who voted for the pensioners?????

It's nice and cute to have these old folks in the Knesset with a goal of making the lives of other old folks easier. But at least one of them must have alzheimers or something. Moshe Sharoni suggested that kashrut be abolished to make prices of food cheaper. Does he think that he is a member of Shinui? Does he know that the anti-religious party collapsed?

In another attack on religion, Avraham Gal the head of the Cultural Judaism Center is upset that he didn't receive any money from the government to advance his cause. You can see this from the way he uses the word parasite. What is cultural Judaism that explains things in a non-missionary way? Go and explain Chanukah without bringing in religion. That isn't a traditional explanation, so it isn't a culutral explanation either. Culture stems from tradition.

Last night the office took us out to Papagaios, a very nice steak house in Haifa. One of the guys was surprised that a kosher restaurant would have good food. I explained to him that kosher meant there was no milk in the meat, not that they first piss on the food. He disagreed.

goings on

I've been working on an idea to build a system to benefit regular train passengers. I wrote up a nice little proposal for the train authority and then tried to get in touch with them. I got names of 2 people at the train authority, thanks to blog readers, and I spoke to one of them today.

Getting through the secretary was tough, but it definitely could have been tougher. She wanted to know who I was and who I was calling from and with regards to what. So I made up a company name and told her I was calling about the proposal. She wanted to know what proposal, so I told her it was for the new system proposal that we were working on. She then wanted to know what the system did. So I said it in a "why don't you know this already tone." Finally she let me talk to her boss who listened to what I had to say and told me that he didn't want to see my proposal and he didn't want to meet with me. His reasoning was because they are in the middle of a tender and this is one of the services in it and he can't look at proposals from other sources in the middle. At least my Hebrew is working at a high enough level to have these conversations.

Now the question is, lets say I can circumvent the train authority and build my system without them. It would be more difficult and less accurate but it would still work. Are they actually bidding out the project that I am working on and when will it come to the market? It could be one of those things that will never actaully happen, in which case I may as well go ahead with it.

In other news, I just released the newest version of the EyeTravel system for home care ophthalmologists. My next order of business is to rewrite it from .Net with a SQL Server background and a c# client to python with a postgresql background and an as yet undetermined client, though I've been thinking of wxWidgets. I have someone in mind to market it as an open source solution, give it away for free and charge only a monthly service fee and special development costs.

I have a couple other potential projects to work on, so we'll see what the next month turns up.

joined the pool

I joined the pool this week because they opened up separate swimming hours twice a week during times that were actually good for me. Signing up for a membership here isn't like signing up for a membership there. I had to sit through 20 minutes of propoganda about the owner and what a good guy he was before he would let me pay.
He's quasi shomer shabbat,
so they don't have a cash register on shabbat, membership only. You know there's really no problem if people pay beforehand... Separate swimming is nice, but it is a business decision... blah blah blah... But finally he allowed me to pay and I am now a member of the pool for a year.

The exercise will do me good. Right now I don't move at all during the week, except Thursday night I play ball and Friday we generally go tiyuling or I work in the garden.

israel train system

Does anyone know someone in management at the Israel Railways Authority?

I am considering a new project and would like a high-level contact to pitch it to.

independence day

Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, was celebrated here yesterday. I went to the end of Memorial Day/Beginning of Independence Day ceremony for the religious at the Music school. Apparantly there were some politics over non-tzniusly dressed performers which caused the religious community to make their own ceremony.
It was a very nice ceremony and most of the music was not live, though probably not because of sefira. My kids all took part in the ceremony (except for the littlest who didn't want to). They first had a flag dance where all the kids in gan (before 1st grade) got flags and danced around for a couple minutes. Then my girls were part of a very cute dance that they had practiced for. There was a girls choir and then the boys choir. Then the fireworks happened and we left because it was too late for my kids. We had a festive prayer service, both at night and in the mornign which includes singing shir hamaalos to the tune of hatikva (That's written in the official machzor) .

During the day we went on a nice hike with 4 other families to Nachal Amud, which is between Tzfat and Meron and the kids got to play in the water and try to catch fish. We then returned home and had a delicious bbq with 2 of those families. We let the kids run through the sprinklers, even though all the women thought it was too cold.

I still don't get this whole first flowering of redemption thing and have not heard any good explanations. Everyone agrees that Mashiach still hasn't come. The process of redemption is a long process that started the day we were exiled. Every step along the way is another test, trial and tribulation. The process is supposed to build us into the nation that we need to be in order to merit the redemption. The fact that we're in Israel now seems to be the end of a long process rather then the beginning of a new process.
Would anyone say there was a first flowering of redemption for the Jews in Egypt? The redemption didn't happen until they actually left. When moshe came was that the first flowering? He was the mashiach!
In any case, I once again followed the wise words of hillel and didn't tifrosh from the tzibor.

Yom Hazikaron

What does yom Hazikaron mean to me?

Yom Hazikaron is Israeli Memorial Day, one day set aside to remember fallen soldiers. Most people in Israel have lost friends and/or relatives who died as they were protecting the people living here and serving their country. I am a new immigrant to Israel and do not know anyone, without ayin hara, who has died in Israel. I feel more like an outsider on this day, then on any other day of the year. Practically everyone else in the country has put their lives on the line so that I can live here in peace. To live in Israel I gave up a nice job, a comfortable social environment, family close by and a system that I understood. That seems so negligible when you see what the natives have given up so that I would feel comfortable coming. I brought my family here because of religious reasons, these soldiers gave me the confidence to do it.

Those who are serving and those who have served and those that will serve and those that will not all owe a big debt of gratitude to the fallen soldiers who gave up their lives so that Jewish people can live under a Jewish government (no matter how much you dislike the politics here) peacefully in their land.

As I hear the siren, I stand up and quietly think about the words written in Pirkei Avos: "Give to him from what is his, for you and yours are his. As David said 'from you comes everything and from your hand we give to you'"

God Bless the fallen soldiers and their families, may no soldiers die next year. May we all be zocheh to live in Eretz Yisroel under the future government of Mashiach, may he come speedily in our days.

should we protest darfur? i think not.

I was just reading a fiction novel about the Afghanistan war against Russia and a US CIA guy was trying to convince someone that the US was correct in helping the Afghan rebels because they were fighting for freedom. The person responded, Freedom for who? If the rebels win they will impose strict Islamic law and there won't be freedom for people who don't follow it.

Is one dictator better then another?

In Darfur, the people being killed are Black Muslims. They rebelled against the Sudanese government in a non-peaceful manner (to put it lightly). The Sudanese government and their Janjaweed friends have overreacted.

But the fact is there are 2 sides to this battle. Just because a group of people decide they want their own government doesn't mean that the government should roll over and say ok.

The Darfurians started shooting first. I don't think there is a need to protest just because peoiple are being slaughtered. You need to understand why the people are getting slaughtered. What if the people being slaughtered would kill you if they got the chance? How can Jews protest the killing of Black Muslims who do not believe that Jews have the right to exist, and after they are saved will support the Palestinians in their war against Jewish survival.

unskilled labor

I've been talking up my idea of outsourcing envelope stuffing and other unskilled labor from the US. I even talked to someone in the Jewish Federation and convinced him that it was viable. An experienced friend burst my bubble a little bit. He said there is no way that it can be cost effective because of shipping costs. Shipping costs is one of the things that I was going to research, but I didn't think it would hit me that hard. The question is whether I can get a nice discount rate from one of the big carriers for doing something good for Israel. We'll soon find out how Zionistic the postman really is.

Then he said that I should focus on training people with unskilled labor instead of finding more unskilled labor for them to do.

I thought about that and I disagree. There will always be unskilled people looking for work. There will always be people who are in between jobs and need something to earn a couple pennies before they find their next opportunity. Outsourcing unskilled labor because it is cheaper will end up costing your country a lot more in the long run, because with each job that you send overseas you will increase the social programs in your own country, paid for by your taxes.

Not everyone is as motivated as you and I are. There are people who are happy going to work putting in their sweat and blood and coming home at the end of a hard day with 100 shekels. I think the key to the economy is having enough unskilled labor jobs available to keep people off of the social programs.

The solution has to be in inventing new needs for unskilled labor in your home country instead of trying to get it outsourced from overseas to you. Coming up with unskilled things for people to do, that will more then pay for itself is a difficult task. The main question is this: If I had 100 people in a room who were willing to do what I asked them to, how could I best capitalize on that? What kind of Israeli service can be provided to either Israelis or foreigners, without trying to steal jobs away from other countries.

100 people in a room. Different language skills, different physical and mental abilities, different backgrounds. They will be happy to work for a minimum wage. There must be some method of pulling out top performers and training them to be more then unskilled laborers if they are interested in that.

