Rock's View on Politics....uh oh

I spoke to an Israeli yesterday about the US elections and he told me the Americans are b'tzurot (in trouble). He said that until now there was no question that people would vote for McCain because nobody wanted a black man in office. Now that McCain picked a woman as his VP, there are no more options. He then said, "Do you have any idea what Golda Meir did to this country?"

Sever Plocker, an Israeli left-wing nutcase, writes about why choosing Sarah Palin as a running mate is showing up all of Obama's faults. In other words they can't say anything about her without showing up their own candidate. Well worth the read.

As I've said in the past, I would vote for a black person to be the president before a woman and would have no inherent preference between a black man and a white man (if everything else was even and that was the sole factor) and I would vote for a woman before an Asian. If I wasn't Jewish, there is no way in Hell I would ever vote for a Jew. The reason has little to do with race and a lot to do with practicality. Black people are 100% American, they have no inherent ties to any other country. Even if they are called African American, most of them (as is true with most white Americans) couldn't find Zimbabwe on the map. Women are fickle and emotional. Its how God created them and we love them for it. That's not to say that no woman would be better then any man as the President, but given the choice, again with all else being even, I would go with the male. Sarah Palin against Obama, for example, I would vote Palin because all else is not even close to being even.
Asians have a different mindset then Americans. They come from places where a 500 year plan to reach an objective is not uncommon. To have a 3rd or 4th generation Chinese-American sleeper agent would not surprise me. Maybe I'm a racist, maybe I've read too many books - I don't know. I have nothing against Asians as a whole. They may cheat in the Olympics by putting 13 year old girs in place of 16 year olds, but they do play a mean game of Ping Pong. Jewish people, whether they admit it or not, have a dual identity. Whether they are Jewish first or American first, if part of their Americanism had to cross part of their Jewishness they would have a serious dilemma. Plus they would not be able to handle Tante Zelda biting off their ear that not only did they have to go and marry a shiksa, but they had to bomb Israel. Oy if only Bubbe Hinde could see you now. She's probably rolling over in her grave...


In Israel the Kadima race is heating up. The choice is between the foreign minister, a woman, and a former general. For some reason gender is not mentioned much in Israeli politics. Maybe its because we have already had a woman vice president who shattered the glass ceiling. Maybe its because in Israel the more corrupt a politician is the better the chance he gets elected and corruption doesn't depend on gender.

bbq on the beach

All 5 of my children are busy during the day now. The youngest one started playgroup today. As could be expected the problems in my oldest's class started on day 1, so we will be meeting with the teacher right away and try to deal with it immediately before it gets out of hand.

Today PM Olmert went to an Arab school to bless the first graders and he was met by protesters. They said that he was being investigated by the police for corruption and didn't want him teaching their children anything. I guess there are some things we can learn from the Arabs.

Tonght we are celebrating the start of school by having a BBQ with friends on the beach.

the tire

After the starting school ceremony, the girls got together in their classrooms for a meet the teachers. My speech was cut down from what I wrote to a skeleton of it by my friend who told me that a lot of people would be insulted by what I had planned to say because I didn't understand the bad history in the school. Also I had forgotten that this was a welcome for first grade and didn't include anything about the darling new students. I also didn't throw in any sefardic phrases like yehi ratzon... and kapara alecha or chamsaa. So it was rewritten, but the new version didn't have a dvar torah, so he told me that the rav bet sefer was going to talk torah and I didn't need to. The subject of my dvar torah was taken out also so I couldn't use the same thing I had. Which left me with the opportunity to say what was on the top of my head which may have been appropriate for first graders "Look, I have put before you a blessing and a curse" but may not have been taken well, so I left out the Torah.

When we left it was already dark and as we were walking towards the car my wife, GBH, noticed someone changing a tire and suggested I go and help him. So I went over there and asked if he needed help and he said no, but it was a guy I knew and I assumed he really did need help so I sent the wife and kids home without me and stayed to help him change his tire. Something looked weird about the jack, so I asked him if he put it in the right place and he said yes, he knows how to change a tire. At one point the car slipped a little bit and I actually looked at the jack. What I found was that he really didn't know how to jack up a car and he had put the jack on upside down. The bottom of the jack is a flat panel that rests on the ground. The top of the jack is a little square piece with a ridge where the piece of metal sticking down from the car is supposed to fit into. Well he had the bottom braced on the bottom of the car against the door and it was balanced on the little square on top. When the car had shifted it was because he had dented the door of the car. It's a good thing that I went to help him or he might not be with us anymore. God works in wonderful ways.

As I was helping him change the tire, we were talking about his ethiopian project. He is an ethioipian himself (a kolel boy) and is now running a program that is trying to bring their teenagers off the street in Karmiel. They seem to be having a lotof what we would term "at-risk"kids. He needs money for the program and they are opening a non-profit org in the US so they can collect money. If any of my readers is interested in donating to a good cause that helps normalize ethiopian jews and teach them a bit of torah in the process, please let me know in the comment section and I will get you contact information.

I told him to send me the flyers he has in English and I will post them here as well.

new school year

The new school year starts tomorrow and tonight is the welcoming ceremony for first grade. I'm speaking as a representative from the parent body - in hebrew. I've spoken publicly in Hebrew a number of times. One time at a sheva brachos I said that I didn't know either the kallah or the chosson, and everyone started laughing, I used the word for "biblical knowing." Another time I used the mishnaic word meaning opposite and got yelled at by someone who couldn't understand why I would be against the gan (we live across the street).
This time I sent my speech to a friend of mine to proofread and make sure that when I thank the mayor for his help I don't also call him an ape.

How far to go?

We're technically already finished with parshas eikev as halfway through the week we switch our mindsets to the next parsha. That makes us solidly sitting in Re'eh territory right now. However, I wanted to share something that I spoke about at seudat shlishit last week in Chevron. You'll have to forgive me for being "so last week."

The activists who were talking to us were describing the obstacles they face while trying to redeem Jewish land. At one point someone told us that they had taken over a block of apartments for a couple weeks when 3000 yasmnikim came in to throw them out.
Yasamnikim are special police who are about as brutal as one can be. When they get taken out for a day of fun, they go to a settler beating instead of tubing on the Jordan river.

Anyways, he said that he and his son barricaded themselves in the apartment and gave them a really hard time before they were dragged out.

As I read through parshas eikev, I felt that the parsha was talking directly to us. It is easily understood in mostly modern hebrew as a musar shmooze from Moshe to us. He writes "Don't think that you are getting this land because you are so good and they are so bad. You are only getting the land because they are so bad. And you are a stiff necked people."
He also uses the famous line. "It was the strength of my army that won the battle." (כחי ועצם ידי עשה את החיל הזה) As it was in Egypt and in all the Jewish battles throughout history it is God who runs the battles and decides who wins and who loses.

Now I am pro fighting for our land. I think that we have to put in the proper effort to get it. I just don't know how far we have to go before it becomes a lack of faith in God to fight our battles. This seems to me to be the question that the Hagana, Irgun and Lehi faced (though they may not have known it).

I think that we have to fight the battle on many fronts, but at some point we have to take a step back and look at the forest. As it says in the parsha, we only deserve the land if we do Torah and mitzvos. If the people do not deserve the land, the actions of a handful of people will not change that fact.

I think that if some of the money that goes towards enhancing settlements went instead towards teaching non-religious people here about the importance of the Land of Israel and in keeping mitzvos then we wouldn't need to spend all that money on enhancing the settlements, it would come by itself.

no camping

We were planning a final camp-out of the summer tonight, but it is not going to happen. The boys school has their big school initiation tonight, which we go to for some strange reason, and the girls initiation is on Sunday night.
Part of the meeting is an election for the parents board and I would like to remain on the board this year as we push for excellence. I don't have a problem pushing my ideas on the principal in any case, but it seems like I have more of a say when I'm on the board.

Instead, I'm looking at having a bbq on the beach on Monday evening to celebrate the start of school.

chasing out the hareidim

There was an article in ynet about a hareidi family being chased out of a park in a secular neighborhood in Bet Hakerem in Jerusalem. Rafi G has also blogged about the story.

At first I felt badly for the poor family that just wanted to play in the park and got chased away by "self-hating jews", the classical term for Jews who don't like hareidim. But on second thought, this is what has been coming to the hareidi community for quite some time. We are talking about a community that ostracizes anyone who does not fit their mold. A yeshiva boy who stops wearing a hat or doesn't talk yeshivish, or wears a colored shirt is considered having gone to tarbus ra, bad culture. A non chareidi person, whether secular or dati leumi is considered to be impinging on the sensitivities of the community if they walk in a chareidi neighborhood.

The infamous tznius patrol, which has been arrested recently, has been going around destroying all non-hareidi things, even though the gedolei hador say that it is inappropriate to do that.

Hareidim can walk into any dati leumi shul and be comfortable davening there - that is unless they can't handle the tooma. On the other hand, a friend of mine walked into a toldos aaron in bet shemesh with a kippa sruga and they wouldn't daven until he left. One boy came over to him and said "we don't pray with Zionists."

Now I'm not going to comment on the hareidi family that this happened to, for all I know they are a very welcoming family and full of gemilas chesed. But the community has been asking for this for a long time.

