But if you are not frum and wear pants in a Police Uniform, then you can mix and stand with men with your bottom facing the Aron Hakoidesh ...
Can you imagine what the Chareidim would do if they saw a photo like this but in a Conservative Shul?
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) praised a group of Ben & Jerry’s franchisees in the United States who are urging the company to reconsider its decision to boycott Judea and Samaria.
In a letter signed by multiple franchises sent to Ben & Jerry’s executives, the franchisees wrote, “Those who feel so strongly about Israel that they want to boycott it or some part of the territory it administers are free to do so. They cannot, however, do that at our expense.”
They went on to explain the decision’s harm to them personally and to their businesses.
“There is a danger in the pursuit of social justice will descend into political correctness or result in the adoption of overly simplistic solutions by people who share a single view of the world that misconstrue complex problems in which multiple claims of justice are implicated,” they said.
The franchisees behind the letter own 30 Ben & Jerry’s locations with a total revenue of $23.3 million.
They wrote that they were “proud to be part of a company that highlights values as a part of its mission” but the “imposition of such narrow prescriptions does not advance social justice, or the pursuit of a values led business in any meaningful way.”
“The decision that has been made to terminate the contract with Ben & Jerry’s licensee in Israel not only distorts the situation on the ground – it has imposed and will to continue to impose, substantial financial costs on all of us,” they said. “More importantly, the controversy your recent actions have brought upon our local businesses has had an adverse effect on the value of our independently owned franchises and investments.”
They added that their families and communities “have shamed us personally for doing business not just with a company that draws controversy, but with one that continues to consider the calculated negative affect on its franchisees as acceptable collateral damage.”
The American Jewish Committee applauded the letter, noting that the franchisees had approached them for help with drafting the letter which was addressed to Ben & Jerry’s CEO, Director of Social Mission, Director of Global Retail Operations, and Head of U.S. Retail and Global Strategy.
AJC Chief Legal Officer Marc D. Stern lauded the franchisees for their courage in directly taking the company to task.
“Tagging one side with all responsibility for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may make self-described social justice advocates proud, but it advances neither peace nor justice,” Stern wrote in a letter to the editor published in the New York Times on Thursday in response to the Ben & Jerry’s co-founders' Times opinion piece defending their company’s decision.
Stern noted that while the co-founders claimed the company’s intent is only to stop serving Judea and Samaria, and not all of Israel, “The chair of the company’s board of directors has publicly said it wanted to boycott Israel but was overruled (wrongly she believed) by its parent company, Unilever, and now may do so only under unspecified arrangements. The failure of Ben and Jerry to address that reality fatally undercuts their argument.”
Jake Novak, the Broadcast Media Director for the Consulate General of Israel in New York, said on Twitter that the franchisees letter was “very, very important.”
“Franchisees often take their franchise owners to court over stuff like this,” he tweeted. “There are lawyers who specialize in these kinds of cases and win. This is a red flag for [Ben & Jerry’s] parent company.”
“Jaws” ain’t got nothin’ on these chompers.
A sheepshead fish with human-looking teeth is freaking people out after it was caught off the Outer Banks.
According to Jennette’s Pier in North Carolina, Nathan Martin caught a grinning 9-pound fish whose teeth resemble dentures. A photo captioned “#bigteethbigtimes” shows the sheepshead flashing a top and bottom set of pearly-ish whites.
Many Facebook users were as creeped out as they were intrigued by the fish that was found in Nags Head. According to Scientific American, the sheepshead’s teeth are similar to those of humans since they, too, are omnivores. The fish usually weigh between 5 and 15 pounds — in part thanks to their hardy incisors — and are generally found year-round in North Carolina’s coastal waters.
The viral post, now with more than 1,200 Facebook reactions and hundreds of shares, had beachgoers shocked — and laughing hysterically.
“Is this where dentures come from?” one commenter said.
“I know people who would love to have that many teeth,” added another.
