath of the war.

Well the Hizballah and the histadrut are talking war again. Israeli intelligence says that the Hizballah is not ready for another war and would prefer to keep it quiet. According to media reports, they are building a new stronghold south of the litani river and expanding their infrastructure.
The histadrut has decided to shut down Israel again, and starting tomorrow, unless an agreement is reached (and it won't be), the trains and planes won't be working and a number of other crucial services will be disrupted as well. I am in favor of paying workers, but there has to be a better way to get them paid then shutting down the airport. Airport workers are getting paid. It is municipal workers in certain cities who haven't gotten paid in a long time.

My parents are supposed to arrive on Thursday, but now we're not sure if they will make it or not. I suggested that they do it the old way. Fly to Cyprus and get on the Aliyah Bet boat going near the coast of Haifa. Then get into a small boat and try to make it to shore. It worked in Exodus.

I think that along with every pulsa denora curse against a prime minister, 2 should be made against the head of the labor union.

Sunday

Busy day today.
My little brother had a baby boy, Purim bris. As I said to him, "Lets hope the shochet isn't drunk." Actually, the bris will be taking place in Jlem, so it is not purim for them. Our purim plans have changed, we will probably be feasting in ramat bet shemesh. Maybe I can score a drink with Rafi G.

We had a couple yeshiva boys up for shabbos from Jerusalem. At the end of shabbos one of them asked if there were any graves nearby that were worth visiting. Our entire region is filled with the graves of pretty much every tzaddik in the book. But he didn't have a car, so there was no way for him to get to Shmaya and Avtalyon, who are resting in peace about 10-15 minutes away.

Our tiyul on Friday was excellent, we went to Nachal Galbon (Jalba'own). The weather was perfect and I am sure the children learned more then they would have learned in school. Especially during Adar, where they dance and have shtick more then class. We walked through a former Syrian military camp and down to the first waterfall, Mapal Devora. We then heded upwards to the other side of the bank to the ancient village of Daburah. This was a Jewish village in the time of the Mishna and the Gemara, they found the address of R' Elazar Hakapar's bet midrash, written in Hebrew when we redeemed it from the Syrians in 1967. The address stone is now located in the museum of Katzrin, so we didn't see it this time. The village was very cool. It was basically ruins, but we saw how houses used to be built, and I showed the children what a shared chatzer was. It was like a walled city. But there were a bunch of them. You walk into a doorway and then there are houses inside with a big courtyard.

We went back down towards the waterfall, and then crossed over the river a number of times walking on rocks, following the red trail. At one point I left the wife and kids to head back to get the car and meet them at the exit point. They saw 2 more waterfalls and had a very steep climb up from the wadi.

I highly recommend this tiyul, but it is well worth reading up the history before going, so that you understand what you are seeing.

TIYUL!!!!!!!

My old secretary would have known what the weather for tomorrow would be. And if she didn't know she would have checked for me. In any case, I found the weather forecast on ynet and it is supposed to be hot tomorrow. This is good because I was planning on taking the family on a tiyul instead of sending them to school.

We haven't decided exactly where we are going yet, but I would like to go see some waterfalls. During Sukkos we went to Nachal Iyun (in Metula) and all 3 waterfalls were dry. This might be a great opportunity to go back and see them full of water.

In Israel news, everyone's favorite billionaire Gadyamak (prounounced Giddymak) started a new political party. The news reported that he told Olmert to be very afraid. Gadyamak is not planning on running for public office himself, but will have a strong hand in developing the platform. I don't know if I would vote for him, but I don't like any of the other parties either. Lets wait and see what his platform actually is.

trippin' hate

On my way home today I was tripping down memory lane when my thoughts were suddenly invaded by a certain person who I was once good friends with. The total feelings of utter hatred and contempt rose in my chest and surprised me. I had forgiven him for the sin of being alive more then 10 years ago.
It led me to the question of can you hate someone who you have forgiven? If you still hate him maybe you didn't really forgive him. So I called my sister, who is one of the few people who would understand that question without needing any explanation.
She felt that you can hate someone who you have already forgiven and it is still a full forgiveness. Her reasoning was that while you have forgiven a specific act that the person has done, the person isn't going to change and what you hate is the way this person behaves, which will continue with or without your forgiveness.

I'm not sure I agree with that. When I forgave him, it was before Yom Kippur and I said "I forgive that jerk, but I still wish he fell off a roof and was still alive to feel himself get rolled over by a truck." In any case hatred is very powerful. As it is said, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to the dark side." In the newer movie (which I haven't seen) Yoda says that hate leads to suffering, but in the original he stated correctly. Hate leads to the dark side.

Another question I was thinking about is why this person invaded my thoughts. Does that mean that an event had occurred with him, so his presence was stronger in the universe or was it just a random occurrence. A lot of people from the past came to me while I was driving and for the most part it was a very pleasant experience.

Happy Adar

It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to write. I've turned into one of those few people who actually spend his whole day at the office working and who has time to blog when they go home.

One of the funniest things I have had the opportunity to hear is a business meeting in English by two high level people who don't speak the language very well. They certainly made themselves understood, and we are talking about very smart people, but the way they used the language made me feel very good about my Hebrew. They didn't have much of a choice in the language, it was a Swede meeting with an Israeli who made aliyah from Russia a long time ago.