This is a tough one. Entrepeneurship at its best. Except backwards. Instead of coming up with an idea and figuring out how to best implement it, here we have an implementation and have to figure out an idea to utilize it.

that green thing

All green and scrunched up, it doesn't have a chance
there's no way it can just get out there and dance
crippled that way for life an eternity of shame
There's no one but God who can take the blame

The darkness is calling the green thing starts rocking
While dragging and sliding it's ticking and tocking
Moving on quickly to that wrong side of the force
Where niceness is frowned on, its good to be coarse

Those who are watching - not so sure what to do
One arab stands up and he shows it his shoe
But the green thing ignores all the shouts and the mob
They want to accept me they're not like this snob

It struggles and struggles determined to prevail
Thinking the dark side is for it the holy grail
Needing to be accepted by anyone or anything
Conquering facts and fears he ignores the warning

When it gets there it sticks out its hand to say hi
The ones who first see hm all let out a cry
tis good that you've came, we're starving out here
they slapped it on the back and passed around beer

Then they lit up the bbq and said we'll have a meal
That green crippled thing looks much better then veal.
They threw him on the grill and tied him onto the keel
And they waited until he was more then just rare
Then they ate that wretched creature without even a care.

holocaust day

I saw a headline on Arutz Sheva's website today that shocked me.
Katzav Asks World Not to Ignore Calls to Destroy Israel
If anything, you would expect to hear a line like that coming out of Iran, not from the President of Israel. There are those that will say that's not what he meant and that the translation is bad. But you never know.

I stood up quietly for 2 minutes today while the siren blared. A country in silence in memory of 6 million Jews who lost their lives only because they were Jewish. This is a secular day of remembrance that we are Jews. It is a day for the secular to remember that we are Jews and why we can't assimilate and that there is something special about the Jewish people.

The religious have many days for this, from Tisha B'av, on one end of the spectrum, which is the day of Jewish tragedy which includes the holocaust, to Purim, on the other end of the spectrum, which is the celebration of a time when the Jews were not destroyed for a change.

The main difference between the religious days of tragedy and the secular day of tragedy is the focus. On religious days of tragedy, we focus on the problem - on the cause of the tragedy (or in the case of Purim the cause of the salvation), we look inwards and say we brought it on ourselves. We promise to be better Jews and we look forward to religious salvation in the form of the mashiach. On the secular day of tragedy, people look outwards and try to assign blame on the nations of the world that participated in the bloodbath or that stood by silently and watched it happen. There is no introspection that maybe we were being punished as a nation. They say the State of Israel is the answer to the holocaust because next time we will fight back.

I see Holocaust day as a sad reminder that secular Jews of today do not take responsibility for their actions. It is not up to the rest of the world to remember and never forget, it is up to us to remember and never forget.

no politics

I'm trying not to write anything about politics because the coalition negotiations are just too disturbing.

As an example, AG Mazuz said Lieberman, head of Yisroel Baytaynu, cannot legally be minister of Internal Security because they are investigating him for accepting money from the same guy who Sharon was being investigated for taking money from. Mazuz had no problem with him being prime minister, who is over the minister of Internal Security. He also had no problem with HaNegbi, the current minister of Internal Security, who was also being investigated during the time he was in office.
This is the same AG who said he couldn't prove the chief rabbi did anything wrong so he should resign by himself instead of being given a chance to prove himself innocent.
It's obvious that Olmert is going to keep this guy as his new AG, he plays the right kind of ball.

Instead of politics, I have a funny story.

My driver this morning asked me if I fix computers. I told him that it depends on what's wrong with it. He said that nothing was wrong with it yet he just wanted to know if he could bring it to me if there was a problem. He had a computer and they took it to the repair shop to get fixed. For some reason he didn't call the repair shop back for a month. When he finally called back to find out if it was fixed yet, the guy told him that he already sold it.
Yes. He took the computer and instead of fixing it, or after fixing it, he sold it to someone else, probably as a new computer. He then offered my driver a new computer for the price of fixing the other one. I would bet that he takes a machine that is half as good, that he stole from someone else and gives that to him hoping that he doesn't know the difference.

pesach vacation

Sometimes it is necessary to just leave for a little bit. Tasks get repetitive and you start feeling closed in. Pesach was a nice opportunity to take a step back. I spent a lot of time with the family, something we don't get a chance to do very often, and even though it is a bit much being with children all day every day, I did enjoy myself. (though my dear wife might tell you that I didn't)
I even took off an extra day and went on a final tiyul on Thursday. We missed the belly dancers at mimoona, but jumping into the pools at the upper zavyaton was well worth it. More on that later.

The only company we had for the seder was my sister, so we really did a kid-focused seder. As always the high point of the evening was the essig fleisht (In yiddish it means "eat meat" and is comprised of stringy meat with meatballs) with the 10 commandments coming in a close second. This year number 1 was Moshe, number 2 was God, number 3 got to throw some of the plagues and my wife was paroh. I was the uberlord and told god what to do. Number 4 just wanted to play with the dead cow (5th plague). 1 found the afikomen that 4 had hid, so it was a good thing my wife convinced me to get presents for not only number 4. Our minhag (which I started last year) was the child who finds the afikomen has to give everyone else presents. Since they don't have presents and I don't want them to cry I give them the presents to hand out. So everyone got an afikomen present. We finished eating the afikomen an hour and a half before chatzos, just to be extra machmir (pesach is all about the chumra) and completely finished the seder before 12.

Friday we started the tiyulim. We picked up my cousin and his girlfriend at the train station at 11 and headed to nachal yechiam, right next to yechiam castle and yechiam meat producing place. My wife turned around with number 4 after about 10 minutes and we continued down without them. When we got to the bottom, I pondered climbing the hill again and didn't like the thought of it. Luckily I had my trail map and decided it wasn't such a far distance to the road at the end. When we got there I called my wife and asked her to pick us up. She had a hard time finding us, because there weren't any good signs, but after some time she arrived. It was a good 3 hour hike.

Sunday morning we left at 5:30 AM to go camping by the dead sea. The plan was shachris at some yishuv on in the Jordan valley and then heading on down to ein gedi for nachal arugot, a 5 hour hike. We were in Nachal arugot when it started to rain. It doesn't rain by the dead sea ever and certainly not on pesach, but apparantly someone forgot to mention that to God and we got soaked. Meanwhile number 1's sandal completely ripped in the missle of the hike and she was just hopping along. We finally got out and by the time everyone made it out of there the rain had pretty much stopped. But the campground place said they were flooded so we decided to open up the grills and have a bbq by the dead sea while we figured out what to do. It started raining again in the middle of the bbq so I opened the trunk and moved the grill underneath, for protection from the rain. Some friends found us a place to stay in the Masada youth hostel and we had an enjoyable evening there.
Next day we did the masada sand dunes and the kids had a great time running up and down, but by the time we finished, I had one kid barefoot and another one crying for no reason so we decided to head on home. Lunch was in Qumran and we got back home around 6:30. We did manage to stop by the dried up section of the Dead Sea and pick up some salt.

On Thursday we headed out on what will forever be known as the sandal hike. For those of you new to this concept, here's how it works.
Wife says: There's a shoe store near katzrin that I want to go to, can we go on a hike in that area?
So we went to Yaar Yehudiya, and did the upper zavyatan. It was anice hike, but the water is too deep for kids. There wasn't any place that I could stand and the water was so cold that after swimming a bit it took me about 10 minutes to catch my breath.
Also the shoe store was nowhere near katzrin, it was next to kiryat shemona. But she did get a very good deal and the exact type of sandals she was looking for.

My advice: if you are going to go on a hike because there is a show store nearby, find out where the shoe store is first.

We then went to tzfat for dinner, we couldn't find the burger place I was looking for, so we ate pizza and headed off for home.

Friday we did some bike riding at the agam and had a quiet shabbos.

seder questions

My wife told my eldest daughter that seder night was the night of questions, so she asked me if she could ask any question she wanted. I of course said sure, so she hit me with one out of left field. "Daddy, why did the prime minister fall asleep in the hospital for a very long time?" Talk about הוריני נא דרכך. My immediate response was because he was old and fat.
This morning I thought about a better response and I explained to her that we don't understand why hashem makes people sick.

a bit of chizuk

Normally I don't post on non work days, and today is a non work day. Today, as I watch my chametz burn and my children dance to the pesach music I thought that I would give a final pesach message to my readers.

Remember, Pesach is not only about us going out of Egypt and it's not only about God taking us out of Egypt.

It is about the combination of us and God meshing together to build perfection in the world which He created imperfectly to give us the chance to perfect it.

As the quote goes, "Your spouse is not the korbon pesach and your children are not chametz"

Try to focus on the big picture of who we are and why we are doing this and try to ignore any little things that bother you.

Happy Pesach.

from slavery to freedom

I was thinking about Pesach this morning. We are supposed to look at
ourselves as if we are actually going from slavery to freedom right
now. That is very hard to visualize, as our lives are not physically
changing as they changed back when the Jews actually left Egypt.

This afternoon we are having a toast at the office in honor of the
holiday and I was wondering if there was any connection between the
holiday that I will be celebrating and the holiday that the other
employees (non-religious) will be celebrating.

An idea hit me that Pesach is also called the holiday of spring, which
signifies rebirth. What is the idea of slavery? Slavery is having no
control over events. You have do what you are told to do. There is a
foregone conclusion to actions. What is freedom? Freedom is the
ability to decide the outcome based on your actions. It is the ability
to be your own person and change what should/could happen by natural
events by doing something to "shake it up."

I think we can look at slavery as the past. You cannot change the
past, whatever happened already happened. It is locked in place
without any ability to improve. Hindsight is 20/20, but by that time
that game is already over.

On the other hand, you can look at freedom as the future. You can
change the future by your actions. You can wake up in the morning and
decide where you want to go today, what you want to do and what you
hope to accomplish.

Now it is a lot easier to understand going from slavery to freedom and
connect every Jew, whether religious or not, in the celebration of the
same holiday. Pesach is the holiday where you look forward to the
future, where you declare, the past already happened and there is
nothing I can do about it, but now we have the rebirth of spring, we
are going forwards towards freedom, towards the ability to choose how
we want our lives to turn out.
We are leaving slavery, the past that cannot be changed, and going to
freedom, where the world is wide open for us to make of it what we
will.

