Comments made at some economic conference today have raised an interesting discussion.

A couple Haredi politicians made some comments that I think are fair. They encouraged PM Netanyahu to go all the way with the hostage deal, not to stop it before the second stage, but to bring all the hostages him, and that they would support him in doing so.

A group of leading right wing, Dati Leumi, rabbonim have published a letter calling on the government to do whatever is necessary, "even with a responsible agreement", to get the hostages released.

There is an issue right now with the defense systems because of the war. Schedules are messed up, they need soldiers, they need soldiers to be available, they need to rotate soldiers, they need to be prepared for possibilities in the north and maybe elsewhere. This war messed up the normal routine of the IDF, just like it did for everything else in the country, and that includes draft dates and training schedules.

Several elections ago I stopped posting the compilations of election campaign ads of the varius parties. I am making an exception for this ad from the Likud, specifically Benjamin Netanyahu, because I like it, though not much as a campaign ad. It doesnt talk about policy or anything like that...

The classic Israeli dress was always kind of informal, comfortable, and even a bit shlumpy. Suits and ties in Israel is relatively new (not including in the Haredi community where suits were always popular). Besides for suits becoming popular, in both government and in the professional scene, in recent years, the general dress code has also spiffed up significantly and is at least no longer shlumpy, though it is still fairly informal.

No Israeli wants to be seen as being a freier. It is part of the DNA of Israelis. 

this is interesting...

A Dati Leumi conference, organized by the Binyan Shalem organization, for women only did not allow any images of women at the conference. At the conference for women. These women stood there looking at each other and sitting next to each other and watching women speak, but anything printed could not have a woman's face on it.

The conference included lectures, shiurim and booths. The booths, selling clothes and other stuff, could not be adorned or decorated with images of women.
source: Srugim

This craziness has crazily spread to even more crazy applications. At a conference for women, only they could not see images of women in print!!

Rav Tau, of Har Hamor, has threatened to break off from the United Right party and form his own party. The threat has been waged to prevent the United Right from forming a union with the New Right party of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked. According to Rav Tau, Bennett is not religious enough and Shaked is a secular woman, and the two should not be associated with the United Right,a party meant to represent the National Religious, and definitely not to head the party.

While the threat is still just a threat, Rav Tau has moved forward with preparations for realizing the formation and running of such a party. A political party is being organized with personalities being chosen to run it. Now a name, slogan and logo have also been chosen (source: Srugim). The name will be "Noam", the slogan will be "a normal nation in our land", and the logo is:





I am not sure what the party name Noam means or refers to, but perhaps it is for the phrase" deracheha darchei noam" - the ways of the Torah are pleasantness.

I have no idea what " a normal nation in our land means". Rav Tau is the head of the relatively extreme edge of the National Religious - even more than the "chardal". They are closer in their personal lifestyles to the Haredi public than to the National Religious, but they believe in and support the State. "Normal" is not something I understand in the context of Rav Tau. Suddenly he wants Israel to be a normal nation, like all the other nations? While he just recently spoke out against a woman leading the national religious party? Perhaps he is expecting that whatever he is proposing, or how he wants Israeli society to be, will become the new normal.

Regardless of whether or not they have a chance to get in, they are resigned to running, if their demands are not met, and insist they will get in either this time or next. They are working for the betterment of Israel, so the possibility of causing votes to be wasted (should they not get in) does not concern them. source: Makor Rishon

A year ago an issue was raised in which the secular residents of Kiryat Arba were requesting hours of mixed family swimming at the local municipal pool, but the city administration was refusing the request. The residents at the time were petitioning the Supreme Court to force the city to provide them with a reasonable amount of mixed swimming hours.

At the time I wrote that just like when enough religious people move to a secular town and demand religious services, including, but not limited to, separate swimming access in the pool, and their requests should be granted, when secular people live in a religious town their needs and requests should also be honored.

A year later and the fight is still going on and in the news.

