sefer torah fundraiser problem

UPDATE:
See bottom for update

Disclaimer: I have not consulted with any rabbinic people about my issue, so don't take this the wrong way.

I recently received a fund-raising request from my yeshiva high school alumni association. They are writing a sefer torah and dedicating it to the rabbeim. It is being marketed as a way to give back to the school and show appreciation for the hard work and dedication that they had put into your education and life. As it is a dormitory school, the rabbis are a very big part of your life and teenage-hood.

After I got the first mail from the alumni association, I got another email from a former classmate asking me to participate in buying a parsha with our class.

I really liked my high school and I liked the rabbis, not all of them obviously, but I got along well enough with most of them, which is not something most of my contemporaries from other high schools can say. I am still in contact with the high school and see one of the rabbis once a year, generally. I have donated in the past and I will continue to donate in the future, may God continue sending me parnasa.

I have a small problem with this particular fund-raiser though. I haven't ruled out participating in my class parsha, and I most probably will participate.

Here's my problem -
They are selling:
Entire Torah: Already Sold
Individual parshas: a bunch of them already sold
Special parshas within the individual parshas: A bunch already sold
Pasukim

If someone already bought the entire Torah, then he gets credit for writing a sefer Torah. The guy who donates a parsha is really not donating a parsha, because the guy who bought the entire torah already got that parsha. The guy who buys a special parsha or a pasuk is not really donating them either.

In other words, if someone buys a pasuk in a special parsha, that pasuk has already been sold to 3 other people, The Torah donor, the parsha donor, the special parsha donor and finally to the pasuk donor. I would think (and I could be wrong) that all of the donors aside from the original Torah donor are going to get credit for giving tzedaka, but not for writing a Torah.

I would like to hear from my readers what they think of this situation. As I mentioned above, I have not consulted with any rabbis about my issue with this yet and it is very possible that I am wrong and that everyone involved does get Torah writing points and not just regular tzedaka points (which are nothing to sneeze at).

UPDATE
I got a response from the yeshiva and I'm happy to tell you that my issue was unfounded. The head of the alumni association sent are sponsa to the exact same question from R' Zalman Nechemia Goldberg. The question asked went much farther then the question I asked and included the question, do you need to make a kinyan on the letter in the sefer somehow. The question indicated that most of the time when you purchase a letter in a sefer torah you do not make a kinyan on it. However, I have seen where the person sponsoring a letter has given the pen to the sofer and made him a shaliach in the writing. They also asked if someone who is not allowed to write a torah donates, does that pasul the entire torah.

If anyone wants to read the responsa themselves, please let me know and I'll forward it over (in Hebrew).
The answer is that when someone buys a parsha, they are not in actuality buying a parsha. The parsha is dedicated to them. However the way that it technically works is that you take all the money collected for the sefer torah project and combine it into one pot. If one person spends $1000 and another person spends $200 then the person with the $200 donation gets 1/5 of the amount of Torah writing credit then the $1000 donor. So if you want to know how much sefer torah writing credit you actually get, you add up the sum total of donations and divide the amount of your donation by it and that percentage is what you take with you as torah writing credit and the rest of the donation goes with you as tzedaka and harbatzas torah credit.

A groiseh yasher koach to the hanhala of the yeshiva, I recommend all of my readers donate to a sefer torah project.

shana tova

I want to wish all my readers a שנה טובה ומתוקה, a sweet and good new year. May this year be a year of health, wealth and happiness for all of us.

I have been very busy this entire year, with very little time to blog, as I'm sure you've noticed. God willing this coming year will be just as busy, if not more so.

selichos

It looks like I missed the JBloggers conference in jlem this year. I've
been pretty lax in my blogging recently and I hardly read anybody so I
didn't feel the pull to connect with my fellow bloggers. Maybe next year.

Normally I leave my house at 6 AM to beat traffic into Haifa, so I daven
when I get there. The shul on the Technion campus is mostly a sefardic
institution and they have been saying selichos for the entire month of
elul. Now that it is a week before rosh hashana, ashkenazim have started
saying selichos as well. After some inner debate I decided that it was
worthwhile leaving at 5:30 AM to get to selichos on time and I will hope
I don't get punished too horribly for saying sefardic selichos instead
of the regular ones.

I got to the shul 2 minutes late and someone was at the door saying
ashkenazim that way. They had a seperate minyan for ashkenazic selichos.
I had been worried about the singing and chanting, but this way there
were no worries. It was the familiar hum of reading the words as fast
you can possibly get them out, reading out loud together the key phrase
over and over with a single pizman other then the daily שמע קולנו. I
don't know if God forgave us because of the stuff we read, I'm not even
sure that anyone who was there knew what he was reading. But he
certainly forgave us because we showed we cared by getting up extra
early to ask.

school politics

I'm on the school parent board again this year (like a PTA). I
considered leaving the board and making room for someone new. In fact, I
tried. I volunteered to be one of the class parents, we have 4 this
year. One of the class parents is supposed to be elected to represent
the class on the school board. I actually insisted on a correct process
this year where 3 people are voted as class parents and only one
represents the class on the school board. Last year, I was the only
volunteer and we had to convince 2 others to raise their hands. This
year 3 other people instantly put up their hands. Nobody had a problem
with 4 class parents. At the end of the meeting I asked the other 3 if
anyone wanted to represent the class and one woman said that her husband
really wanted to. I thought this would be a great way out of it. It is
so hard getting anything across and the culture is so different here
that I thought, "I tried for a couple years, and they'll be relieved
when I tell them that I'm not returning."

So I went down to the final meeting where we were talking about whether
to strike the system because a teacher wasn't given all the hours we
wanted and told them that 6th grade will be represented by another
parent. I was informed by the principal and a few other parents that
that is ridiculous and 6th grade can be represented by more then 1
parent. I explained to them that we had already agreed to 1 parent per
class and they rejected that with the explanation that at the beginning
of the year a bunch of parents join and then leave, so most probably the
other guy wouldn't stick it out.

At the meeting, most of the other parents actually agreed with me
(surprise) that we could not threaten to strike the system when the
school has more hours then it is supposed to and we only want 5 more,
which we can pick up from other classes here and there.

Last week I met with the principal and we worked out some of our
misunderstandings, so all is good.

Lost and Found

On July 16 2005, I wrote a blog post about going to Morgenfeld's
restaurant on Moshav Liman. The restaurant has since moved to across
from Akhziv and the food is excellent, we were there 2 nights ago with
settler friends from the West Bank.

Laurie commented that she was looking for a friend, Amir Tlumak who used
to live in moshav Liman. I don't know either Laurie or Amir, but
yesterday, more then 2 years later, Amir commented on that blog post
that he is still in Israel and hasn't seen Laurie in 27 years.

Amir did not leave an email address or phone number, and Laurie did not
leave any contact information either.

If Laurie is still reading and Amir still wants to be found or if anyone
knows Laurie or Amir, please let me know if they find each other. I'm
very curious.

sefardi selichos rap

I go to a sefardic shul for morning prayers every morning and now during the month of elul they have started saying selichos. Ashkenazim only have to say 1 week of selichos because as a general rule we have less to be forgiven for.
Sefardim don't just say selichos, though, they chant them. And sometimes they slaughter a goat in the middle.
The way it works is different people randomly start leading the chant at different places, so one guy might start chanting out loud and everyone will start answering and then in the middle a different guy will start his own chant.
Today someone started rapping instead of chanting. I think he was going for a new selichos feel. But he actually rapped shomer yisrael. It was very moving. Then he started to breakdance and that's when the rabbi asked him to leave. He felt that it was inappropriate to rap and breakdance the selichos as it is supposed to be a chanting with minor in-sync swaying.

tzfat klezmerfest

While I'm already blogging...

The klezmer festival is back in tzfat (or safed if you write it like
that). The hebrew site can be found at http://www.klezmerf.com/ and
there is also a English site at
http://safed-home.com/KlezmerFestival.html The English schedule is at
http://safed-home.com/2009KlezmerFestivalSchedule.html one of the links
on the site doesn't work.

The festival starts today, Aug 10 and goes until Wednesday. We've gone
for the past couple years and have really enjoyed ourselves. I highly
recommend Simply Tzfat who is playing tonight at 11PM. We won't be there
as it is way too late for the kids, but it is definitely worth seeing.

If you just roam the streets you'll find a mad fiddler or too and that
totally make the evening.

Enjoy the music.

50 shek for a blogging convention???

I just received my invitation to the 2nd annual Jewish bloggers
convention. It will be held somewhere in Jerusalem on Sep 13, 2009. The
exact location is not being released due to security concerns.

I enjoyed the 1st blogging convention. I didn't learn anything listening
to the panelists, but it was a lot of fun meeting the other bloggers,
some of whom I read and others who I had never heard of. When I first
suggested this blogging convention to Jameel 5 years ago, I told him
that people would happily pay to go to a blogging convention and he told
me I'm out of my mind.

I'm not so sure that I'm going to go this year. Maybe it's the 50 shekel
cover charge. Maybe it's because I'm not seen as often on the blogging
scene anymore. Maybe it's because I don't have any freaking time.

In defense of the cover charge, last year's dinner was easily worth 50
shek. If you have a couple of piled high deli sandwiches and some
drinks, you could easily surpass the cover charge. I would doubt this is
for profit, and even if it was I'm pro-free market.

But at the moment I'm not registering. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

sys admin in haifa

I'm looking for a sys admin in Haifa with good Linux experience. If
you're interested shoot me a note.

apples from the US

Today, at work, I noticed that the Granny Smith apples had a tag that
said Product of the USA, Washington Apples. I asked the woman who is in
charge of food why we are buying our apples from the US. We have plenty
of apples grown in the country. She replied that we buy from the
supermarket, whatever they have. But it is probably because of shmita,
then she and another woman (both of them secular) started arguing about
exactly when shmita ended and if that was a valid reason.