I recently spoke to a friend who is thinking of leaving the yeshiva world and getting a job. I suggested that he check out dati leumi neighborhoods instead of chareidi ones. He was uncomfortable with the idea.

plexiglas experience

My in-laws were just in from the great white north and my FIL loves helping out around the house. One of the projects that we had was to put a plexiglass wall going up the stairs. We had 2 wooden railings and nothing in between and my wife, God Bless Her, was afraid that the children would fall through. This fear was not without cause as the baby did fall through a hole so small we couldn't imagine that she could fit through it. She fell straight down from one floor to the next (about 15 feet) and apparantly landed on her diaper. It freaked her out ( and my wife as well) but, Thank God, no damage was done.

The first challenge was finding out what plexiglass is in Hebrew. They didn't know what we were talking about at the hardware store. After a number of inquiries, we found out that there is a glass store our industrial zone, so we went there. They make plexiglas, it is called perspex in Hebrew and it costs 300 shekel a square meter for 6 milli width.

We explained what we wanted including the measurements. We needed a parallelogram, the same height and width but at an angle. My FIL even drew a picture showing the angle. They explained to us that it was impossible and our drawing was wrong. It had to have a right angle and one side was shorter then the other and that would be the angled side.

We drank lousy thick coffee while they tried explaining this to us and then my FIL tried explaining why they were wrong and we really needed the parallelogram that he drew.
The manager was a Druze and the worker was Russian, I decided we needed some extra help, so I called a friend who is a native Hebrew speaker to try and explain it to them. After they discussed it for a bit, he asked them why they couldn't do it at an angle. They replied that they didn't have a protractor, so the only angle they could do was 90 degrees. I asked if I brought in a protractor and drew it on the glass would they be able to cut it. They said yes no problem, but it was late Friday, so I should come back Sunday. Sunday we went out for a tiyul and when we got back they said it was too late but that they would do it the next day before noon. I asked if we needed to draw the angle for them, and he said no need. He can do it, no problem.
The next day at noon, it was ready. My FIL picked it up and installed it on the stairs.

The only explanation I can think of is they went out on Sunday and bought themselves a protractor.

programming help

I am in the middle of writing medical software and I really don't have the time to finish it. I am thinking of calling GlobeTask again to have a virtual programmer write it for me. I don't know if Globetask does programming, they are more of a virtual assistant company, where you call them to do time consuming tasks. The research they did for me on telemedicine devices was spot on and really saved me tons of hours.

The software piece that I need done is a GUI client that is to be written in wxPython. It is the part of the software that will allow the doctor to download the current patients to his laptop so he can work in a disconnected environment. I actually wanted to learn the library, whjich is why I'm writing it using wx, but I am so far behind schedule. Hopefully, GlobeTask or someone like them can pull it together quickly.

Livni, Mofaz, Barak or Netanyahu

The Kadima elections are coming up and the people of Kadima are going to choose their next leader. One problem that they might find in trying to determine who is the best leader for the party is that the party officially has no ideals. Since there is no one who can convince anyone else that they will best represent the vision of the party, it all comes down to who has the most personal supporters and who can get the least dirt thrown at him.

Livni and Mofaz are both from the Likud, but they seem to have veered leftwards in their struggle to gain or remain in power. We will all remmeber that when Mofaz lost the Likud primaries he said that the Likud was his home and then went and switched parties.

Barak has been playing Kadima politics for the past couple months as he forced Kadima into primaries, is forcing Olmert not to run and is now suggesting the Livni is not qualified to be prime minister. It looks like Barak is really running the show for the no-ideal party.

Obviously this is all in self interest, as Barak wants Kadima to fall apart at its seams and he will become prime minister as Kadima and Labor merge,leaving those right-leaning kadimaists to move back into the Likud. This is the only real chance that Barak has of becoming prime minister, and he is certain that if Mofaz wins the election, the former Laborites will come swimming back to him.

Barak won't be any better of a prime minister then he was the last time. After he lost the premiership, he realized that he was swimming without an inner tube and quit politics for good. He only came back to the party when they realized that none of the other wannabes in the party were worth their weight in straw.

Ditto for Netanyahu. Now Netanyahu talks the talk, but gave 80% of Hebron to the Arabs. He gave them guns and bullets, from which they shoot at Jewish people. He has shown that as prime minister he will not take an ideal stand. That being said he belongs in Kadima, the party without ideals. At the blogger convention he talked tough about Jewish history, but he didn't give the authorization for the Jewish community in Hebron to move into the homes that are Jewishly owned.

All in all, there is a serious lack of quality leadership in the country. This seems to be a problem around the world, as we look at the US elections and see the choices are Obama or McCain. With the democratic runner-up being Hillary Clinton. Those 3 names just shout out, "No leaders. Please barf."

Meanwhile, I am not a member of any political party. Last general elections I voted Chareidi because I couldn't stand the thought of voting for anyone and I figured that each vote they received was like $2.00 to charity. I may not agree with their lifestyle/philosophy, but I do believe in giving charity and their organizations are worthy.

To whine or to act

I mentioned last week, we just got a new principal for the girls school. I'm on the PTA board and we had a meeting with her last night for 3 hours. One of the problems we are facing is that the Education department does not want to approve 2 of the younger teachers for positions this school year, even though they had already been assigned classes to teach. We have a bunch of old teachers who are not able to teach anymore, because they're all burnt out and are bad for the students. For some reason, they can't fire them either. So the solution has been to give them minimal hours and bring in new teachers to teach the classes until the old goats either retire or die.

The principal requested that the PTA board write a letter to the education dept. explaining that we won't accept a school year without those new teachers. Our big threat is that we're going to strike the school year. None of the parents want to do it, but we don't feel we have much of a choice.

I recommended raising money for new playground equipment (again) and suggested that we have 2 options, either to continue to cry that the city won't give us what we deserve or to take pride in our school and raise the money ourselves. The opposing board member said that she isn't a fryer (Hebrew for sucker) and she is not contributing anything to buy equipment that the city is required to buy for us.

The most surprising thing was when I suggested we bring in Bat-El Gaterer, the religious olympian, to speak to the girls, none of the other board members or the principal had heard of her.

Is there no pride in our community?

Shabbos in Chevron (Hebron)

There are a number of places that elicit emotion in Jewish people just by hearing their names. This past shabbos we had the pleasure and great opportunity to visit one of them.

Chevron, or Hebron, the land of our forefathers.

Chevron symbolizes the Jewish connection to the land of Israel. It is the place of our roots, from where Judaism sprouted. This is the place that Avraham Avinu, father Abraham, settled in. The location of the cave of the patriarchs, which Avraham bought for 400 pieces of silver. Chevron was the capital of the King David's kingdom until he moved it to Jerusalem, 7 years after he began his rule.

While we didn't know it when we decided to go, this week was the anniversary of the 1929 Chevron massacre, when centuries of Jewish presence in Chevron was ended. This was indeed a symbolic shabbos to go and experience the renewed Jewish presence that has been facing an enormous uphill battle since we recaptured the city in 1967. We got to see first-hand the struggles that the Jewish residents have to go through on a daily basis.

We left our Galilean village Friday morning at 9:00 AM to head down to jlem where we were meeting the group. Most of the group came from Kochav Yaakov, a settlement between Jlem and Ramallah. We had actually considered moving there when we made aliyah 5 years ago, but for a number of reasons chose our Galilean mountainside instead. We got lost in jlem and showed up 15 minutes late to the spot we were supposed to meet the bus. Fortunately for us (unfortunately for them), their was a problem on the highway and the bus was delayed for about an hour, so we waited for them for 45 minutes. The group was very friendly and we warmed to them immediately. I think all of the other families were at least partly Torontonian (coincidentally), so it gave my in-laws a lantsman connection right away.

Bethlehem
The first place we headed to was Kever Rachel, where mother Rachel was buried on the side of the road so that her children could stop by and pray while they were on the road. It used to be a quaint little building at the side of the road where you could pull off, pray and continue on your way. Since the peace process there has been no access for Jews to Bethlehem (because of the peace) and Kever Rachel has become a huge military compound completely surrounded by 30 foot walls. I said a couple chapters of Tehillim and went to deal with the children so my wife could have some quality prayer time. One of the ladies on the group brought a huge length of red string with her. There is a tradition that if you wrap a red string around the kever marker 7 times and then cut it up into little pieces and tie it around people's hands then good things will happen. A lot of people feel that the red strings that are handed out at other locations never actually got the kever rachel treatment and is therefore invalid. This is A1 kosher red string that got the full 7 times around and therefore can be worn by people who are into that sort of thing.

The bus was not ready when we left the building and the soldiers told us to wait in the building. We were a bit concerned at first that the bus got kidnapped, but eventually it returned.

Chevron
The next stop was at the guest house in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood in Chevron (Hebron). We got our rooms and the kids played barefoot outside. The park next to the guest house was under renovations, so they made do with running around senselessy like kids do. The park that was being renovated was the place where a baby, Shalhevet Pas, was killed by an arab sniper a couple years ago. The rooms were decent, we had 2 bunkbeds and a cot for the kids, the air-conditioning worked well and the bathroom was ok.
I watched the kids play outside while my wife got them ready for shabbos one at a time. It was nice to see that the kids all made friends with the other kids on the trip right away. They were all English/Hebrew speakers and the kids spoke a mixed language amongst themselves.

We went to the Maarat Hamachpela for maariv, the evening prayer. It was done in a Carlebach style, led by Simcha Hochbaum, a local activist.

