Sunday, August 11, 2024
Military rabbinate tells IDF soldiers not to fast on Tisha B'Av
The IDF rabbinate told soldiers engaged in operational activity not to fast on Tisha B'Av on Sunday, KAN News reported.
"Fasting during operational activity is prohibited; it is a life-threatening matter," the rabbinate said.
This order followed a case where two soldiers who were involved in operational activity and were fasting on the 17th of Tammuz deteriorated to a life-threatening condition.
Soldiers were also told, "Soldiers in the field across all sectors, including the Gaza Strip, northern Israel, and the West Bank, as well as those who may be called up for operational activity and soldiers on guard duty, need to eat and drink to perform optimally."
Har Habyit ...Why Frum Jews Abandoned it! Just 400 Years ago Frum Jews Went There All the Time?
Loose Translation from the Hebrew!
When we davened for two thousand years begging to return to Zion, we mainly meant returning to the Bais Hamikdash , the Har Habayit, but when we finally did return, we left it neglected and forgotten.
The picture of the Har Habayit is present in every house in Gaza, but almost impossible to find in Jewish homes.
Last Friday, Hezbollah supporter Sheikh Akrama Sabri eulogized Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on the Har Habyit without anyone stopping him, but Jews who dare bow on the Mount, or dare dance and sing there, or dare sneak tefillin into its area, who dare sneak in a Shofar or lulav or even if they just deviate slightly from the specific path permitted to observant Jews, are immediately detained, and often arrested and banned for long periods.
The Temple Mount – the object of dreams of many generations of Jews –have ten gates, nine of which only Muslims can enter , but there is only one open to non-Muslims (Shaar Hillel).
Unlike the other 9 gates, this one gate is open only five or six hours a day, and only five days a week. Observant Jews are not allowed to ascend the Mount freely even during the few hours of entry, but are required to wait for a close and supervised escort by the police • On the other hand, the mountain plaza serves as the playground of four Muslim schools. No wonder Muslims watch football matches on the Har Habayit almost every day.
According to Jewish law, ascending to the Temple Mount is permitted only after immersion in a mikveh, without leather shoes, and around the site of the Temple and not to the place of the Temple itself.
The Mishna in Mesactas Keilim teaches that the sanctity of the Temple Mount is expressed in the fact that unclean people who have not been purified in the Mikveh are not allowed to ascend to it.
According to the Mishnah, the The Har Habayit is an exact square of 500 by 500 cubits, about 250 by 250 meters, but the Har Habayit today is a square that is not equal to all sides, and its area is much larger:
The length of the Western Wall alone is almost half a kilometer, Because Herod expanded the area of the mountain south, west and north.
Only Herod did not touch the route of the eastern wall of the mountain, the one facing the Kidron River and the Mount of Olives, and it therefore contains remains from the First Temple period, and more precisely from the time of King Hezekiah .
The construction of the Western Wall – the most well-known and popular of the walls of the mountain – had not yet been finalized when Titus arrived and destroyed the Temple in 70 AD .
By the way, According to Prof. Dan Bahat, who was the archaeologist of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the first evidence of prayer at the Western Wall itself dates back to 1625, "only"399 years ago.
Jewish prayer on the Har Habyit itself took place over long periods of time in the two-thousand-year-old exile, especially during the early Muslim period .
Rabbi Pesachyeh of Regensburg, 12th century, wrote about the early days of Muslims in the Holy City:
"And Pritzim came and informed the king of the Ishmaelites (Caliph Omar, A.S.) and said:
'There is one old man among us who knows the place of the heichal and the azarah'; And the king pushed him away until he showed him. This king loved Jews and said:
'I want to build a heichal there so only Jews can daven there,' and he built a hall out of marble stones, a beautiful building made of red and green marble stones and all kinds of colors."
The description of the "beautiful building" corresponds to the appearance of the Dome of the Rock known to us, a building made of marble in a variety of colors built according to the accepted practice in 691. According to this description, the dome was originally built for the Jews.