A couple weeks ago we visited the Breishit fruit packing plant in the
Golan. The apple picking is starting in another 2 weeks, so there are no
fresh apples from Israel yet, last years crop was indeed a shmitta crop,
so unless we are eating heter mechira (and it is odd that the
supermarket we buy from wouldn't) we have to eat apples from chool (out
of the country).

Speaking of the harvest, I saw a bunch of random people in one of
kibbutz yagur's fields picking tomatoes. A guy I was giving a ride to
told me that the machine already finished the harvest, and these people
are doing leket. Leket is one of the commandments of a field. After the
harvest, anyone can come to the field and pick up what is left. It is
one of the 3 commandments relating to poor people picking other people's
crops, giving them something to eat. The other 2 commandments are שכחה
and פאה. I have not seen a corner of any field marked off as being for
poor people to harvest, but I imagine that if a buncle is left in the
field, someone will come and take it.

According to <a
href="http://www.ynet.co.il/yaan/0,7340,L-15229-MTUyMjlfODA3MzA4NDZfMTQ4Njg3MjAw-FreeYaan,00.html">ynet's
encyclopedia</a> these mitzvos are only done when most of the Jewish
people live in Israel. Until then this is a Rabbinical commandment, and
I'm happy to see it is being fulfilled.

Finally on the topic of harvest, we went to the Golan last week to a
U-Pick in Moshav Sha'al and had a great time picking sour cherries,
raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, little plums and some other
assorted berries. It is 23 shekel entry fee for all you can eat and then
20 shek a kilo for what you take home. Highly recommended.

mad reviews

These are unpaid ads.

First off I want to give mad reviews to the good doctors at EyeTravel, who travel around MI providing eyecare for the homebound. Eyetravel doctors go to people who can't get out, their primary enjoyment in life is watching tv or reading. Unfortunately as they get older and their health deteriorates, their eyesight is not as sharp as it once was. EyeTravel doctors give these people back their life as they come prepared with miniature medical equipment right into the house and restore their eyesight so they can continue to enjoy tv, reading and whatever else they need to see. As a number of their patients say to them when they are done, "God Bless You."

Back in Israel - Mad Reviews to the new burger place in Meona. Your choice of 160, 220 or 320 gram burgers (160 grams is ~1/4 lb). A 160 gram burger is 25 shek (about $6.50) and comes with an order of fries (cajun spicy, or regular). The burger and the fries were both excellent. It takes a bit of time to prepare the burger, but the taste is what counts.

Mad Reviews to me, I made chicken for the first time and it was edible. I actually didn't do much more then put my special wing sauce on already cut pieces of chicken and put in in the oven, but it worked. I also learned that if you have potatoes on the bottom of the chicken pot and you want them to be in oil so that they can fry while the stuff on top is cooking in the sauce, it doesn't work, because oil always floats even if you try to get it to stay on the bottom.

the economic thing

This topic has been touched upon for several years. Everyone knows close ones who either work in the center of the country, or even in the regional center of the North, realizing that local jobs go less far in covering personal skill sets, or failing that, basic family monthly expenditures - if, that is, you can find one.

The graph image appeared in the "Israeli" July 25, 2006 on page 12 with no documentation.

In general. there has been a scarcity of useful documented local economic information and indicators or ideas relevant for initiatives in the so-called peripheries. But I am convinced this is an inhouse matter and among those of us who are concerned, there is sufficient talent and intelligence to suggest strategy over a barbeque, maybe.

I would like to share some sources that may flesh out thinking about these ideas. The first three touch on or relate to the North; the fourth relates to similar problems in the UK but which provide food for thought. Maybe you, the reader, do not need these. Anyway, they are not required reading, just represent my 2 cents worth. Check out the zip file and other links, if interested.

http://www.i-biz.co.il/innovation.asp
http://israel.planetfinancegroup.org/EN/download.php
http://www.tzafona.org.il/tzafona/open.aspx

http://www.ideopolis.info/publications.htm

The bottom line is that our specific catchment area and population - even total population - is only a very small part of even the North of the country meaning we can expect to receive only token attention from central government planning committees even after, nevermind . I personally find this lack of attention to inhibit my own sense of confidence, but that's a good reason I am me and you are you.

If you who happen to be reading this would like to invest in charcoal or other components or expenses or aims of this venture, please let us know.

pesach tiyul

I know this is a bit late to be writing about our Pesach tiyulim, but I know everyone has been waiting for them. I just handed in a new support application that I've been working on for a couple months and I actually have a couple minutes to breathe.

Sunday morning, Chol Hamoed, we met my brother and his family near Yokneam to nachal Hashofet. My brother-in-law and family and littlest sister were with us for shabbos and they came with us too. I downloaded the directions from the Internet, and we found the park and a nice place to have a picnic lunch. We did deli sandwiches and they did some kind of cheesy somethings. Of course, there was also chocolate spread for the matzas.

After lunch we tried to figure out which way the nachal was, but the signs were all very confusing and the Internet directions did not help very much. There were a number of other cars trying to figure out where it was as well and so we guessed and continued upwards. We continued driving and the signs were not very clear and we finally got to a place where a number of cars were parked. We stopped there and asked someone if they knew where we were in relation to the map. They guessed that we were on the map and must be somewhere in the middle of the trail we were looking for.

We decided to start from that point and hope to find the red trail to get us to the water springs. We started walking through the cornfields, there were signs that said that we should not enter the cornfields, but the children didn't think that applied to them and they walked part of the time through the corn. It was similar to the movies, where you the corn is higher then the people walking, so we couldn't see them, but fortunately no one got lost.

At some point my BIL turned around and left because it was too much for his kids (they're much younger). And we continued onwards. After about an hour, we found the springs and had a great time playing in them. There were tons of people there, and it was good to have had a nice long hike before getting to the water. I've found that water after a strenuous hike is much better then water that you park next to, but that is debatable. My little sister fell into the water a number of times and she blamed me, in part, for her inability to stay on her feet.

After we finished playing in the water, we continued on the circular trail till we exited into the parking lot. The problem was that we didn't know where we were in relation to the trail to take us back to our car. It took us some time and the kids all got popsicles, but we found our way back to the trail and after a good hike back, we found our car.

We returned to our village for a nice BBQ. One of my little brothers came up with his family from Sunday eve through the last day. We did kabobs, not israeli hamburgers, meat and vegetables on a stick (They say that if there is both meat and vegetables on the stick, then your grill has not been disgraced as it would be if there was only vegetables), hot dogs and hamburgers. We decided that kabobs are bad to cook, because the meat and vegetables don't get ready at the same time and also the meat doesn't all get ready at the same time because there are different levels of heat on the grill. In any case, the food was all et and a good time was had by all.

$300 million dollar mistake

Surprisingly enough, traintalk did not send me this article, which details how small things in e-commerce can make such a huge difference.
A huge retailer took away their forced customer registration on their website and they realized $300 million dollars more in sales.

The first thing I did after reading that was to send a message to my web developers that registration should happen automatically, and it should send a password by email so the user can check their account status.

atzmaut tiyul

Yom Haatzmaut we planned a nice tiyul in the morning. Our family BBQ was at 3:00 PM, which gave us plenty of opportunity to enjoy the day. David Bellin, a friend and tour guide operator, recommended that we hike Nachal Katlav. The nachal is between Bet Shemesh and Jlem (through the back) and was perfect for our hike. We ate lunch at a precarious angle half way down the mountain. It was rocky, and rough and slightly strenuous. There was nana growing there and we found a couple almond trees as well. My eldest picked some wild beans and told me to eat them, slightly spicy and good.

The hike took us approximately 3 hours. We parked a car at the end, so we would not have to climb all the way back up. I heard the climb up is the fun part, but we passed on it this time. We got to the bbq on time and had a great time eating and playing around. There was very little traffic all the way home and we arrived before 10PM.

Special Prayer Session

One of the most contested things about Israeli Independence day among various religious sects is whether to say hallel and if so, with a bracha or without. Before moving to Israel, I had never celebrated Israeli Independence Day (though as I'm writing this, I seem to recall a BBQ at my parents house once). After I got here I joined a religious zionist community and started celebrating the independence. I have been going to special prayers every year since I got here, though I still haven't said hallel with a bracha. It's a lot more then just hallel, they add in a whole bunch of stuff including blowing the shofar at night and reading a haftorah (without a bracha) during the day.

This year after the bris, we had thought we were going to hang out with my aunt and uncle who are here (for the first time) on a mission. We couldn't get ahold of them right away so we decided to go to the kotel for a little bit. They called as we were driving to their hotel and told us that the group was doing something that evening, so they wouldn't be able to get together with us until the next day for the family BBQ. We realized after we hung up that their hotel was across the street from the parking lot, so we stopped in the hotel anyways and visited for a bit. We continued on our way to the wall and the kids were all complaining that they were starving hungry (apparantly they forgot you are supposed to eat at a bris) so we stopped for pizza (70 shekel a pie in the old city, איזה מכה.

We then realized that we would be right on time for special prayers at the wall, so we hurried on down. They were just finishing up the speeches and we watched as they raised the flag to full mast and put out the big memorial flame that had been burning next to the Wall throughout Memorial Day. We then proceeded to do special prayers. Special Prayers (which includes the normal evening service) was very, very long. The first part was read repetitively half of a pasuk by the chazzan and the other half by the people, sometime. They were chanting sefardically as well (though nobody slaughtered a goat) and tried to throw in the tune of Hatikva as many times as they could during the reading/chanting. Hallel took way too long. Did you know that you could do the entire hatikva tune for each הודו לה' כי טוב. I hadn't know it was possible.