Ynet is reporting that the Supreme Court had heard the case and decided that the City must provide the residents with some mixed swimming hours. After the decision some local rabbis called on the public to cancel their membership at the pool. The pool was even shut down because of this issue for a period of time. Now City Hall has decided to reopen the pool and again only offer separate swimming hours.

It seems an agreement was even reached between the relevant residents and City Hall as to the times and number of hours of available mixed swimming, with the approval of the Court, yet City Hall has decided to break the agreement and not allow any mixed swimming at all.

The new mayor claims he is trying to find a solution but int he meantime the pool needs to be open, even with just separate swimming available for the health needs of the public. Obviously the secular residents are upset over this.

It seems that when the religious, and this is obviously not limited to the Haredi community as this is a case of Dati Leumi, are a minority in a town, they are very good at demanding services to satisfy their needs, be it eruv, mikva, [some] roads closed on Shabbos, separate swimming hours at the local pool, budgets for various events and things, and they rightfully deserve it. It is the job of City Hall to provide the residents of its town with the public services they need. Yet when the religious are the majority, they are not so good at taking care of, and providing for, the needs of the secular minority.

The City of Rishon LeTzion has been running a pilot for a while to open libraries for the religious community. At the request of the community's representatives, the city agreed to run this pilot in which they open 4 libraries once a week after hours - meaning, after the library has already closed its regular operating hours for the public. As well, the library removes from the shelves books deemed inappropriate for the religious public for the duration of the opening hours for the religious community.

The pilot has come to an end, due to a lawsuit for discrimination.

Lee Weizman sued the city of Rishon claiming she was discriminated against when she noticed the branch of the library open and decided to return books she had borrowed. She was told she could not do so at that time, though after arguing they accepted the books from her. Another time as well she went to exchange books and was refused service, but after arguing the manager got involved and let her get new books in exchange for the books she was returning.

Weizman complained to the city but her complaint was ignored, so she decided to sue instead. She sued the city for 75,000nis. The counter claim by the city is that in both incidents in which she tried to avail herself of the library's services, she was provided the service, so she was not discriminated against.

The court decided in favor of Weizman, though for far less than what she claimed. The court awarded her 10,000nis. The judge explained that making separate hours for the religious "torani" community in the municipal library is discriminatory and against the law, as it discriminates against the secular community during those hours. Being that this is not a religious service, and nothing in the service provided by the library requires making a distinction between the religious and secular communities. The fact that a religious community might choose to not avail themselves of the service during regular hours for their ideological reasons does not make it discriminatory against them.

The City's response was that the city tried this pilot to allow the religious public to use the library. The library continued to function as normal for the secular and general public during the same hours as always and nothing was changed for them. The pilot has now been canceled.
source: Ynet

Personally I dont know why people feel they cannot go to a library when secular people are there. Nor do I know why some people might feel insulted or upset because of certain books on the shelves that they won't even borrow to read. However, I do think it is a shame that there seemingly cannot be a legal way to provide services to such communities in a way they find acceptable. Different strokes for different folks. The question is where it will lead to. At what point will the court say that this separation of groups is ok and we will not intervene - will shuls and yeshivas and seminaries eventually become a target as well?

Regarding this case, it is interesting that the Dati community in Rishon wanted to separate themselves for the general public in this way. The Dati community generally prides itself on being involved with the general community and not being isolationists.

Also, how is a librarian supposed to determine if someone is part of the Dati community and provide the service, or not? Even if a person comes in dressed not classicly religious, there is a wide range of people within every community, and people have kids who don't conform exactly to the way the parents want. I dont know how the librarian determined Weizman should not be provided the service, most likely by whatever way she was dressed, but it seems this entire exercise was flawed in that anybody not dressed overtly secular (whatever that might mean) should have been able to get away with getting into the library without too much effort, thus rendering the entire exercise pointless to begin with.

interestingly, in the last few days the DL online news media has published a number of articles about the upcoming elections for the head of the Shomron regional council. The candidates for the position have been Yossi Dagan and Gershon Mesika.

