Why you need a Tav Teken

I recently bought an electrical splitter from a local hardware store. I specifically wanted a cordless one, and one with the maximum possible number of outlets. Usually you only get up to three points on a cordless splitter, so I was very happy to find one with four points.

But hold on a second. My electrical engineering instincts told me that something was amiss. Didn't I once encounter one of these splitters before, many years ago, in the context of a minor electrical explosion? Well, let's open this baby up and see what sordid sins are hiding behind that clean facade...

Have you spotted the problem? Let me enlarge and annotate this second picture for you...

Well, the earth (green) looks OK. Now take a look at the live circuit (brown). As you face the socket, live should be on the right. And on the right had side of the splitter, the right hand socket is brown. But look at the left hand side: the positions of the live and neutral points have been reversed!

I took it back to the store and got a refund. I showed this faulty wiring to the shop attendant, who assured me that it's perfectly OK to switch around the live and neutral points; it makes no difference which side they're on - and he promptly put this michshol straight back on the shelf.

I presented him with my credentials as an electrical engineer (sort of true - I got the degree then went to work in programming), and attempted to explain that while it may be OK to switch the live and neutral for your unearthed radio/tape player, the minute you plug in an appliance that needs to be earthed, you are going to create a moderately large explosion. The earth and the neutral need to be at the same voltage (or close), while the live oscillates between about +330V and -330V, creating a Root Mean Square voltage of about 220V. (Wow! I remembered that from university, 15 years ago!) If you start sending oscillating voltages up your neutral wire where there's an earth connected, you are going to create a big, fat 220V short-circuit into your earth. That makes a nice big spark, possibly destroying the appliance you were unfortunate enough to plug into this socket.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. And the splitter stayed on the shelf for the next unwitting victim.

If I'd had more time, I would have been more forceful. Perhaps I should have been, anyway - this may be a case of hashovas aveida, to prevent damage to anyone else who might buy one of these nasty little jobbies.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: make sure that when you buy electrical stuff, it should have the tav teken. Otherwise there is no guarantee that what you bought is anything better than seriously dangerous.

The worst form of evil - and how to fight it

As an optimist, I always like to preface negativity with some positivity. So let me start by saying there are a lot of really good people out there. People who love their fellow Jews. People whose observance and learnedness of Torah has brought them to the highest levels of perfection attainable by a human being.

And then there are some pretty nasty people out there. There are the Amalekite types - non-Jews who just hate Jews lishma. Then there are the Achav/Menashe types, also known as mumar l'hach'is (MLH) - real self-hating Jews whose share Amalek's goal of eradicating Judaism, if not the Jews themselves. And we have the more benign (and very common) mumar l'teiavon (MLT) - Jews who don't keep the Torah because it's inconvenient, they are unmotivated, they cannot control their desires, etc. Have I covered everyone?

Apparently not. There's another kind of baddie out there. This one is a talmid chacham. He is G-d fearing, pious, learned and scrupulously meticulous in his performance of mitzvos. He is passionate and fiercely committed to Yiddishkeit. And he is responsible for more death and destruction ר"ל to the Jewish People than any of the previous categories of sinners. Let's hear more about him from the Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, in this extract from his introduction to Sefer Bereishis from Ha'Amek Davar (translation mine):

[The Jews at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple] were righteous, pious and labored in Torah. But they were not straight (ישרים) in their conduct. Therefore, because of the causeless hatred (sin'as chinam) for each other in their hearts, they suspected anyone who acted differently from their view of fearing G-d of being a Sadducee and an Apikoros. This led to extremes of bloodshed and the most terrible evils in the world until the Temple was destroyed... Hashem is straight and does not suffer "tzaddikim" such as these... even though their intentions may be for the sake of Heaven, [these "tzaddikim"] cause the destruction of Creation and demolition of settlement in the Land [of Israel].

Yup, this "tzaddik" is responsible for nothing less than the destruction of the Temple, and every pogrom, expulsion, massacre and holocaust that has followed. And worse than the MLT, worse than the MLH, he can never do teshuva; he can never repent. He cannot, because it is physically impossible; he has nothing to repent for - because in his own mind, he is right, and everybody else is wrong.

Do you know anybody like that? I do. I met him online yesterday morning - or at least, I met his blog, after he spammed me (and many others in the Jewish cyberworld, as a subsequent Google search told me). Go ahead and take a look - but be warned: have an antacid and/or a stiff drink at hand, because this site is liable to do something serious to your metabolism. Here it is.

Notice how this guy meets all the criteria of the Netziv. Firstly, with brazen chutzpah, he titles his blog "Authentic Judaism" - in one fell swoop relegating anyone who doesn't agree with every word he says to the status of "non-authentic" and therefore an apikoros. (That's not speculation, by the way - he says so explicitly.) And he doesn't just disagree on issues - he loudly and proudly proclaims his own visceral hatred towards anyone who disagrees with him. He ridicules and insults gedolei Torah in the most despicable terms. All this he does this under the veneer of "hating Hashem's enemies", which everyone agrees is a mitzva. But he makes the logical non sequitur of jumping from "I am for Hashem" (true) to "Anyone who disagrees with me is against Hashem" (false). The site is so crammed with half-truths and non sequiturs, that it doesn't even merit specific critique. It is self-evidently sheker of the darkest, most vindictive variety. This is the yetzer hara with a yarmulke. This is truly the Face of Evil.

So what's a healthy approach to people like this? My first reaction after visiting his site was a powerful urge to vomit. Having calmed down a bit, I find myself filled with a kind of morbid fascination at the psychosis that has possessed this yid - and an icy fear at having felt the heart of darkness, and realizing that there is a very large proportion of "frum" society that shares it.

How do we deal with it? What hope is there for Am Yisrael if this malignant tumor of sin'as chinam has become so deeply rooted in our people that hatred has now become a shita, and aveiros of the worst order are considered mitzvos? We see it frequently, and I don't think I need to enumerate all the ways in which this vile philosophy is manifesting - hameivin yavin.

My Rav quoted to me, "A little light dispels a lot of darkness." Well, we have a lot of darkness out there that needs dispelling. I'd like to say that especially coming up to Rosh Hashana, we should take very great care to love and respect our fellow Jews, especially the ones with whom we have disagreements - but I don't think that's enough. The sin'as chinam machine is working powerfully and grinding away at our society, and I am afraid it's a weak and feckless response just to turn the other cheek and talk about brotherly love. As Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

I think our society needs a bigger tikkun. How about this: get a bunch of banners printed for people to hang off their balconies: "V'ahavta l're'acha kamocha"; "All Jews welcome in our neighborhood!" etc. Offer a nice sign to be put up at the new mall in Ramat Beit Shemesh (or wherever) to the effect that everyone is welcome, and there will be a zero-tolerance policy towards intimidation and physical or verbal violence; perpetrators will be ejected, by the police if necessary.

What ideas do you have? How do you think we should relate to crackpots like "Rabbi Authentic"? How can we counteract their poison and make a real tikkun olam?

Pirsumei Nisa: Another "Only In Israel" Story!

Yesterday my wife went on a Very Special outing with my 10-year-old daughter (and 3-month-old baby) - where else, but to go clothes shopping at the Hamashbir 50% sale in Jerusalem. I won't tell you how much they spent; suffice it to say that they enjoyed themselves! My wife was completely thrilled to find a store that didn't feel like it was improvised out of somebody's basement, selling clothes that were actually made with the shape of the human body in mind, made from material that will not perish on its first trip through the washing machine.

Anyway, to save herself the stress of driving in central Jerusalem and the expense of using one of the licensed muggers they call parking garages, she parked at the Wolfson Towers and caught a taxi to and from Hamashbir. But on the way back, in all the ballagan of schlepping prams, babies and parcels, the bags from Hamashbir failed to make it back into our car... a fact which my wife realized, to her utter shock and dismay, only when she got back home.