We decided to leave immediately afterwards and did not stay for the dancing.

We got to my brother's in Modiin (where we were staying) around 11:00 PM and then we started the grill up. My brother made a rub for the grilled chicken that was a bit strong, it was based on spicy paprika. It was a good way to end the evening.

the bris

My brother's child had his bris on Memorial Day so we headed on down to jlem for the festivities. There is a dichotomy of emotions involved when memorial day meshes with a happy occasion, as you have to intertwine the seriousness of the day and the sensitivities of the people remembering their lost ones along with the happiness of the day.

The child was named Shoham Amitai. In my brother's speech he said that he didn't want to name after a dead person and especially not after someone who died so young, so he hinted at a friend of his who was killed in action during the Lebanon war, whose name was Amichai. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the name had to signify both Holocaust Day (the day of birth) as well as Memorial Day (the day of bris). Though my brother did not mention it (and probably doesn't know), the name Shoham hints at the holocaust as the Shoham Geriatric Center in Pardes Hanna is the home to the larget number of first generation Holocaust survivors in Israel.

May baby Hammy be zoche to Torah, Chuppah and good deeds.

memorial day

Today is Memorial Day in Israel, whcih is noted in a different manner then Memorial Day in the US. This is a very solemn day, there are no big sales or BBQs, as most of the population in Israel has lost a loved one in Israel's wars. This is a day for visiting graves, of family or friends who you served with in the army.

I feel very much an outsider on this day, as I did not serve in the army and in my family only one brother served in the army and he made it out unharmed, thank God.

Last night, we went to the city's memorial service, which included the El Malei Rachamim, and a speech by one the city's rabbis as well as other people. The mayor did not get up to tell us how important he was, though the MC let us know. They have a slideshow where they mention all of the locals who were killed in Israel's wars. It is a very touching service, though a bit much for the little ones so we left in the middle.

word for single purpose item

In Hebrew I have often heard the term yehudi when talking about something that has a single use. For example, if I want my own server for something that would say it is a sherut yehudi.

The word yehudi means Jewish, and I thought it was funny that they would use that term in Hebrew to talk about designating something for a specific purpose. I have used the term myself and people have understood me.

Today I learned that the word that is used in not yehudi, Jewish, it is yeudi, designated. The difference in spelling is יהודי vs. ייעודי. Hebes (native hebrew speakers) don't always pronounce the hay, so they can sound the same.

I realized this when reading some literature and it suddenly struck me that the word they were using was the word tht I thought was something else.

mazel tov

My little brother had a baby boy today. It is Holocaust day and the bris will be on Memorial Day. I wonder if the planning people did this on purpose. Anybody born on Yom Hashoah should have their bris on Yom Hazikaron.

They are going to need a name that will incorporate all of these events, such as Massuah or something similar.

the pesach seder

Seder was surprisingly fun. We ended up without any guests and the army never sent me the soldiers that I requested, so we were going to be alone. Seder is generally more fun with more people so we were a bit sad. We heard another family was without guests, so we invited them over. They turned us down and then invited us the next day. We agreed and invited them for lunch.

There are a number of different kinds of seder people. Some people read through the hagaddah quickly without commentary, other people discuss it, some people like to analyse every word and other families sing the whole thing. We like to discuss the hagaddah on the level of the children at the table, and the family we went to is more of a read it through kind. We didn't really discuss it, but we compromised as I interrupted the reading with questions and discussion points. I had prizes for the different age groups and the mixture of our 2 styles went very well.
I asked a couple difficult questions, one of which was partially answered by their teenage daughter who had been listening when I spoke to bnei akiva on shabbos. I hadn't given them the full answer, to the question I asked, but I was amazed that she was able to repeat what I had told them.

They brought a gift when they came for lunch and we hadn't brought a gift when we went to them, which is kind of awkward. Now we have to decide if we have to gift them back. The intricacies of human relations are always confusing.

One thing that is very different about where I grew up and where my children go to school is there is no focus on the hagaddah in my children's schools. I always came home with notebooks full of information on the hagaddah, as did my siblings. My children didn't know the first thing about it and I went through it a little bit before the seder with each of them so they would be prepared.

Blessing God for the sun

Every 28 years, on the day before Pesach, the sun is in the exact spot that it was on the day that God created it (at least according to Abaye). To celebrate this we say a special blessing to God, who creates things. My wife wore a yellow scarf in honor of the day.

Today was that day. The last time this happened I was 5 years old and I don't remember it. Today someone in shul asked me to remember him the next time I say the prayer. He just turned 60 and assumes he won't be around for the next time around.

I went to 2 sun blessing ceremonies, the first was at our shul after davening. Everyone went outside and said the bracha together. The second one was the community event, where there were speeches (The head of the religious party, an official rabbi and the mayor) and musical accompanyment. I went with the wife and children to that one.

If you haven't thought about it recently, just look up at say out loud, "Thank God for the sun"

searching for chametz

Tonight begins the search for chametz. We do this even though my wife
has already been through the house and is sure that the house is ready
for Pesach. The odd thing is that sometimes we find chametz. This is
not, chas vshalom, a criticism on the cleaning efforts, this is a fact
of life. Some things get missed.

We should learn a life lesson from this process.

As we continue through life striving for perfection it is worthwhile to
stop and do a check and see if the part of your life that you have
"cleaned up" is truly clean or if there is still a bit of chametz lying
around. It is only when we take the time to do the check, as opposed to
all the time spent cleaning that we are able to find the missing spots.

This year after you finish your search for chametz, take a minute and
think of a way that you could finish a process of making yourself
better/cleaner spiritually/physically and how you would be able to do a
search afterwards to make sure that the process did not leave any spots
behind.

Have a great Pesach.

(non) kosher for pesach

I was talking to a co-worker about Pesach and what the company does on
Chol Hamoed. I believe they generally order from places that are not
kosher for pasech. My co-worker is not religious and does not keep
kosher, but he was concerned that there wouldn't be anything for him to
eat. He does not eat chametz on pesach. He doesn't necessarily keep
kosher during the holiday, in fact he told me one of his favorite pesach
foods growing up was matza, cream cheese and meat.

Very odd, but in my opinion it is better to keep Pesach wrong and at
least identify with your Jewishness then not to keep it at all.

another false alarm

Today my wife called me that the air raid siren went off while she was
grocery shopping. She didn't hear the siren in the store but was told
about it by someone afterwards. They have already announced that it was
a false alarm and that they will be checking into the spate of false
alarms recently. According to one of our commenters, it is a natural
reaction by the radar watcher who were wrong on thinking that real ones
were false, which is understandable but still keeps us on edge.

My children are currently all out and about, the oldest one is who knows
where with a friend, and 2-4 were at the park with friends. They have an
older girl with them, but she's only 13. I hope they didn't completely
flip out, especially since they were at the park close to the siren.

bnei akiva peula

Bnei Akiva asked me to do a "peula" for them on Friday night. Peula means activity, but it is actually supposed to be an interactive discussion on any topic that I want.

I actually volunteered to be on the list of people they call, after they posted a letter in our shul lamenting how hard it was to get anybody to help them out and it was our responsibility to provide them with quality peulot and they posted a sign up sheet for anybody willing to give one. So I posted my name and a month later they called me.

The age group is high shool (15-18) and I recognized most of the kids by face, if not by name, and most of them knew who I was. I had heard a great Radio Lab a while ago which gave a situation that is perfect for a teenage discussion.

You are standing on a bridge and you see a train coming towards the bridge. You look behind you and see that the tracks are broken and end in a big pit. If the train keeps going it will fall in the ditch and kill or injure hundreds of people. There is no way for you to warn the train. You have 30 seconds before it arrives. Suddenly you notice a fat man sitting on the bridge over the tracks. Not just a regular fat man, huge. You know that if you push the fat man, he will fall on the tracks and stop the train. He will die, but all the other people will be saved.

Would you go over and push the fat man?

On Radio Lab they asked this question and alomost everyone said no. They then changed the question slightly.

You are on the same bridge, and see the same train going towards the same problem. This time there are a parallel set of tracks and the fat man is sitting on the parallel tracks with his back towards the train. Next to you is a lever and if you pull the lever you will switch the tracks that the train is going on and it will kill the fat man and save all the people on the train.

Would you pull the lever?

This time, a signaificant number of people answered yes.

So I put the question to the teenagers. The topic of my discussion was not, would you kill a man to save 500. It was on making decisions and what goes into them. I gave them both cases, they didn't see any real difference between the two cases and if a teenager is going to theoretically kill someone he would prefer to push him.

There were about 70 kids in the room,50 girls and 20 boys, sitting separately (who would have thought that would happen in BA), so it was easy to see the differences between boy responses and girl responses.
In the initial response, only 7 people answered, 5 wanted to kill him and 2 didn't. I explained to everyone that all of the rest decided not to make a decision, which was a decision in of itself.

I changed the role of the fat man a number of times to gauge the responses:
* What if the fat man broke the tracks dug the pit?
Suddenly a lot of the kids wanted to kill him and there were a bunch who decided that we shouldn't kill him, even though they hadn't decided not to kill him before (from the undecideds).
* What if he was your friend?
* What if you know he had 5 kids at home?
* What if your brother was on the train?
* What if he wasn't Jewish, but he was completely innocent, someone from Mexico that had never seen a Jew before?
Here a couple kids said that didn't see any difference if he was Jewish or not, and an argument broke out about whether his descendents would become terrorists.