The specific news articles I am referring to were reporting about announcements from Rav Shmuel Eliyahu and Rav Dovid Abuchatzeira, and perhaps some others. These rabbonim announced that Yossi Dagan should continue in his position of head of the council.

Fair enough.

What is interesting about this is that the Dati Leumi regularly states that they do not conduct their affairs the way the Haredi community does. They ask the rabbonim, but more as a consultation rather than as a psak of daas torah, and they do not feel obligated or committed to follow the [political or social (rather than halachic)] announcements of the rabbonim. If their rabbinic leadership says something, they take it under advisement, but do not necessarily act accordingly. The DL rabbonim do generally say who or what they support in various political elections or other affairs, but, again, it isn't binding on the DL public and they don't really take center stage in these issues and discussions.

So, what is interesting is that in this case, the DL went very Haredi. Not only were the rabbinic positions given center stage, Mesika even pulled out of the race because of it. I don't know if it is a trend or a one-time affair, maybe this specific issue was more "Chardal" to start with, or maybe it was something else. Maybe someone who follows this community and its trends more astutely might weigh in with an explanation...

Behadrei is reporting on a shiur given by the Rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Chevron, Rav Mordechai Farbshtein, in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav. It is noted that the last time the rosh yeshiva of Chevron Yeshiva gave shiur in Merkaz Harav was 50 years ago when Rav Yechezkal Sarna gave shiur and the Roshei Yeshiva of Merkaz HaRav were Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook and Rav Avraham Shapira.

I appreciate that the article does not describe this as a show of "achdut", or unity. I always dislike that term when used to describe two Jews with different kippot that do an activity together. I also appreciate that the visit was not described as "historic", as is often done in such situations.

While I too applaud the invitation offered to Rav Farbshtein by Merkaz Harav and his acceptance and deliverance of the shiur, I do wonder when we will see reciprocity. Every now and again we find such occurrences of rebbes and rosh yeshivas of Haredi yeshivas or schools being invited to schools and yeshivas in other sectors, and that is wonderful and very open-minded of the hosting schools and yeshivas to expose their students to the Torah and teachings of other streams. I fail to recall such an invitation offered by a Haredi school or yeshiva to any rebbe or rosh yeshiva from other streams thus exposing its students to the teachings and Torah of others. Just like I want to see the Rosh Yeshiva of Chevron as a guest in Merkaz HaRav, I also want to see the Rosh Yeshiva of Merkaz HaRav, or Kerem BYavneh or Shaalavim or others invited to Chevron, or Mir, or Ponevezsh, or others.

The IDF is reportedly working overtime to find ways to get religious women to join the IDF and have made their interview process more thorough to determine a candidate's level of religious observance when applying for the exemption for religious women.

Reportedly, the recruiting officer even said to one such candidate who explained that she does not want to serve due to a prohibition on women serving int he army and a psak to that point issued by many rabbonim, something to the tune of many haredim are being drafted today and if the army was so bad, they would not do so - "and they are far more haredi than you".
source: Kipa

The candidate's response should have been something to the tune of explaining that the Haredim don't allow even a single woman to join the army, so if they want to point to the Haredim as examples, their number swill go way down among female recruits. And, if they want to compare the DL community to the Haredi community in general regarding the draft, the DL can take a similar approach to the Haredim as well, and the army won't be so happy about Haredim drafting if the DL community imitates the percentages of Haredim being drafted...

Also the "Kipot Srugot" today, in very large communities, mostly in the center of the country, are already borderline Reform. Anyone who knows how their shuls function and their prayer services - very drastic changes.. true, there are more with kippot, and they are more Israeli, but it is borderline Reform..

  -- Minister Aryeh Deri

for a long time already residents of a certain section of RBS B have been attacking people walking through the main road on Shabbos afternoon, but recently it has escalated.