The Maarat Hamachpela, known as the maara, is not much of a cave. It is a huge building designed like a fortress. I believe it was built in the 1400s by the Turks, but I don't have Internet access at the moment to verify that. There are 3 rooms inside, though it looks much bigger then that. The Abraham room is the smallest and it could hold approximately 30 people. The Yaakov (Jacob) room is where we davened and it could easily hold a couple hundred. The largest room is the Yitzchak room, but at the moment it is only accessible to Muslims who believe that it is the Ishmael room. I don't know if they really believe that or if they just say that to bother the Jews. The Yaakov room is actually outide in the courtyard with a tarp covering. There are tombs with names of the partiarchs

Outside the building, the courtyard was filled with women and children, everyone easily relied on the soldiers standing guard for protection. Our kids were a bit nervous because we had told them that they had to stay near us at all times because it was dangerous if they went to the wrong area. We saw the local kids walking throughout the neighborhood by themselves and that relaxed us a bit. Dinner was excellent, Morrocan food, and we had a chance to relax and meet the other families in the group.

In the morning, I overslept a bit and went to the 9AM tefilla at the maara. This was a mistake, t was the fastest davening I've ever been to. Normally this is not a problem, but they started from áøåê ùàîø and davened sefard (in other words they skipped the entire thing). Davening finished within an hour. When we asked one of the policemen at the gate, where the 9:00 was, he pointed and and said in hebrew, it's full gas. No kidding.

Lunch was good. They put eggs in the chulent, but that's what I would expect from Moroccans. Before dessert we had our first propoganda speech by David Wilder who told us about the community, what they were doing and what the challenges were in trying to convince the government to let them live in homes that belong to Jewish people. In 1929, after the massacre the surviving Jews were expelled from Chevron. But they still kept the deeds to their property. This property is mostly now controlled by the Arabs and even the properties that are controlled by the Jews, the government won't let them enter. It is a fight for every inch of land and for every new family to move in. The expulsion from Gush Katif showed them how successful they can be and they are bringing all their weight and money down against little Chevron.

After lunch we had rest and relaxation time until 4:30, when we went on our tour of the community with Simcha Hochbaum as our guide. We went to first see the graves of Yishai and Ruth. We couldn't see the former Slabodka yeshiva because that is in the 80% of Hebron that Netanyahu gave away to the arabs when he was the prime minister (And tafka pp doesn't like him...)
We saw some excavations of what might have been the gate of the city where Avraham bought the cave from Efron the Hittite. We saw the hospital where the women and children hid during the 1929 massacre and the arabs came and may they all be cursed for eternity for what they did there. A group of women and children took it over in 1979 and it is now a permanent residence. We saw and davened in the Avraham Avinu shul.

It was a great experience for the entire family, and I'm really happy we went. We arrived home at about 1:30 AM, exhausted.

Bronze Medal

Israel captured its first Olympic medal yesterday as Shachar Zubari from Eilat took the bronze in Wind-Surfing.

In today's Taekwondo match, Batel Gaterer Israel's religious taekwondoist lost 4-3 to the Czech girl, Martina Zubcic.
Martina then went on to defeat the Brazilian kicker, Debora Nunes, 3-2.
She finally lost to Turkey in the semi-finals.
Turkey lost to the Korean who took the Gold Medal. I guess it would be a national disappointment if Korea didn't win the gold medal in their own national sport.

Losing in the first round of the olympics is still a huge accomplishment. We are proud of Bat-El for representing Israel and not compromising on her religious standards. I think she can serve as a role model to all religous Jews that it is possible to keep our religious values and still strive to be the best.

Linked In networking group

A couple months ago I started a Linked In group called Israeli Anglo Network. The purpose of the group is to help English speaking olim build proteczia in a country where jobs more often go to the buddy of someone then the person most qualified.
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/42658

This is not a mailing list or a discussion forum, it is just a group where other Linked In people who are in the group can find you. It is not the most convenient interface and they have screwed up a number of features as they are "improving" it.

At the moment, I have more then 220 members. Everyone in the group either lives in Israel or lied and said they did. I wanted to keep the group from being watered down, so I didn't let in anyone who wanted to be linked with everyone in the world (yes there are a lot of those people) or people who support Israel, or people who think that being in Linked In groups is the only way to be cool. If 10% of the group was not relevant to the group's purpose (which is to help ourselves) then it would lose a lot more then 10% of its value.

If you live and/or work in Israel, speak English and would like to be part of giving/getting proteczia even though you weren't in Unit 51 or a cherry, please join the group: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/42658

blogger conference

I must be the last person at the conference to blog about it. I actually considered live blogging it, but I didn't want to even think about holding my laptop in one hand and a plate of deli in the other, while balancing a drink somewhere in the middle. So the laptop remained in the car.
It's about a 3 hour drive from the heartland to our Galilean village, so after visiting with my sister and brother-in-law for 10 minutes, I hit the road. It only took me 2 hours to get home and as I told my wife, "maybe I drove a little bit faster then a could've"

It was a great conference, but somehow I think the organizers missed the boat (or at least part of it). For me, and for a number of the bloggers who I spoke to, the main reason they came was to hear people like Zavi Apfelbaum, the Director of Brand Management at the Foreign Ministry. How can our blogs help the state of Israel. The problem is that she ran out of time in the middle of her presentation and skipped through a number of the relevant points. When they called her on time, there were protests from the entire crowd. Her Q & A session was disrupted by a wack job yelling about Israel's Jewishness. Now I am pro-Jewishness in Israel. It is a main part of the content that I write here, but there is a civilized way of discussing it and a non-civilized way. Screaming "What about the Jewishness" a dozen times until they end the session is not the way, especially when she never came out against Jewishness. She just came out for a multi-faceted approach to how we would like Joe Goy to think about Israel.

I pretty much skipped the last group of panelists and went and spoke to Zavi. I explained to her what bloggers would like to do to help her and a little bit of the power of getting the message out if she had 1000 bloggers including some topics that she sends out in their normal blogs. For example, if I get a message that says: There are dinosaurs from Argentina in the MadaTech science museum in Haifa. I would be happy to write about that, I might even include differing viewpoints on creationism vs evolution and how old the world really is.

Another high point of the convention was the surprise speaker, blogger Benyamin Netanyahu. It is not updated all that often, but he explained that as an aversion to ghost writers and the lack of time to actually write himself. These are sentiments that I fully understand. Netanyahu spoke very well and answered questions, most of them political in nature. What he failed to do, was address how bloggers could unite to get a message across. I wasn't called on to ask a question and when I finally decided to ask without being called on they were just ending the session.

The first group of panelists were interesting, discussing what the purpose of their blogs was and how they became big traffic players. All of them without intent. In other words, write passionately, engage the community and quite naturally traffic that is interested in your topic will come to your site.

I saw a number of bloggers who I recognized from the online world including: Rafi G, Jameel at the Muqata, Joe Settler, Batya from Shiloh Musings. I was sitting in the same row as Lurker, the guy who doesn't have a blog but comments, and RivkA from Coffee and Chemo. I had a great discussion with Ted from IsraPundit about politics and life in general.

To sum up, it was a great convention and I would go again next year.

going to Chevron

Last night we dined out at Arnolds in Netiv Hashayara. nice food and atmosphere, but they told us we had to eat outside if we wanted to come because there was a party there. It was a bit humid, but not uncomfortable. The food was good but not as good as Morganfeld's in Moshav Liman. It's hard to compare because at Morganfeld's we generally get the sirloin steak and here the only glatt meat they had was the Entrecote. It probably changes depending on the week, you just have to ask each time.

In another hour or so, I will begin the trek down to jlem for the big JBloggers conference. A number of my anonymous blogging colleagues will be there, but I will not be reporting on the unmasking.

This coming shabbos it looks like we will be heading down to Chevron, the city of the avos. Very exciting. I haven't been down there in forever.

klezmer festival - done

The KlezmerFest was a lot of fun. For those who didn't make it the first night, there are 2 more nights for you to get on over there. As planned, we saw Simply Tzfat, which is mostly Breslovers, and 1 chabadnik. (I think the chabadnik was playing drums so he wouldn't actually be seen on stage. The mad fiddler was excellent.

The free concert cost us about 150 shekels. 70 shek for parking. (They changed it so you don't pay for parking with a free shuttle, you get free parking and pay 10 shek a person for the shuttle.) They charged us for our 1 year old, which made me a bit angry but I paid without a fight because there was no point in fighting, they determined the price and if we want to use the service we have to pay it. I did mention that was unreasonable and he shrugged his shoulders. 54 shek for pizza. 20 shek for popcorn, 37 shek for drinks. Not bad for an evening out with all the kids.

We walked through the carnival atmosphere for a bit. It was a nice mix of religious/non religious people. We heard a couple of other groups performing, but don't know who they were. We got back home at 11. An enjoyable evening out.

Tel Dan burnt down

This past Shabbos was very nice. My in-laws are in from anada and my bro-in-law came up with his wife and 2 kids. Everyone got along very nicely.

Sunday I took off for the day and we all went to Tel Dan, which is on the border of the upper galilee and the Golan Heights. It is a beautiful nature reserve and had a nice wooden path that is available for strollers, wheel chairs and people who have trouble walking. Unfortunately, there was a forest fire in Tel Dan a month ago and it destroyed, among other things the wooden path. They hastily formed a new trail that allows visitors to see most of the attractions in the nature reserve. It was nice, but not exactly what we expected. I explained to my children in my best Smokey the Bear voice that "Only you can prevent forest fires."

We hit Pizza Meter in Kiryat Shmona for a late lunch - delicious pizza. A half meter is about the size of a normal pizza, for 44 shek and it comes with a bottle of pop.