To finish off, I explained to them that the facts of the situation remained the same during all of the scenarios. What changed was the emotional factor. I told them that we are always aking decisions and emotion plays a big part in it and that it is very important to understand ourselves and understand what pressures we are open to, and what our buttons were that cause us to react when pushed. I told them that if they did not understand what made them tick, then they were open to manipulation as soon as someone else figured out what buttons to push.

Finally I tied it into Pesach, and expalined that when God hardened Pharoah's heart, he removed the emotional equation. From a logical perspective, Pharoah still wanted to keep the Jews enslaved. However, he had reached a breaking point emotionally. God therefore removed the emotional factor from him so that he could finish showing Egypt, and the world, the rest of the plagues, until form a logical perspective they recognized that God ran the world and all of nature and decided that if God decided that the Jews should leave, he could take them.

I got mad reviews, everyone loved it.

lieberman and annapolis

Avigdor Lieberman, the new Foreign Minister of Israel, responded to
Tzipi Livni's speech, in which she berated him and everyone else in the
government, with a proverbial slap in the face.

Livni has been spent countless hours working on the Annapolis initiative
for peace, which was what the former government had based their peace
efforts on. However, this initiative was never ratified by any Israeli
government. The latest peace initiative that was ratified by the Israeli
government was the Road Map for Peace brought by the Quartet. Lieberman
started his first day in office by declaring Annapolis dead and buried
and declared that Israel would only be obligated to the ROad Map which
was approved by an Israeli government.

The Road Map for Peace has stages including obligations that the arabs
have to fulfill before Israel has to continue fulfilling. The reason why
Livni needed Annapolis was because Israel had already gone beyond its
obligations and the arabs hadn't done anything. In order to keep the
ball rolling towards ??peace?? Livni created a new initiative to
obligate Israel to more concessions without asking anything in return.

It's a good thing for the country that the only thing she can do now is
shriek from the opposition instead of continuing her policy of damage
towards Israel.

air raid siren

My wife just called that they are down in the bomb shelter again. She
didn't hear any booms and it was only a single siren. They were probably
cleaning the siren for Pesach when it went off by accident.

lone soldiers

We would like to invite 2 lone soldiers (חיילים\חיילות בודדים) for the first day of Pesach.
Does anyone know who to get in touch with?

new government

Netanyahu presented his government yesterday and then he and Livni spoke. I prefer Netanyahu to Livni as prime minister, but I think he paid too large of a price. I also feel that the government is way too big. 1/4 of the Knesset members are ministers. Netanyahu's speech was very positive and he was constantly heckled by Kadima members. Livni's speech was bitter. There are no other words for it. She personally attacked everyone in the government, basically calling them a bunch of liars and thieves.

Livni is just a bitter old woman, crying that she received more mandates, so she deserves something.

Netanyahu did not mention the Kadima corruption in his speech, he thanked the former prime minister and did not wish him a comfortable prison cell. He did not talk aboout how crappy the last government was. One of the prices of victory is that it is very hard to attack the losers and make sure they stay losers for ever. Hopefully Netanyahu's government will actually do something positive in the next couple years.

Regarding the National Union - On one hand I'm sad that they were left out of the government, because I share a lot of the same ideas and plans as National Union voters. On the other hand, I'm happy they were left out because they are a bunch of backstabbing fools who don't know when to say enough. I feel that the NU and their voters are the epitome of "My power and the strength of my hand won for me this victory."

I'm also not happy that Labor is in the government. Barak is a crackhead and will probably be deposed of in the next Labor primary.

We'll see in the upcoming months if Lieberman is indicted for his crimes that have been investigated for the last 10 years. None of the facts have changed in 10 years, the issues just come out during election season. How odd is that.

Finally the Jewish Home, Daniel Hershkovitz's party settled for minister of Science. I really wanted education, but I guess science is part of education. Hopefully they can throw a bit of Judaism on the fire and have some spirituality and Zionism thrown back into the equation.

not like jack

In our shul there is a small group of daf yomi learners, who learn by themselves (myself included). We often discuss the daf or include references to it in our conversation.
I generally do the daf during davening, not during the actual prayers, but during Torah reading, or when the shatz repeats shemona esrei. Sometimes, I'll see something in Rashi or something that doesn't make sense in the daf and I want to go and show it to someone. Then I remember. I am not Jack. And I hold myself back and wait until after davening till I discuss the daf.

There was this baalabus in a yeshiva (somewhere in America) that spent the entire time on shabbos davening learning. I never saw him with a siddur in his hand. We'll call him Jack. Probably a couple dozen times during the davening he would yell loudly to the mashgiach, "Look at this!!" As if the mashgiach had never seen whatever it was that he was looking at. First of all, we didn't like Jack, or his kids. Secondly we felt that it was the wrong time to be having a chavrussa.

Now that I'm more grown up, I realize that davening is an excellent time for learning. I understand that it is the wrong time, as I should be concentrating on the prayers, and when I have my boys with me I don't look in my gemara at all (Educational purposes). But it is a time when I have dedicated to religious time, so instead of reading the Torah pamphlets that everyone else is reading, I go through the daf.

But I am not Jack. I don't disturb other people's davening with my insights or questions on the page. I am not Jack, I spend time actually davening during the service. I won;t say that I am doing it correctly, but at least, I am not like Jack.

tremp to a kibbutz

Last week I gave a girl a tremp from the Technion campus to the junction near the kibbutz she lives at. I asked her if she was a kibbutznik and she replied that her parents are. She is planning on leaving the kibbutz when she moves on. She said that the idealism is mostly gone and the beaurocracy is way too suffocating. When she grows up she does not want to have a committee decide on everything that she wants to do. She needs more freedom of movement. I suppose there was probably some sort of disagreement in the kibbutz about her going to to the Technion, but it could be a lot of other things as well.

I explained to her that there is a tight framework around everything in life and the kibbutz is probably just an exaggerated example. I gave her the example of my life, in which I have a wife and 5 children and work. I enjoy my life, but there is a very tight framework deciding what I do and when I do it. Even single people with few responsibilities cannot go and do whatever they want. They have to get up in the morning for work, they cannot just decide to take off whenever they want, etc..

I also explained that with the responsibility and framework comes all the benefits.

She was unconvinced and I wished her luck in her future.

judification of our village

I attended an urgent meeting last night on the topic of Judification of our village. Apparently a lot of Arabs are moving in and people would like to stop the trend. There is a rumor that this is an intentional move and Saudi Arabia is funding Arabs moving into Jewish neighborhoods. In some cases the Arabs are offering more then the asking price to convince the seller to sell to them.

We discussed a multi-level plan.
1) Buy houses - There is a definite lack of quality rental properties in the area and a high demand. There is a current NBN initiative to move new immigrants to the Galilee and our village is one of the featured places. Buying property for rental is a solid investment.
There is an organization called Moreshet Galil that is involved in buying houses in the area and keeping it Jewish. One of their proposals is to form real estate investment groups, where people buy houses together. Their first proposal is a house for approximately $120,000 with someone prepared to rent the house for approximately $475/month. He is looking for 5 investors to split the house and already has 3 people at $24,000 a piece and is looking for 2 more. It will provide revenue of approximately $95.00 per month, which is a much better rate then you would get on almost any other investment at the moment.

Another thing we talked about was making the new communities that are being planned into closed neighborhoods where any buyer would have to be accepted by the acceptence committee.

Someone propsed making it less comfortable for them to live in our neighborhoods.

Lastly, we discussed the economic problems of the area and how we can improve it.

It was an interesting discussion, and I will probably have more to discuss on this in the upcoming months.

not hit

On Saturday night my SIL calls right after shabbos to find out if we are still alive. Apparantly there had been a rocket attack in our neighborhood over shabbos and people were injured. We hadn't heard anything, except for a lot of thunder. We checked the news reports and it said a village near ours was hit, but the village was not mentioned. This might be under military censor still, so I'll only say it was a Christian arab village that was hit. This village has been around since the days of the crusaders and has a crusader castle on the other side of it. Also of interest to note, this village is right next to the village where Gilad Shalit is from.

That news ended a very interesting shabbos. We had 3 boys from Anywhere in Israel who were looking for an out-of-the-ordinary shabbos. We had a nice friday night with pouring rain. Unfortunately the basement flooded and all of their stuff got soaking wet. We had fixed the problem of rain coming into the basement, but 6 hours of straight rain overcame our defenses.

I told the boys that not only did they get flooded, they also survived a rocket attack. I suggested that the next time they seek adventure, maybe they should think again.

ceasefire????

It seems like Israel really likes these one sided deals in Gaza. They walked out of the Gaza strip without an agreement, and that is what brought us this war. They are now walking out of gaza again without an agreement, and you can bet that they won't have a problem shooting rockets at us as soon as the last soldier leaves the strip, if they wait that long.

What I heard from the PM was laughable, given the history. "If they fire on us we will respond severely." I laugh at that statement even as I write it. You can almost hear Rabin saying, "if they shoot at us with the weapons we gave them then we will go in and take them back." Or how about Sharon, "if they dare to shoot one rocket at us after we leave Gaza, we will take it back." In other words, Olmert has decided that we've killed too many bad guys for now, so we will give them time to stock up on more weapons so that they are more prepared for the next round.

The northern border has been quiet for the past couple days and we're hoping it will remain that way.

Galilee sporadic attacks

Well I guess that free punch was just the beginning. Rockets were shot at Kiryat Shmona and my wife said some hit Kabri as well, those that was not reported on the news. I think it means they are getting nervous that we are nearing our goal in Gaza. They are keeping us off-balance at the moment.
We had just offered to watch my brother's kids while they go to have another baby. They aren't sure if the north is the best place to send the kids to right now. They live in peaceful, quiet Samaria.