מותר לך מותר לך מותר לך

One of the big dangers of pesach cleaning is that women tend to go a little bit overboard in their cleaning frenzy and say that a number of things that were actually permitted are forbidden. This doesn't seem like a big problem except that Judaism handles speech in a very severe manner. If someone says that something is forbidden to him then it becomes forbidden. For example if you say Bread is now forbidden to me then for you bread is treif as pork.

This can be a big problem with women running around assuring everything including the kitchen sink and that's why this is one time a year when men really have to use the power entrusted to them by God. One of the coolest things written in the Torah is that if a woman makes a vow and her husband (or father when she's younger) doesn't accept it, he just says מותר לך מותר לך מותר לך and it's as if the vow was never made.

This power vested in us should be used sparingly, as wives would take the frying pan to their husbands rather quickly if they revoked every word that came out of their mouths, but during this chag season it is especially important to have those words on your lips and as you are cleaning something that your wife just assured, remember to say מותר לך מותר לך מותר לך. It saves a lot of hassle and she will really appreciate it when she understands how you are saving her from herself.

pesach hagaddah

I just wanted to share an email conversation that I had with my
sister.

Sister: I got R' Moti's Hagaddah :-)
I'll let you see it if you're really lucky.
Rock: He's the guy who spat at the dati leumi and said I won't join your political movement?
Sister: sorta
Sister: Oh...when you get to hell...request a seat in the non-Hitler section...i hear those are going fast...

Pizza popola

I got an email today stating that the regular restaurants we order
from will be closed for the holiday, so we will be ordering from pizza
popolo, who delivers anyways. Happy Holidays.

I think the email should have ended, "...so we will be serving matza and
cream cheese in the 4th floor conference room."

God did this so I would have felt incredibly guilty working on
chol hamoed.

I reckon nobody who is upset about this would eat there anyways, so a
call to boycott them would be preaching to the choir. Who can I report
this restaurant to for serving chametz on pesach? And if Lieberman
becomes the Interior Minister is that good for the Jews or bad for the
Jews?

pesach is here

Well at least in our house it is. We switched over the kitchen Friday and ate out both meals shabbos. Our local caterer had meals in the shuls at a very reasonable price and the food was delicious.

I went out afikomen present shopping today and I decided that the boys will get the afikomen this year, because I didn't find any presents for the girls. I also think that the present I found for my older son is probably more appropriate for the little guy so in the end he gets 2 presents and everyone else gets none and now I just have to figure out how to make sure he gets it and nobody else does.

Pesach means vacation for us, and I am taking chol hamoed as vacation and we're going camping in the dead sea area with some friends. A bunch of families planned on going with us, and so far there is 1 family roughing it in the campgrounds with us and 2 other families who will be staying at a motel in the area and travelling with us during the day. (And I'll bet they're going to want to bbq with us as well.)

One family that we are going with was looking for an enclosed roof carrier for their car. They found it in America for $160 and in Israel for 6000 shekels. The same carrier, made by the same company and probably imported from the same country.

This is the problem with a non-competitive market. We brought everything with us when we made aliyah and Israelis look at some of the things we have that are pretty standard in America, like a swingset or a gas grill as extravagant because here they cost a minimum of triple the price from what we paid.

the car saga

I don't think I posted the first part of the car saga, and the current episode won't make any sense without it so that post is on the bottom of this one. Those who already know the car story can skip the bottom section.

Yesterday was the first day my taxi was supposed to meet me at the train station. I told him I get oout of the building at exactly 7:20 and he said he would be there between 7:20 and 7:30 and I told him I needed him there at exactly 7:20 and he said that over the course of time we'll get it perfect. So yesterday he calls me as I am getting off the train and asks me where I am. I told him that I was at the train station and he said ok, the taxi will be there in 15-20 minutes. I told him no way and I was going to take the bus. He told me to go find another taxi and he would pay for it. I thought that was ridiculous because the bus is so much easier and it leaves right away. So I took the bus. I told him if he is not there right on time then it is more of a hassle then a benefit.

Today we missed the train, because our sherut didn't find people so it couldn't leave. So I took the next train 10 minutes later. I called my guy and he said the driver would be there right on time. I told him I would be 10 minutes late. So I get off the train and I'm standing right where I said I would and I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and it is time for the next bus to leave. The driver calls me and asks me where I am. He sent someone for me today and the guy couldn't find me. I told him I was exactly where I said I would be. The door closest to the bus station. The taxi rolls by a minute later. He said he was waiting by the other door because he thought that would be better for me. Only in Israel would a taxi driver decide that it is better for you to be in a different place then you told him you would be and then wait there.
We beat the bus by 1 minute.

---

The beginning of the story

One of the popular benefits you get working in the hi tech industry in Israel is a car. The car is taken care of by the company 100%. Including gas and maintenance. When I got hired I asked about the car benefit and I was told (and I don't remember the exact words) that they don't give a car for 2 years because they want to see how we work together first and make sure it is a good match.

At my first end of year meeting, my boss mentioned something about working more hours and I mentioned that if I had a car I would be more flexible with my hours and they said it was too early for a car and that my working hours are fine and they didn't mean that I should work more.

During the course of the past 2 years two other employees mentioned the 2 years clause to me in different contexts. Aside from that everyone, except for the girls on the third floor, in the comapny who was here longer then me has a company car. Except for one guy and he was fired and I don't know how long before me he was there.

At this end of year meeting I decided not to bring up the car because I figured I can wait another 4 months until my time is up and I didn't want to ask for any favors. So 3 weeks ago, about a month before my 2 years was up I asked my boss what the story with the car was. He said all benefits are decided at the end of year meeting and I would have to bring it up then. So then I checked with our policy person who said a car is not an automatic benefit, it is a negotiated benefit. So I explained the situation to my boss and he decided that the company would increase my travel compensation in the meantime and then we could discuss the car at the next end of year meeting.
He then decided that he would also send a taxi to pick me up from the train station every morning. That didn't make a lot of sense because the bus that I take leaves 5 minutes after I get off the train (or 10 minutes if I miss the first train), and it takes 15 minutes to get to my office. The taxi, if he is there exactly on time, would save me at the most 5 minutes. They are paying him 35 shek a day to pick me up and the bus costs less then 5. It is slightly more confortable
in the taxi but it is more stressful because I have to worry about being late and all that.

8 more months until the next meeting, I won't miss the opportunity again.

trumah and maaser

In Israel there are certain laws that you have to follow that you don't have to follow outside of Israel. Some of these laws include taking off a portion of fruit and vegetables and leaving them aside for other purposes that aren't relevant today. However, you can't eat the food until this portion has been taken off. This is called Terumah and Maaser. Actually 2 out of every 7 years you are supposed to give the maaser to poor people, and we actually do that today by giving them the value of a tenth of the produce.

We have some fruit trees in our yard and it is a pain to take off each time you pluck a lemon, for example. So I asked a friend about it and he said that you can take off one time from all the ripe fruit that is still on the tree. So we took off some fruit and said everything that is currently ripe has now had trumah and maaser taken from it. Then we used the fruit without taking off terumah and maaser again.

Another friend of ours told us that we will burn in hell because you are not allowed to do that. He had an English book of the laws that said very specifically you can't do it and if you need to then ask a Rabbi. Which says to me that there are ways to do it, you just have to find out how.

I asked the rabbi and he said that you can't do it. So I went back to my friend who said I could and he said it is straight out in the rambam that you can. So I looked and there in black and white it said that you can take from a single group of trees and take off for the still attached fruit from the same group of trees if they are more then a third grown.

My friend is a Yemenite and they actually paskan by the Rambam, so that was good for him, but I needed to see it in the shulchan aruch, which is how we paskan. Usng pretty much the same words as the rambam, it says pretty clearly in yoridayah that you can do what we wanted to do. So I went back to the rabbi with the book and I said, it seems to say here that I can do what I wanted to do.

The rabbi and I disagreed on the point that the shulchan aruch was making. First it says you can not take off from what was not attached onto what is attached and then it says but you can if it is from the same group of trees. I thought the maiun difference was it is from the same group of trees and he thought that it was saying something else.

In any case, the rabbi is going to look it up in a sefer that is clearer on this subject. He thinks he remembers that the main problem is that if it grows an extra inch then I am still obligated to take off from that extra inch.

I'll keep you updated.

HOP box 2

Last night I started the second box of Hooked on Phonics with my oldest daughter. She is totally bonkers over Harry Potter right now, and after opening the box, I called out to my wife that there was Harry Potter book 5 in the box and I wasn't sure if we should let her read it or not. Then I told her I was just kidding. She got so mad, it was so funny. We did learn to read some some new sounds: both th as in thin and th as in that are in the new section, as is sh, ch, sk, sc and a bunch more. By this time next year, maybe she'll be able to read Harry Potter 5 in English.

Number 2 wants to learn to read English as well, and we just found out what her Hebrew reading problem might be. She needs glasses. As soon as we are comfortable with her Hebrew reading she gets to start English.

being in the middle

Stepima had a similar post today, but only about religion. No politics involved.

Yesterday I wrote about being in the middle and as I talk to more and more people, they identify with the right wing and not with the center. I've heard people disparage the center and say they would never go there. This made me think of an example where every religious Jew thinks they are the center. Orthodox Judaism.