So we started the chase, realizing that the bags had no identifying features that the finder could use to reach us. As far as halachic simanim go, the fact that there was a certain grouping of clothes, in two packets, left in the trunk of a taxi would be a siman muvhak - but that wasn't much help to us. We didn't know the driver's name, just his description (young, nearly-shaved head, no kippa), nor which taxi company he worked for. My daughter remembered that there was a sticker in the car saying "My home is in Maaleh Adumim". A lead!

OK, off to the yellow pages. I mean, how many taxi companies can there be operating in Jerusalem?

82. Plus 3 in Maaleh Adumim.

OK... so let's go for the big hitters first - the most likely ones to have been patrolling the center of town. Luckily the Yellow Pages provides a map of all the locations, so I could pick off the ones based in the area. Some were hasa'ot, some were shuttle services. I eliminated the Arab ones. Anything with a cellphone number probably belongs to a freelancer. So I started calling, developed my script as I went along, emphasizing the driver from Maaleh Adumim and the fact that the parcels were pretty valuable. No dice. While most were sympathetic, they couldn't help me, or told me to "call again tomorrow".

My alarm sounded for mincha, and I went across the road to join the Moroccan minyan. As is my habit, while they were doing korbanot and all the other stuff they do before Ashrei, I picked up a chumash and started reviewing the parsha. I was up to the second aliya. Hashovas Aveida. Hm. I learned it extra hard, with special kavana. Shnayim Mikra, echad targum - the real way. Oh yes, yesterday was Monday - Yom Sheini. Significant? I wonder...

I left mincha imbued with confidence - and gratitude to Hashem for the fact that we were going to get our parcels back. Don't know how or when, but we will.

Made a few more calls to taxi companies, Hamashbir themselves (in case the driver returned it to them). One veteran taxi driver was really helpful, and got into sleuthing: he asked pertinent questions about the driver, the car, a bunch of details we didn't realize we knew, and referred us to another taxi maven in Maaleh Adumim, who also did his part to help. Then we decided this was enough hishtadlus for now. By the end of the evening we were happy and joking about the whole experience. My wife told me animatedly about every garment she bought, with full enjoyment of how beautiful it was, and it kind of felt like we already had them back.

This morning I started phoning again. The first company I called said not to bother until after 10 o' clock - all the drivers were still asleep! So I did, and one by one, I called the companies on my list. Each one in turn sent a broadcast to all his drivers with the pertinent details; each one said no, and I crossed them off my list... until... one of them gave me a cellphone number, and said, "Here, call this number." So I did... and this was the driver of the taxi... who had found my wife's packages in his trunk not 10 minutes beforehand.

So as I write this, he's just brought the packages to my wife, who happens to be in Jerusalem right now. She asked him what would have happened if we hadn't tracked him down? He said, they don't have any formal system for lost items; they just keep the items for as long as they feel like it, and wait for someone to contact them.

Think about it: if I had called 10 minutes earlier, the driver wouldn't have found the parcels yet, I would have crossed that company off my list, and we would in all likelihood never have seen those clothes again.

Yes, it's not a breathtaking miracle, it all happened al derech hateva, but I'm still very grateful to Hashem for having orchestrated things the way He did. And it highlights again that even a young skin-headed "chiloni" taxi driver has the Jewish heart to do the mitzva of hashovas aveida.


Postscript: if you should ever lose an item in an unidentified taxi the way I did, here are some tips:

1. Resist the temptation to start phoning immediately. Give it a day or two, to give the driver the opportunity to discover the lost item.
2. The police have a lost-and-found desk. The number in Jerusalem is 02 539 1360/1.
3. Contrary to some reports, it is not necessary to make a donation to Kupat Ha'Ir in order to get your lost item back. :-D
   
4. Probably the most important segula you can have is gratitude. Gratitude for the fact that Hashem is looking out for you, and that He will give you the y'shua you need. This principle applies in all aspects of life, and merits not just a separate blog post, but an entire book in its own right. The more you improve and sharpen your midda of gratitude, the more things in your life will just keep going right, and getting better all the time. Don't worry - Be happy! Really!
   

Ayn Rand meets Rav Shimon Shkop

I just finished reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. As a piece of fiction, I found it very entertaining and compelling; as a work of philosophy, I found it intriguing. For those who haven't read it, she expounds her philosophy of objectivism through her characters, who are pretty weird at times, but she makes her point well enough.

One of the main points of objectivism is that your ethics are supposed to be governed by rational self-interest. She is explicitly against altruism, that is, the sacrifice of self for others, but she equally does not subscribe to the converse, sacrifice of others for self. People should aspire to their highest potential, irrespective of others, and neither live for others nor expect others to live for them.

Seems a bit selfish and heartless, doesn't it?

I'm not so sure she's so far off the truth. My friend MG told me a vort he heard in the name of Rav Shimon Shkop. (I can't verify the quote; if anyone can give a source for this, I'd be most grateful.) He was asked, if Hashem wants us to do chesed with others, why did He make us naturally so selfish?

Rav Shkop answered that the selfishness that G-d gave man is part of the gift of being able to do chesed. If you have a normal, single person, he looks out for his own interests. He gets married, and now he also looks out for his wife's interests. he has children, and he now looks out for his children's interests. All the time he is being selfish - but he views his wife and children as an extension of himself. If a person works on his ahavas Yisroel, he will grow his concept of self until he sees all of Klal Yisroel as extensions of himself, and he will look out for their interests as he looks out for his own.

In other words, Judaism does not preach negation or sacrifice of the self; rather a person must develop a healthy sense of ego that encompasses the well being of others.

Ayn Rand almost got there, but in her vehemence against collectivism/dependence, she stopped short at libertarianism/independence and missed the final step: interdependence. (Stephen Covey fans, that's for you.) Interestingly, none of her characters ever have children. Nor did she. I guess that's what happens when you can't grow your ego past yourself.

EDIT: Thanks to MG, who saw this post and sent me links to Rav Schwab's magnum opus, Shaarei Yosher. The part about developing your ego to encompass others is in the introduction, pages 1 and 2.

I am not tweeting for Gilad Schalit

Gilad Schalit is about to spend yet another birthday in captivity. In honor of this occasion, several Jewish/Israel activists have called for Twitterers to tweet messages about Gilad with a specific tag, in the hope of making his name a Top-10 trending topic.

Let me be clear: I hope and pray for Gilad's safe and speedy return to his family just as much as the next guy; I cannot even begin to imagine what kind of suffering he and his family must be going through.

But I will not support this or any other "Free Gilad" campaigns. Not on Twitter, not on Facebook, not even as a bumper sticker.

Think about it: who is supposed to feel the heat from these campaigns? Hamas? You gotta be kidding! If Gilad Schalit became the top trending topic on Twitter for an entire year, it would not make one whit of difference to those bloodthirsty savages. Rather, it would have exactly the opposite of the intended effect: once Hamas sees that so many people care about Gilad, they will know that they can up their price for him.

The only party who is going to feel the pressure is the Israeli government, who will feel themselves pushed to make yet another obscenely lopsided deal to release more and more murderers, terrorists and common criminals in order to get back one Israeli soldier - who may C"V not even be alive any more. And these deals always result in more terrorism and murder.

I want Gilad home - but not at any price. I will not be party to any pressure campaign on the Israeli government in this regard, because there are 6 million other Jews in Israel who should not be made to pay for Gilad Schalit with their own blood.

The Dilemma of the Cat Man

For those of you who have been quietly following my cat saga, it has finally been resolved.

Three of the kittens have been adopted (one by my children). And somebody put us in touch with a fellow who runs a cat shelter called Girgurim. We called him up, and he was willing to take in the mother and two remaining kittens. He wanted to push us off for a few days, but eventually we got him to agree to take them before shabbos.

So Friday afternoon, my family piled into the car with said felines, and drove off to Kibbutz Harel (between Tzomet Shimshon and TzometNachson), where Girgurim is located. Here our host accepted the cats and took us on a short tour of his premises.