A third joked, “Sad when someone catches a fish and it has more teeth than they do.”
Coinci-dental-ly, this isn’t the first time a toothy sheepshead made a splash on social media. A triggerfish with human-esque teeth and lips was spotted in Malaysia, and was almost identical to an Instagram star’s filler-injected pout.
Gwen Berry failed to medal during the women’s hammer throw finals on Tuesday. Berry finished in eleventh place out of twelve competitors, registering a distance of 71.35 meters.
The 32-year-old caused a stir during the medal ceremony at the Olympic trials in June. After winning a bronze medal during the event, Berry faced the stands rather than the American flag, holding up a shirt that read “Activist Athlete.”
Afterward, Berry said she was “pissed” that “The Star-Spangled Banner” played during the celebration.
“If you know your history, you know the full song of the national anthem,” Berry said on Black News Channel. “The third paragraph speaks to slaves in America — our blood being slain … all over the floor.”
In July, before the Olympics commenced, Berry pledged to “represent the oppressed people” should she win a medal in Tokyo, adding, “that’s been my message for the last three years.”
Israel’s national carrier El Al will hold a trial for inflight COVID-19 testing on Thursday, in a plan that will enable passengers to skip the mandatory tests that all arrivals are required to undergo when they land at Ben Gurion Airport.
There have been numerous complaints about long and crowded lines at the airport, as arriving passengers wait to take their tests. These have sparked concerns that the conditions could facilitate the spread of the virus among the crowds.
The voluntary pilot program will be tried on an El Al flight leaving New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport at 2 p.m. local time, carrying about 280 passengers. It is being done in coordination with the Health Ministry and the Femi Premium company, which operates COVID-19 testing facilities at Ben Gurion, as well as XpresCheck, a US company that carries out testing at JFK.
XpresCheck will perform virus tests on passengers at the boarding gate before they get on the plane. Passengers who do not undergo tests before the flight can be tested on the plane.
Specially qualified personnel will perform throat and nose swabs while wearing personal protection outfits and disposable gloves — the latter replaced between passengers.
The tests will be placed in a culture used for transporting samples and stored in special refrigerated coolers during the flight. Each sample will be marked with a barcode to identify the passenger it came from. Passengers will be asked to provide details such as name, passport number, address, and telephone number, in order to inform them of the test results.
Tests will cost NIS 80 ($25) each for passengers who sign up for the program before the flight.
All travelers, including those who are vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19, are required to self-isolate for 24 hours upon arrival in Israel, or for a shorter period if they receive a negative test result (starting August 11, arrivals from many countries, including the US, will need to isolate for a week, even if vaccinated).
Though the program enables travelers to avoid being tested at the airport, El Al stressed that the tests are not a replacement for the virus test all arrivals must undergo up to 72 hours before their flight.
In a statement Wednesday announcing the pilot, El Al said the method could be “a breakthrough for the entry of tourists into Israel in the future.”
“The aim of the project is to bring the flight experience back to one somewhat similar to the one we knew before the eruption of the coronavirus,” the statement said.
El Al CEO Avigal Soreq added: “It is clear to everyone that the virus is here to stay in one form or another and we must not put life on hold.
“El Al will continue to do everything in its power to develop creative and effective solutions for its customers” in order to open the country for foreign tourism that is a critical part of the economy, Soreq said.
Israel has seen a strong resurgence of COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, which officials have blamed on the Delta variant of the virus brought back to the country by travelers who did not properly quarantine on arrival.
In recent days new daily virus cases have passed 3,000. As of Thursday morning there were 24,463 active cases in the county, of which 241 were in serious condition. In mid-June, there were just a few dozen being cases found each day.
Israel has begun reintroducing restrictions on public life to curb the outbreak while also urging people to get vaccinated under the national inoculation drive that has already given shots to over 55 percent of the population.
It has also started giving third booster shots to people over age 60, in a world-first.