No matter what you do or how you practice you feel that you are only doing what is absolutely required. People who don't follow exactly what you follow are "not as religious," people who do more then you do are "crazy fanatics." As does everyone else, I only do what is in the shulchan aruch. Nobody feels that they are being needlessly machmir. If someone is extra machmir (stringent) in a certain thing it is because it needs it and anyone who is not machmir on that specific thing obviously doesn't understand. Anyone who is more maikal (lenient) then you is obviously missing the spirit of Judaism. "Who cares if they got a psak to swim on shabbos, it just isn't done by normal Orthodox Jews." This is necessary for religion because we don't want to think we are doing things that God doesn't care about, otherwise why inconvenience ourselves. Also if we are doing something to inconvenience ourselves, it better be something that God cares about. That makes everyone else who is not following exactly what your following not as practically Orthodox as you are.

The same should be true politically. We should be looking at ourselves as the center, that we are no more nationalistic that requires. We are no less nationalistic then requires. That puts us squarely in the center. In your religious observance you don't associate yourself by other people's standards. Nobody thinks, "He's Normal Orthodox and he doesn't play ball on shabbat, so if I play ball, I must be left wing." They think, "He's frummer then you need to be. My rabbi told me exactly how to do it without breaking shabbos."

We should be defining ourselves as middle of the road. No matter where we are on the political spectrum. In our own minds the spectrum should rotate around us.

what a caption

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2107093,00.html
This has been commented on by a number of blogs I have seen.
Check out the voting Hareidi.

coalition analysis

Looks like my predicted numbers were slightly off. The count with more then 99% of the vote counted is:
Kadima : 28
Labor : 20
Shas : 13
Lieberman : 12
Likud : 11
Arabs : 10
NUNRP : 9
Gil (old folks) : 7
UTJ : 6
Meretz : 4


The coalition games will begin. Lets start out by saying that I would not be surprised if the Arab parties were invited to join the coalition by Kadima. There are 3 Arab parties, though so that would compound the difficulties.

Possible coalitions:
Kadima, Labor, Shas, UTJ, Gil= 74 seats - strong coalition
Kadima, Labor, Meretz, Arabs = 62 seats - very hard to stomach for a half of kadima members.
Kadima, Labor, Likud, Gil= 66 seats - would be called national unity and acceptable to most in both parties
If Kadima cannot pull together one of those 3 coalitions, the game might get interesting.
Shas, Lieberman,Likud,NUNRP,oldfolks,UTJ and 3 Kadima rebels = 61
Kadima right wingers may break from the party and return to Likud or even Lieberman on the proposal to include Arab parties. The right wing should anticipate and encourage this.

The real question is whether Kadima can stomach the social demands of both Labor and the Pensioners. It seems like they won't have a choice if they want to build a disengagement coalition.

The only way this can happen is if Shas, UTJ and Likud hold out on a Kadima/Labor group. This is not seen as likely.

A second round of elections will probably have even lower voter turnout then this one did.

moving rightwards?? NO WAY!!

I learned a number of things from my dad when I was growing up. One of the interesting things I learned from him was that normal people shave in the morning. Not that he did nor anyone else I ever saw shave, but that's besides the point.

The more relevant thing I learned from my dad is that it's important to be in the middle. Being in the middle means that you are balanced. Being on one side of the spectrum, for example a right winger or a leftwinger means that you are a bit radical. Nobody wants to be radical so they define the spectrum around themselves. I would like to say that I am the center, Likud is left, Kadima is very left, Labor is a bunch of nutcases and meretz is like martians they are so far out there. I would say marzel is slightly right wing and then there are other groups which are far right wing.

The slogan of the "right wing" should not have been "Moving rightwards", and their party should not have been called "the new Right". The message should have been, "come back to your roots" or "Don't be radical, vote for us", "All normal people vote this way", "Education is our middle name", "The pro children party".

I don't see religious issues as being right wing while left wingers can't follow mitzvot. In my mind, religion is the middle of the road. Anybody can do it. I also see settlements as a normal middle of the road part of Israeli society. It is not radical, it is not right, it is normal. One huge problem with the gazan refugees is that they define themselves as so far right that most of the population doesn't see them as having any connection to normal mainstream people. If they marketed themselves as normal mainstream, they would get a lot more sympathy and other people might identify with their plight. But really, who in Tel Aviv really cares about a bunch of far right wingers.

i voted gimmel; wife voted Good

I got up early this morning. Not because I was excited about elections, but because the baby got up at 5:45. So I went to an early morning shachris and then got home as the kids were finishing breakfast. We went out to the yard and started gardening, I cleared away a new vegetable patch and we planted cherry tomatos, regular tomatos and zucchinis (but the planting took place much later). Then we went to vote.

I voted Gimmel.
My wife voted Good.

Then we went hiking, it was just like Sunday, we went to the keshet cave and then the the namar cave. They are on the lebanese border and there are hidden treasures in them. My children were looking for dinosaues because I told them there were baby dragons in the caves and they didn't know the difference and then ignored me when I tried explaining it. The keshet cave was a has been. Local legend has it that there used to be a cave there but it was inhabited by a band of robbers. One of the robbers repented after seeing mohammead in a dream. He told the others they should become farmers. The other robbers decided it was easier being robbers and they were going to push him out of the cave and down the cliff, but as they planned it the cave roof collapsed and only the one part (the part that is still standing) the the good robber was standing under stayed up.We saw someone kind of rappel down the side. It was only kind of because he was more let down on a string and there were no walls to repel against.
Then we walked to namar, but there was a sign by the nature authority that said entrance forbidden because bats hiberate in the cave in the winter and they didn't want us waking them. So we continued walking to the bottom and then rested for a bit and walked all the way back up.

Finally we had a nice bbq with 3 other families. A really nice evening. Well balanced with 2 English speaking and 2 Hebrew speaking. I don't like having too many english speakers because then there is mostly english going on and the hebes feel left out. - they were here first - so I always have either all english or no more english people then the number of hebes. It helps our hebrew as well.

election predictions

(Unsponsored) Ad for UTJ - A vote for UTJ is like putting a dollar in tzedaka. If you hate all the other parties, why not give some tzedaka.

My election predictions are as follows:
Kadima : 28
Labor : 24
Likud : 20
Shas : 16
NRP/NU : 14
Lieberman: 6
Arabs : 5
Meretz : 4
UTJ : 3

This leaves nobody with a natural coalition. Though it opens a strong possibility of Kadima, Labor, Shas and UTJ. That will give shas a lot of power. Another possibility is that Likud and Labor will leave Kadima in the cold and join together to destroy their common enemy. Remeber if Kadima is not in the government, they are completely out of the picture. They don't have a platform or ideology holding them together. You will definitely not have a strong opposition and the people in that party will likely float back to their original parties.
My numbers gives the right wing bloc only 59 seats. The left wing coalition is not much better, as the arabs would never join the government, so a left wing coalition would only include 56 seats.
My government prediction is either Kadima, Labor, Shas and UTJ or Likud, Labor, NRP, Shas and UTJ, giving each party about equal power.

The rock of galilee still has not come out with an absolute recommendation, but we will definitely be voting either for UTJ or NRP/NU. We don't see the UTJ as being a major player because of the few seats that they have and I don't see any possibility of them joining a coalition without either shas or the NUNRP, and shas is their more natural partner.

(just to let you know the official polls from yesterdays yidiot (if I remember it correctly), so we can compare afterwards:
kadima : 34
labor : 21
likud : 13
Lieberman: 12
Shas : 11
nunrp : 9
arabs : 7
meretz : 5
old people : 2

Which leaves 6 seats unaccounted for.)

disengagement and elections

I was against the disengagement from the Gaza Strip. However, I was not against the withdrawal because people were going to lose their homes and their livelihoods, though that made me sad. I was also not against the withdrawal because giving part of the land of israel to non jews falls in the category of יהרג ועל יעבר, a sin that is so great it is better to die then to take part of it, because most rabbis who I heard did not take that opinion, or the opinion that there was anything halachically wrong with doing it at all.

There are times when people have to give for the for the good of the state. The people who went to live in the settlements helped enhance security, and gave of themselves to do it. They put themselves in danger every day because they believed it was good for the country. Obviously the country has to compensate them and make sure that they are looked at as heroes for serving the country and not as drek that was holding the country back, and it is doing a lousy job of that. But that probably has a lot to do with the level of confrontation that was involved here and the open hostility between the 2 sides.

I was against it for the simple reason that I felt it did nothing to enhance any aspect of the State of Israel. Security is not improved because of it, though it may be worse now, no social problems have been solved, it created a big rift in society, and soldiers are still in danger. It brought Hamas into power and showed the arabs that violence pays. It also did not gain us any real foreign relation points. In fact in retrospect, all the warnings beforehand have proved accurate. So I feel that I was correct in opposing it.

There are other people who feel that this was a good move. I don't understand their reasoning, but I respect their opinion that this will be good for the country.

This came up again now because of an article on the Arutz 7 newsite. It seems that the Hareidi religious parties, United Torah Judaism, are willing to be part of a government that will disengage again. They said that they will join any government under certain conditions and they will keep their coalition agreement and would expect the other side to keep theirs. Keep in mind that the UTJ votes are _always_ decided by their council of Torah Sages, at whose head is Rav Elyashiv the leader of Ashkenazic Torah Jewry.