New Ad from Trump Campaign
New ad from Trump! pic.twitter.com/1zg19kquYo
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) August 8, 2024
Hamas in Gaza Murder Gazan who yelled Yesterday "Save us from Hamas"
Yesterday this man in Gaza recorded this video saying “save us from H×mas, not from the Jews” 👇
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) August 10, 2024
Today he was found dead, having been stabbed in the neck.
pic.twitter.com/T7TmqGshbV
"If Comrade Walz and Comrade Harris win this November, the people cheering will be the pink-haired Marxists, the looters, perverts, flag-burners, Hamas supporters, drug dealers, gun-grabbers, and human traffickers."
BEST I'VE EVER HEARD TRUMP!
"If Comrade Walz and Comrade Harris win this November, the people cheering will be the pink-haired Marxists, the looters, perverts, flag-burners, Hamas supporters, drug dealers, gun-grabbers, and human traffickers."pic.twitter.com/JmR8KQGQGp— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) August 10, 2024
Chareidie Mob In Tzfas Try to stop the Arrest of the Beit Shemesh Pedophile who Molested 2 Children in the Mikva in Tfas
הלם ותדהמה ▪︎ עבריין מין מבית שמש נלכד למרות התפרעות ההמונים
היום בשעות הבוקר התקבל דיווח במשטרת ישראל משני קטינים אודות אדם שביצע בהם עבירות מין בעת ששהו בתוך מקווה בעיר צפת.
בפעילות חקירה מהירה הגיעו שוטרי המחוז הצפוני לזהותו של החשוד במעשה תושב בית שמש בן 24 והצליחו לאתר אותו בתוך מתחם הציון במירון.
ההבעת מעצרו הנוכחים בציון וכן החשוד ניסו להכשיל את המעצר ובסופו של דבר הצליחו השוטרים לבצע את המעצר והעבירו את החשוד לחקיר
How Chareide Gedoilim Distort and Manipulate The Gemarrah That States that Torah "Protects and Shields"
I'm willing to be convinced by a valid halachic argument. I'm not willing to be convinced by cliches, the misreading of sources, or shallow argumentation.
Two nights ago, a student from a local yeshiva called our house; he asked for money so that the institution could meet its budget. After inquiring about the number of students learning in this yeshiva and how long it had been open, my wife Aliza asked how many of its students had joined the army since the yeshiva’s founding. “None!” he answered proudly.
In the course of explaining why he and the other students should not be drafted, he reasoned that because they learn for twelve hours a day, they are both working harder, and accomplishing more for the security of the country, than the soldiers who are on the front lines.
Aliza didn’t even bother telling him that our son Yaakov, who is serving in the north of Israel, routinely wakes up at 3 or 4 in the morning to begin his day. Given that context, her interlocutor’s boast about learning twelve hours a day is somewhat less impressive; while his claim that he is working harder than our soldiers, who risk life and limb alongside experiencing oppressive heat by day and the cold frost at night, with sleep escaping from their eyes (see Bereshit 31:40) is a perfect example of breathtaking ingratitude alongside ignorant self-congratulation.
(He also tried proving his point by asserting that most of Israel’s wars have begun during bein hazmanim, when the yeshivot are on vacation. One wonders how common this argument is, and - if it has become a real talking point - why almost every yeshiva in Israel will be on bein hazmanim for the next three weeks, rather than insisting that vacation be canceled and the regular yeshiva schedule be maintained. At the very least, if the students genuinely need a vacation and a given yeshiva’s administration authentically believes that study is an indispensable part of the war effort, they should stagger the time off so that the yeshiva is well-populated every day of the year. The fact that this solution is generally ignored can lead an honest person to wonder if the ultra-Orthodox population actually believes its own arguments.)
At least this student’s foolish and arrogant callousness is easy to dismiss. More troubling from an Orthodox perspective is the regular misuse of sources, and the repeated claim that they prove something different from what they actually say.
A typical example of this is the oft-cited Yerushalmi (Chagigah 1:7) which demonstrates that scholars are the true guardians of the city, and the local guards are, at best, secondary to the effort. The problem, of course, is that the Yerushalmi doesn’t say what people presume that it says.