They care for around 800 cats in 1 dunam of land that they have enclosed for their comfort. Yes, those figures are correct. We saw it. They never destroy any cats, no matter how sick or feeble; they just take them in and care for them. And I have to be honest, these cats look like somebody is taking the most amazing care of them. They look strong, robust, healthy - as if each one of them was being taken care of individually by a family with 2.4 kids and a white picket fence around their garden. Except that they're all living under one gigantic roof, with tens of discarded sofas, beds and other furniture and toys to sleep on and play with. If I were a cat in Israel, I would probably want to live there.

Anyway, I thanked they guy, and gave him a modest donation - maybe enough to feed the 3 cats I gave him for a month. I thought, I can't take this money out of maaser, and I would much rather donate money to a cause that benefits people rather than cats.

So now, this guy with the big heart is saddled with 3 extra feline mouths to feed. I'm sure it's a big maala what he's doing, looking after Hashem's creatures - but would I encourage my children to follow his path? No way. Frankly, I think he's lost the plot. I think he's wasting his obviously considerable koach of chesed on a bunch of dumb cats, when he could be using it to care for any number of different kinds of people who need it.

Yet I am grateful to him, and I took advantage of him. I think what he's doing is silly and wasteful; I think he is wasting his life on a non-cause - and I went ahead and fed him more of the same drug.

Was that a good thing to do? Should I maybe have looked at his situation and said to myself, "This man says he wants my cats, but I know better what he needs, and that is for me simply to dump the cats on some kibbutz somewhere and let them fend for themselves, rather than be an additional burden to this misguided fellow Yid here, who doesn't know his right hand from his left."

What do you think?

Don't donate money over the phone!

This post was inspired by Rafi's posting today, about an experience he had with a telemarketer soliciting him for a donation. I was going to comment there, but I think this merits a blog post of its own.

There are many stories of people abusing the name of a well known organization to solicit donations over the phone. Lemaan Achai has been the victim of this: they have stated many times that they never solicit funds over the phone, yet there's an organization called "Lemaan Achai (Rechovot)" that regularly phones people in Beit Shemesh, introducing themselves simply as "Lemaan Achai" (maybe mumbling the "Rechovot" part), and leveraging LA's good name in Beit Shemesh to get funds for themselves.

A few months ago, it occurred to me that is is impossible for me to know whether anybody who calls me unsolicited is actually representing the organization they say they are. If I wanted, I could open myself a PayPal or other merchant account and name it, say, "Yad Eliezer", then start phoning people up with a great sales pitch, get their credit card numbers and bill them as if I were the real Yad Eliezer. It would show up on their credit card statements as "Yad Eliezer", and nobody would be any the wiser.

Since then, I have refused point blank to give out my credit card info to anybody over the phone - even if I know the organization, and the caller insists that I've donated to them in the past, and all they want is for me to renew my donation! Who says that they didn't dupe me a year ago? How do I know that they really are who they say they are - especially if their caller ID is blocked, as most telemarketers are? Instead, what I do is I ask them for their website URL, or for them to send me a brochure in the mail so that I can mail them a check. It's actually a little disconcerting how few of these reps have actually followed through with this...

Bottom line: don't give your credit card information to anybody over the phone - unless you yourself initiated the call.

Another wild translation

I saw this over a year ago, and took this photo, then forgot about it. Today I was cleaning out my cellphone pictures, and I found it again:

Don't trust translation software!

This one is just too precious not to share. I picked this up from my mailbox a few minutes ago:What more can I say?

The irony of having a "friend" in Washington

When George W Bush was running for re-election against John Kerry in 2004, I speculated with some of my friends that maybe it would be better for Kerry to win, because at least then you'd know who you're dealing with. With Bush, who was perceived as a "friend" of Israel, it'd be difficult to say "no" to any demands he places on Israel, even though you know the Palestinians will serially violate every single one of their obligations with impunity - because Bush is a friend, and we don't want to alienate our friends, right? But for Kerry, who is known to be more pro-Arab than Bush, there wouldn't be any illusions, and therefore no need to pander to him.

My friends swung me only on the basis that Bush was in favor of keeping US troops in Iraq, which is exactly where you want them if Iran was ever going to be subjected to the former Bush Doctrine of regime change for governments that support terrorism, while Kerry had promised a full pullout.

Four years later, I had the same debate, and still came out rooting for John McCain for the same reasons, muttering a quiet "baruch Dayan HaEmes" when the results showed Obama had won. And now we get to see my "friend in Washington" thesis in practice.

Obama has truly surpassed all my expectations for alienating Israelis. It really is amazing how he has swung Israeli public opinion since his inauguration: when he started out he had 31% of Israelis thinking he was pro-Israel, versus 14% who felt he was pro-Arab, and 40% felt he was neutral. The latest opinion polls have only 6% still thinking he's pro-Israel, 36% neutral, and fully 50% now feel he's pro-Arab. You gotta hand it to the guy - that is really amazing work. Not only has he debased himself by grovelling in front of the Muslim world with his cringing apologetics in Cairo, but he has succeeded in completely alienating Israelis to the extent that only 6% of us feel that he's on our side!

To me, this is very good news. He now has absolutely no leverage to extract any more stupid unliateral concessions out of us. Take today - the US State Department officially stated that they demand and end to all construction in Jerusalem suburbs on the "wrong" side of the Green Line, including "natural growth". Does anyone seriously believe that we're going to listen to a bombastic edict like that? Fuggedaboudit. Obama is just burning all his leverage with Israel, because no "friend" could make a demand like that, especially when we would be getting nothing in return. To a world of Islamist enemies, the USA has no concrete demands, just some touchy-feely stuff about trying to get to know each other better - but for Israel, the US's only staunch friend and ally - for Israel, the US knows how to make concrete demands.

And if we don't comply? What are they going to do - declare sanctions on us? Congress and Senate may be stacked with Democrats, but most of them are still pretty pro-Israel, to the extent that there's even been a rumbling among the Democrats themselves about Obama's Israel-unfriendly line. Sanctions not happening any time soon.

There really is great meaning to the "Baruch Dayan Haemes" blessing - we acknowledge G-d's greater judgment when things happen that appear to be bad. Obama's ascent to the presidency looks like really bad news, but I'll bet in the next 4 years Israel makes fewer stupid unilateral concessions than it did in any of the 4-year terms of Bush (Jr and Sr) or Clinton.

Supporting the Iranian revolution is a no-lose proposition!

Today I had to say a birkas shehecheyanu - it's the first time I've ever felt proud of a statement made by Shimon Peres!

Israel is to my knowledge the first and only country to have publicly supported the Iranian people in their quest for freedom. And we should be trumpeting this from the rooftops!

It's a no-lose proposition: if the Iranian regime falls (as we all hope it will), then the Iranian people will have a massive grudge against the people who passively watched them getting slaughtered amid mild statements of "reservations" about the fairness of the election, calls for "restraint" and "calm", and earnest attempts to "engage in dialogue" with the murderers. Conversely, those who stood up and cheered for the people, even if they could do nothing more than have the moral clarity to call Evil for what it is, will at least be remembered as friends.

And if the regime manages to crush the revolution - well, what have we lost? Are they going to hate us more than they already do? Are they going to want to drop a bomb on us ר"ל any more than they do now? And if they try to incite their people against us with the "Look! It's all a Zionist plot!" line, I think that would backfire on them in our favor. The Iranian regime has no more credibility with its people, and they're not going to buy the "Goldstein" argument any more. The fear society of Iran is cracking, and it will not last very much longer at all. And if the perception in the street is that Israel is the enemy of the Iranian regime, so much the better! When the Iranian people eventually are liberated, they may yet become our allies!

Stranger than fiction?

You have nothing to lose. Get onto twitter and make sure everybody knows that Israel is supporting the Iranian people!

Rabbi Horowitz - The System Worked

After all the bad press we've been getting about the sexual molestation issues in our community, at last we have some good news from Rabbi Yakov Horowitz.