The problem is that the city planner built RBS B, a neighborhood that was marketed for more extreme elements of Haredi society right on the main road between older Bet Shemesh and newer Bet Shemesh, including RBS A, and C (and future neighborhoods). The only way to walk from RBS A to a neighborhood in older Bet Shemesh is via the main drag of RBS B, which goes right through the heart of the neighborhood of the violent extremists.

While individuals walk for many reasons (i.e. a simcha, visit friends, or whatnot), they specifically target the Bnei Akiva youth group counselors that walk from RBS A to Bet Shemesh and back to lead their groups on Shabbos afternoon. Recently it has gotten so bad that parents and adults have been volunteering to walk and accompany these teens. That has not helped, and the level of the attacks has continuously increased.


Somebody has decided to hit back at the extremists. According to an anonymous pashkevil put up around RBS B a few days ago, a group of residents is threatening the extremists that if their violence continues they will report the illegal businesses of the extremists to the tax authorities, along with reporting their illegal construction and if any are US citizens, to also report them to the tax authorities there.

Nobody really knows, at least not publicly, who is behind this. The two theories are either the DL community, that is regularly attacked the most with the violence, or other local residents (non-extremist Haredim) of RBS B who are simply fed up with what is going on.

The pashkevil itself is designed and worded exactly like a Haredi pashkevil, so either the DL really upped their game this time, or else it really does come out of the Haredi community. As well, the people who would best know about the local illegal businesses and construction would be the local neighbors and not others fro other communities and sectors in other neighborhoods. It makes most sense (to me) that it is from local residents rather than from the DL community, but either way is fine.

Now we have to see if whoever this is actually follows through with the threats and hits them where it hurts - in the pocketbooks.

This past Shabbos yesterday, it did not help. Reports from people who were present say the violence continued with screaming and things being thrown from windows and porches at the people passing through and this time there was even fishing wire strung across the street in a way that was meant to hurt people.

Srugim is reporting on an interesting development in the Dati Leumi yeshiva world..

The topic reminded me of complaints I have often heard in the Modern Orthodox educational system. The complaint goes that among the Modern Orthodox, in the USA, most people do not go into the "klei kodesh" industry and become rebbeim and teachers, and whatnot. They become lawyers, doctors, accountants, programmers, engineers, businessmen and whatever else, but not, with exception, By them mostly not becoming rebbeim, the rebbeim hired by these Modern Orthodox schools is almost always going to be rebbeim associated with the Haredi community. The complaint is that the boys pick up on the hashkafa from these rebbeim, they get gently, or not so gently, pushed in the direction of becoming "blacker", more yeshivish, more Haredi. But, because there seems to be a dearth of teachers from within the community, the schools don't really have a choice. They really need, in order to solve the problem, to encourage their kids to also consider careers in education as teachers and rebbeim, at least for children that it is appropriate for.

Anyways, the issue that reminded me of this is a report that in the Dati Leumi school and yeshiva system have already solved the rebbe issue and over the years has mostly stopped hiring haredi rebbeim as more and more rebbeim from the Dati Leumi communities have taken over those positions.

However, they have identified and additional situation that they have wanted to deal with. The Dati Leumi rabbinic world has produced a wealth of books in the Torah world, but almost entirely in the realms of halacha, Jewish thought/philosophy and Tanakh. They did not publish seforim that offered commentary and perush on Gemara, at an iyyun level.

The Dati Leumi yeshivas were using all the classic seforim, including the more recent publications from the past half century that have all been published by rabbonm and talmidei chachomim from the Haredi world. There just was not anything else available.

According to Srugim, in the past decade or so talmidei chachomim from the DL world have been concentrating on publishing their works on Gemara, and the situation is one now where they have "enough" such publications that they can actually use them and not be dependent on the seforim from Haredi authors.

This is allowing the DL yeshivot to replace the Haredi "achrei achronim" from the shelves with DL "achrei achronim"..

Halevai we should arrive at the day when Haredi yeshivas will accept and use seforim and rabbonim from the dati leumi torah world, and that the Dati Leumi yeshivas will accept and use seforim and rabbonim from the Haredi torah world (as they have until recently). Torah should be valuable no matter what kippa is worn by the people and talmidei chachomim learning it.