The Talk backs on the site were interesting. Pinchas from Jerusalem feels that Christians understand the Torah better then Rav Elyashiv. Charlie from Boca Raton feels that if they join the government they may as well join Hamas. Lorrie from Brooklyn feels they are making their own Torah, she also knows Torah better then Rav Elyashiv and therefore must be the Christian Pinchas talked to. Yael from Yesha doesn't understand why their is even a question because she fully understands the Torah unlike these foolish rabbis. Benny from Toronto is sad that the Rebbe was right. Mordechai from Jerusalem will now not vote for the UTJ because of this article. Uncle Bernie (nice to see your name on the list), along with many other people, feels that they are selling the Torah for funding. Akiva in Chicago feels that the hareidim have no fear of God. Jay from the USA, maybe a voice of reason, suggests that they ask a shalo. (Who should ask the shalo? The council of Torah sages should ask his local orthodox rabbi?)

People are forgetting what the Hareidim believe about the State of Israel. They believe that the government is not a Jewish government, it is a government of Jews. This is something that the national religious are slowly realizing. That means that if the government gives up some of Israel, that is not against halacha, because while Jews were living on that land and that was good, it was conquered by an army of Jews and not a Jewish army and therefore there is no
problem handing it away if that is for the good of the country. They would like to live in a completely religious country, but they are under no illusions that this is going to happen because of a knesset decision or not.

People who still believe that the government of Israel is the Jewish government that is the result of the redemption from exile are missing a few peas from their pod. While we have to fight for Jewish issues and the right to live Jewish lives in a Jewish country in the land of Israel we have to choose our battles. The battle on civil marriages, for example, is of utmost importance to the survival of the Jewish people. If there was an ultimatum that either you vote for withdrawal or civil marriages will actually be put up for a vote in the knesset (where it would most likely win) I think it would behoove every religious party to make sure that withdrawal passes. Yes, I feel they should sell out for other important Jewish issues. That is what a democracy is. Selling out on some issues so that your important issue goes your way. Don't like democracy? Daven for mashiach!

tzim tzimmering

To celebrate my wife's birthday we are going to a tzimmer for the night and then doing something fun tomorrow without the kids. A tzimmer, for those chulnikim that have never heard the word, is a nice little getaway generally in the north. You can see details at www.tzimmer.net. We are going to moshav avivim, closer to the Lebanese border then we actually live. The problems with some of the nice tzimmers that I saw on the website is that it has the same view as I see from my house, one of them seemed like it was directly across the mountain from the picture of the view they had up. One might think that if city folks come to the country for vacation that the country folks would go to the city for vacation, but that isn't even remotely true. The reason the city folks come to the country for vacation is because that is where everyone truly wants to be. (except for one friend who hates trees and needs to live in urbania).

This will be the first time we have went away by ourselves since my eldest was born 8 years ago. (Yes she's already 8). We have left some of them before with my parents before we aliyahed, but we always had at least one with us. This was made possibility by our neighbors who wanted to do something nice for my wife on her brithday and offered to watch the kids. Since the baby just turned 3 and he really is sleeping through most of the night and hasn't had a complete freak attack when I've gone up to him recently, we accepted. My wife thinks that he considers the neighbor like a second mom anyways, so it should be no problem. My oldest didn't want to sleep with everyone else, so she gets to go to a friends house and she is very excited about it.

Tonight we have a reservation at a nice steak house in Moshav Dishon called El Rancho (kosher hechsher, but with some kosher mehadrin food). Tomorrow we are planning on going horse back riding at vered hagalil and then maybe hiking somewhere in the area.
For shabbos we're invited out for lunch and eating home for dinner but the food is already cooked. (yay wife).

happy birthday

I hope all my readers will join me in wishing my wife, Mrs. Rock of Galilee (also known as Rolling Hills of green), a very happy 30th birthday.

...and many more

got a sign

We're in the middle of election season and I finally sold out and got a big orange sign for my property that says (in Hebrew) "a new right has arisen" and it supports the NRP nd NU merged party. I was talking to our local NRP bigshot who asked me if I had a sign yet./ I told him I didn't know who I was voting for yet, and he said that was fine, but I still needed a sign in my yard. I'll probably end up voting for them anyway, and it is the party that the majority of the community supports, so I put it down to public service.

There really aren't a lot of choices to vote for, I mean there are a ton of choices, but none of them are any good. A guy at work suggested that voting would be a lot more popular if you couldvote for who you didn't want. He was going to vote against Peretz (Labor). The death penalty also seems to be popular in our office, and if any candidate supported it, he would be a shoo in.

Speaking of the death penalty, whoever came up with the NU NRP mergers campaign should be shot. They are focusing on things that absolutely nobody cares about. They are not focusing on the things they are good at that people do care about, like education. Their campaign should focus on raising the standard of education and building a strong nationalistic country, not being a new right wing.

The Green Leaf party probably won't make it in and neither will Marzel. The polls are showing Shinui not getting in either. That's the pot heads, the hot heads and the snot heads.

They are saying that the polls don't really reflect reality though because there are 25 undecided seats. That's a 20% swing vote. It also seems like the people who aren't sure aren't going to vote Kadima, they are trying to decide which of the other bad parties to vote for.

I'll try to keep y'all updated on the election happenings, but the good news is that we have a vacation day. That means I might not vote, because we can go on a full day tiyul. What kind of idiot decided that there should be no work on voting day. They should give off the day after voting as a reward for the ountry if they get a high turnout.

snickers and twix

Today I noticed that Snickers and Twix in Israel are not under the
hashgacha of the rabanut of Israel. They are under the hashgacha of
the triangle K, with the approval of the rabanut of Israel.
Apparantly, the rabanut gives a rubber stamp approval to certain
kashrut organizations from the US and the triangle K is on the list.
While I don't really know any solid reason why we don't eat triangle
K, it is a generally accepted principle in the US, not to eat that
hechsher. I looked at the Twix bar today and it specifically said it
contains gelatin. This could be the reason why we don't eat triangle
k, because our rabbinic leadership has said that gelatin is treif (not
kosher).

NEWSFLASH: BABY RUTH IS UNDER THE OU.

For those that do not know what gelatin is, my understanding is that
it is made from finely ground up non kosher animals. There is an
argument in halacha if something that finely ground up is still
considered the animal. We paskin that it is, and we do not eat it. I
once had a discussion with someone on this topic and he said that for
those considering it treif, it was treif as pork.

I suggested that assumedly everyone would agree it is not treif as
pork and the argument was whether it was better not to eat it
anyways. In terms of bitul bshishim, one issue is that in this case
they made the mixture on purpose, which while still halachically
permissible for those that did not make the mixture, is considered
problematic.

We never resolved this issue and if anyone has a clue please feel free
to post your thoughts.

what is purim all about

The Jews were in a sorry state back in Persia. They were fast becoming assimilated, not keeping Torah and Mitzvos. You couldn't even tell who was a Jew by looking at them, the megilla says that the only way Haman knew that mordechai was Jewish was because people told him. My chavrussa (who I am giving credit for the base idea behind the vort) said that there are some modern opinions that Mordechai and Esther were themselves assimilated.

The miracle here was not that the Jews were saved, the miracle was that they accepted the Torah anew. They all realized what happened could have only come from God and therefore did tshuva. If you look at what Mordechai did, it seems very small from a Jewish perspective. He refused to bow down to Haman. Even a jew who eats treif on yom kippur wouldn't bow down. It's one of the big 3 sins. But it was this small, almost insignificant act that brought about the grand scale tshuva which was the goal of Purim. Saving the Jews was incidental to the main goal. What we learn out from Purim is that even if there is just a spark of Judaism left in someone it can cause the entire Jewish people to ignite in a religious fervor.

Even Tommy Lapid lighting the menorah can cause tshuva. (Though if he knew that, he would shoot himself for doing it)

When I told my dad this vort, he didn't like that I said mordechai and Esther were assimilated, so I told him he didn't understand Toras Eretz Yisroel. Then I called my little brother in jerusalem and told him to tell my dad the same vort when he visited him on Purim the next day.

Jericho Operation

The IDF went into Jericho and took the bad guys out of PA jail right before they were going to be set free by the new Hamas government.
For those that don't remember, there was an international agreement which included British and US troops to guard these prisoners as a condition for them remaining in PA jail. The international jail guards left yesterday, probably because they were afraid of getting kidnapped or killed, and the IDF swooped in and asked them nicely to either surrender or die. They nicely decided to surrender.

During an election campaign this kind of operation is looked at very cynically. Nobody believes that Olmert did this to gain points for his campaign. This was the kind of action that was required and this was the only time to do it. Some would say that he got lucky in having an operation like this fall into his lap.

However, we can not get out of the political mangling so quickly. Why did the US and British guards decide to leave exactly 2 weeks before the elections? Was there some sort of secret agreement between the Israel,US, Britain and the PA? Is this the real reason why Mazen was out of the country? Can we see Shimon Peres working behind the scenes convincing them to leave so that Olmert could gain political points?

I don't see any reason to think otherwise.

This is one of the rare cases where political sleaze actually benefited Israel. Putting those guys behind Israeli bars is going to do a lot for Israeli morale and the war against terror.

an enjoyable purim

We had a very enjoyable Purim. My parents and littlest sister came up from the less then holy land to celebrate with us. My kids dressed as harry potter, shabbat queen, ninja turtle/spiderman and barney.