On Wednesday Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said that a lockdown over the coming Jewish holidays is “a last resort” but could be implemented if coronavirus cases continue to rise.
Twenty-six Israelis have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of August, with 10 people dying on Sunday, the highest one-day figure since early April. The death toll since the start of the pandemic is at 6,503.
Catering Standards Questioned?
Invited to an affair under the supervision of Lakewood's yeshiva’s established “Hashgocha” Kosher Council of Lakewood, aka “KCL” , but which was being held in a non-kosher facility, we went into the kitchen to look around and to compare notes with the Mashgiach. we were not prepared for what we found.
More disappointing was it to learn that the “Rabbonim” who certified the KCL never visited any of their certified establishments. The affair under their certification was being held in a non-kosher facility.
KASHRUS experts recently discovered a number of such organizations where the “Rabbonim” themselves have never seen the operation which they certify, but instead rely totally on the head “Mashgiach” or on their Kashrus Administrator to make all “halachic” decisions.
This letter, basically unchanged, was mailed to all of the “Rabbonim” in the Lakewood Yeshiva’s KCL kashrus organization. To date, “we have not received any reply”.
Archaeological excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the City of David National Park revealed a layer of destruction, including a row of shattered vessels, including bowls, lamps, cooking utensils, storage and storage jars, which were smashed as the building's walls collapsed.
According to the researchers, since no signs of fire were found, this was not a deliberate event and the reason for the collapse of the building is the earthquake that occurred in Israel during the eighth century BCE, during the period of the Kingdom of Judah.
According to Dr. Joe Uziel and Ortal Chalaf, excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority: "When we excavated the structure and uncovered an 8th century BCE layer of destruction, we were very surprised, because we know that Jerusalem continued to exist in succession until the Babylonian destruction, which occurred about 200 years later."
"We asked ourselves what could have caused that dramatic layer of destruction we uncovered. Examining the excavation findings, we tried to check if there is a reference to it in the biblical text. Interestingly, the earthquake that appears in the Bible in the books of Amos and Zechariah, occurred at the time when the building we excavated in the City of David collapsed."
"The combination of the finds in the field together with the biblical description, led us to the conclusion that the earthquake that struck the Land of Israel during the reign of Uzziah king of Judah, also hit the capital of the kingdom - Jerusalem."
According to the researchers: "The earthquake that occurred in the middle of the 8th century BCE was probably one of the strongest and most damaging earthquakes in ancient times, and evidence of its occurrence has been discovered in the past in excavations conducted at a variety of sites throughout Israel, such as Hazor, Gezer, Tel Agol, and Tell es-Safi/Gath.
You would think that Jews especially "Torah Jews'' would want to support businesses that are owned by their fellow Jews.
Not a chance.
The Gerer Rebbe flew ''Delta"" this week on his visit to New York, despite the fact that El Al is now owned by a shomer Torah Umitvois.
The Gerer Rebbe is a multi-millionaire, so his decision to support ''Goyim" was not a financial one, this was not a question of the price of the ticket.
To make matters worse, the Israeli Hamodia, a Gerer backed newspaper, encouraged its readers to fly an airline owned by goyim, instead of encouraging Jews to support their own.
This post is not about someone who has a limited budget and must fly the cheapest way.
The U.S. nursing home industry’s resistance to forcing workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 for fear that too many of them might quit began to crack this week when its biggest player announced its employees must get the shot to keep their jobs.
The new requirement at Genesis Healthcare, which has 70,000 employees at nearly 400 nursing homes and senior communities, is the clearest sign yet that owners may be willing to risk an exodus at already dangerously understaffed facilities to quickly vaccinate the 40% of workers still resisting shots and fend off the surging delta variant.
Some experts are calling for mandatory vaccinations at nursing homes, warning that unprotected staff members are endangering residents. Even residents who have been inoculated are vulnerable because many are elderly and frail, with weak immune systems.