Note that in this case, they went straight to the police. Not to the tznius police, the real police. It was handled cleanly, discreetly, and with the full cooperation and support of the local Rabbonus.

Think we could manage that here?

The speech we wish Bibi could have given

Ah, if only we had a PM who had the guts to tell it like it is...

You want to have a prime minister who isn't afraid to mention G-d's name?
Sign up already!

Stan's right to have babies

It struck me that every one of Bibi's conditions for Palestinian statehood is very reasonable, yet even before the applause for his speech had died down, the Arabs had rejected every one of them offhand, and blamed him for setting unacceptable conditions. ("What?! You want our independence not to come at the expense of yours?! Outrageous!")

In effect, Bibi's nod to a Palestinian state is no more meaningful than Judith's proposal that Stan should have the right to have babies. Well played, man!

The best possible outcome x2

Yesterday there were two fairly significant events: Bibi Netanyahu's grand policy speech, and continued and escalating riots in Iran protesting the stolen election.

All told, I don't think things could have turned out better in either situation.

I'm not going to dissect Bibi's speech here; there are some very good analyses from Jameel and Barry Rubin, among others. I will just say that I think he played his hand very well. He made an offer to the Arabs that incensed the Right, but it's got as much chance of coming to fruition as, we have of, well, the Arabs acknowledging Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, with Jerusalem as its undivided capital, and not flooded with millions of Arab "refugees". He also had the guts to say "NO" to Obama's noxious demands that we effectively sterilize the Jews who live over the Green Line; and he gave a good lesson to the Prez about Jewish history in Eretz Yisrael not having started with the Holocaust. Just a pity that he failed to call for the release of Jonathan Pollard. Maybe he felt that he'd pushed his luck enough already... but still...

In summary, I would have been ecstatic if he'd given the speech that Moshe Feiglin wrote for him, but I don't think Bibi, given that he does not believe in G-d, could have done any better than he did last night.

Strangely enough, I'm much more captivated by the goings on in Iran than I am by the repercussions of Bibi's speech. Before the elections I was in contact with an 19-year-old Iranian programmer whom I met on StackOverflow. I asked him what his feeling was on the election, and he said he wasn't even going to bother to vote. There was originally a field of hundreds of candidates, but the list got sanitized by the mullahs until there were only 4 candidates who got the hechsher of Iran's Supreme Leadership. If they got the hechsher, that basically automatically disqualifies them as a real hope for the people. They could only choose between Bad, Filthy, Disgusting and Utterly Repulsive.

So I thought, perhaps it's actually worse if Ahmadinejad loses! Coz then the new guy can come in and pretend that he wants to talk with the West, while buying more and more time to continue developing nuclear weapons apace, and still spewing the same hatred and genocidal invective against Israel. At least if Ahmadinejad wins, he can't even fake moderation! It'll be more difficult to pretend that talking to him is going to help things - although I think Obama has already decided that he has no problem with Iran having the Bomb.

But lo and behold! The Iranian people turned out in their masses to vote for Bad instead of Utterly Repulsive - and when their votes were stolen, they decided they had had enough! They have tasted freedom, and they are not going to let go! And it's not just about rallying around the guy who lost. I don't think the Iranians just want a change in government; if they did, I wouldn't be so interested. I think they want a change in regime.

Take a look at all the Twitter traffic emanating from Iran. People aren't just chanting, "Down with Ahmadinejad," or "Long live Moussavi" - they are shouting, "Death to Khamenei!"

It's really amazing, seeing as I'm in the middle of rereading Natan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy - to see how perfectly accurate his words are. We are watching a fear society in its last stages before collapse. The people have tasted freedom, and the regime is being forced to spend every last iota of its power to repress them and beat them into submission. As his last throw of the die, Ahmadinejad is playing his only trump card - the bogeyman of "foreign enemies" who are plotting against Iran and trying to sabotage its internal affairs. Sharansky identified this, too - the only way to keep True Believers as TBs, and to prevent doublethinkers from becoming dissenters is to focus their attention on outside enemies, to serve as a rallying point. Looking at the footage of the Iranian riots, I think it's too late for that.

IMO it's going to go either one of three ways from here.

1. The mullahs carry out their own version of Tiananmen Square, crushing people's will to resist. Try papering over a massacre when you're trying to fake moderation to the West. Even Europe will have a hard time justifying doing business with Iran after that.
2. They will give in to pressure and either annul the election results or institute some kind of power sharing between the candidates. There will also have to be some kind of regime reform to accompany that if they want the people to calm down. Yet another crack in the fear society's brittle fortifications.
3. The people storm the Bastille, as it were, and literally throw the mullahs from power. Not so far-fetched; from what I'm reading on Twitter, the army has declared it will not fight against the protestors, and the government is being forced to use Hizbullah Arabs for crowd control, because the local Farsi police are to compassionate on their brethren.

I'm rooting for number 3. But whatever happens, Iran's fear society is crumbling, and we can look forward to the liberation of the Iranian people from their dictatorship sooner than you think. The only thing that can save them now is if the West, in its infuriating "realist" delusions, decides to give the mullahs and Ahmadinejad a hand-up, all in the name of "regional stability". Right now what the people of Iran really need is for the USA and Europe to come out publicly supporting their struggle for freedom. If they fail to do so, then when the Iranians finally do liberate themselves, they will resent us all the more for failing to come to their assistance.

You can also make a difference. Use the social networking web sites to post messages of encouragement to the Iranian people, who deserve freedom no less than any other nation on Earth. Tell them we are with them; encourage them to liberate themselves - and show them that they have friends in the Weat, and especially in Israel.

The News Revolution

When social networks like Facebook and Twitter started coming out, I took a look, and after much consideration decided that they were just a bloody waste of time.

Now, watching the stuff happening in Iran after their elections, I am coming to realize that we are actually watching nothing less than a revolution - the News Revolution.

I started realizing this during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, when my primary news source was not CNN, not the Jerusalem Post, and not Radio Kol Yisrael. It was Jameel @ The Muqata. Yes, a blog web site, which carried the most up to date news about how things were going for our boys in Gaza, where rockets were falling - and they had the scoop hours before the news appeared on any mainstream news source.

And now on Twitter, you can watch everything happening within Iran, as told by the Iranians, and uncensored by the politicos at CNN and BBC who prefer detente over confrontation, who prefer stability over freedom. All the stuff that you'll never see on CNN. And more - it is also serving as a mouthpiece for those people who otherwise could not express themselves - both for Iranians to sound off about how they long for freedom, and for outsiders to encourage them to pursue it.

This is the News Revolution, where the people are taking back the narrative from the journalists. No longer can the mainstream media black out all dissenting opinions and subtly mold popular consensus; no longer can they control what people are exposed to. The truth will out, and we will all be much better off for it!

Girsa d'yankusa

Jewish tradition has a very strong emphasis on "girsa d'yankusa" - the things you learn when you're young. On a fresh, impressionable mind, things make a much greater impact - so it's considered really important to start out on the right foot.

I can see how true this is of myself. I grew up in a pretty liberal household in South Africa, and the things I learned under my parents' tutelage have been the things that have most stuck with me in my life. Things like basic menschkeit and honesty. Having an open mind, and encouraging questioning. A deep seated revulsion at racism of any sort - I will never forget the telling off I got when, as a 6-year-old, I repeated a racist term I had learned from my schoolmates! I also imbibed a culture of activism, and having the courage to stand up for what you believe in, especially from my mother, who was arrested several times for anti-apartheid activities. People who haven't lived in a fear society usually don't fully appreciate just what kind of mesirus nefesh it takes to be a dissident, and actively work against the regime. My parents took great risks to do what they believed was right, and I can only pray that I can be a worthy heir to this spirit.

I only became religious at age 20, long past my "girsa d'yankusa" stage. And while I have intellectually accepted the ol malchus shamayim, internalizing it to the degree that it is a part of my personality is much more of a struggle, particularly where my religion might conflict with some of the things I learned as a child. I instinctively look for accommodations, and it's a constant challenge for me to be conscious of where the accommodation is justified, and where it's just a case of cognitive dissonance.