Monday night we had a community Purim party that was very culturally Israeli. The food was cold falafel and there was a costume competition and then an evening of song. The children got to watch a magician and a couple plays and they enjoyed it very much. The costumes were interesting, especially noteworthy was a couple who dressed up as MP3. She wore the M and he wore the P3. On the back they had the words in Hebrew, she was אם (mother) and he was פי 3 (times 3). He was dressed in a "fat" costume.

The evening of song was enjoyable. My dad had never been to or heard of one before. He found it amazing that Israelis could sit around for 2 hours and sing old songs. There was a guitarist and the words to each song were projected on a screen.

Shaloch manos was good this year. I grilled my steaklets right after davening and then delivered them warm. Most of our friends were actually home this year, which was surprising. My neighbor refused to eat a steak for breakfast, so he had to heat it up later. His loss. Being fleishigs first thing in the morning is a segula for being fleishigs for lunch and being fleishigs for lunch is a segula for being fleishigs for dinner.

tzedaka on purim

There are different levels of giving tzedaka and one of the highest forms is where the giver does not know who he is giving to and the receiver does not know who he is receiving from. A lot of communities have organizations that handle this, in our community it is called keren chesed. You give them money and they make sure poor people get the money. It is 100% voluntary organization and 100% of the money goes to the people who need it.

I was discussing matanos le'evyonim with the rabbi last night and I asked him if this form of tzedaka was appropriate on Purim. There is a big discussion among the rishonim about the purpose of mishloach manos, whether it is to help someone with their seuda or to increase good will among people. If it is to increase good will then giving anonymously will not fulfill the mitzva but if it is to help with the seuda then it will fulfill the mitzva. However, there is no discussion that I have seen about the purpose of matanos le'evyonim. Does that have the same criteria, in which case the poor person must know who he is receiving from and the giver must know to whom it is being given? The rabbi wasn't sure. I figured I'll ask the gabbai tzedaka, who is probably an expert on these matters and he'll be able to tell me the best way to give this year.

We also discussed mishloach manos, and the best thing to give is something that can be eaten as part of a meal and not just candy and bisli. I wanted to share an inexpensive high quality way of doing this.

Buy a cheap roast and a cheap bottle of brandy. I got a little more then a kilo for 30 shek (and that was mehadrin) and a 20 shek bottle of brandy. Marinate the roast in the brandy at least overnight. That will tenderize and flavor the meat. Cut it steaklet size strips and bbq. You can get 15 or so steaklets out of it, adding about 2 shek per shaloch manos to your package. You should cut the meat with an electric knife. It makes it much easier.

Selling aliyahs

Our shul has an interesting minhag to sell aliyahs on shabbos zachor, the shabbos before Purim. What makes this an especially interesting minhag is that we don't sell aliyahs any other time during the year.

Last year, we hosted my BILs wedding party right around Purim and had a house full for shabbos zachor. My wife, God bless her, got stayinbedanddontmove sick and I was left to deal with the children and the company. Normally this wouldn't be a problem and I would take all the kids to shul with me, but there were ladies sleeping in the boys room so I couldn't get them dressed. So I stayed home and played with them until one of the women got up and then headed off to shul by myself. I am usually an ontime shul goer. If I'm late, it is usually just after they started. That shabbos I walked up to the entrance around birchas kohanim. I was one of the gabbaim of the shul last year and there were two other gabbais talking outside. As I neared the building they saw me and said "Thank God you're here. You have to sell the aliyahs this year in English." Not having any clue what they were talking about and not having davened yet, I let them lead me up to the front of the shul where I sold the aliyahs in English and very poor hebrew.

This year, they had the decency to tell me in advance. I don't know why I was chosen, except maybe because I have the worst Hebrew in shul, and I'm not a gabbai anymore. But the current gabbais asked me to sell the aliyahs again and in the spirit of Purim and fun, I agreed. So I brought my brand new starw cowboy hat (Did I mention that it says Dale Earnheart on the side with the number 3?) to shul and went up to sell the aliyahs. This year there was no request to do it in English, so I sold most of them in Hebrew. I threw in an English joke and then in Hebrew said,"That doesn't translate well."
We try to confuse the average person, so the bidding is in objects instead of money. The first kovud went for cakes for the party. Now each cake costs 8 shekel, which they rounded to $2. So anybody who bid 1 ooga, was actually bidding $2. We also sold for sections of the curtains that they wanted to buy and candy bags for the children.

At one point I tzun dritinmulled and someone tried to bid afterwards. The concensus was that he didn't understand yiddish and was trying to figure out how much the aliyah would actually cost him if he bid on it, so we opened up the bidding on that aliyah again.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the performance, I even got people to laugh at some Hebrew jokes, though I did hear some people explaining to other people what was so funny. One of the politicos in shul kept trying to keep the currency in "kaful tov (without the vav)", because tet bet is the letters of the NU and NRP merger. At one point we had a discussion if someone said 4 times tov and someone else said 44 who gets it. Then someone bid for someone else, who yelled that he knew how to bid for himself if he wanted the aliyah.

All in all I had fun, and the congregation had fun and my children weren't embarrassed (I think they're still too young for that) and that's what counts.

just a random post

It's hailing. Again. In March. And my bus isn't for another 10 minutes and I don't want to go outside and wait. And 2 days ago it was 80 degrees (not israeli/canadian degrees, real degrees).The folks are coming up for Purim in a couple days and I'm hoping we get some decent weather.
There are a couple of big events going on in March.
First was sister-in-law deb's bday. then yak and debs anniversary, then my baby turns 3. The next day my wife turns 30. A week later my little brother turns 29.
Seems like everyone is getting older.
There was some excitement in ISrael today, the Baby Ruth bar arrived. I don't know exactly when it came or how long its been here, but I noticed it for the first time today. I haven't had a baby ruth in a long time and the peanuts and nougat really hit the spot.

Shout out to the Nestle folks.

talk backers in trouble

Now, not only bloggers need to worry about whether what they write will pass the legal litmus test in Israel, people who write Talk Backs to newspaper articles are in danger of being prosecuted.
The new Yisraeli newspaper, handed out for free in bus and train stations reported today that a newspaper had a story about a mother and a daughter and a couple of Talk Backs hinted at who the father was. I don't know that story, so I can't comment on that in detail, but basically it said that they are going to start tracking down people who leave Talk Backs and prosecute them if their views don't conform with that of shabak.
(Can you say administrative detention).
I mostly read ynetnews to get my Israeli news of the day and the talkbacks are very entertaining for the most part. There are 5 or 6 writers and 100 comments. After someone comments the other people comment back to them.

I may write about these commentors one day, now that they are marked as international talkbackists. So here's to Abdulla, Bunnie Meyer, Michael Steiner, Josh, Yishai Kohen from YeSHa and the rest of you. You better watch your back. Shabak is watching you.

ready for purim

I FOUND THEM!!!!!!
At a lousy toy store in the mall. I walked into the middle of an argument with a lot of people yelling about how the store doesn't take returns. I didn't much care whether they took returns or not. I just wanted to make sure that they didn't have what I needed just so that I wouldn't feel like maybe they did.

There, on the shelf, in between the crappy felt cowboy hats and the chinaman hats, were genuine, straw cowboy hats. They all said Dale Earnhart on them and they had a colored rim but I bought 3 of them anyways.
I don't know where my cowboy hat went from last year, but it would have been a sad purim without a cowboy hat.
Now we have an alomost complete Purim. The folks are coming (kinda oleh regel) and they are probably bringing wild turkey with them. Not only that wild turkey who we will also enjoy seeing, but also the beverage.

Now all we have to do is prepare our shalach manos, write our poem, listen to megilla and give money to poor folks. It is looking like a fun time will be had by all.

Conversation with Jameel

I spoke with Jameel for the first time last night and my first thought was to have the traditional conversation that one might have with an Arab in Israel.
It would go like this (transliterated because I can't write Arabic)
Masa Alchir
{Arab Grunts}
Malay
{Arab Grunts}
Jareeda Minfadlak
{Arab Grunts and gives you a newspaper}
Shukrun.

Our conversation didn't go exactly that way, and after thinking about it, it could be because Jameel is the first arab I've talked to who didn't work at a gas station.

cowboys

Purim is coming up fast and that got me thinking about cowboys.
I got home last night from work and turned on some Waylen and Willie. "Mommas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys." After the song my 5 year old said to me, "Daddy, why shouldn't momma's let their babies be cowboys?" So we played the song again and then I asked him if he understood. He didn't. SO I told him when he was his sister's age, then he might understand. At that point he burst into tears and said, "Daddy, Af Pam (Never) I won't understand." We went to the other computer that has better speakers and I played the song one more time and then I asked him if he understood and he said yes and went happily to bed.

The traditional family favorite is the Alvin version where he changes the word cowboys to chipmunks.

For those few of you that don't recognize the song you can goto http://www.simplyangel.com/mommasdontletyourbabies.htm to hear it.

Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold
They'd rather give you a song than diamonds or gold
Lone Star belt buckles and old faded Levi's
Each night begins a new day
If you don't understand him and he don't die young
He'll probably just ride away.

Mommas don't let your baby's grow up to be cowboys
Don't let em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Let em be doctors and lawyers and such
Mommas don't let your baby's grow up to be cowboys
Cause they'll never stay home and they're always alone
Even with someone they love.

Cowboys like smoky old pool rooms and clear mountain mornings
Little warm puppies and children and girls of the night
Them that don't know him won't like him and them that do
Sometimes won't know how to take him
He ain't wrong he's just different but his pride won't let him
Do things to make you think he's right.