However, being that that is not the case, I can understand why the DL yeshivot would give preference to perushim written by their own people. The Haredi workd wont be using and promoting them, so if the DL world does not, who will? How will such talmidei chachomim be encouraged? The DL world needs to encourage such talmidei chachom to focus on these seforim and part of that is to give these talmidei chachomim preferential treatment as rebbeim and their seforim on the bookshelves.

this article, describing a deal made for the appointment of new dayyanim to the batei din, made me wonder.

The relevant point is that an arrangement was reached by which the new appointments will be comprised of 33% asheknazi haredi dayyanim, 33% sefardi haredi dayyanim, and 33% dati leumi dayyanim.

Here are the garbled and partially redundant thoughts it caused me to wonder about:
1. that is 66% haredi and 33% dati leumi. why did the dati leumi agree to it?
2. why is it ok for the haredi side to distinguish as two separate groups the sefardi and ashkenazi dayyanim, thus claiming an equal portion of both, yet the dati leumi are happy to not make that distinction, thus ending with a clear majority for haredim over dati leumi?
3. are the haredi reps really so divisive and racist or is it successful tactics to get more dayyanim?
4. are the dati leumi living in Utopia? are they really so not-racist that they are willing to forgo such a big discrepancy just so as not to appear as being racially divisive?
5. why not divide it two ways? or four ways?

this attempt to lay blame and responsibility for someone's mistakes and wrongdoings is so trivial and sad... Metzger himself is to blame. who cares about how he became a rabbi? What difference does it make if it was Rav Elyashiv behind his appointment, or if he came out of the DL yeshiva system - both are true, so does one bear more responsibility than the other?

Going further than the argument in the video, over Metzger himself, is who deserves to be called a rabbi, in light of the fight over the alternate conversion beis din established by a group of Dati Leumi rabbonim,. I am not going to offer an opinion as to who is right and who is wrong in that fight, but I, once again, find the irony striking in the fight:
the haredim, who really reject the rabbanut, are out there defending it like lions, against the dl who normally follow the rabbanut but right now are somewhat separating from it. Furthermore, the haredi community does just about the same thing. They have their own batei din for kashrut, weddings, divorce, conversion and everything else and refuse to trust the rabbanut. Yet when the dl start to do basically the same thing, the haredim get upset

Bet Shemesh: Separation Between Haredim and National Religious

  -- Srugim

Here we go again. Bet Shemesh has had relative quiet for too long...

no, this is not a decision to split the city. Just a Matnas (the RBS matnas) that is splitting the week between Haredi activities and DL activities, with specific days each week for each.

I understand perfectly why they want this and do this. I understand perfectly why the other communities bristle at this.

The one question I have that was never answered is if the Haredi community is always insisting on doing things separately, why have they been so opposed to splitting the city (regardless of whether I think it is a good idea or not) - they want to keep everything separate anyway!

I think we must be deep in the days of the Messiah...

Over the past few days and weeks I have seen (and read some of them) countless articles written by Dati Leumi rabbonim and lay people about how the Rabbanut is so bad, how it needs to be reformed or privatized, how the Rabbanut cannot be trusted, how the Rabbanut must be shut down.... Whether it was based on Riskin-gate or the conversion issues or kashrut issues or divorce and agunah issues, the Dati Leumi have recently been coming out en masse against the Rabbanut.

And, at the same time, over the same period, I have seen (and read some of them) countless articles from Haredi rabbonim and lay people coming out in defense of the Rabbanut,m explaining how they do such a fine job, how their role is so important, how they keep the State Jewish, how they are the only ones who can run the conversion issue in a proper manner, how the Rabbanut must be the authority on kashrut, etc.

To paraphrase Yosef, the son of Rabbi Yehoshua in Talmud Bava Basra, עולם הפוך ראיתי - I have seen an upside down (or backwards) world.