Tonight we are heading to the mystical city of Tzfat to hear the klezmerim play their music. You can see more information about the klezmerfest on their website.

Klezmer Festival

Next week - Mon, Tues and Wed (Aug 18-20) is the big annual Tzfat klezmer festival. I highly recommend it. We have gone and had a great time the past 3 years. (Except for one of the girls who thinks she remembers it and thinks it was boring). 4 years ago (or was it 5) we were supposed to go with the neighbors, but after driving for about 10 minutes they got a call from their mom that the baby just wouldn't calm down, so we returned home.
The Rock of Galilee will be going on Monday evening. We are planning on starting off the evening at the Municipal Stage to listen to Simply Tzfat for an hour. We might stay in the same place to listen to Maksim Klezmer afterwards, but we have not made a final decision on that yet.

The official klemer fest website is http://www.klezmerf.com

On Wednesday evening is the big international JBlogger convention in jlem, and I am planning on attending.

an evening in the forest

Only in Israel will the driver of an 18 wheeler decide that traffic is going to slow for him and pull onto the should top pass a couple cars and then cut back in. This is an example of what I put up with on the daily commute.

We had a fun company event yesterday. They set up in the Carmel forest with an open bar for the adults and bouncy things, a climbing wall and arts and craft activities for the children. There was also a pool table, air hockey, foosball and board games such as checker, chess, backgammon and cards.
I started out letting the kids jump around on the bouncy things, then I hit the bar. A long island for myself and a Tom Collins for my wife. The bartender replies that he doesn't have any ice tea and he doesn't know what a Tom Collins is. So I tell him how to make a Tom Collins and then how to make a long island. He asked if I wanted to take over.

Dinner was delicious, even though we had specially packaged "Super Kosher" food, so we didn't have to eat the regular kosher food that the non-shomer kashrus people were eating.
Towards the end of the evening, a co-worker (non-religious sefardi) told me that I should have gotten a minyan together for mincha so that he could say kaddish. I told him that I daven by myself at these types of events as there is no one else who is generally interested in davening. Also I didn't know he had to say kaddish.
I told him no problem, we'll gather 10 people, I'll say a mishna and then you can say kaddish. So he went back to his car and got his kippa and we gathered 10 men. I said a mishna from Avos, then some rav chananya ben akashya and he said kaddish. Excpet he didn't know kaddish very well so I had to help him. I told him he couldn't say kaddish dirabbonim because I didn't know that one by heart. It was still funny because I had to help him out with the extra sefardical words that he says. It's a good thing that I have experience davening with sefardim or I wouldn't have even known that they have extra words.

Next month - Dead Sea for shabbos.

we saw an owl

This evening I took my girls out for a roller-blade. Well they roller bladed and I walked. They still aren't up to the level where it is worth it to put on my roller blades.
As we were walking we saw 2 very cool things.
The first was a helicopter that was standing in mid-air in the middle of the wadi. It was very dark and we could only see its lights. Suddenly it turned off its lights and we heard it moving, but we couldn't see it at all. I wonder if it saw something, or what it was looking for. A bit scary, I suppose. Generally when we see or hear things like that, we don't read about it in the morning, but I always wonder what is really going on.

Far cooler then that, we saw a bird with an incredible wingspan flying out from the wadi. I said it was a bird, but my daughter looked closer and yelled that it was an owl. I looked again and saw that she was right. It was an owl and it was just flying around in circles, higher and higher. I think that was the first time I've seen an owl flying free in its natural habitat.

hiring a principal

Well Tisha B'Av is over and I'm eating a late lunch with another religious person at 12:45 so we can eat meat. Tomorrow is shwarma day, so we're not going to go there, probably just to the local cafeteria and get a chicken leg or something.

Our girls school principal decided to retire. He had a heart attack during the year last year (A couple days after I had a disagreement with him, though I don't blame myself for the heart attack). But he gave notice very late, so they don't have time to go through the normal hiring procedure, so they are doing a shortened, less open, procedure.

I am on the board of parents of the school and I tried to find out how we could be involved in the hiring process, so we don't end up with a monster. I was told that the best we could do is give a recommendation for a specific candidate. There are 3 candidates from our community who are vying for the position.

If anyone is qualified to be a religious girls elementary school principal and wants to move up north, now is the time.

The current candidates are:
* the former assistant principal who left the school last year to become principal somewhere else.
* The assistant principal at the boys school
* The teacher who was already appointed to be assistant principal this coming year.

They all seem to be qualified for the position, though we aren't doing any interviewing of the candidates, so I don't really know that. One of the members on the board wanted us to send a letter recommending the former assistant principal for the job. Apparantly, a number of people have called up the supervisor and said some nasty things about her.

The board member who wanted to send a letter is also the best friend of the former assistant principal. She was not interested in sending similar letters in support of the other candidates who are community members.

My first thought was that it would be ok to say that we do not agree with nasty rumors and that in our opinion she was a viable candidate, but no more support then that.

After thinking about it for a while, I changed my mind and said that if people are complaining about her, I am not giving any recommendation unless I know what people are saying and to check if there is a problem. As a representative of the parent body, I can't just ignore the fact that people are unhappy with her candidacy.

Most of the board agreed with my assessment and we decided that if the supervisor is not going to include us in the hiring process then we will not, as a body, do any recommending.

God help us.

tisha b'av

I got off the floor about an hour ago, a little bit after chatzos. While the fire is still burning in the bais hamikdash, we only have a small, symbolic amount of mourning to do. The beard that I have been growing for 3 weeks, the not going to public events, no live music, the refraining from water activities, the vegetarianism etc.. all say that I am symbolically part of the mourning. It would be impossible to truly mourn, for if we knew what we were missing, we would never get off the ground. As it is written, "those who mourn Jerusalem and the temple will take place in its rebuilding.

My shul says 14 kinos on Tisha B'av morning, ending with the traditional Eli Zion. We started davening at 7:30 and finished at around 9:30 I thought that it was a good amount of time. In our shul, a different person reads each kinah out loud and then the congregation says out loud the congregational point, so during one kinah everyone is saying Oyah together. I read one kinah, stating that God is great and we should be embarrassed as it went through some of history saying nice things that God did for us and how we screwed it up. I thought that it was a decent amount of time for kinos. In Detroit, where they said all of them, someone generally brought a backgammon set and when we got bored of kinos we would play

I took my little girl for a walk today because she needed to get out. It was so refreshing breathing the fresh air and looking around at the Galilean hills. May we merit the bais hamikdash to be speedily rebuild, in our days.

friday hike

Today were planning on going to Tel Dan with the family for a nice little non-intensive nature walk. 2 kids refused to go and then the family we were planning on going with decided not to go, so I ended up sitting on the couch working most of the afternoon. This was good because I have a lot of work to do to finish the application I'm writing. But OTOH I really wanted to go out. After working all week, I like to enjoy Friday and get ready for shabbos by seeing the rivers and streams in our nature reserves and say מה רבו מעשיך ה.

Have a good shabbos

azrieli

A couple of days ago my eldest returned from her visit in the US/Canada. She was gone for about 5.5 weeks and I think everyone agreed that it was 2 long. My wife, God bless her, took all the kids and went down to pick her up from the airport. My in-laws came in as well, and they planned on having dinner with at my BIL's in bet shemesh. The problem was that after a long, exhausting day with the kids, my wife was a bit nervous about driving 3 hours back home. I don't blame her at all, because it's a long drive and very dark and the kids tend to fall asleep. So I offered to take the train down after work and drive back with them. It's not that I'm so gallant, but the last thing I need in my life is a trip down south to identify the bodies.

I was going to go all the way to the Bet Shemesh station, but that included a layover in Tel Aviv and I was not in the mood of that, so we agreed that I would go to the Azrieli mall and wait for her there. I brought my laptop with me, so I could work on the train, I am learning wxPython right now and it gave me a full hour on the train to play around with it.
--Did you know there are outlets on the train to plug in laptops? You have to sit in the right seat though.--

I got to Azrieli at about 6:15 and my family was supposed to leave Bet Shemesh at 6:30, which gave me time to find something to eat. Unfortunately it is the 9 days before tisha b'av and we are very sad that we cannot put our cows on the altar so we don't eat meat to make the memory real. So I had to settle for Sbarros. Not bad food, but not exactly a shwarma either. Then I walked around the mall. They were having the 10th Bday party of the azrieli center, and the place was full of clowns, music, and other events for kids. They had a bunch of stuff that was very cool, like people doing flips (I like flips).

The azrieli center is right on top of the Ayalon highway, so the plan was that when the family drove by, i would walk down to the highway and get in. If I timed it right, they wouldn't need to pull over because of the horrible traffic situation on the Ayalon. Thank God we live in the Galilee where there is no traffic.

When the wife called to say she was enterring Tel Aviv, I went and bought a couple of fruit shakes from Juiceland. They had grapes, watermelon, cantelope and pecans crushed into an orange juice base (the 2nd one had a milk base). Drinking this is also part of the 9 days, by the way. By the time they finished, I walked down the entrance ramp of the highway and my wife had just passed. She pulled over to the side and I got there a couple minutes later.