For example, I learned to live and let live. If someone else wants to do something that you disapprove of, unless it materially affects you, you should leave him alone to make his own choices. Judaism, on the other hand, is pretty strong about coercion, to the point where (in the presence of an authorized court) a Jew who eats pork can be flogged to within an inch of his life, and he can be sentenced to death for driving his car on shabbos. If that's not coercion, I don't know what is. But here I am, openly criticizing the ban on pork sales, advocating for civil marriage legislation, and quite willing to give directions to a Jew who is driving his car on shabbos. In each one of these instances I have, I believe, sound halachic reasons to back up my position, whether because the benefit of the coercion is outweighed by the loss, or because by giving the guy directions you are actually minimizing the chillul shabbos. But my position is not mainstream; I venture you'd find that most religious Jews would reflexively take exactly the opposite position to me in all of the above issues.

I was brought up with democracy as a fundamental value. People choose their leaders, and the leaders are answerable to their electorate, who will punish them if they fail to perform. Contrast Judaism, which on the face of things, does not have such a concept as leaders elected from the bottom up. The Jewish ideal is top-down: a king, appointed by Divine edict through a prophet, succeeded by his biological heirs, and wielding practically absolute power, albeit constrained by his own requirement to keep all the mitzvos of the Torah, as well as certain checks and balances that are under the control of the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin itself is certainly not elected; it is appointed in much the same way (lehavdil elef havdolos) as the Israeli Supreme Court, only more so - there is not even a judicial selection committee for lay people to have their say; new dayanim on the Sanhedrin are appointed only by the existing members!

I reconcile this by saying that the Sanhedrin represented an unbroken chain of command from Moshe Rabbeinu and the 70 elders, who in turn appointed the best possible people to fill any vacancies. If you have a benevolent leadership like this, their judgment is probably way better than the judgment of a bunch of mostly ignorant lay people. After all, according to pure democratic principles, we have the absurd situation that a mentally retarded teenager's randomly chosen vote carries as much weight as the carefully considered position of a G-d fearing genius like Prof. Yisrael Aumann. But in our time, when we have no prophet to declare whom Hashem has chosen as king, and our Rabbinic chain of command has been all but broken, democracy is simply the best alternative we have left. We cannot continue to follow the paradigm of self-appointed, self-perpetuating structures, because look what happens if your original kernel is corrupt: you come out with an abomination like the Israeli Supreme Court, whose primary agenda appears to be stripping Israel of every last vestige of real Jewish values. We are therefore forced to fall back on the people's choice, both in terms of leadership and judiciary, because a leadership that is answerable to its people is far more likely to be benevolent than an unscrupulous dictatorship. (I include the judiciary in a guarded kind of way, because truthfully, we do have a Jewish judiciary even today - but there is no one beis din that is universally accepted by all factions, so unless all today's gedolei Torah can get together to appoint a Sanhedrin, a hypothetical Torah-true State of Israel would have no alternative but to have some kind of democratically appointed Sanhedrin, perhaps appointed by democratic vote among the gedolei hador.)

What about other clashes with Western values, such as "gender equality"? Yeah, yeah, I know all the apologetics about "separate but equal", and the different roles that men and women are supposed to play in Judaism. But am I happy to let my two sons split my entire inheritance, leaving my three daughters with nothing? Not a chance. Whatever the halachic devices are to do so, I fully intend to make sure that my daughters get their fair share of my estate. What is this? - do I think I'm smarter than the Torah? I'm uncomfortable with the dissonance between my professed beliefs and the fact that I simply don't want my inheritance to be distributed the way the Torah says it should be. Is that a bad thing?

I'm sure there are many other areas of my life where my worldview is colored by my secular/traditional upbringing, and is in conflict with authentic Jewish values - whatever those are.

What about you?
What was the "theme" of your upbringing?
How does that mesh with your current lifestyle?
What dissonances do you experience in your life?
What lessons have you learned, and what advice do you have for others to deal with dissonances?

The safest place for your life's savings?

With the world's financial crisis, many people have joked that the safest place for your money is under your mattress.

Well, apparently that's not necessarily so!

An Israeli woman mistakenly threw out a mattress with $1 million inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites.

The woman told Army Radio that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise on Monday and threw out the old one, only to discover that her mother had hidden her life savings inside.

But look at what she has to say about this misfortune - a profound Jewish response:

For her part, Anat said it could be worse. "People have to take everything in proportion and thank God for the good and the bad," she said.

Kol hakavod, Anat! That is a kiddush Hashem. May He restore your mother's lost money!

Calling cat lovers!

A few weeks ago, one of our neighbors' kids brought home a cat that somebody else had had as a pet, and didn't want it anymore. I'm sure the story has grown legs, but apparently the original owner was about to dump it somewhere, and our neighbor's kid had rachmonus on the thing and brought it home.

Problem 1: she didn't clear it with her parents. So she wasn't allowed to keep it in the house, and it started wandering from house to house in our complex, picking up whatever scraps it could beg or steal.

Problem 2: it started becoming apparent after a week or two that either this cat had been eating really well, or it had a few buns in the oven. On shabbos a week ago we settled that question; it lay down in our next-door neighbors' garden and proceeded - much to the delight of a capacity crowd of local children, and much to the chagrin of the family whose garden was serving as the grandstand - to deliver six teeny tiny (and very cute) little kittens. (One has since died; the remaining 5 look pretty strong.)

Problem 3: Now this cat has officially adopted our complex as its home, and she is becoming more and more emphatic about her rights to whatever any household happens to be eating, cooking or defrosting at any given time. This past shabbos she had the chutzpah to take advantage of our open front door to sneak up to our second floor, and one by one she deposited her kittens on the pull-out bed in our 2nd bedroom.

Now the neighbors are growing restless, and this cat is fast becoming felix non gratus...

Are there any cat lovers out there? There are 5 really cute kittens just waiting for a good home. My daughter got very excited about them and went and took a bunch of photos, just so you can see that they really are cute. If you want the mommy, too, you can have them all now; if you just want a kitten, we'll hand them out as soon as they don't need their mother anymore. (Incidentally, does anyone know offhand what age that is?)

Please be in touch by email: sbehr.at.sabreton.com

---

Update 20 July 2009:
The kittens are now weaned and ready to go to a good, loving home! They are healthy, strong, amazingly cute, friendly and love to play with children.

Please be in touch to claim your kitten!

UPDATE 27 July 2009:
The neighbors have had enough. Ultimatum - the cats have to go... today.

This is your last opportunity to get yourself a strong, healthy, de-flead, hand-tame and very cute kitten.

Email: sbehr.at.sabreton.com or phone 02 999 1342

Venomous drink?

Just a little bit of fun... I spotted this sign in my local supermarket today:

RC = ארסי = poisonous, venomous, toxic, virulent

Man, does that stuff pack a punch!

Barack Obama as John Lennon

I just read the full text of President Obama's Cairo speech.

He really sounds genuine. I think he honestly, truthfully wants to make the world a better place.

But to call him naïve would disrespectful to naïveté.
The leader of the free world, in front of billions of viewers, metaphorically sat down, lit up a joint and started singing "Imagine" by John Lennon.
The real kicker was his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Marei d'chulei alma! The man sounds like an 18-year-old at a university "Ban The Bomb" protest!

I feel an icy chill when I consider that for the next 4 years at least, we have a guy with the maturity and subtlety of a teenager leading the greatest world power at a time of international crisis.

To put it mildly, the next 4 years are going to be Interesting Times...

Spin

Here's a short video clip called "Spin", which I think carries some very deep and profound messages. Watch it and tell me what you think...