I think we are sending some artillery into southern Lebanon to show them that we aren't complete wussies, but we haven't attacked Beirut yet. UNIFIL is still scratching their heads as they try to figure out what the best way to condemn Israel for getting rockets shot at herself again. This is supposed to be a group that is charged with shooting the bad guys. This is their entire purpose of existence. Lets hope they can figure out which way the barrel should be pointing before Israel has to go in and do the job itself.

ctrl Alt up arrow

In Windows XP sometimes the screen gets turned in the wrong direction. So you are looking at it sideways or upside down. The easiest way to deal with this problem is to physically turn the monitor on to its side or upside down and then it will be the correct orientation. Another way of doing it is by clicking ctrl+Alt+up arrow. The orientation was most probably changed that way to begin with (clicking ctrl+alt+other arrow).

Sometimes life is like that too. You do something small and find that suddenly your orientation is way off. The easiest way of dealing with it is to adapt to your new orientation, such as turning your monitor upside down. The more correct way of correcting it is to figure out how to get your orientation back the way you want it to be and hopefully on the way figure out how it got screwed up.

In the JPost today there was a story about a teenager (17 year old) who was convicted of killing his mother and wounding his father because they took away his video game. The judge said that he firmly believed that the boy did not realize that by killing his parents they would be gone forever, however he denied an insanity plea and said the boy was responsible for his actions. Talk about needing a reorientation.

UPDATE: I just realized that while this story was in the jpost, it did not happen in Israel.

Haifa was not hit

Haifa was not hit. Don't worry we're all ok. This is the message we passed along to my wife's grandma after she got ver worried when she heard that Haifa was hit yesterday. I was here, nothing happened. At least nothing out of the ordinary - other then me buying shoes, which I don't normally do.

There is a push now to ban Balad, one of the Arab political parties, from participating in the upcoming Knesset elections. The party's platform includes armed struggle against the state and the destruction of its Jewish character. Kadima is trying to look more and more right wing because of the war is actually going to support the motion, while Labor is going to vote against.

The natives are getting restless and there will probably be more riots if the motion actually passes. the last time they did this the supreme court invalidated the vote and let them participate.

Balad's official response to the proceedings are that they stand by their platform.

The question is should a democracy allow a voice calling for the state's destruction? If the majority of people vote that they prefer a dictatorship to a democracy, do they take away their own inherent right to be self-deterministic? When the majority of German's voted for Hitler, did that make the actions that he did, which he promised before he was elected, moral? Or moral for the German people? Or is democracy not equal to morality?
If the majority of Gazans vote to annihilate Israel, does that make them all the enemy and remove from them any status of innocent civilian?

Deep thoughts by Sim

shoes

I finally decided the time had come for new shoes. My New Balance of 1+ years were completely destroyed after having served me faithfully for about 2 years. I showed them to the guy in the shoe store and he said he had never seen New Balance look like that before.
I am very hard on shoes, I am a two pair of shoes kind of guy, 1 for shabbos, holidays and other assorted looking fancy occassions and the other for everything else. I also have sandals, but I don't consider them shoes. I went to the Grand Canyon today, the big mall in Haifa (Canyon is Hebrew for mall). I explained to the guy in the store that I am hard on shoes and I need the entire front to be solid leather, not netting or material as I would rip right through that. He had never heard of anyone doing that before but I chalk that up to his inexperience.

He had some Air Jordans, which he said were the best quality that he had, but I told him I had a problem buying those. He was a bit confused, so I told him I was from Detroit. He told me that it shouldn't be so personal, because Jordan would have played for whatever team gave him the most money. Israelis do not understand sports. In the end he didn't have any other quality shoes, so I bought these. I feel like my feet should throw up.

leftists suck

It looks like the war chants were a bit early. One barrage, a war does not make. I think they were testing the water or throwing a free punch.

I want to wish a happy birthday to my little sister who turned 18 yesterday.

Anyways, for shabbos we are heading off to Bet-shemesh to spend it with the BIL. This was planned in advance and is not related to the rocket fire. Bet Shemesh is within firing range of Gaza, it is about 40 KM away, though they haven't been hit yet. Hamas probably wants to avoid the Tel Aviv area because they know that if the lefties have to go into their bomb shelter even one time it will kill the support they enjoy there. Udi Aloni suggested, in a ynetnews article, that Israelis should happily accept the rockets from Hamas as it is our fault that they are unhappy. The entire family is a bunch of nutcases. Someone should check into how much of his monthly income comes from Europeans.

TrainTalk pointed me towards a eureferndum blog post which discussed how Hamas is not only using women and children as human shields, but is actively trying to get them killed so as to maximize their pity power. I think it's important to see exactly who we are dealing with.

sonic booms???

My wife heard a boom earlier and she called me to ask if there was anything on the news. I told her that she was the news and there wouldn't be anything on for at least 10 minutes. I listened to the news afterwards and there was a live report of someone from Lebanon who saw the rocket take off towards Israel. After that there was a report from Nahariya that rockets had landed. The reports were from someone who was "very experienced" according to the radio. The Home Front Command denied the reports and said with absolute certainty that there was no second barrage and the noise that was heard was from sonic booms.

I came home early today because my wife had an appointment with my older daughter and I have to get the baby from gan. It just turned out to be on Katyusha day, luckily for us.

activating the war blog

I've been very lax at blogging recenty. This is mostly because I have completely run out of time. I fired my system admin at work recently, and now I have his work to do on top of mine. That and the rest of life has just left me with no time at all.

This morning my wife called and asked if she should take the kids home because rockets hit in our area. They haven't hit our village yet, but it's probably only a matter of time. Two minutes after I hung up with her, Jameel called to find out if we were still alive.

During warfare I feel a greater responsibility to blog then during peacetime (or non-active war, as is the general state in Israel). This is to keep people informed about what is really going on. The media outlets generally have such garbage and try to equate our suffering to their suffering. There is no comparison. Their suffering is self-inflicted and our suffering is inflicted by them. In other words they inflict suffering on everyone. It's about time we wiped them out.

We are still working out our family war plan, and I will keep you updated as the war progresses.

At the moment, the kids are all in school and we are waiting for instructions from the warroom as to whether we are taking them home or not. For the moment everything is just tense.

It's a good thing I only planned on working half a day today.

Local elections

Big day in Israel as all municipalities hold their local elections. In our village, there are 13 seats on the city council up for grabs and the mayor's seat. We have a local religious party that is expecting to do very well this year. I am voting for them. I haven't decided who to vote for mayor yet. My choices are the incumbant, who has been the mayor for 30 years and is a dictator and a Likud guy who's running under Gaydamak's banner who has been trying to throw out the current mayor for years.

We threw a small get together for the current mayor at our house Saturday night. About 30 people showed up and we listened to the mayor tell us that he liked religious people and we really didn't need to vote for our party because his party would take care of us in any case. I agreed to have the get together because someone in our community asked me to do it so that the mayor feels he has support in our community. That way when we approach him after the elections, if he wins, he will feel that at least some of us are on his side.

The reaon we don't like the other guy is because he has been running an incredibly vicious, negative campaign. He hasn't said anything good that he will do, he just focuses on how corrupt the other guy is. Now for the past 5 years that I have been living in the city, it has been run very well. The city looks good and no matter what everyone is saying about education, the children are getting a decent one. There is growth and most of the problems that the other guy tries to throw on him probably aren't his fault. He did remove a 30,000 shekel debt that his daughter owed to the city and his son-in-law is making a nice salary on a job that he probably doesn't deserve, but I can't imagine that sort of thing would change with any new guy.

Also I like local dictators. I think they are a very efficient form of government. The religious politicos say that the current mayor has been giving them hell for the past 5 years and I should vote for the other guy. Other people in the community have been telling me that the mayor has helped us out in the past and because he's going to win anyways, we should support him so that he doesn't take it out on us later.

Yitzchak Rabin

Today is the yahrzeit, the anniversary of death, for Yitzchak Rabin, the former prime minister of Israel. It is a sad day for the Jewish people in a number of respects. The government instigators, lead by Avishai Raviv, have never been brought to justice for their role in the assassination. The left have used this incident to massively incite against religious Jews. But the saddest part of the day is that when we felt we didn't have enough political power to stop the terrible things that Rabin was doing, we decided to try and change history by killing him. In the year before Rabin was killed, I heard a number of people, rabbis and laymen, talking about how he had to be stopped, but I took it as empty rhetoric. Sometimes our talk is very tough, but we do not expect anything to come of it.

There are two very important things to remember on the day of Yitzchak Rabin's murder. The most important thing to remember is that killing someone you disagree with is not the answer. Obviously there are people who are worthy of death. Killing a democratic prime minister who is doing something that a large percentage of his electorate want him to, will not change the direction.

The second important thing to remember on this day when Rabin is idolized by the masses is that he was wrong. His policies were wrong, his answers to any questions against what he was doing was wrong. The peace process was wrong. What he did brought harm to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. How many of us heard him say, "If they use the guns against us, we will take them away." When they used the guns against us, the answer was "it's too late." Had he ever heard of foresight? When Sharon gave away Gaza, years after Rabin's death, he said the same thing: "If they shoot on us from there, we will take it back." The people didn't laugh at how stupid he sounded. Now we are getting it from Gaza, and we are getting it from the guns we gave them.