Mommas don't let your baby's grow up to be cowboys
Don't let em pick guitars and drive them old trucks
Let em be doctors and lawyers and such
Mommas don't let your baby's grow up to be cowboys
Cause they'll never stay home and they're always alone
Even with someone they love.

Mommas don't let your baby's grow up to be cowboys.

Aliyah Tip

One of the most important things that is often overlooked when moving to Israel is budgeting. The costs in Israel are generally not the same thing as they do in the US. For example, when we moved here almost 3 years ago, I thought we had enough to live on for 6 months. We ended up with enough for 9 months (Thank God). Having an accurate financial picture is very important but also not easy to come by.

I would recommend discussing various costs with people you know in Israel who are in a similar family situation as you are. Sit down and write out the standard expenses that you are expecting every month. Remember, all the numbers that you have been working with and understand up until now are practically worthless. For example, we spend approximately 20% less here on food every month. Gasoline in Israel costs about $5/gallon.

What I recommend is starting with an estimate that includes: rent, car and gas (if you're going to buy one), electricity, water/sewage, arnona (municipal taxes), food, phone, internet, entertainment, house/garden (if you need to buy things for this), schooling (if you are planning on sending to pre-gan or private school - regular schooling doesn't cost that much), clothing (including shoes), chugim (extra curricular activities) and any other category you can think of.

Ask 5 people from the community you are moving to what the rent prices how much they generally spend on those categories. Remember, winter and summer are different for things like water and electricity.
You need to talk to people in the community because a lot of the numbers depend on your community. For example, if all of your friends send their kids to chugim, you will probably also. If none of your friends send their kids to chugim, the odds are that your kids won't want to go.

We've found budgeting to be very important, especially when you are starting again from scratch and don't have the experience of approximately how much you spend every month.

Just thought I would share.

need ideas, please help

I was talking with traintalk on the train this mornign (as usual) and the conversation turned towards employment, poverty, hopelessness and why nothing can be done about it in Israel. I mentioned an idea that I had been working on a couple years ago before I got a job that I believe could improve the situation.

The Day Labor Employment Center. A for-profit social enterprise.

I never followed through with it because I got offered a full-time job in my field during the same week that I had an interview for a grant. The grant wouldn't have paid all the bills and I was really more interested in integrating into society at that point, soon after we had made aliyah. But now that I'm feeling that my family has pretty much normalized into our community and Israeli society, it is time to put the social issues back on the table.

Helping me out with this can be a serious help to the Israeli economy, and give people more control on their lives. In short, it is a mitzva.

What I am looking for:
1) Ideas for projects that can be done with little/no training, paid on a per task basis and do not need follow up by the person who did the work.

2) People or companies who are willing to pay for this work to be done.

As an example of #1, filling cute bottles with Israeli sand.
As an example of #2, someone who would like to sell cute bottles of Israeli sand out fo Israel.
As another example of #2, a company that would like to sell bead necklaces, needs filing done or any other non-complicated work.

We would be able to do this for a very good price, and you would be helping out the Israeli economy. Right now I am trolling for ideas and to check out the potential before starting to more seriously pursue it. If a test case center works in a small town, then we can expand the program around the country.


Please pass this link on to anyone else you think may be interested.

communication

My office is offering a 3 day seminar on communication, so I signed up. I thought it would be interesting to see how big of a role language plays. It turned out that everyone in the office had signed up for the seminar and there were only 3 native Hebrew speakers there. The rest were Russian speakers and one other American.
The first day was interesting as we learned about some of the obvious problems with people communicating. Hopefully the next two sessions will be just as fun and informative.

I was communicating with some of the guys at work today (from the FSU) and they felt pretty strongly that we need the death penalty for service people who don't come when they promise to. Actually, only one of them insisted on the death penalty. The other one thought you should take a bb gun and shoot out their windows every night until they come to answer your call.

At least it confirmed that the problem with service in Israel is very bad. One guy's contractor has promised every day for a month that he will come tomorrow, to finish up some work that he is in the middle of. Another guy couldn't get the air conditioning service people to talk to him.

This is not a problem with language, this is a problem with lack of quality. The only way to survive is to know people who know people. When we had a problem with water in our basement, a friend called the plumber who owed him a favor and he came over right away. I am sure that without that help, we would still be waiting for him to come over.

Communication is very important. You have to be able to make sure that service people understand that it is in their best interest to come over. It all comes back to it's not what you know, it's who you know.

david irving put away

David Irving is a guy who said a number of times in the past 20 years that the Holocaust never happened. He claimed that there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. For this crime against humanity he was thrown into jail for 3 years.

Maybe I'm missing something here?!?

Why is it a crime to publicly announce your lack of knowledge? Let's put Hamas in jail because they said they don't recognize Israel. Duh, it's there. Check the maps.
How about if we say we believe Sharon is already dead and they are just cooling the body until right before the elections to announce it for political gain.
Oops. I'm already in jail for that one.
Does everyone believe that Washington crossed the Rubicon?
Did the US invade Vietnam?
Did we put a man on the moon?

This guy should be laughed out of academia, not thrown into jail. If he can prove his facts in serious debate, then let him have a go at it. I have no problem having him fired from his job for trying to falsify history. He was a history teacher. If he tried to falsify history with no basis in any matter, he should be fired. But to throw a guy in jail because he doesn't believe that 6 million people were killed in a genocidal attempt to wipe out an entire nation because of the threat they posed as the conscience of the world???? (Did you read mein kampf?)

The holocaust was indeed a tragedy on epic proportions, but you can't lock up a guy for 3 years because he says it didn't happen! I think the pertinent question here is: "Is the world a safer place now that David Irving will not be a part of it for 3 years?"

The answer is no.

freedom of choice

If anyone is wondering what kind of food to bring to a funeral, I just read that while smiley face cookies would be in bad taste, Better then Sex cake is definitely the way to go. (Recipes are at the site)

"people should not be punished for exercising their democratic choice" - Makhmood Abbas

WTF kind of ridiculous statement is that. I would agree that people should not be punished when a dictator determines foreign policy and anyone who disagrees with him gets a couple weeks in the local gulag and then shot in the head. However, if people vote for a group that says that they are planning on being very violent then they are directly responsible. They were not duped. It is not like the Israeli public who voted for Sharon who said before the elections that he was against disengagement (Amram Mitzna's platform) and then turned his back on the people who voted for him. These are people who said, Hamas please attack Israeli. Kill as many of them as you possibly can. More then half of the population apparantly would like to see more violence against Israel. Their actions in the ballot box speak louder then any words possibly could. This voting speaks louder then palestinian citizens dancing on international television when they heard about the twin towers going up in smoke.

The civilized world should stand up now and say, maybe they do not want peace. Maybe they are bad people. Maybe the only answer is to wipe out that cancer from the world. Rehabilitation doesn't always work, especially when the entire society is corrupt.

Take an example from God and what he did to Sodom.

People are held accountable for their choices, and voting is exercising your right to be held accountable for the poeple you vote for.

religious meet secular

My wife went to a meeting last night of religious and secular people to air out their differences with each other. While these meetings may cause personal respect between one group and the next (which is a very good thing unto itself), they are unlikely to cause either group to see things from the other side's perspective.

My wife gave me two examples from the secular side:
1) A former yeshiva boy who stopped being religious in the army was at a shabbos get together with some army buddies. He opened a bottle of wine and asked a religious boy to make kiddush. The religious boy said it was יין נסך, forbidden wine, because it was opened by somene who was not shomer shabbos. He was so put off by that that he decided he didn't want to have anything to do with religious people. (we're not going to discuss the halachic aspect of this case, but there are opinions that say that the wine is forbidden and opinions that say the wine is not forbidden)

2) A couple adopted a child and wanted to convert her. The rabbinical court said they had to sign a paper saying they would send her to religious schools. The couple refused to sign the paper because they didn't want to "lie to themselves and to to religious court." They thought that was such a horrible experience that it left a strong distaste in their mouth for religious people. (They did sign the paper in the end and sent the child to some religious schools.)

On the religious side, the issues that I have heard are more along the lines of:
If they are not going to keep shabbos or kosher then I don't want my children playing with their children because it is much harder to raise your kids religious when their friends from school are out at a movie on Friday night. It is hard to send them to a nonkosher house where you don't know what they might eat. Therefore, we don't want non-religious kids in the religious school.

The issues, as a whole, seem to be that secular Jews want to be able to do anything they would like to without barriers. In other words they do not want religion to be a factor in their life. Religious Jews want to hold onto their code of behavior and are not willing to compromise so as not to offend someone.

An example I gave to my wife is, I don't complain when my co-workers always go to a non-kosher place for lunch on Thursday, even though I am automatically disqualified from going. However, they would be very against a company rule saying that they had to eat at a kosher place, so that I could go too.

In both the situations that the seculars mentioned, there is nothing that could be done from a religious perspective. If you're going to be offended and hate me for the rest of my life if I won't drink something forbidden, there's nothing I can do about that. Hours of explaining are not going to change the fact that if it is only forbidden food because you touched it. The religious guy didn't tell the secular guy, as far as I know, that he was a bad person. He told him he wasn't going to drink the wine. The secular guy in this case was not harmed at all by the first guy not drinking his wine. His pride may have been hurt, but that is because he doesn't understand the law and he doesn't want to understand the law.