The rest of the ride was relaxing and enjoyable. It was very nice to see my daughter again.

resurrection

I think the war killed my blog. Yes, that war that happened 2 years ago for a single summer caused a lot of casualties. I've been meaning on getting back on track since then, but I always feel that my content isn't on par anymore. Beforehand, I had no problem writing about random events and thoughts. Then the war came and I was focused. I had a topic, and I wrote about it every day. Real events that were happening, letting my readers around the world know how a Galilean family had turned into refugees and was living in the Jerusalem refugee camp.
After the war, I felt that my regular content wasn't as good anymore. It seemed to lack the purpose that I had beforehand.

Now is time for the resurrection. Resurrections are important during the 9 days before tisha b'av. It can remind us that just like this blog is coming back from the dead, the beis hamikdah will be rebuilt.

During this period of time we don't eat meat to remind us of the korbanos that we do not have any more. We don't eat chicken because it reminds us of meat. This is a time to cry and to pray, but most importantly to resurrect ourselves and bring ourselves to the glory that we once were.

We have suffered through so many tisha b'avs and the redemption is now near.

The Rock of Galilee will now restart blogging about the future as well as the present and the past.

Jameel's pro YU problem

Jameel Rasheed, of muqata fame, with his pro-YU hashkafik acceptance of the fact that a book written by the nephew of the Netziv said that Volozhiner's learned secular studies , has driven away potential olim. A commenter on the Muqata blog specifically blamed Jameel's hashkafa as to why he would not move to Israel. In order to promote aliya, Jameel has to make a choice. Should he stop spewing his hashkafic opinions and driving off potentials or should he say to hell with him, we don't want those kind of olim anyway.

It is debatable whether accepting a statement written in the book "My Uncle, the Netziv" would be considered YU hashkafa. Another way of looking at it is that a hashkafa that bashes secular learning is not following the Volozhiner hashkafa and using the story of why the Netziv closed the yeshiva is misrepresenting the facts which would indicate that they are violating the commandment "Stay far away from the untruth."

It could be that the anonymous commentor simply does not know how to read and assumes that if his rebbe said something it must be 100% true and therefore it is Jameel who is lying by quoting the book.

I would bet that Jameel will not change his pro-YU hashkafa until aliyah slows down about 50-70%. Once that happens you can expect more posts from Jameel about the evils of reading and thinking. He will probably post more anti-army posts and talk about the benefits of burning trash in the streets to let people know you are angry about something.

i said I wouldn't...

When I moved to Israel 5 years ago, I didn't have any intention of leaving. ever. And I said it a number of times, in front of a number of people.
This coming week, I am leaving the land of Israel for a short much needed vacation. We are leaving all of our children, something we have only done for a single night in the past 10 years, for a full week as we head off to Rhodes, Greece.
I wanted to go for 3 nights, but the specials were all for 4 nights. My wife didn't want to go to Turkey and there was a good deal in Greece, so we booked.
I don't know what we're going to do there, but it will be a lot of fun. There is no kosher food there, so we will live out the week on the food we are bringing and fresh vegetables. I've heard you can get international kosher food in the supermarket, but we'll have to wait and see about that. I think I can live for a week on carrots and cucumbers if they confiscate my salami at the border. There''s also fresh fish, that only need fins and scales to be kosher, you can kill them any way you want.

pesach final camping day

I look at the news today and Gary, IN has made the headlines. !@#$ing Gary, IN.
Everyone I know who drove by Gary, IN on occassion had the same thing to say about it. It was as if a haze hung over the city and you would just look at it as you are driving into Chicago and just blurt out, beeping Gary, Indiana. You knew you were getting close because an awful feeling comes over you and you look at this place and think, nuclear salvation, and then you see the sign that says Welcome to Gary.

Back to Pesach.
We woke up in the morning and planned on heading over to Nachal Elal. This was supposed to be our major hike, 4 km, 2 waterfalls and walking alongside a flowing stream. Some friends told us they wanted to join us, but they hadn't made it to the campgrounds because their baby was sick. They called and said they were coming and it would only take them a couple of hours to get here. We went slowly and found stuff to do, we had to stop in a grocery store to get stuff for lunch, etc.. But when we finally got to the start of the trail, our friends were still nowhere close by and they were then thinking about another tiyul because it was so hot. It was 100 degree heat, but very dry so you really didn't feel it. We bathed the kids in sunscreen and brought 12 liters of water and started down the trail. It was a lot of fun getting down into the wadi, not a simple grandparents trail, but a real climb. We made it to the first waterfall and everyone dunked their heads and got sprayed on and after playing for a bit, it was time to head on out. We started walking and soon in, we saw that the forest had burned. Someone had told me that there had been a fire there, but I wasn't expecting the destruction that we saw. Everything was black and the ground was covered in ash. There was no shade. We continued onwards and after about half an hour past through the burnt part. Other then that, the scenery was amazing. We found a nice large spring of water to eat lunch at, and the kids played in the water for a nice amount of time. We continued onwards, it was hot and the kids were a bit cranky. By the time we got to the 2nd waterfall, my wife looked down at what we would have to do to get to the waterfall and then get back up and said there was no way that we were going down there. We were standing at the top of the waterfall and we would have to climb all the way down and then all the way back up.
We bypassed the fall, though it looked very refreshing and I would have loved to jump in. By the time we reached the end, we were n our last lit of water, or so. The kids were all beyond exhausted and I was happy we hadn't gone down to play in the last waterfall.
We all got popsicles at the end of the tiyul (which makes it all worth it) and our friends who had only done a small tiyul in the area picked us up and brought us to our car. (Which was really nice because I didn't want to start hitchhiking at that point.

After that we headed for home for a relaxing end of chag. We went to the beach the next day and found a giant dead turtle floating in a small cove. The final day of chol hamoed we went to nachal kziv and walked through the stream for about an hour.

Good times.

pesach cont.

Have you ever chamsaed someone while driving? It is much more gratifying then giving someone the finger, because first of all it is 5 fingers and a palm you are giving them which is 5 times as much and also because when you chamsa someone the curses that go along with it are much more severe. For example, a truck (yes an 18 wheeler TRUCK) decided that the line of traffic in front of him was going too slowly so he pulled onto the shoulder and sped past. I chamsaed him twice and among other things that I yelled at him was that he should get raped by the same camel 50 times.
To throw a chamsa at someone you put your 3 middle fingers together and strewtch out your thumb and your pinky and yell chamsa alecha (חמסא עליך in hebrew) Then while your fingers are still in the chamsa position you yell ridiculous curses containing what you would like to happen to him, his mother, his wives, his mistresses, his children, his posessions,...

In any case, I digress. Back to the pesach tiyul.

After Ein Tina, we were discussing the next plans with ourr friends and they decided not to continue with us, but we were going in the same direction so we continued onwards together and then one friend said that yesterday the bridge crossing the Jordan river was out and he found a dirt road through the fields that connected to another bridge and we could cross there. So we cut onto a dirt road and drove through fields until we found the second bridge and crossed the Jordan. We had planned to stop along the river for lunch, but there were no places with shade so we kept going onwards. We considered various options and decided that instead of BBQing we would just eat when we got to Keshet Yonaton, which was supposed to be a kosher lemahdrin place. When we got there they told me that it was too late to order and that they don't eat until 7PM anyways. So there we were without meat (except for deli slices) and no restaurant. So we decided to head on down to Ein Gev, where there was supposed an eretz yisroel festival. We drive down towards Ein Gev, or how we thought the map showed would be a good way to get there, and we didn't see any kosher restaurants on the way and there was no road to ein gev. We finally turned into what looked like a parking lot right where the road was supposed to be and it was blocked by police and soldiers. They asked what we wanted and I said we were trying to figure out how to get to Ein Gev. After discussing it they said that this was a road and it went to Ein Gev, but we should drive very carefully. So we went down a windy, steep road filled with potholes and surrounded on both sides by a barbed wire fence that had signs be careful of land mines. It was a fun drive and we finally got to Ein Gev and the children are starving. We walked through Ein Gev and there was no festival. There were signs that there was going to be a festival, but I think it was a Music Festival and it was only after dark. When we got to the end of the sidewalk there was a restaurant and a lot of ashkenazic looking religious looking people were walking in. We decided it probably wasn't our kind of kosher and offered the kids matza and meat slices. None of them were very happy. I finally decided to check out the kashrus of the restaurant and walked in and asked. They had a rabanut kosher for pesach without kitniyos. So I decided that we could eat there. Another religious person came and decided to tell me about the restaurant. He said that about 10 years ago the restaurant made a deal with the rabanut that they really wanted to be kosher, but they needed to be open on shabbos. The deal was that they use different dishes and an Arab cook on shabbos, so it is as if it is a separate restaturant. He said if I considered that toi be kosher then I could eat there. I thanked him for the information and said that I thought that was a great compromise. Who knew that religious people knew how to make that kind of compromise. So we went in to eat.
We had fish, the kids mostly ate salad and everyone was happy. President Peres walked in the door as we were walking out, so I wished him a happy holiday and he responded in kind.
We then headed back to the campground (we went the other way back) and slept well.

We counted Day 3 in the omer.

To be continued

pesach tiyul

I know I've been very lax about keeping you all up to date on what is going on. There have been a lot of things that I have really wanted to write about, but haven't gotten around to. Like the secular wedding we went to joining a Moroccan guy and a Russian girl (both born in Israel, but keeping their respective cultures) in a very interesting religious ceremony. I'm not going to write about that now, but I wanted to a month ago and mentioned it to one of my readers (who befriended me on facebook), who probably does not read anymore, since I stopped writing.