Because of the path that Yitzchak Rabin followed, the Jewish People live in fear in their own land. But killing him was not the answer. The killer also did not have any foresight. The automatic prime minister after Rabin was killed was Shimon Peres, who is far worse in concessions to the arabs then Rabin ever was. If he killed him to, there is the political party that backed those ideals. In order to truly end the process, he would have had to kill a large percentage of the people in Israel, which would have been far worse then anything Yitzchak Rabin could have done.

blame obama

There have been a bunch of weird things happening to the computers at work this week and I've decided to blame Barack Obama, the new President-elect of the US for this. For every unexplained incident, for example, an icon disappearing from the desktop. I have blamed cosmic factors and Obama being elected.

It's going to be a long 4 years.

local elections

In our national elections, the NRP has decided to merge with the a number of right wing parties to build a united "right-wing" front. From a political perspective this is a great idea, if they can form some sort of agreement on policy. From a Jewish perspective, it is marketed completely wrong. The Torah says very specifically that we should go straight and not turn right or left. Therefore the party should market itself as a centrist party, in keeping with the Torah, instead of saying they are a religious party that believes that right-wing is better, against what the Torah says. They should market every party that is more left-wing then themselves as right-left (Likud), center-left (Labor) and left-left (Meretz, Kadima). If there are other parties that are more right wing then them, they can be marketed as right wing.

It's all in the marketing. Kadima marketted themselves as a centrist party and then apologized to the Palestinians for the refugee problem, something that not even President Peres would consider.

In our local elections, the supporters of the guy running against the current mayor called our house to convince us to support them. MY wife, who is mostly apolitical, answered the phone. They started telling her what the problems were with the current mayor and that their guy was going to fix it. Instead of hanging up on them or passing the phone to me, she asked them how they were going to fix those problems. They replied that there are a lot of problems. So again she asked HOW they are going to fix them. They had no response so the candidate himself got on the phone. He told her that the current mayor puts a lot of money into making the city look nice, so he would take all that money and put it into education, as an example. She finally hung up without making any commitment to vote for him.

She didn't ask him this question, but according to what he is saying, the ugliest cities should have the best education. Does he have any statistics to back that up? The facts are that the more beautiful cities generally have better education because the way a city looks says something about the population. I wouldn't want to live in a city that looks like a ghetto and I would bet the level of education would sink very rapidly if the city stopped investing in its looks.

more spam

I just saw the most shocking video of Barack Obama talking about his ideas of redistributing wealth to poor people. That means that if you earn $100,000, he wants to take it away from you and give $50,000 to someone who did not earn it so that you are both even. Now after the poor person has the money and loses it, he would then take the money away from you again and give it to him to lose again. As he says "I don't want to punish you for success, I just want to give the people behind you a chance as well"

Watch it and weep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

I keep getting this email at work from Chinese domain registration companies that someone is trying to take our company's domain name with a .tw or .hk or .cn at the end. They, being a morally upright company, want to give us the first chance at it because it is our trademark. I generally either ignore the messages as spam or I send them back a ridiculous message that makes no sense. It is fun because they generally respond.

Today, this is the email I sent them:
"I will file a lawsuit against you in the International Court of Justice that sits in the Hague. This is outright licentiousness and we feel that you are causing international strife. We insist that you cease and desist at this very moment. Chinese domain names, as you well know, are like the big dog that barks twice and then howls long and loud. I believe that you are Kevlin and you are not Will and you begin this process of squeezing us out of all of our hard-earned profits so that you can take over the world and get a Chinese American woman elected to President. We will not stand for this."

I got 2 responses back from them. The first one said that if I didn't register it soon the other group would because of the law: "who is first, who is the owner."

The second response I got back from them was surprising:
"Thank you for your reply, we have rejected their applications,but they will most likely register and snatch those domains in other approach.In that case we will not be with responsibility for any result about the matter."

I replied and invited him to tea to discuss world arbitization.

Acco in flames

Acco has been a "model of Jewish/Arab relations" for the past number of years. They shop at each others stores, eat in each others restaurants and drink coffee together like brothers. At least that's how it was until Yom Kippur. In an obvious attempt to incite a riot, the Arabs sent a driver playing loud music into a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur evening. The Jewish residents asked him to stop and when he refused they roughed him up a little bit (He was not sent to a hospital and had no serious injuries).
At the same time, the loud speakers at all the mosques in town started blaring that the Jews were attacking Arabs for no reason and they should all get over there. 2000 arabs attacked the Jewish section of Acco, smashing car windows and shops, beating up people and burning things. Arabs were yelling "itbach al yahud" "slaughter the Jews."

God told the people of Acco, your prayers were ignored.

After Yom Kippur, the Jews had had enough. They went on a rampage and starting their retaliation. Apparantly, the police had forgotten that it was their job to stop the Arabs and they didn't much stop the Jews either. Houses were firebombed and people were beaten up. There is a call for an economic boycott of all Arab businesses in Acco.

I heard from an Acco resident that her eyes stung on her way home from shul after Yom Kippur because of the amount of tear gas that had been fired on the crowd. She said she doesn't even live in that neighborhood. Right now she is completely freaked out and is thinking of moving in with her grandma in Haifa just to get away from the madness. The Arab leaders have agreed to condemn the violence but they do it in such a wussy manner that it is telling the Arabs, you go slaughter some Jews, and we'll say "noo noo".

my shabbos shuva drasha

In our shul we have a speech on Friday night in between kabalas shabbos and maariv. The rabbi only speaks on shabbos mevarchim and the other 3 weeks a month, they ask a member of the community to speak. We have a lot of rabbis in our congregation so most of the time we do get a rabbincal speech, but every once in a while they ask someone who is not a rabbi to speak. This week they asked me. This was not just a regular shabbos, this was shabbos shuva, the shabbos between rosh hashana and yom kippur. During the day the rabbi gives a long drasha that is supposed to fill your heart with thoughts of repentence. I turned him down at first, but he insisted and wouldn't accept any of the alternative speakers I suggested. Generally, I speak in shul one day I year, shabbos zachor. We sell Aliyahs on that shabbos and a couple of years ago they decided it would be funny if someone who didn't speak hebrew very well would sell them.
In any case, I agreed to speak and prepared my 5 minute shabbos shuva drasha. Everybody seemed to enjoy it. I could tell by the shock on people's faces when I started out yelling "Repent! Repent or you'll burn in the fires of hell" and the smiles that broke out when I said people must have considered Hosea a hypocrite for talking about repentence that it was a success.

The only negative comments I got were a couple of people who thought that maybe instead of saying "go forth and sin no more" I left out the "no more" and called on people to just sin. All of the other people just said they really enjoyed it. My Hebrew has drastically improved in the past 5 years and everyone actually understood me.

If anyone wants to see the English translation, let me know.
Here is my speech in Hebrew, for your enjoyment:

שובו! שובו פן תשרפו באש של גהינום!

כך אמר לי איש – יחף ומלוכלך - ברכבת של ניו יורק לפני 15 שנים. עכשיו אני עומד פה מול קהילה של רבנים, תלמידי חכמים ואנשי ציבור וחשבתי לעצמי מה אני יכול להגיד לכם על תשובה?

ההפטרה שלנו מתחיל עם הושע אומר לשבטי ישראל, "שובה ישראל."

מי זה היה הושע? הספר מתחיל אם סיפור שצווה אותו לקחת אשת זנונים ושיהיה לו ילדים. לפי כמה מפורשים הסיפור קרה בדיוק כמו שכתוב. בעיני העם חייב להיות בעיה דתית עם הושע. איזה צבעוני לדבר על תשובה בנאדם כמוהו שמםתובב עם נשים כמו גומר בת דבילים.

הייתי מדריך בתנועת נוער בארה"ב שעסק בקירוב רחוקים. היה להם אירוע לגייס כספים וכמה מהבוגרים דברו. נער אחת ממשפחה דתי עמד ודיבר על החווית החיים ונסיונות שלו וגם דיבר על ענייני מוסר ותשובה. הוא אמר שעכשיו הוא התאושש וחזר לדרך הטוב והישר אבל הוא זכר שבתון אחת במלון שהוא גילח עם סכין גילוח והזמין פיצה לא כשרה. היה שוק והלם שנער ממשפחה דתי יכול להגיד את זה, במיוחד שההורים שלו ישבו בקהל.

מה זה תשובה – זה תהליך שחייב לעסוק בו רק אחר שעושים חטא

ומה זה חטא – זה פעולה נגד רצון ה'

ומה זה ה' – הוא מלך מלכי המלכים, בורא שמים וארץ, שנותן לנו הכל, איש כפי צרכיו ולכולם יש תכלית אישי ומסלול החיים שהוא צריך ללכת.

איך אפשר לדמיין בן אדם שעובר על רצון השם? משוגע הוא? אחר הפרשיות הקודמות שתיאר מה יקרה להעם שלא הולך בדרכו. “בהמתו שחט לפניך ולא תאכל ממנו" "גלות" “עונש" “נשים אוכלים בנם"

אבל בסוף פרשה שלנו משה רבינו אוסף את כל המנהיגים של כלל ישראל ואמר להם:

“כי ידעתי אחרי מותי כי השחת תשחיתון וסרתם מן הדרך אשר צויתי אתכם וקראת אתכם הרעה באחרית הימים כי תעשו את הרע בעיני ה' להכעיסו במעשה ידיכם"

משה ידע שיש חטא, היה לו הרבה נסיון מאז שהוא התחיל להנהיג את בני ישראל. חטא דבר טבעי

וזה מה שהוא רצה למסור למנהיגים של העם. תנהיג בסבלנות. יהיה עונשים. וזה גם תהליך של חיים - של לומדים מהשגיעות שלנו.