In the second situation, the couple was actually hurt. They just wanted to raise a child in Israel. Non-Jewish children are second-class citizens in Israel and the parents wanted to bring the child up as a cultural Jew. However, there are 2 ways to become Jewish. Being born into it and converting. If you're born into it and you don't want to follow the rules, there is nothing we can do about it right now. You live your life and we'll live ours. But if someone else wants to become Jewish, one of the requirements is to accept on yourself Jewish law. They are very lenient about that here, making the couple sign a paper, which they never really have to follow, that they will teach their child what being Jewish means.

This is a battle that is being fought across the spectrum of life. Secular people wanting to live a life without limitations and religious people holding strongly to their values. Groups like this will help explain each side's perspectives in a nonconfrontational manner, but in the end the result is the same.

sharon's burial

No, the PM isn't dead yet. Here's to hoping he lasts a long time. I'm not sure what the point of Omri's 6 months suspended sentence is. What's going to happen in 6 months when the PM takes a turn for the worse? Wouldn't it make more sense to put him in jail now and let him out to visit his dad twice a week. They could let him out for the funeral, if that happened during his 9 months in jail. I would even be happy to let him sit the shiva before returning to jail, as long as they added 7 more days on to his sentence.

Speaking of the PM's burial, Noam Federman got some publicity in todays English ynet. He send a letter froma concerned citizen asking the health department to ensure that the prime minister is not buried illegally. Apparantly, the PM buried his wife illegally in a nature reserve and is planning on lying next to her after he's gone.
When he appaled to the court to exhume Lily's body and move it to somewhere legal, the court turned him down with the explanation that he was correct, but she was already buried, so it is too late. That is a ridiculous explanation. Can you imagine the court saying it was too late if you or I had been buried illegally? The Israeli Police Grave Digging section would be out the next morning, and probably spit on the dead people as well.

This appeal against the prime ministers stated intentions to commit a crime after his demise was done correctly. If he waited until after the PM died, his appeal would have gone unanswered. Now there is an opportunity for them to make other plans before they need to announce them to the world.

Hebrew lesson

The word חייב means obligate. לחייב means to obligate. חיוב is to enforce or coerce.

However, when you ask if something should be חיובי when you are writing a procedures document, they give you an answer that makes no sense at all. Then you go around in circles for a couple minutes until the person you're talking to asks you to explain yourself in English.

Apparantly, חיובי is not something that is obligatory. It means positive, affirmative or favorable.

Sometimes it's easier just not to try.

therapy of a long walk

Sometimes you just need to get out. Today was one of those days, when I just didn't think I could handle sitting at my desk any longer. So, when my Tuesday afternoon shwarma group decided not to go for schwarma today, I went anyways. I decided to walk instead of hoping on a sherut or bus, so I could get some fresh air. Walking through Technion campus till Neve Sha'anan. Then going to the bank machine and having my American ATM card eaten.
The schwarma was good (My company has an account there, so I got to sign for it).
An enjoyable walk back.
Then I decided that the answer is to actually go open source on the software that I have written and earn some money by providing service contracts. It was originally written in ASP.Net with C# and an MSSQL backend and a C# .Net portable client system, because I needed some experience in that, but now I am planning on rewriting it in python with a postgresql backend and I haven't decided on the front end for the portable client, but I'm prtetty sure it won't be .NET. I may just use an Access front end and distribute the Access Runtime library, because I use that at work and it is easy to play with. Or I may try to play with WxWidgets to see how that interacts with a database because we're planning on redoing our front end at work and it would give me good experience. In any case, the more open source, the better.
My goal is to have it ready for a first release for general practitioners in 3-4 months.

I'm also working on some disruptive technologies for the Israeli train system, that my traintalk buddy dreamed up. I'm very excited about the potentials of that because if it can be done for free, which is how we are trying to do it, then it opens up a world of possibilities.

My head is clear now and I can put in the rest of a day at work.
As they say: Sababa.

happy tu bshvat

For tu b'shvat my office gave each employee a large container full of dried fruits. Not even one bukser was inside. Apparantly, buksor is old ghetto jew - mishmaish (dried apricot) is new Jew.

We didn't plant a tree this year in honor, but our trees are blooming. Our almond tree, which we thought was dead, has flowers blooming. The lemons are ripe and if you want to try some good grilling, cut open a fresh lemon and stick it on a steak. Absolutely delicious. Don't forget to take off truma and maaser. Which reminds me, I think maaser changes at tu bshvat to maaser sheni. I'll have to discuss it with the rabbi again to find out exactly when to do what. I'm sure he'll tell me we've been doing it all wrong. But at least we get the trumah right, so we're not going directly to hell.
Spring is just around the corner. I'm thinking of starting some cherry tomatoes and maybe some zucchini. We'll have to see if I have time to set up an area.
There are some great tu bshvat songs that my kids learned. I thought i had never heard them because they were zionist songs, but my sister says she learned them in bais yaakov so they can't be that zionistical.

For all the chutznikim: Enjoy your bukser.

value of regards

On Friday afternoon my brother-in-law, may he return to full health soon in our days, called me and said that he had regards for me from someone. He then asked me how I knew that person, and I gave him the standard reply, "I know a lot of people." He thought the message on the back was kind of strange, as it a blogosphere identification and he is not a member.

There are 2 kinds of blogs, anonymous blogs and blogs that are not anonymous. I, as most of you know, have a non-anonymous blog. Approximately 85% of my readers have known me for a long time. The other 15% are random people, who may enjoy what I write or may come to laugh at my opinions on various topics.

The person sending the regards is an anonymous blogger, for the most part (He can't be that anonymous if he is sending me his business card). Anonymous bloggers don't want people to know who they are for a variety of reasons. These reasons may include:

• they will get put in administrative detention if shabak finds them
• they are writing about things they don't want associated with them
• They are expressing a fantasy part of their life, being creative in their writing and don't want their friends/relatives to think of them that way. (similar to the above reason)
• They are writing about personal issues, maybe therapeurically
• They like having a secret identity.
• Other reasons

I do appreciate the business card.

One of the hardest things for me about making aliyah was suddenly losing all of the contacts and business relationships that I had made over the 7 years that I was working back home, as well as all the personal and family contacts and relationships that I had grown up with. If I had a question about food, we had a good friend who was a caterer. Any legal questions, there were plenty of lawyers. Doctors were around to answer the medical questions. Same was true with accounting, politics, plumbing, electrical, you name it. I was part of the loop for technology or computer issues.
When I moved to Israel, I lost all that. We had a plumbing problem, I had no idea who to call. We called a friend who had pull with a plumber and he came out right away. We had an electrical problem and I didn't know who to call. We got someone's name who came out and said, "no, I don't want to do this job." We called someone else who did what we needed and the electric box blew up a week later. Someone else asked us why we used him, "...everyone knows he's incompetent."
So slowly, slowly we're learning the ropes and finding out all the stuff that you're just supposed to know . Building a network of contacts is a long process that includes a lot of give and take. It takes years or even generations before you really know what's going on.

This business card could have been very helpful to me two years ago when I sent a resume to the company he works for. I didn't even get an interview, though the headhunters I was dealing with said it was a 90% probability. Once, back in America, I didn't get a job because they gave it to the project manager's son's best friend. A couple weeks later, someone in shul said they needed someone with my qualificaltions and doubled my salary. As they say, it's not what you know, it's who you know.

Now I have one more person on my list.

no train

The train didn't come this morning because someone got run over. (Like he couldn't see that coming from a mile away.) While getting hit by a train is in no way humorous for the guy getting hit, it did bring to mind an old camp song, part of which goes:

A man was standing on the tracks and didn't see the train
yisgadal viyiskadash vimiroo amen.

I made it to work in good time anyways. There are always sheruts leaving from right next to the train station and surprise, surprise pretty much everyone wanted to go to haifa, so there were very few exta stops on the way.

obituary of an alumni director

No, he's not completely dead, but I'm sure a part of him died the day he left.
As a disclaimer: I haven't spoken to him since I got the e-mail that he was no longer with us.

Once upon a time there was an alumni director who we will call fred. Fred wasn't always an alumni director, at one time he was a regular alumnus and before that a student. Fred thought that he would stay forever at the institute where he was happy. He learned Torah, played ball and rooted for the bears. Fred finally left the institution when he found out that he would only be allowed to touch with two hands in touch football games and that it was considered inappropriate to throw younger bachurim into trees.

A couple years later, after Fred learned a little bit about life, got married and learned a little bit more about life, he returned to the institute from where he had only good memories. When the administration saw that Fred was not going to leave this time they asked him if he would be the alumni director, thinking that would stop him from swinging on the rafters in the new bais midrash and throwing freshies over the railing by the old dorm rooms. As the alumni director Fred was responsible for picking apples and eating in NY restaurants. As long as there were other alumni there it was all good. He was also supposed to remind alumni of all the good memories that they had of the institute so that they would have a warm, fuzzy feeling inside and give the institute a lot of money. But it was more then just money, it was about maintaining a connection to the past and also about money.

Now Fred has decided that it is time to leave the institution again, once again for personal reasons. This time I doubt the reasons had to do with touch football, but it may have had to do with the Packers. It's hard to live in a state where you passionately hate their NFL team. "Personal reasons" gives you such a wide range of options to make assumptions as to why a person would leave.

We wish Fred much luck in his future endeavors and we are certain that he will be back at the institute at some point, if not permanently then as a visit, because it is so hard to just let go.