In any case, Pesach just ended and our mad tiyuling is done with. I wanted to share the beauty of the land of Israel with you. We were supposed to go camping with 2 other families for 2 nights and 3 days of hiking. It's always fun to go camping with Israelis because we have such different cultures. Anyways, one family had a child get sick on them so they didn't come and then another family decided to join us.

Chol HaMoed:
Day 1 - We went hiking in Nachal Iyun in Metulla, the finger of Israel. Metulla is an example of Israel giving the finger to the Syrians as we bomb their nuclear reactor. The PM told us he did that so that we would know that the government knows how to defend our country. Whatever. He's a jerk. It was a gorgeous day outside and there was no water running in nachal Iyun, which was a disappointment for the kids. We finally got to the end and there was a big pool of crystal clear water by the Tanur waterfall and a lot of signs that said "Do not go into the water." We respected the signs, though I don't know why.
We then headed over to the Charoshet Tal national park, to set up our tents. We figured if we got there early then we would get a good location along the stream. The place is huge and there are streams running through the entire campsite so everyone gets to put their tent next to the stream and nobody was on top of the other person. The kids played in the water and then we went to check out the big pools of water that they have in the non-camping section of the park. The kids had a lot of fun playing in the water and I decided to take my eldest to the deep water. I swam under the line and two strokes in absolutely froze. Apparantly the water comes directly from the meting snow on Mount Hermon. The shallow water is slightly warmed by the sun, but the deep water was just plum cold. Cold doesn't describe it. It was like swimming next to ice floes, but without the floes. I turned around and made it back to the shallow water, but just barely.
Afterwards, we had a twilight tour of Tel Hai. Tel Hai is a historical site showing where Trumpledorf died for his country. He only had one arm and when he was shot he told the doctor it is good to die for your country. Post Modern Historians have changed what he said, but they are liberal revisionists so who really cares about them. We then walked down the path of the wounded to the next village and looked at the roaring lion. It was an enjoyable evening. We then headed back to the campsite for our BBQ and sleep. It was late for the kids to have eaten but due to culture misunderstandings between our families we had decided to BBQ at a number of different times and didn't actually do it until we returned from the twilight tour. Somehow on Pesach we always end up hanging out with sefardim who eat kitniyos on Pesach. I think its because most of our friends here are Sefardim, but they only act differently then us on Pesach when they eat chumus with their bamba (and when they have to wake up early for a month to say slichos to get forgiveness for eating that food). I brought 5 bags of marshmallows (Liebers, with no kitnayos) for all the kids, and they all had a good time playing with fire.
By the way did I mention my kids hate sliced deli meat? Brings back memories of canned noodles in sauce, but very few people will get that reference.
We counted 2 on the omer.

Day 2
We woke up in the morning, or did we ever fall asleep? We have 3 tents, 2 4 person and one 2 person. I just bought the 2 person for the girls because my daughter had a camping trip with her youth group (no I can't bring myself to publicly write that my daughter is part of that youth group) and I figured that as the girls get older and will camp more often they will need a tent and the 4 person was getting squishy with all the kids in it anyways. So we have the boys tent, the girls tent and our tent. The baby is in our tent and she sleeps diagonally, so I was half on the mat and half off the mat and it was very comfortable, but You don't really go camping for the comfort so it was ok.
Anyways, we woke up in the morning and the kids played in the water for a couple hours until we decided it was time to get a move on it. The plan was to hit the chitzbani river by the Sneer national park. When we got there it was a 2 mile backup, so the other families suggested we go somewhere else. When we returned home the neighbors told us they waited in the 2 mile line and it only took 10-15 minutes. In any case we headed down to Ein Tina, which is a hike that is suppoed to be all in water. It started off in water, but as we headed up the mountain it dried up. When we got to the top, water was rushing out and we got to dunk our heads. We went back down the other side where the water was actually flowing, it was fun, like walking down a waterfall. It seemed like the kind of thing my dad would have loved taking us to 20 years ago and now would yell at me for taking my kids to dangerous places.
It's 11:30PM and I'm going to sleep. Maybe I'll continue this tomorrow, or a different time.

the "f's" of freedom and fanaticism (cont.) or, the human operating system

I have been looking at the question of identifying suspicious internet behaviors lately, wondering if a crazy new concept I have about search could have an application in this field. Probably not, even if it seems otherwise.

Two sources inform me: The New York Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence Division, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, made public August 15, 2007, 90 pages, also available in macromedia flashpaper format online, and
Haruki Murakami, Underground: the Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel), Vintage International, 2001, 366 pages

I read the Murakami book first, finding it in a bookstore after first reading his novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The NYPD report was found not within the first results of a web search for suspicious criminal or terrorist internet search behavior. To be blunt, both sources are non-fiction and both come around pretty much to similar assumptions about the kind of people in Japan or the West who end up in or leave terrorist cells: these are normal and middle or upper class people who find within their acquired new ideologies something missing within mainstream society. As Murakami says, it is exactly these "who should be most critical of our 'utilitarian society' who use the 'utility of logic' as a a weapon and end up slaughtering masses of people", that "language and logic cut off from reality have a far greater power than the language and logic of reality - with all that extraneous matter [confusion and contradictions - traintalk] weighing down like a rock on any actions we take".

The NYPD report is controversial on several levels and mostly because some believe it should have stayed classified. I disagree: the incisive moments of radicalization - the stages of wandering, world view rebuilding, and enabling are the precise suspect shadow activities that are the red lights of the process which occurs but which also happens on the internet. Ideally, finding this thread and locating these people in early incubation stages could conceivably prevent future tragedies. My thought on making this report public is that it makes these potential future terrorists members of society again - it says, read this and know thyself and implicitly it says, we know the kinds of things you are doing and the kinds of things you are going through, even if you actually go through with it to the end and we never find you. Without saying it, it has the potential to create a mental dialogue and I believe it is one of the first attempts I have seen at saying in different words, you're really ok (and when you're not ok is a fine line) until what you are doing is illegal - look, we're really ok too, that even if we might both be a little screwed up (or very or not screwed up at all), we can still find a way to put this behind us and move forward together.

It doesn't say the following but it could have: "Oppression, suffering, revenge, or desperation" for some - the report is referring to Palestinians - is the same as confusion, contradiction, hard knocks and identity crisis for others. Or, in more direct language, we who made aliyah as individuals can have it just as hard but for different reasons as those who came in large numbers to Israel because they had to. As it happens, it is likely everyone has problems. For whatever its worth, we are the same stuff. Some end up on death row in prison, some die and some are Fortune 500 material, and some can be any of the above.

Some time ago, on a late arriving train no less, I had the privilege of speaking with a person who told me that the entire world is based on the same human operating system and that this was this person's basis for believing in ultimate understanding, a la Thucidydes, his hope for world peace. At the time I disagreed, arguing that, due to what seem to be perversions and mutations, that people can not and will not see eye to eye. I offered a compromise: factor in "klipot" and I will accept that we are all on the same operating system. He agreed, although we had made a few stops and many people stood between us, packed inside the door, and then soon, he arrived at his stop, we made sign language for thank you and farewell and he left the train. If I recall correctly, my basis for this discussion was The World is Flat and an excellent critique against it. However, if indeed , we are all on the same human operating system - it is this that makes the world flat from the start.

What is missing are the narratives that remind us. Perhaps better - the narratives that speak to us where we are.

mishkan and marriage

I came up with a great vort this shabbos and I wanted to share it with you. I was at sheva brachos for a couple I don't know and I was thinking about the mishkan. The mishkan is a fascinating subject because it defines exactly how God wants us to serve him. The essence of God is in the details, as we are commanded to build it exactly according to specification. There is no room for someone to say, I will worship God in my own way, without the framework of religion.

How is building the mishkan connected to marriage?

בלבבי משכן אבנה - In my heart I will build a mishkan.

Matters of the heart relate to spousal relationship. Building a mishkan in my heart means that in order to have a successful marriage, you need to follow an exact plan in how you act. there is no room for a person to decide that I am going to show love in my own way that is not in the framework of a Jewish marriage. When your wife is sad, you need to give her a hug, but only when it is allowed. During other times you have to show her that you care in other ways.

ולמשכן מזבח אשים - In the mishkan I will put an altar

ולקרבן אקריב לו את נפשי - For a sacrifice I will offer my soul

Spouses have to be prepared to sacrifice for one another. Things won't always go your way and very often you will need to compromise and to give up things that you want. In the framework of marriage, you have to be prepared to completely give your soul to your spouse.

There were 2 other points of building the mishkan that are related to marriage:

1) It takes a lot of hard work, but the end result is a sanctuary

2) Both men and women have to put in the effort, but not on the same things. There are jobs for the wife and jobs for the husband, and very seldom do they overlap. Marriage is not 50%-50%, it is 100%-100%, each side has to do their job 100%.

an evening out

Last night the company took my department and our spouses out to Papagaios in Haifa's Hutzot HaMifratz. This restaurant gives a new meaning to the word busserfest. All you can eat for 140 shek per person, or you can bump it to 180 shek and include drinks and dessert. The restaurant is under the hashgacha of the rabanut. Our shita is to call the mashgiach of a restaurant we want to go and ask him which food we can eat. They are generally very helpful. The mashgiach at Papagaios signs off on which meat is glatt per day and they have the list at the maitre d's desk.

