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

got the car

My end of year meeting went remarkably well. They list both positives and negatives of the year. My major negative was that my office is a mess and I should clean it neater. When they get to that level, you know things are going well.
I got my raise and bonus on average with the rest of the company and I also got a company car. All expenses paid for except the taxes (which the government is trying to raise).
My new Toyota Corolla should be here tomorrow morning and then I am done with sheruts forever. I enjoyed the morning train, but that half hour was the only part of the hour and a half commute that was even partially acceptable.

Now I have to buy CDs to burn so I can start listening to the daf on the way to work. I'm way behind in Taanis, but if I can get 2 pages in every day, I'll catch up before they finish.
I will also be able to finally get to shul in the morning. If I leave 10 minutes later then I leave now, I will be able to get to minyan at the Technion and still get to work at the same time.

God is great.

english speakers unite???

I've been thinking about the value of an English Speakers Business Club where English speakers in Israel from different business sectors could get together once a month and socialize. The purpose of the group would be utilizing our common language to network, help each other out and just in general meet people to add to your contact network.
I mentioned this idea to NBN because I am on their employment buddy list and I thought this would be an effective way of networking the buddies to help NBN olim as well as helping themselves.

Or would it be a complete waste of time.

goings on

Sometimes Dilbert has perspective and other times Dilbert is just dumb. Yesterday's Dilbert was dumb. They are making a whole week series about the alien which will at times be funny. But the opening salvo is definitely missing what it needs. Today's was decent and can relate to a business environment.

On Sunday night we had a couple of seminary girls over the house, the wife's cousin and her friend. We took them bowling in Karmiel and I am embarrassed to say that I lost 1 of the 3 games. The plan was to hit a strike in the last frame and then win, but in the last frame I only got a spare (the last pin was rocking back and forth and should have fallen) and lost by 4 points.

I have my end of year meeting at the end of the month, it was postponed from yesterday. This is the big meeting where I find out if I get my car or not.

And finally it looks like our community swimming pool will be opening soon. It has been closed since this summer when it got a direct hit by a katyusha. When that is finished there will be no remnants of the war (aside from a little PTSS) and I can therefore remove the tshirts and mugs from the site.

miracles do happen

Someone asked me last week why God didn't show his face these days the way he did in Biblical times. No plagues, no walls falling down, no nothing. Just the sun coming up every morning and going down every evening.

I gave him a bunch of answers, such as the miracles occur every day, we just have to see them. As examples, I gave him the tsunami and the 6 day war. He thought those were too natural looking and were not on the same level as what used to be.

I was looking through this weeks parsha, Vaera, where the plagues against Egypt started and I noticed a very interesting pattern. All of the wonders that God was doing in Egypt, starting from the very first one, were all copyable on one level or another by Paroahs magicians (except for the lice). He started off by throwing the stick on the floor and it turned into an alligator. The magicians then did the exact same thing. Moshe and Aharon were able to "outmagic" them each time. If God was trying to show miracles, why didn't he start off with things that the magicians could not do?

It seems clear to me that all the miracles that occurred back in the time of the bible could be explained by the norms of the times. It was not an obvious miracle that everyone stepped back and said "this is God."
When the walls of Jericho fell down, the Jews first walked around 7 times blowing a shofar. People who did not want to see miracles could have easily said that the Jews found the weak spot in the walls as they walked around it 7 times.

In short, we only see them as clear miracles, because it was laid out for us as such. To casual observers, they all may have looked mike natural, or normal supernatural events.

In our lives we have the exact same experience. We see tsunamis, powerful Israel lost a war to a ragamuffin band of terrorists, Jewish Israeli communities are wiped out for no real reason, and so on and so forth. It is very easy to look at these events as happenstance, natural events that have no connection to the upper world.

Or you can see God's hand moving the pieces around the board as he plays a winning game of chess with himself.

vague

I knew a rabbi who was oftentimes purposefully vague and would say things that didn't make a whole lot of sense on the face of things. It would cause you to think about things, such as "does that mean that he knows about ..." or "Does he want me to get more information about ..."

This type of vagueness can be very frustrating at times for the receiver, but for the speaker it can accomplish exactly what you want without the need to express it.

This is not always a good thing. For example, my children tend to say things like, "I am thirsty" instead of asking for a drink. I explain to them that when they want something they have to be more direct and take it to the next logical conclusion. So I say to them. "You are thirsty, is there a way to fix that problem?

However at times vagueness can be very good. For examples, there are topics that you might not want to discuss before the person has a basic understanding of the topic. A vague comment will cause the person who received it to check into the subject and think about it. Then the person will be prepared for a more direct conversation later on.

Signs from God.

Today I ordered a salad for lunch and they forgot to bring it. They brought everyone else's order, including salads. I decided God didn't want me to eat salad today, so I told my secretary to order me a pizza instead. The pizza came, and that is a sign from God that he is happy with my order.

The pizza was slightly burnt, which I took as a sign from God that he was so happy with the order that he took part of it for himself with a fire from heaven.

The chief of staff of the IDF resigned last night. I haven't talked to anyone who thought that was a bad idea and I spoke to people all across the political spectrum.

lunch talk

Have you ever considered doing something immoral, such as being a serial killer/rapist? Even if you haven't actively considered doing it, has the thought entered your mind? Have you thought about the best way to do it so as to outsmart the police.

What stops you from carrying this out? Is there a sense of morality? based on what? Is it religion? Do you believe you will burn in hell if you do something that God doesn't want you to do? Do you believe in societal norms, without which the world as we know it cannot exist. Have you thought about this aspect as much as you have thought about the other aspect.