Hattip: Mois

Pikud HaOref Special Edition

The Home Front Command (Pikud HaOref) has been busily distributing CDs today in Ramat Beit Shemesh - a version of their emergency instructions specially made for the Charedi public. This includes haskamos of Rav Shlomo Amar, Rav Simcha haKohen Kook and Rav Yitzchak Dovid Grossman (regrettably no "Litvishe gedolim" there), instructions couched in religious terms of "mitzva" and "hishtadlus", recommendations to bring siddurim, tehillim and tallis and tefillin into the safe room, and - of course - not even a fleeting image of anything suggestive of something that might be construed as... um... female. Sssh. (I checked out the "regular edition" Hebrew videos on the web site, and they don't have any women there, either... so I guess any lonely males looking for a glimpse of the opposite sex will have to find another web site.)

In case you don't find the CDs buried in that 6-month-old pile of junk mail in your post box, as a public service, here are the two most important videos:

1) Choosing and preparing your secure room:


2) What to do in an emergency:


And here is the FAQ (in English) regarding the nationwide drill happening this Tuesday (June 2).

Bad news proves: The world is great!

On the way to visit my wife in hospital a couple of weeks ago, I picked up a hitchhiker. On hearing that we had just had a son, my passenger commented, "It's so nice to hear good news, when the world is so full of difficulties and tragedy." He then proceeded to enumerate several instances of people he knew in difficult financial, health and family situations... being a kind-hearted Jew, he was clearly very touched and disturbed by the suffering of his fellows.

I thought about this for a minute, and started speculating aloud with him:

As human beings, we are drawn to read bad news. Newspapers are filled mostly with a mixture of alarming, depressing and outraging articles; clearly that's what people want to read! Why are we so perversely fascinated by bad news? Why are we more drawn to a story of a horrific car accident ר"ל than a story about a new medication that will lengthen and improve the lives of millions of cancer sufferers?

In determining newsworthiness, my guess is that the most eye-catching stories are the ones that are the most out of the ordinary. Dog bites man = yawn; man bites dog = wow! So in fact, the fact that the media reports on so much negativity is the exception that proves the rule: The world is great!

As you read these words, thousands of babies are being born all around the world, bringing joy and excitement to their parents. Nobody reports on this tremendous miracle, because it is so common, we have come to take it for granted. Yes, many people are dying, too - but mostly people who have lived a good and long life. Most people in the world have enough to eat; most people enjoy their lives in general. The sun rises and sets like clockwork, providing exactly enough light and warmth to sustain life on the planet; our climate patterns are stable enough that we can predict with great confidence whether we should pack away our winter woollies for the next 6 months. Electricity supply has over 99% uptime (compare that to 100 years ago!), we can make inexpensive or free phone calls all over the world, with streaming video, we have a zillion and one different flavors of ice cream (dairy and pareve) to choose from, and we have baby-soft, fresh disposable toilet paper (check out Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayim 3:11 for the alternative).

Yes, folks, the world is working just great, thank you. And instead of focusing ourselves on the exceptions to the rule and getting all depressed by them, we should continually marvel at and be grateful for the infinite kindness of the Creator, Who has set things up so staggeringly perfectly that we barely notice how good things are, except by exception. It's just as well some bad things happen; otherwise we might never notice the good...

Enforcing bicycle safety laws?

I recently saw a police car stopped on a street in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
The officer was standing with a kid on a bicycle, and writing down something.
The child was not wearing a helmet...

I heard a while ago that they had passed a law that allows police to fine the parents of a child who is riding a bike without a helmet.
Can anyone confirm this?
Does my sighting mean that they are now enforcing this law?

If so - kol hakavod to them!

Azriel Chayim Behr

On Monday 18 May 2009, כ"ד אייר תשס"ט, our son entered into the Bris of Avraham Avinu, and was given the name Azriel Chayim - עזריאל חיים.

This is a first for us. For all our previous children we put a lot of thought into the meaning of their names, the etymology of each name, the balance between the first and second names, etc. etc. This time around it didn't really matter to us what the names Azriel or Chayim mean or how they complement each other, or even that "Azriel" sounds uncomfortably like our older son's name "Ezra", which could possibly giving the impression that we're obsessed with help (עזר being the root of both names)! There was almost no need for discussion; we simply knew, even from before he was conceived, that our next son would bear the name Azriel Chayim. Because that is the name of the person who, in my humblest opinion, was probably the greatest human being I have ever met.

That's him on the left: Rabbi Azriel Chaim Goldfein זצ"ל, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshiva Gedola of Johannesburg, who passed away about a year and a half ago at the relatively young age of 73. I have written before about him, in a more oblique way; and many others have delivered spoken and written hespedim for him. I'd like to add my angle here.

Rabbi Goldfein was one of those rare individuals who was beloved by practically everyone he ever met. He loved and could relate to every human being, whether the greatest Torah scholar, an assimilated Jew or a non-Jewish nurse taking his blood pressure. He could converse freely and easily with anyone, with sincerity and interest, as one person said at his funeral, as if they were his best friend in the world. "Nay," said this speaker, "when he was talking to you, you were his best friend in the world."

He was a man of profound humility. He did not puff up in self-importance; he declined to grow a beard (other than during sefira and bein hameitzarim); while always dignified, he never felt the need to dress in an overtly "rabbinic" way. I heard that at one major public dinner, there was one table reserved for the Rabbis of the community. Rabbi Goldfein was among the first to arrive, and as he was making to sit down at this table, one of the waiters came and said, "Excuse me, sir, you can't sit here; this table is reserved for the Rabbis!" Rabbi Goldfein simply thanked the waiter for pointing this out, and politely moved away, mingled with other guests, and only later discreetly returned to the Rabbis' table along with his colleagues.

He drilled home the importance of derech eretz, how important it is to behave like a mensch, to dress like a mensch, to relate to others like a mensch. Derech eretz kadma laTorah, he always said: if you don't have the most basic level of menschkeit, how is it possible that the higher level of Torah is going to stick with you? Can you have a house without a foundation?

And speaking of Torah, he was a person who was, if you can have such a thing, the embodiment of pure, unadulterated Torah, with no add-ons of politics or other agendas. Once an Israeli professor met him, learned he was a Rosh Yeshiva, and asked him which camp he was from. "What do you mean, what camp am I from?" asked Rav Goldfein. "I'm a Rosh Yeshiva, not a Rosh Machaneh!" He had no interest in these political squabbles. All he wanted was to know the emes - how to understand the daf, what is the halacha; what does Hashem want us to do? And a love of Torah! He was generally a happy and optimistic person - but when he was giving shiur, he never stopped smiling - not for a minute! Even when he was in hospital, towards the end, in great pain and discomfort, and under strict instructions to relax and not strain himself, he could not resist engaging in Torah discussions with his colleagues and students who came to visit him. He would simply forget his pain, becoming more and more animated and excited as the discussions progressed, until the doctors would come and eject his guests and sternly warn him (again) that he needed to rest.

But to me, the one thing that he represented most strongly was balance. As I mentioned in my previous article, it's actually pretty easy to be stringent all the time. All you have to do is work on your gevura, your ability to restrain yourself, and you can say "no" to pretty much anything. But that's not the whole picture - because for every stringency there is an associated leniency. You want to make your restaurant "mehadrin"? If all restaurants do that, all the "regular" shochtim will lose their parnassa! You want a new, nicer mikveh, with more hiddurim? And cast aspersions on all the people who used the old mikveh for decades before? Every choice in life is something to be weighed up carefully, and casually choosing to err on the side of (apparent) stringency is not automatically the safest route!

Rabbi Goldfein to me represented the struggle for balance - and a thoroughly successful one at that. It is our beracha to our child, Azriel Chayim, that he should take after his namesake in all the aspects I have described above, and that his struggle for perfection throughout his life should be similarly blessed.

What's YOUR position on techeles?

After a very interesting Pesach trip with Machon Ptil Tekhelet, I'm going through a gradual phasing in of techeles into my tzitzis.