You don't order food at Papgaios, you order a style of food. They have choices or Brazilian meat, fish, vegetarian and children's. Obviously, we went with the Brazilian meat. They start off with a platter of wings and salads on the table (and bread but you're supposed to ignore the bread or you won't have room for the meat) and then start to work. Their style is to first bring you everything to try and then bring you more of whatever you want, if you still have any room after that.
They bring skewers full of meat to the table and give a little piece to every one. Then they bring the next course. You don't have to try anything you don't want to. They brought chicken breasts, polkas, kabobs (in Israel a kabob is grilled ground meat, like a hamburger, not what we call a shish kabob), choriesis (like hot dogs, the only meat that wasn't glatt), chicken liver and goose hearts. Then they started with the serious food. Entricote steak marinated in beer, they cut it into slices at the table so people who wanted well done got the outside and people who wanted rare got the inside, sinta steak, entricote, not marinated in beer, sinta steak slices (much better then the first chunk of sinta they brought) and ribs.

After the ribs (which were delicious), they are done with the presentation and then they ask you if you would like more of anything. Most people at that point were done. I continued a little bit farther and had seconds of the entricote and the ribs.

All in all, it was a most excellent dining experience.

Galilean Snow

Last night it started snowing in our Galilean village. We went out to play in the snow a bit with the neighbors, all the kids were already sleeping. I was pretty sure the snow would be all gone by morning, but when I got up, just before 6, the snow was coming down. I called th rabbi who I drive to work and we decided to daven first and then see what the situation was. When I got home my wife told me that I should stay home and play with the kids, as school was cancelled anyways. The roads didn't look that great  so I agreed.

Then I went skiing. 

We live on a mountain and I thought that akiing would be a great idea if I couldgo from the top of the hill to the bottom. Apparantly, the angles weren't that great and it was slightly less exhilirating then a bunny hill. It was very enjoyable, in any case, even though I had to walk all the way back up in my ski boots.
I did meet a snowboarder with similar ideas. He is from Vegas originally and thought h would catch some runs.  

end of the world as we know it

Neil Kleid. That was what I thought on my way home from work today. Just Neil Kleid.

Today they played It's the end of the world as you know it, by REM on galgalatz and, as always when I hear that song, I had a flashback. 12 hours in the car with Neil and that song. None of this was Neil's fault. It was my car and my tape, but still when I hear that song, that's what I think about. It was a great trip. I heard that he got engaged and I sent him an email, but I think it went in his spam box.  If anyone wants to find out who he is or what he's up to, just google him.

I know I've been absent in the blogosphere recently. I'm just over-beyond busy, even when I'm at work.

gaming halacha

I had a monetary dispute with my neighbor (not the one we like) yesterday. He's Russian and not Orthodox, though he believes that he is religious in his own way. About a year ago he built a wall in between our properties without discussing it with me and then asked me to help pay for it. According to Jewish law, I am obligated to pay for a minimal fence that is acceptable in our neighborhood, so I offered to pay for that and he said that was fine. I was going to pay him in installments, so when I gave him the first installment, I brought a receipt for him to sign. He insisted that there was no need for formalities like that between neighbors and since we are both honest there is no need for it. I figured that since there is no record of me owing him any money, if I paid him and he said I didn't he doesn't have a case anyways, so I agreed in the name of neighborly relations.
I paid him 3 installments and owed him a little bit more and he came to me yesterday to see if I had it, and when I mentioned how much I owed him he thought it was much more. He said that they kept track and they have written down that I paid him twice and they have no record of a third payment. I told my wife and she remembered me coming home and telling her that now I only owe them a little bit more.
So I went back and told them that I only owe them what I thought I did and not as much as they thought I did. I told him that I paid them and the fact that they don't have a record of it isn't my fault. I also reminded them that I asked for a receipt and they refused so they can't complain that I am not paying what I said I paid. I honestly don't believe they are trying to cheat me, I think I gave them the money at an inconvenient time and they forgot about it. In the end we decided to split the difference. They're very upset because they believe I owe them more moeny and I'm upset because I know I paid and was stupid for not demading the receipt.

I was just thinking about how Jewish law would play into this. If we had gone to a Jewish court and I said I owe him a little and he says I owe him a lot then I would have to swear and pay him what I said I owed him. Today they don't make you swear so they would work out a compromise similar to what we workied out. However, I know the law. If I went to court, I would say I don't owe him anything, and then get off scott free and then I would pay him what I thought I owed him. In other words, because I learned Jewish law, I can game the system and he can't because he never learned Jewish law. That being said, anyone who spent time learning gemara would know that if he goes to court with a claim of partial owing that he is going to lose. He even knows the reasons behind it - people are not so brazen to say they don't owe anything when they owe something. They instead claim they owe a little bit to get them off the hook and then if they ever get money they will pay. Understanding that logic will present a problem to the court because now there is no psychology involved. I weill now be brazen and say that I don't owe anything because I know that if I don't, the system will take advantage of my honesty.

A matter of input

Recently I've been thinking about the decision making process in terms of freedom of choice as opposed to natural inputs that define your decisions. Freedom of choice, by definition, means that when you come to a decision point you can use your intellect, emotions, experience, randomity and whatever else you personally feel is relevant to actaully decide. Nobody is forcing you to make this specific decision and you can say that while logically A makes the most sense, I WANT to decide B. The problem is that it is impossible to have a completely objective view of any situation and the inputs you have received over the course of your life, including what you see as valid logic or valid emotional response might be something that other people see as illogical and/or an invalid emotional response. That means that your freedom of choice is severly limited by your experience. In other words, the more experience you have the less freedom of choice you have because your decision will be based very heavily on the inputs you have received over the course of your life. On the other hand, the less experience you have the more your decision becomes a factor of randomness and less a factor of real choice.

This indicates that true freedom of choice is very hard to come by, if it exists at all. Your choice is either a given (therefore not a choice) based on specific inputs or it is random which removes any value of having a choice. Unfortunately, this approach turns us into robots with a strong artificial intelligence module.

The question is, would it be possible for a machine, given 100% of a person's lifetime inputs be able to predict the choice correctly 100% of the time. As this is impossible to feed that into the machine, we will never know the answer.

google and its discontents

First, there were the msn and yahoo search engines that seemed to have sold out to the advertisers. But as google overtook the motown auto industry in size, they too acquired a bad name in an information industry already humiliated by the consumer driven compuserve and aol. In the present era, collaboration has become the big word with consensus becoming more important than anything objective. Just like israrail, google's own success has become its greatest failure - in short, from producing the best hits to the hits that pay the most and/or that have gamed the engine the best in order to appear first. Information has become a second class citizen in an internet world financed by big business pr and advertising - call it seo for short. After all, it is only logical that the internet as the short tail of business should conquer the world, blinding it of anything real. Remember when consumer was king? That was before bill gates decided to play in the internet sandbox.

What's the solution? Let's use the same seo tricks and turn search on its head. Let's become enabled to search by comparing the types of search masks and phrases that produce the best results and then apply it specifically to what we want to find by gaming the game seo has been playing up to now. To do this, it would be advantageous to use the most perfect market of searches and results in the world i.e. google - but doing so by turning it inside out and upside down because, let's face it - google has become the biggest paid directory around. And anyway, microsoft had its day and then came open source; google has had its day and now comes change from it's disenfranchised.

Needless to say, if this can happen with google - then perhaps israrail will change for the better one day too ....

vacation

I'm on vacation for a week. You would think I would now have time to update my blog, but I would doubt it. Next week my sister is gettng married at the interntional convention center in Jerusalem and we have the honor of hosting the party in our Galilean village from this evening until the wedding day. The whole family will not be coming to us because of academic responsibilities so we have a small group of 35 for shabbos including women and children. 

There is a strike of all Iraeli high school teachers going on. It is in the middle of the third week. They feel that because they are trying to teach our children the basic knowledge that they need to survive in life, they deserve a bit of respect and a proper paycheck. They don't have to work in the summer and get a nice break for holidays, so that should be worth something.

The prime minister announced that he has cancer the same day that there was supposed to be a big media expose on his corruption, so they postponed the expose. Coincidence? I think not. The big question going around is _ does he really have cancer and if so, did they hold the story until it was most politically beneficial for him.

weekend in jlem

I'm sitting at my brothers place in Modiin waiting for my wife to come back so we can start the long drive home. Actually, it's shorter to drive home then it was to drive to Cleveland - in other words long is relative.
We spent shabbos in jerusalem with my mom and we had a very nice time. It was a little bit tense as my children are not used to being in a small enclosure with breakable (ruinable?) items, but that's life. I went to sleep at about 1:30 AM on Thursday night after a midnight shopping trip to go get vegetables. I had been on the road since about 6 PM and by the time I finished shopping, I was so fried that there was no way I was going to make it for a short visit to the old city, so I just went back to the apartment and went to sleep. I got my visit in to the wall the next morning. One of my kids woke up at 5:30 and decided he was going to start making a ruckus. I decided it was more worth my while to get up and I took him to the wall for shachris (morning prayers). After davening, I messaged my wife to see if anyone was up yet and she told me they were still sleeping, so I took the kid with me for a nice breakfast. Parking was free because they don't start charging at the meters until 8AM, and we were back at the apartment by then.
We headed off to the zoo to spend the morning, and I went to sleep lying on the ground at the children's zoo. I live in a children's zoo so I didn't feel I was really missing much if I didn't see it in that location.

Shabbos was very nice, we got to spend some quality time with the chosson (groom), which we enjoyed.