לפעמים קשה לקבל דברים כאלה מרבנים שנראים בעינינו כמו לא מהעולם שלנו, רחוקים הם. כך היה לנו את הושע, היה לנו הנער ההוא, היה לנו את האיש היחף ברכבת ועכשיו יש לכם אותי. ואני אומר לכם תהיה לכם סבלנות. אתם תחטאו, בני זוג שלכם יחטאו, ובניכם ובנותיכם יחטאו. זה נורמל, וזה טבעי.

יהיה עונשים גם לכל אחד פרטי וגם לכל העם.

לדלג לפרשה הבאה:

“הצור תמים פעלו כי כל דרכיו משפט א-ל אמונה ואין עול צדיק וישר הוא"

שבת שלום

after shmitta planting

Well the new year started and shmitta is over. Like Yom Kippur, where you start building your sukka immediately after, we tilled the land and planted carrots (That's the only vegetable in season right now). I will not be surprised if they do not grow, because we were supposed to but them 2 cm in the ground and 20 cm apart from each other and my children have a hard time following instructions. It's not simple to just go out and plant now that shmitta is over. If the plant was created in a forbidden way during shmitta then you can't plant it after shmitta either. This is the reason we got seeds. (Also because they didn't have any flats of what I wanted.) I don't have a tiller, so I did it with a shovel. It was pretty difficult. I think the reason the vegetables didn't work 2 years ago when we tried (aside from the fact that we were chased away from our home by Katyushas and our watering system stopped working) is because I didn't till the land. So this time, I made sure to till first.
It will take 1-2 weeks until the buds start coming out and then 2 months until we can eat them. These are organic carrot seeds, and I dodn't spray them with anything, so these will be real organic carrots. I was very excited to be able to plant right after shmitta. It's like saying that the only reason we didn't work the land the entire year was because God told us not too. As soon as the prohibition ended we went and planted.

Now I have to work on my sukkah.
BTW, does anybody know what days the chol hamoed concert in Bet Shemesh is this year?

shana tova

Rock of Galilee wishes all of our readers a happy, healthy sweet new year.

shabbos in the hospital

My daughter fell down the stairs in school and hurt her neck and was sent to the hospital. They put her in a neck brace attached to a pulley on top of her bed with a weight at the end. It seemed very old-style medicine, but I really don't have any way to judge that. She went in Thursday afternoon and they decided to keep her for shabbos. We weren't happy about it, but we didn't really want to decide on our own that the doctor didn't know what he was doing.
I stayed with her and my wife had shabbos with the other children at home. They got invited out for all 3 meals and we got tons of other offers. It is really nice living in a caring community.
The hospital doesn't provide meals for parents staying with their children so I brought all the food I needed myself. I bought

• a bottle of Efrat Shiraz, not as good as Carmel, but better then Domaine.
  
• A bunch of small challahs
• a Rotisserie chicken, I reheated it before I left for the hospital at 3:30 double wrapped it in tinfoil and put it into a thermal bag and it was still warm when we ate it at 7:00.
• A lot of water
• Chummus
• Potato Salad
• A Turkey salami
  

The neighbors made me a couple of delicious kugels as well.

We drank wine, ate bread, had meat and sang shabbos songs. There is a shul in the hospital, so I took her for kabalat shabbat. It was a very difficult shabbos for my daughter, who was tied down to the bed for most of it. She stayed in a very upbeat mood until the evening when they told her that she had to stay for another night. We read books and talked and tried to play games, but it was very hard for her to play chess and checkers with her head attached to the bed. She was looking horizontzally at the pieces.

They let her out this morning and now she has to wear a brace until the end of the week.

To the Dead Sea

The company is taking us on a vacation this weekend to the Dead Sea. Tomorrow afternoon work ends early, I'll probably just work from home, we'll take the kids out from school early (they'll be so disappointed) and we head southbound.

The dead sea is an interesting experience. Very few people actually like to go into the salty water. It can burn your eye out and tastes disgusting if you get any in your mouth. It hurts a lot if you have any scratches on your body. But it is supposed to be good for healing. So it might hurt a lot now but then it will feel better later, so it is worth it.

Friday, the scheduled activity is Masada and then a Bedouin lunch, they ordered Mehadrin for us (which means the Bedouin stole a rabbi along with the kosher sheep). We're not going to do Masada because the kids have already been there and no new ruins have been "found" since then. We'll probably do something like Ein Bokek, which is one of the Shabbos activities, because we are not participating in any of the shabbos activities.

We're driving ourselves, as are the other religious families. The buses were supposed to leave from there after shabbos ended, but then they changed their minds and said they would leave on shabbos. I argued against the buses leaving on shabbos because we're a Jewish company. I went through the list of people coming and pointed out a couple people who might prefer to leave after shabbos even if they are not publicly shabbos-observant. In the end we compromised and one of the buses is waiting until after shabbos to leave. I told the HR manager that I was watching out for the people who didn't know they were shomer shabbat.

Lousy Dinner

Yesterday my wife, God Bless her, was not feeling very well, so I came home a bit early to help out with the kids. The kids were all very hungry when I walked in, so I decided to make them dinner. We had twice leftover chicken in the fridge, so I decided to make them a chicken dinner.
I cut the meat off of the bone and put it into a tin foil pan. I then covered it with bbq sauce and mustard. I added a touch of spicy chily sauce. We had olives and grapes in the fridge, so I put those in as well. Then I found some spices on the counter and put some in (I don't know exactly which spices, but one of them was kind of off white). I stuck it in the oven for about 20 minutes and then voila, I had a delicious meal.

My oldest daughter actually liked it. The other ones wouldn't even look at it. "Ichsa. That's disgusting" and "I'm going to throw up" and "That's not food" were but a few of the statements coming from the children. I told them they had to try it and then they could have a peanut butter sandwich. So they tried it and decided it was more disgusting then they could have possibly ever imagined.

I actually thought it was pretty good.

Olmert kneels to Arabs

A recent Haaretz article quoted PM Olmert as expressing sorrow for the plight of the Palestinain refugees who lost their homes as a result of the forming of the state of Israel. He equated their plight to that of the Jews who were expelled from Arab lands at the same time. There is an expression that Olmert would have been wise to adhere to: "Better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are stupid then to open it and let people know it."

This type of comment incorporates so much historical revisionism it makes one want to throw up. There is no comparison between the Jews being thrown out of their birthplaces and the Arabs who left so that they would not be in the way when the Arab armies crushed the Jewish people and made them all very wealthy. Olmert is expressing sorrow that we won a war that was forced upon us. He is expressing sorrow that we were not swept into the sea, as was promised to the fleeing Arabs.

After apology, the next step is compensation. Now that we see where the PM was going with this, we should rejoice in our fortune that his corrupt dealings were found out and that he will spend a couple good years in jail. This kind of talk is most damaging to the State of Israel. It delegitimizes the right of defense and the right of the Jewish people to live in the God's country. He has effectively kneeled in front of Mohammad and kissed his shoes. Alas, The depths to which we have fallen.

Vigilante Justice

This past shabbat a 9 year old boy was stabbed by an Arab Terrorist (is that redundant) in Yitzhar. The Arab also burnt down a house, but thankfully it was empty. Some of the residents of Yitzhar, in an act of vigilante justice attacked the village where the terrorist had escaped to.

A number of left wing nutbags have condemned the attacks by the Yitzhar residents. They completely ignored the terrorist crime commited by the Arab. This is for an obvious reason. Left wingers don't consider Arabs to be people. They expect Arabs to try and harm people and when they do it is not a surprising occurrence. It doesn't matter if it is a child or an adult or blowing up a sidewalk cafe. Left-wingers will not condemn it because "what do you expect from an Arab." They do however condemn Jews who try to protect themselves or seek justice, which the police sometimes fail to do. I thought about the reason for this and it is probably because they have such a high regard for Jewish people that they expect them to react in the way an adult would if a retarded child hit him.

Right wingers, on the other hand, consider Arabs to be people and expect them to be held accountable for their actions. When an Arab village protects a child killer and/or terrorist that village has to be held responsible. Anybody who protects a terrorist is a terrorist themselves. They show by their actions that they support killing and harming Jewish people and must be held accountable. In the biblical story, Shimon and Levi wiped out the village of Shechem when the prince kidnapped and raped their sister. They decided the entire village was guilty because they did not protest. Their father, Yaakov, was angry at what they had done. He was not angry that they wiped out the village, they deserved that. He was angry that the other nations in the area would turn against them and he would have to fight them all.

Maybe our situation is similar in that the nations of the world would turn against us if we wiped out a village because of their sins. That does not change the fact that justice would be served if the village were completely wiped out and all the people in it killed.

beautiful insult

My daughter has been having some problems with some of the girls in her class. Since she came back from her trip abroad a number of girls have teased her that she speaks with an American accent. One girl was talking to her very nicely and my daughter had enough and she said to the girl in English, "You're beautiful." The girl, not understanding, was very insulted and went to complain to the English teacher that my daughter was cursing her out in English. The teacher called my daughter over and asked her what she said. My daughter answered and the teacher burst out laughing and walked away, leaving the girl who complained open-mouthed and speechless.

I'm proud of her that she finally has learned to use her language skills to her advantage.

Israeli school politics

There are members of my village who read this blog so I tried very hard to not include anything that can be construed as lashon hara.

I'm on the board of the PTA again this year in the girls school (vaad horim in Hebrew). One of the functions of the board is to approve the amount of money that each parent must pay. There are obligatory payments and optional payments, and some gray areas, such as the class trip.

The principal presented the payment sheet to us a week before school started. We accepted it all, changing some minor details, such as having 5th and 6th grade go on a 2 day overnight trip together, which would make it slightly cheaper for both classes.