Being extra conscious now of techeles, I'm noticing what other people are wearing, and it surprises me that so few people are wearing techeles. To me it seems a pretty simple choice: the researchers seem to have very solid proof that that the stuff they're producing is the real techeles mentioned in the Torah. And even if you say there's some doubt as to whether it really is techeles, what have you got to lose? At worst you've got a dye on your tzitzis that doesn't make them invalid; at best you're fulfilling an extra mitzva d'oraysa, every minute of the daylight hours, for which the reward is eternal!

Is techeles too expensive? Most people are prepared to invest a fair bit of money in hiddurim/optional extras, such as buying a top-of-the-range esrog for Sukkos, or tefillin with completely black straps. So if you're prepared to pay 200 NIS or more for a nice lulav/esrog set, with which you're going to perform a mitzva d'oraysa exactly once if you're lucky (this year 1st day Sukkos falls on shabbos, so the entire mitzva of lulav will be d'rabbanan this year) - why would you not spend 160 NIS on something that is a mitzva d'oraysa (even if you have some doubt), that you can do every single day, every minute of the daylight hours?

I don't really buy the financial argument; I'm guessing that the reason why more people aren't wearing techeles is partly because people haven't really thought that hard about it, and partly because it's perceived as a political statement: I know one charedi Rabbi who wears techeles, but tucks in his tzitzis so that he doesn't get ostracized by the rest of his charedi chevra.

I'm especially interested to hear if you are opposed to wearing techeles - why?

What do you think? Please take the poll on the sidebar of my blog, or leave comments on this article.

Later Edit: I have taken down the poll, because some immature, insecure person has obviously written a bot to skew the results. I mean, I may be very popular and loved, but even I doubt my ability to attract some 45 people within an hour to visit my blog, let alone vote in a poll... and funnily enough, all of them were "ideologically opposed to techeles".

This reaction is very disturbing, because it says to me that someone feels so strongly against techeles that they are willing to violate "midavar sheker tirchak" (last week's parsha!) in order to push a certain agenda.

Why? What is so insidious, so subversive about techeles, that someone should feel the need to wage a holy war against a mitzva of the Torah?

Lomdishe Graffiti

Mas'as Mordechai is a major beis midrash in my street, and I've recently started a chavrusa there in the mornings. For the convenience of the many people learning there, they have an automatic beverage vending machine, which produces a reasonable tasting vehicle for the morning caffeine kick, plus several other liquids said to taste of tea, coffee and other popular beverages.

On this machine is a sign attesting to the kashrus of all the drinks. Since some of the drinks contain chometz (chicory, I guess), they also felt the need to assure potential buyers that they need have no concern about the chometz having been in Jewish ownership over Pesach. The sign said something to the effect of:

כל המשקאות הינם ללא חשש חמץ שעבר עליו הפסח
(Loosely translated: All the drinks are above suspicion of being chometz that was owned by a Jew over Pesach)

But some learned joker has gone and strategically inserted two commas, so that the sign reads:

כל המשקאות הינם, ללא חשש, חמץ שעבר עליו הפסח
(Loosely translated: All the drinks are, without any doubt, chometz that was owned by a Jew over Pesach)

Touché!

Groan - Netanyahu immediately disappoints...

Well, looks like my earlier posting of today was wrong; apparently Netanyahu was not finessing anything, nor was he asserting anything about the Arabs having to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Quoth he:

"Contrary to reports, I don't condition dialogue with the Palestinians on recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Nevertheless, progress in the peace process does depend on the willingness to recognize Israel as a Jewish state."

Blah blah blah. Granted, we won't make any progress, but we will still go on talking... and allowing ourselves to be pressurized into making unreciprocated concessions... and destroying Jewish towns and lives... while the Pals do nothing but incite against us in their official media and complain to the world that we're poisoning their wells, using the blood of their children to bake matzos... etc. etc.

Ugh. For a few hours there I thought we were going to see a new style of leadership and advocacy... but it looks like Bibi is slotting straight back into the Kadima/Labor mode of apologetics, concessions and never holding the Palestinian leadership accountable for anything - lest Heaven Forfend! it should turn out that our supposed "peace partners" also want us dead, just as much as Hamas. They only differ on tactics.

Bibi, you let the side down badly. Again.

What NOT to put on a T-shirt

Every now and then when I want a good laugh, I visit Engrish.com for some very funny attempts at English in the Far East.

Apparently this kind of pseudo-English is not confined to the Orient, though. I went to mincha at a local shul a few days ago, and was treated to a rather disturbing sight. One of the mispallelim was wearing a T-shirt with a slogan emlazoned, in large, bold white on black: "RAPER MEN".

After davening, I discreetly called him aside, and asked him if he understood much English. Nope. Clearly not. I explained to him in my best Hebrew what the slogan on his shirt meant. Oops. He won't be wearing that shirt again. (I decided not to photograph him for Engrish.com!)

What was it supposed to say? "Rapper men"? "Paper men"?

Moral of the story: don't wear garments with slogans in a language you don't understand!

All credit to Netanyahu

Bibi Netanyahu is not my favorite politician in the world, but I have to hand it to him, his demand for the PA to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people as a precondition to restarting talks was a genius of a maneuver. The Arabs couldn't bring themselves to accept this, and have launched a pretty pathetic counter-offensive in the media to regain the upper hand.

What this really highlights is the stark difference in approach between Bibi and his opponents. Olmert, Livni et al were completely bent on ignoring the fact that no amount of concessions would ever get the Arabs to accept Israel as a Jewish state. Bibi, in one deft finesse, has exposed for everyone to see the fact that we have no partner for peace - for if they will not accept the fundamental premise that Israel is the state of the Jewish people as a starting point, then there is nothing to talk about. Even Obama can't paper over that - or can he?

So now Netanyahu can come out looking like the good guy: "We're willing to do anything we can for peace - but these guys are not in the game for peace."

Kol hakavod, Bibi! Now keep it up!

The origin of April Fools' Day

Having been "taken" by no fewer than two April Fools' jokes yesterday, I thought I'd mention this...

Back in my bochur days at the Yeshiva Gedola of Johannesburg, I once picked up a (Hebrew) book off the shelf that gave some insight into various odd minhagim. I was intrigued to find one section devoted to the custom of playing tricks on people on April 1. And here's what I found out.

The Christians founded their faith a lot on the Pagan idea of a virgin birth. They claim that their savior was born on 25 December. Which would mean that, given a normal pregnancy of 38 weeks, the baby would have been conceived on or around 1 April. (Go ahead and count - or else you can trust that I've done the math already.) So why pull pranks on people on that day? Well, it wasn't the Christians who started it... it was the Pagans who were, shall we say, a little skeptical of whether the baby's father was really the angel he claimed he was.

The book's author concluded that even though the fun is at the expense of the Christians (and they don't even realize it!), it's inappropriate for Jews to get involved in these practices.

I've been looking for another copy of this book, but I can't remember what it was called, or who wrote it! Anyone know?

Amateur Game Theory analysis - Elections 2009 (1st Quarter)

I'm a great fan of the very concept of Game Theory - the study how to model strategic situations mathematically - for which our very own Prof Yisrael Aumann won a Nobel Prize in Economics.

I would love to know how Prof Aumann would map out the political landscape on Feb 11 2009, the day after Netanyahu stole defeat from the jaws of victory - but unfortunately I don't have access to him or his phenomenal knowledge and understanding. Even so, I'm going to dabble a bit in analyzing where things stand on the political landscape, and how they will play out.

First up: the facts. As of this writing, the provisional seat allocations are:
Kadima - 28
Likud - 27
Yisrael Beiteinu - 15
Labor - 13
Arabs - 12
Shas - 11
National Union - 4
Gimmel - 4
Bayit Yehudi - 3
Meretz - 3

Now bear in mind that the votes from the army usually favor the Likud or other right-wing parties, and they have the power to swing one or two mandates. Furthermore, Kadima made its vote-sharing agreement with the Green Party, which failed to make the cut, so they won't be getting diddly squat from any vote sharing agreements, making them even less likely to benefit from the army's votes. But in the meantime it's an unknown and I'm going to discount the army votes for now.