The baby was asleep on the floor after some crying and one of the kids just went and woke her up. ARGHHH
Have a good night.

rabin - 12 years later

Yesterday was the 12 year anniversary of the death of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. I remember very clearly when I heard about it. I was in the US at my parents house. Shabbos had just ended and we were cleaning up. The phone rang, it was a friend of mine from NY (actually he is from Indianapolis, but he was living in NY). He asked me if I saw the news and I said no. He then told me that Rabin had been killed. He was very depressed about it because it meant Shimon Peres was the prime minister and that could only mean downhill for the political process. My thoughts at the time ran the gamut from "what horrible news" to "can it get worse then Oslo." I had heard the calls that the prime minister must be killed to save Jews from the horrible Oslo process. I don't know who had thought that it would actually make a difference. The political system is not run by a single man. Though in Israel everyone seems to think that it is. A national decision by Rabin, Peres or Sharon is not made on a personal whim, but only after polls, meetings, discussions etc...

Of course the other side of the coin is "Wag The Dog," which indicates that politicians in power will abuse their power without keeping the nation in mind in order to solve personal problems. But does anybody really believe that Clinton bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant to change the public's focus?

I was written up in Globes. They did an article about American olim in hi-tech. It's in Hebrew, so it isn't readable by all of you. Let me know if you want to see the article, I have a PDF copy.

We're heading down to jlem for the weekend. Mom is here getting ready for the big wedding and the sister has a shaitel party (in nice language) on Saturday night that my wife wants to go to.

I still haven't tried the GlobeTask free trial, but it is getting rave reviews from 2 friends who have tried it. I just have to figure out if it is worth the money to have someone else handle the minor stuff and only focus on what needs me. The idea of a virtual assistant is very tempting.

Picking fruit at a U-Pick is like fishing in a stocked pond.

I know I haven't been blogging recently. I am just so busy.

A friend of mine tried out a virtual assistant service called GlobeTask, where he sends work to a virtual assistant for a very low price and it gets done. It's like sending your clothes to the cleaners, you just give them instructions either by email or phone and they handle all the details. He highly recommended it to me, I just have to decide if I have any tasks that I can actually delegate instead of doing them myself. Delegation is very hard because if you pride yourself on quality, then trusting anybody to do as good of a job is difficult to say the least. I am over-buried in work these days, so it is a thought. If anybody else has used GlobeTask or other virtual assistants and can comment on quality, please leave a comment.

The holidays were great and jammed pack. We had 2 sukkahs this year, as we did last year, one for eating and one for sleeping. The 1 night that we didn't sleep in it (we got back from jlem too late) it collapsed because of a non-normal wind. (If it was a normal wind, it wouldn't have been a kosher sukkah to begin with, which is why I assume it was an extra strong wind.)
We started off the holiday with my brother (and family) and sister (without fiance) coming up. I lost the Scrabble game by about 35 points, but I am out of practice so 35 points isn't so bad. Friday we went to the Carmel mountains for a hike through Little Switzerland. The tour book said it was a circular trail, but we realized that it wasn't exactly circular so we turned around in good time and headed back the way we came.

On Sunday we went to the Yehiam crusader castle for the big Renaisance Festival. The festival wasn't until Monday, but we went on the guided tour anyways. It was free because we are members of the National Parks. Sunday night we had a little Sukkah party in our sukkah and had 5 couples over for some nice socializing.

Monday was oleh regel day, we planned on heading down to Jlem and then to the bet shemesh concert in the evening. Sunday night, #4 threw up all through the night so we weren't sure if we were going to go at all. Monday mornign I gave the 3 older kids the option to go down anyways by ourselves or to do something fun in the north. They chose to head south. We had a great time and the kids had an amazing time at the concert in the evening. Going through the old city on Sukkos is unbelievable. it is packed with people and there are things going on all the time. This year there was a large concert in the Southern Excavation as well. We also tried to go to the hike in the City of David, but the lines were too long and the hike was 3 hours, but the kids really wanted to go in the water and the Shiloach river is part of the hike. So I decided to take them somewhere else where we could just go into the water. We went just outside of Ein Kerem in Jlem to a KKL(JNF) park called the Sataf. You can drive right over to the springs and there is a small pool of water there. The catch is that you have to jump 20 feet down to get into the pool of water. I watched someone else do it first to make sure that it wasn't dangerous and the girls wanted to go in, so I jumped in first so I could help them if they couldn't swim in their skirts and then the girls jumped in. They had a great time. The boy can't swim well enough yet, so he didn't jump in, but there is a little cave with water in it, that he crawled through, so everyone had a good time.

Tuesday we lazed around and Wednesday we woke up early to go fruit picking. After this experience I have decided that picking fruit at a U-Pick is like fishing in a stocked pond. We went to the river to pick blackberries. We walked through the water and after we finished eating the blackberries we gathered enough in the bag for blackberry pie. While we were walking around we found fig trees with delicious fresh figs. Hanging from a very tall tree there was a grape vine with clusters of purple grapes. I explained to the kids that we were not greedy and we would only take one cluster...if we could reach them. I swung a very long stick at a cluster and managed to knock some of the grapes into the river and the kids quickly pounced on them. I considered climbing the tree to get a cluster, but my wife was getting too nervous. After this experience I can't imagine going to a U-Pick and calmly taking the fruit from the tree.

end of the year

The year is ending with a bang. It seems like the entire year is catching up with us in the last week. There were more then 60 soldiers injured in a rocket attack last night. This was not an unexpected event, the terrorists did absolutely nothing different then the last 2000 rockets that they have been sending off at us. Now there is a big debate about what to do about it and there will probably be a harsh military response. This is absolutely ridiculous. If there was no harsh response when the same rocket with the potential to kill civilians lands in an empty field there should be no harsh response when it hits soldiers or civilians. The government's stance is that it is ok for rockets to land in our territory. Rockets are dangerous and when you allow people to shoot them at you, then you may get hurt. This entire debate and harsh response should have taken place after the first kassam.

In any case, there is a lot to pray for this rosh hashana.
I'm not big on new years resolutions and while I really would like to post more often, I am finding less and less time to actually type what I want to type when I sit down at the keyboard and more and more what I have to type.

The holiday season should be a lot of fun, I'm taking off the middle days of Sukkos and hopefully we'll get some quality tiyuling done.

Have a happy new year. For those of you I didn't call and am not going to call, pray hard and remember that God is on our side, though he sometimes smacks us in the back of the head till we say Doh. It's just his way of saying he cares.

Shana Tova.

its only wednesday

This week has gone just about as slowly as a week can possibly go.
#3 fractured his wrist on Shabbos when he fell off the bimba (baby scooter) he was standing on. Sunday morning was the first day of school (1st grade), so I got him all taken care of and casted by 10 AM and brought him to school. He only lasted an hour and a half. The poor boy was in so much pain, we just kept him on a constant aspirin drip for 2 days. Today he went to his first youth group meeting and hurt his arm again while playing soccer. His excuse for playing was "They convinced me."

Yesterday we went to the US consulate in Haifa to renew all the children's passports and make the littlest a US citizen. It didn't go very smoothly, with all the children yelling and having a good time while we finished up the paperwork, but he accepted W-2s as proof that I was in the US for a good number of years so we're all good.

I've been overbusy with work, there is just too much going on.

the "f's" of freedom and fanaticism

Two documentary "must sees" - you don't need a TV - over the last half year are:
The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom - Adam Curtis - BBC shown on BBC2 in three parts at 21:00 (UK) on 10,17,24 March 2007 and God's Warriors - Christiane Amanpour - CNN shown on CNN in three parts at 21:00 (USA) on 21, 22, 23 August 2007 in the following order: Jewish, Muslim, Christian.

Having searched for a comparison of the above whether on the net, blogs or commercial source, I am fairly convinced that the following is uncharted territory.

Summarizing these documentaries, Curtis' presentation is based on the idea of "the war coming home", the real world application of the cold war concept of game theory to all of society and its effecting of the emergence of market sovereignity over political choice (read "democracy") leading to the prevalence of freedom from security, dignity and meaning and thus to atomization, selfishness and nihilism (read "negative freedom"), Prozac (and CRM and ERP - my additions). The upshot is a powerpoint spreadsheet statistical and number persuasiveness underlying a newer development of gaming or conning the system bringing about such things as enron, the rich getting much richer and an almost absolute irreversible political corruption (as well as so-called customer service). Amanpour brings the phenomena of religious fanaticism under scrutiny in three flavors and in the following order - Jewish, Muslim and Christian. As this is more emotional territory, there is more blog ranting against her apparent moral relativism and editorial decisons of adding or subtracting material but if you read the August 20 transcript of her interview by Larry King, she places the term "illegitimate" in the right places and so I am led to believe that the programs reflect CNN's own global interests, not necessarily her own.

The programs overlap in the meaning of violence for the perpetrator (is it a transcending freedom or an audition for the world to come?. Or is it repressive or progressive?) and in the failure of politics and in religion's audition to fill that vacuum (except in the Russian Federation where "security, dignity and meaning" are chosen over personal freedom). Overall, the two programs seem to comprise an overall attack upon what I would term the behavioral materialists, were I to make some kind of Weberian joke on Marx. The message seems to be that as much as things spiritual and soul-ish have been disproven or factored out as not numerically significant and so nonexistent on the checklist, they are rebounding big time.

What it means locally may be an explanation of how much Israel is affected by what goes on outside. Making sense now of President Bush's compliment on Israel's democracy, it is supposed to be on the level of a demo freeware lite democracy, expected to be no more than the type built to make (or if need be, force) the world free.