It is the beginning of the Jewish month of Adar and that means that it is time to get ready for Purim. Last year my favorite costume set in our village was a husband and wife. The wife was M in english and אם in Hebrew. The husband was wearing a couple pillows on his stomach and he was P3 in English and פי שלש in Hebrew. For those who don't get it, think again.
We have a great theme for our shalach manos this year, but I'll probably just put on the old cowboy hat and go as myself.

I haven't been by the Muqata in a while, so I haven't seen what the plans are for the jblogosphere, but I plan to check it out later on today.

Last night I saw a movie that I truly enjoyed called Bulworth. It's about a senator who hires a hit man to kill himself and then endears himself to the black community of South Central LA. If you haven't seen it yet, see it now.

In Israeli news, the chief of Police quit half an hour before he was supposed to be fired. He said he was taking personal responsibility. That brings out memories of "you can't fire me, I quit." Now the head of the prison service will be the head of police and the deputy head of police will be the head of the prison services, the music stops and this country is just as screwed up as it was before the music started. Oh and the head of the tax authority quit, he's being investigated for...tax evasion.

I think I saw a skit like this country at Second City once.

shiurim

Now that I am driving to work, I have started downloading MP3 shiurim to listen to on the commute.
I heard a great shiur on kabbala and golus by Rav David Bar Chayim of Torah Light. I really enjoyed it and it definitely was on my wavelength (which sme people would say is odd). It is about an hour and a half shiur, but it is well worth it.
I'm currently downloading the daf yomi for Megilla. If I can make the time to actually go over it inside as well, I will have a much better understanding then I have been until now.

army tremp

This morning I gave a soldier a ride from tzomet Achihud all the way to Nesher, a suburb of Haifa. He got in my car and heard the shiur on the cd player and immediately put his hand in his pocket, pulled out his kippa and put it on his head. He asked who the rabbi was and I told him it was Rav Elon, and his response was, "He's the best".
The shiur ended with a great connection between last weeks haftorah and this weeks parsha (not just the yisro relation angle and not the shira). Barak told Devorah that she would have to go to war with him or he wasn't going to go. This is because he didn't want people attributing the victory to him, but to God with the people's help. This is the reason why Yisro came to the Bnei Yisroel, according to rashi, because he heard that God was working with the people. In that same way when Yael the wife of Yisro's grandchild heard that the Jewish people miraculously beat the Canaanites, she went to the other side and killed the final Canaanite general who her family was aligned with.
After the shiur, we started talking about computers and he asked me if he could call me in the evening to help fix his computer. I told him that he should find a teenager who loves computers and he would be fine. I dropped him off without giving him my phone number because he didn't have a pen.

religious or something

According to Walla news (sorry it's in Hebrew, I haven't seen the story in English yet), Rav Elyashiv has instructed the heads of girl schools and seminaries to ban entrance to any girl whose parents use a "non-kosher" cell phone. The idea of "kosher" cell phone is to remove the Internet/tv/(camera??) features of the cell phone so that it cannot be used for viewing inappropriate material.

They have not gotten to the level where the phone automatically disconnects if a boys voice is heard on a girl's phone, but don't think that is far behind. And no, it doesn't matter if it is the father calling his daughter. It is bitul torah to talk to your daughter in any case.

Why is it that every time I hear news from the Chareidi world, I thank God that I moved to a dati leumi community?

On the other side of the spectrum a non-religious yeshiva opened up in Tel Aviv. No it is not for people who want to become religious, it is for people who want to stay secular. It aims to give over Jewish culture without Jewish religion. Sounds Greek to me. They have not formulated a policy on cell phones yet, but I imagine that they will only allow people in who use their cell phones in inappropriate ways to counter to negative publicity of inappropriate cell phones.

On my way to work this morning I listened to a Rabbi Mordechai Alon shiur on parshas Yisro (I haven't fallen so far off the derech to say Yitro yet, but one more chareidi news story...) So far I've listened to 45 minutes of it and he has talked entirely about the haftorah of last weeks parsha. The connection is there as the girl who kills the bad general (sisro) was married to one of Yisro's children or grandchildren. It will be interesting to hear how he brings it all together. I guess when you give a parsha shiur for so many years it becomes hard to find some connection that you haven't already used.

no bukser for me

Happy Tu Bshvat, New Years day for the trees.
This Tu Bshvat, I thought about playing God and pronouncing death sentences on certain trees that I was planning on cutting down this year. You know the whole "who will live and who will die, who in their time and who not in their time..."
In any case, I did some of the who will be born and I planted two cherry trees, one sour and one sweet. The guy in the store told me that they were three years old and that he had them for 1 year. I went straight from the store to the rabbi to find out when i could eat the cherries, if they actually grow. After some quick negotiation, he gave me a one year dispensation and said I could eat them Tu Bshvat 2009. This is because the flower pot they were growing in had holes on the bottom and the flower pot was sitting on the ground outside the nursery. The guy who takes care of it is not religious and therefore generally would not be believed for the purpose of religious issues. However, in this case, since I had already bought the trees before asking about their history and he had absolutely no reason to lie and he is ind of the "expert" because he takes care of trees the rabbi said he could be considered somewhat reliable.
So y'all are invited up for cherry pie in Feb. 2009.

Have a great shabbos