One of the payments that was presented as obligatory was 30 shekels for dental insurance. A number of parents complained that there is no dental service so why are we paying for the insurance. One of the members of the board checked the law and found out it was only obligatory in a city that provides the service. He sent an email to the board and the principal explaining the law and requesting that the principal issue an apology and credit all the parents. He also suggested that the board was at fault for not verifying this information before-hand. I replied that I agreed with what he wrote, but it is not the board's responsibility to know all the laws and procedures and it was 100% the principal's mistake for presenting it as an obligatory payment. I explained that I don't have time or desire to verify that what the principal presents to us is true, and I suspect the other parents do not either. I don't have any problem with accepting that a mistake occurred, just accept it refund the money and get on with life.

A person who is not on the board saw the emails (looked at a board member's email) and wrote a nasty reply. A very cynical email was sent that the board is anti the new principal and that we are jumping on her for making a small mistake and we're all hypocrites. The email seemed to indicate that we are driving our children to hate the principal by having loud public discussions and we are harming the children and the school by doing this. (He knows about this because he went to university and read the books).

A minute after I read this a board member called me and asked if I read it. He had already prepared a response and he wanted me to sign on it. I told him that I would have to read it first. He sent me the letter which was a nasty personal response.

I sat down and modified his response to be much more diplomatic. I wrote that I will ignore your cynicism and hurtfulness and just answer the issue at hand. I then explained the situation and why his concerns were not justified. I also explained to him that the emails he saw were sent only to the board members and the principal and were not meant for the entire parent body.

In the end he apologized for his tone and his content and said he had taken things out of proportion.

Honor the office

PM Olmert will be indicted for accepting bribes, corruption and in general being a jerk. When we were at the NBN ceremony on Monday, they requested that we honor the office of the PM, no matter our feelings for the man himself.

I thought about it for a while, whether that is chanifa (hypocritical flattery or ingratiation) and this morning while I was driving with the dayan, I discussed what he thought about it. He actually brought up the topic, as he was telling me about a young woman who made aliyah on my brother's flight who came to the court to get a letter of exemption from the army for being religious. She told him about the ceremony and mentioned that someone was holding up the newspaper with his picture on it the entire speech. I said I thought that no matter personal opinion of him or level of corruption there still needed to be respect for his position. That is not to say that we shouldn't protest against his staying in power after it becomes apparant that he is corrupt, but we have to do it while still honoring the office.

The rabbi agreed with me and brought down the proof from the way that the prophets dealt with the corrupt kings. The specific example he gave was Eliahu and Akhav. No one will argue that Olmert is more corrupt then Akhav was, yet the seat of monarchy was respected by Eliahu. We have similar proofs from the way Moshe spoke to Pharaoh, no matter what he had done, he held the highest position in the country and that seat demands respect.

As long as we accept the rule of the State of Israel, of which the Knesset is representative and which is headed by the prime minister, we have to show respect for the institutions by showing respect to the people who are sitting there.

NBN ceremony - brother rock has arrived

My little brother made aliyah yesterday with his wife and 2 kids on a Nefesh B'Nefesh flight filled with new olim. The flight arrived at 7:30 AM and they have a ceremony to greet the new olim. We stayed at my older brother's house Sunday night because he lives close to the airport and got to the airport at around 7. Security was tight because the prime minister was speaking. On every seat was a newspaper, either Jerusalem Post or Haaretz (in English). On the front page of both newspapers was a picture of the prime minister, probably so everyone would know who was speaking to them. The headline next to the picture (in the jpost) was "Police recommend indicting PM for bribery and a host of other charges." NBN requested from the guests to treat the PM with the respect due to the office of the PM because they work together and they have been very helpful to NBN. When he spoke he got applause when he spoke of Zionism and moving to Israel etc.. But whenever he tried to insert some politica, he got booed. He mentioned the word Kadima and at least half the room started booing.
The ceremony itself was great. They had lots of food and drink, were friendly and only asked my kids to stop making a lot of noise about 2 dozen times.

The new olim will be starting out in Ariel, a large West Bank settlement. We wish them the best of luck in their new home.

Settler girls

The new school year has started (in preparation for the new Jewish Year) and with it the bnot sherut (National Service girls) have come in force to our village. Last year the majority of the girls were sefardim, a bunch of them coming from the lower north (Haifa Krayot etc..). This year we have a complete turn around. While we haven't met all of the firls yet, it seems that the girls are predominently ashkenazi. We had 2 of them over for friday night dinner, very friendly girls. The 2 we had over, and at least 3 others, are settlers from Karnei Shomron and the Kochav Yair area. I asked them if they noticed a significant difference between where they are from and the Galil. The surprising answer was -- There are a lot more Arabs in the Galil. I don't know if that is true, but the Galilean arabs are a lot more visible then those over the green line.

Before Oslo, the Arabs over the green line were visible as well. Life was similar to how it is now in the Galilee, Jews and Arabs were on friendly terms they shopped in each others stores and drank thick, bad-tasting coffee together. It was only after we started the peace process that the real hostilities began (Thank you Meretz et al). Now the Arabs and the Jews on that side of the country are openly hostile to one another. Jews entering Kalkilya, once a popular shopping spot for Jewish settlers, are in danger of getting physically attacked and ripped apart, as happened a couple years ago in Jenin. Lets hope we don't try and make peace the the Arabs in the Galilee, that will really open up a can of worms.

There is a big demographic problem in the Galilee. 52% of the population is Arab, including Muslim, Christian and Druze. They are not content to live in their villages and build illegally as they have been doing for years, now they are trying to take over Jewish villages by buying homes and apartments. The real problem is that not enough Jews are moving to the Galilee and that leaves the space wide open for Arabs to buy apartments in Jewish cities. There are a couple programs working on strengthing the Galil and increasing immigration. Lets hope it's not too little too late.

In any case, there is a bet in the community how long it will take the settler girls to bring in a couple caravans, put them on the wadi and call it our outpost.

Pray for the MIL

My MIL had an operation last week and the initial results seemed positive. Last night my BIL called us at 1:00 AM to let us know that there were complications and she was back in the hospital. She is stable at the moment, but we are still very concerned.

Please say a prayer, tehillim or give some charity for the health and well-being of chana rachel bas tzivia

no biking in the galilee

Today we took the children bike riding down by the lake. Since we live on a mountain, it is very hard to teach the kids to ride on our street or around the block because they have to start off in 21st gear. So we like to go down to the lake which has a very nice ride around it. I sometimes take my roller blades, because the kids aren't fast enough on their bikes yet to go faster then me, though the older two have overtaken me running.

Anyways, we got down to the lake and the road was blocked because of a bike race. Well that didn't bother us that much, we just parked our car and left it.As we started walking down the rest of the hill to get to the biking route, racing bikes were whizzing by us and people were yelling that we were in the way. When we finally got down there, we realized that most of the lakefront was blocked off for this bike race. We go down there a lot and there were no signs posted in town stating that the lake was closed. We let the kids ride around in the narrow space left for them for about 10 minutes until we just got frustrated and left.

right wing policeman

This morning I picked up a soldier in the Border Guards who was hitchhiking. Technically he's a police officer, but I think they seem to be more military then law enforcement. He spoke with an Arabic accent, so I assumed he was a druze (I was wrong). We were listening to an interview with Haim Ramon about a government discussion whether to offer settlers compensation now for leaving their homes in Yoosh (Judea and Samaria) before the negotiations over final borders. It is a ridiculous proposal because it is based on the idea that Ramon has already decided pre-negotiation what we are giving up and to make it a fact on the ground so that there is no discussion. Obviously, if the Arabs are not going to have to negotiate for Jews being thrown out of their home, they will have more chips to negotiate with, so whether it is true or not it puts Israel in a much worse position.

In any case, I mentioned to the soldier that these discussions are useless because the gap is too large between the 2 sides. They should just have a vote and see if more people support the stupid idea or not. He pretty much exploded and said that there is no one to talk to and this whole process is ridiculous. He was born in Morocco and his father told him that the only way to deal with Arabs is by strength and force. If you say good morning nicely to an Arab he will assume that you are afraid of him. His suggestion was that for every Israeli killed we should kill 10 or 100. If they shoot 1 rocket at us, we should flatten all the land in the area so that they learn that we are not to be played with. He said that when we left Lebanon, we ran away leaving tanks and equipment (I don't know if he was talking about the first war or the more recent one). He said, can you imagine the most powerful army in the world running away from nothing. (Reminds me of the story of Sancherev when the Assyrians ran away from the loud noises that God sent towards them).
I agreed with him, but mentioned that we were discussing right vs.left and not Israeli vs. Arab. He started ranting again that Israelis are too dumb to know what to do with the enemy. How the left wing tries to be fair in the stupidest cases. He mentioned a story of a terrorist, a father of 8, who bombed the train station in Nahariya. That family is still today collecting National Insurance. He said that was a direct support of terror.

I let him off at Tzomet Yagur and wished him well.

New Format

We've decided that two years after missiles have stopped falling on the our Galilean village that the war has taken a long-term break. Our format has changed back to pre-war issues and (as you can see) we have given the blog a face-lift.

There are a number of plans for the blog in the coming months, aside from the regular stories, and I welcome comments on the new layout and format.

Check out the selected daily news stories in the What's Happening section on the right side of the page.

bombing Iran

I generally don't like to write about work, but this is too funny. We got an email with comments about one of our products. At the bottom of the email he wrote: "You guys better not bomb Iran. It will be your undoing. Wake up fellow people. This is the Universe speaking."

We discussed whether the reply should be:
a) We hadn't thought about that, we'll call back the missiles.
b) We'll forward you concerns to CEO Olmert.
c) It's top secret that our products will be used to bomb Iran. Watch out for the Mossad.
d) Too Late.