I went to lunch yesterday with some colleagues from the former Soviet Union. They aren't religious and the conversation (not initiated by me) went from the weekly Torah portion , to Buddha to Marx and Engels to how religious Jews would relate to a UFO if it were provable that it were from outer space and the beings inside were not from this planet.

After the conversation one of the guys said, in what must be the most Jewish of all expressions, It seems like being religious would be very difficult. (shver tzu zein a yid). I answered him back that being religoius wasn't very difficult and it is much more difficult being Jewish without being religious.

israeli politics

Did anyone else notice that the decision to investigate PM Olmert was made the day after he said at a news conference that one-sided pullbacks, such as was done in Lebanon and Gaza, were a mistake and Israel would not be doing them anymore? I am not going to defend Olmert, he should have been investigated for all these things before he ran as head of Kadima. However, I see European hands mingling in Israeli politics and the Justice Department.
I also agree with Olmert's colleagues about the bad timing of the announcement. When the PM is in another country dealing with matters of state, that is the wrong time to announce that he will be investigated for criminal actions. There is plenty of time both before and after the visit, to announce that. This announcement embarrasses Israel as a country and weakens our hand in dealing with China. The feeling there may be that the guy will be thrown in jail soon and they'll have to start negotiating with someone else pretty soon.

Now we have the head of the tax authority in jail for evading taxes. The head of the Lands authority is in jail for accepting bribes and falsely registering property in other people's names. The Justice Minister is on trial for sexual misconduct, the president is being investigated for rape. The former finance minister is being questioned under warning. The prime minister is being investigated because he has never done an honest thing in his life.

The country's political base is being ripped apart by its seams. The entire Knesset and the hierarchy of all government offices should resign and be banned on working in a position of public responsibility.

I say start over from scratch. We need a few good men to take hold of the country and set it on the right path with transparency built into the framework.

sleeping in class

Cross-posted on my alumni website's forum.

I was talking to my sister recently about some of the rules in her high school and one of them reminded me of a rule that we had in one class that I still do not understand.

Navi class, 11th grade. If you sleep in class you lose a grade on your report card. You can do very well on the tests, by studying for them and reading other people's notes. If the class is so easy for certain students, that they can understand the material without listening in class they should be moved up to a higher level where effort would be required, not penalized.

This is something that students wouldn't even think about. As a student, it would have never occurred to me to ask to be put in a harder class. Now that I am thinking about this rule in retrospect, I think it is something the yeshiva should have offered and recommended to students who sleep in class and still get good grades.

Even if there wasn't a higher level navi class, it could be monitored beis medrash time to learn navi on your own with more difficult tests. Or navi with a beis medrash chavrussa, etc..

This is my constructive criticism, 15 years too late.

Any comments?

40 hours in western galilee hospital

On Shabbos afternoon, my 3 year old jumped onto the arm of the couch, grabbed my kippa and yelled "Daddy, I got your kippa." He then tried getting off the couch and slipped on something on the couch, flipped backwards and landed on his head. He seemed fine, so I yelled at him because I have told him numerous times not to climb on the arm of the couch. His mother gave him hugs.
When I returned from shul after shabbos, my wife wanted me to look at him because he was acting very tired and kvetchy. I looked at him and his pupils seemed a bit dilated. I checked all the other kids and compared their pupil sizes with his and in fact they were larger. So we called his doctor and went to her house for her to check him. She suggested that we go to the hospital to have it checked out because he was having the classic symptoms of cuncussion (brain movement in hebrew) and they would want to do a CT scan to see if he was bleeding.
I went to the hospital with the neighborly nurse (her dad is a head of dept there and she knows the people so we were hoping for some good proteczia). We went straight in and within an hour, he had vomitted once so they decided to keep us. They were going to wait to see if he threw up anymore before doing a CT scan. No reason to radiate the kid if he doesn't barf at least twice. So we slept there. We had a nice room with two other children. One of them spoke no Hebrew at all and the other did as a second language. The ones who spoke Hebrew were friendly, I couldn't tell you if the other ones were or not.
At about 9:30 PM he must have started to feel better because he started horsing around and jumping all over, just like normal. He finally fell asleep at 11:30 PM. I was pretty sure that the next morning we would be released. The doctors made their rounds at around 9 AM. At 8:30 he threw up. So they said that we would have to wait for the next rounds at 3:00 PM to see if we could go home. At 2:30 PM he had a high fever and they suggested that we stay another day. So we stayed another day. The doctors at 9 said we could go home, but they didn't process us until 11, which is when we went home. I hadn't really slept in 2 days, so I got home and went to sleep for 4 hours.

Of course you can't leave the hospital empty handed, so my son came home with a lion shaped helium balloon and I came home with a bad cold.

More on EL AL

A friend of mine who is an EL AL frequent flyer sent them an email explaining that after his upcoming trip (for which he had already purchased tickets) he will be unable to fly on their airline again due to their new policy of violating shabbat.

He got back a nice letter explaining that the reason they flew on shabbat on that one occassion was not for financial considerations but rather because they wished to prevent suffering and distress to their passengers. They also stressed that they are the only airline in the world that plans its flight schedule without flights on shabbat.

_My Commentary_

If the chareidi community goes ahead with its ban, EL AL will most likely start scheduling regular flights on shabbat. They will change the status of the airline from shabbat oberservant with exceptions to not shabbat observant at all.

Instead of threatening not to ride their planes anymore because of a violation in a special circumstance, they could have done much better by praising EL AL and asking them to continue being shabbat observance and to try and find ways to not violate shabbat during times of crisis.