So here's my take on the parties, what motivates them, and how negotiations will go, working in rough order of more certain behavior to less certain.

The Arabs: up to 12 seats, will probably lose one or two from the army votes. Bad news for everyone; they won't join any coalition and are effectively just there as spoilers.

Meretz: I shed no tears for them; they lost their support to Kadima, and that's a large part of the reason why Livni pipped Bibi at the post. If only the right-wingers who voted for Lieberman had realized the same thing on the other side of the spectrum... Anyway, Meretz is squarely in the Kadima camp; no way they'll be part of a Likud-led coalition. And if Livni wants Lieberman in her government, she'll have to do without Meretz, too.

National Union: Will never join a Kadima-led coalition, being that they view Kadima as Satan's spawn (as do I). Lo nishkach v'lo nislach.

Bayit Yehudi ("New" Mafdal): Will join any coalition that will have them. The epitome of dati leumi obsequiousness, they will attempt to do kiruv on the most hardened and cynical of politicians, following the tradition of Mafdal remaining in Sharon's government in the vain hope that their feckless presence would somehow prevent the expulsion and destruction of Gush Katif.

UTJ (Gimmel): Same goes for them, except they're less obsequious and more demanding; they will join any government that will meet their price tag.

Shas: They've officially thrown in their lot with Bibi, and Livni has publicly all but burnt her bridges with them. It will take a lot for her to climb down and accept now what she rejected before with such righteous indignation. Shas's price tag is not only waaay higher than UTJ's; it carries with it a strident demand for a socialist economic policy, which even Netanyahu is going to have difficulty finessing. Being that both Likud and Kadima are basically free market supporters, Shas must know that their demands are not going to be met easily, and both Likud and Kadima would frankly rather form a coalition without Shas at all - if they could.
Question: Knowing that his party is suffered rather than welcomed in a coalition, will Eli Yishai tone down his demands and try to get what he can rather than take the chance of being left completely out in the cold?

Labor: Ehud Barak has stated that he's expecting to be in the opposition, but I don't think he'd say no to any opportunity to be part of anyone's coalition. He's more naturally at home with Kadima, but I can easily see him in a Likud coalition, too. Remember, this "socialist" follows the tradition of many other socialist leaders by making sure that his own nest is very well feathered before he attends to the needs of the starving masses. I don't think there's an ideological bone in his body; if he could hang on to a ministry - any ministry - by signing up for a Likud coalition, I don't think Netanyahu's diplomatic or economic agenda would faze him much. He might have more of a problem convincing his fellow MKs to come along for the ride, especially when the knives are already out for him in his own party...

Yisrael Beiteinu: While I may quietly enjoy some of Avigdor Lieberman's demagoguery, the man simply gives me the creeps. There's something darkly Orwellian about him. He says he's right-wing, but he sat quite happily in Ehud Olmert's government while the embers of Gush Katif were still warm. His loyalty to the Jewish people and Eretz Yisrael is not religious; it's racist - and he is open about the fact that he is quite happy to toss away pieces of Israel just so he can get rid of the Arab Israeli citizens who're on it.

Fundamentally, though, Lieberman is a power-seeker, and as head of the 3rd largest party, he knows that he should be in any coalition. He will go to the highest bidder.

Likud: If Netanyahu doesn't manage to block Livni and form his own government, his political career is finished, and he knows it. This electoral loss, when he should have had an easy win, is an enormous embarrassment to him, and he will be desperate to pull this one out of the fire. He also will not play second fiddle to Livni. As far as he's concerned, the right-wing bloc won, and he should be PM. And don't ever forget the deep enmity and resentment between Likud and it's mamzer step-child Kadima. Forget about sitting in any Kadima-led coalition; the Likud MKs will never agree to it. They would rather do another stint in the opposition, knowing that the moment Livni slips up, they can form their own government without going to elections again.

Kadima: Kadima is desperate, too, but for a different reason. If they don't get into government, they will have as much chance of surviving until the next election as a catfish in a terrarium. Kadima was conceived, formed and congealed around only one thing: power. They have no common ideology, just a deep desire to be in charge, and they do not care if Israel is turned into a smoldering pile of ashes, as long as they can stand on top of the pile. This is why they pursue the diplomatic agenda they do - they perceive that this is where the international community and the ruling elites of the media and judiciary want them to go, and as long as they continue sticking it to the settlers and advertising wholesale giveaways of Israel's historical and strategic assets, their grip on power will be strengthened. Kadima is not equipped to be an opposition party, and my prediction is that if they are not at least part of this government, they will be destroyed in the next election by the comeback of the more ideologically motivated Labor and Meretz. Question: if Tzipi Livni knew she could not form her own government, would she play second fiddle to Netanyahu?

Tachlis: here's the scorecard:
Kadima + Meretz = 31 MKs who will only sit in a Kadima coalition.
Likud + NU = 31 MKs who will only sit in a Likud coalition.
YB + Labor + Shas + UTJ + Mafdal = 46 votes for sale, of which 13 are more inclined toward Kadima and 33 more toward Likud.

At this point, Likud seems to be sitting pretty. Bibi says he wants a government of national unity. If Kadima decides to sit this one out, Likud+Labor+YB = 55; add NU and Mafdal, and the charedim can safely be left out in the cold, too. Obviously Bibi would want some insurance, and with less negotiating leverage, Shas and UTJ could be brought in for a much lower price. Even YB would theoretically be disposable in such a coalition, which would then leave the Likud with a narrow 62 MK coalition - and that wouldn't be the first time it's happened. When any party in a coalition is disposable, its relative worth is diminished, and its negotiating leverage is correspondingly undermined.

For her part, Livni has a headache from the fact that YB and Meretz will not sit together in a government. Theoretically she could squeak together 62 MKs from Kadima, Meretz, Labor, Shas, UTJ and Mafdal - but what a mess! Little 3-seated Meretz could bring down her government with the first Charedi demand for yeshiva funding. Meretz will therefore not be in any government, her starting score goes back to 28, and she cannot form a government without Lieberman. Ironically, her weak position could itself be her savior. If Lieberman has done the same math as I have, he will realize this, and know he can ask any price of her, ad chatzi hamalchus. Don't be surprised, therefore, if Lieberman recommends Livni for PM, because he reasons he can get a way better deal out of her than he can with Bibi.

If Lieberman recommends Livni for PM, she will have the votes of the Arabs+Meretz+Labor+YB+Kadima = 71 MKs, and Peres will certainly give her first bite at forming a coalition. Desperate as she is to be in power, she will give Lieberman whatever he wants and form a government of Kadima, YB, Labor, UTJ and Mafdal - 63 MKs. UTJ will be easier to accommodate than Shas, who in any event have bad blood with her.

So now it's Livni who seems to have her nose ahead again! Are we having fun yet? This is just like the Pirate Puzzle; the story goes on!

Now, if Netanyahu is reading this, and realizes that Lieberman could potentially suck the wind out of his sails, he's either going to have to make a better pre-emptive offer to Lieberman (very expensive, knowing how much leverage he already has over Livni), or lock Livni's other potential partners out of her coalition somehow. If he can get either UTJ or Mafdal to bind themselves to him, he can block Livni's coalition. Mafdal is probably the softest target, because they are ideologically closer, and honestly, they don't want Livni to be PM. They would join her government only out of a general misguided desire to influence them for the good, not because they actually want to see yishuvim uprooted or Jerusalem divided C"V. They are also idealists, not power-seekers, so they won't be doing the same game theory analyses that we are currently engaging in. If Netanyahu can just close in on Mafdal and sweet-talk them into declaring publicly that they will have no part in a Livni-led government, then Lieberman would gain nothing by throwing his support behind Livni, and he would only create bad blood with Bibi.

So watch for Mafdal (or maybe UTJ) making any public statements about not joining a Kadima govt. If they do, that's the sign that Bibi has won. If not, watch for Lieberman making a "surprise" endorsement of Livni for PM.