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai taught: If you see towns that were uprooted from their place in the Land of Israel, know that [the reason is that] they did not contribute to the salaries of teachers of Tanach and Mishnah. What is the textual source of this? [The verse says,] “Why is the land destroyed, torn down like a desert with no passers by? Hashem answered, because they abandoned My Torah.”
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi sent Rabbi Chiya, Rabbi Asi, and Rabbi Ami to pass through the cities of the Land of Israel in order to establish teachers of Tanach and Mishnah for them. They entered one place and found neither teachers of Tanach nor teachers of Mishnah. They said to [the populace], Bring us the guards of the city, and they brought the watchmen [who stand by the gate]. [The rabbis] said to them, Are these actually the guards of the city?! These are nothing other than the destroyers of the city! So they asked them, Who, then, are the guards of the city? They answered, The teachers of Tanach and Mishnah. That is the meaning of the verse, “If Hashem does not build the house, its builders work for nothing; if Hashem does not guard the city, the guard watches for no reason.”
Only a wanton misreading of this source would indicate that students learning Torah in a Ramat Beit Shemesh yeshiva have any effect on the war effort. First of all, the Yerushalmi is discussing the failure of local communities to pay their teachers - and, according to commentators like the Korban HaEdah, specifically the teachers of children. The entire purpose of the rabbis’ visit to the local town was to encourage them to hire teachers, not to open another kollel or to convince the local populace to spend more time learning Torah. Moreover, the entire episode, along with Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai’s introductory statement, attempts to demonstrate that the presence (and paying) of teachers in a city serves to protect that city - not the Land of Israel in general, and certainly not the wider Jewish population across the globe. Finally, there is every reason to believe that this passage is aggadic rather than halachic in nature - that is, it is not part of the Talmud’s legal writings. Aggadata must be read with extreme care and should be taken very seriously; it should not, however, be used as the basis of legal argumentation.
In sum, the Yerushalmi is probably not meant to serve as a legal argument in the first place - but even if someone insists on understanding it as a practical halachic guide, it asserts that vulnerable cities can protect themselves by hiring and paying teachers who will teach in that same city. Accordingly, if we take the words of the Yerushalmi seriously, cities on the Lebanese and Gaza borders should quickly hire more teachers who will teach Torah to the local children, and the population of Torah observant Jews should eagerly volunteer their services in this regard. Needless to say, this has not happened; I have not heard anyone urging that we implement this Yerushalmi-based solution. Instead, we only hear the refrain that more Torah learning by more people is the answer to Israel’s security needs.
This Yerushalmi, of course, is only one of many texts that are cited (sometimes mistakenly so) to demonstrate that Torah learning, rather than military effort, is the primary way that Israel is protected from its enemies. Other texts may potentially show this more effectively than the Yerushalmi in Chagigah - but we rarely are proffered sophisticated analysis of these sources.
When talmidei chachamim are presented with a halachic question or problem, they typically respond by marshaling all the available halachic sources and then presenting a cogent and well-reasoned argument. To our real regret, not enough scholars have done this when it comes to defending the ultra-Orthodox exemption from the IDF. Rather than offering classic halachic reasoning, too many Chareidi leaders present platitudes and cliches, while citing sources in ways that would never pass muster in an honest halachic dialogue. Aggadata is presented as halacha, while context is frequently ignored.
If the Chareidi leadership wants Israel’s non-Chareidi Orthodox population to respect their anti-army attitude - never mind giving money to the yeshivot which encourage this behavior - they need to present reasoned halachic justifications, rather than pointing to random aggadic sources and insisting that the rest of us trust the Torah intuition of Chareidi gedolim.
Perhaps they have a convincing argument. Until they say what it is, the rest of us have every right to demand more - and to demand that they show some humility instead of proudly advertising that none of a yeshiva’s students had ever joined the IDF.
White House All Out Attack on Smotrich to Support Harris
I mention this because the White House has launched an all-out attack on one of Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers, marking him as a threat to peace and tranquility on the planet. National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby on Saturday announced:
“We are already in preparatory discussions for the senior meeting that will take place on Thursday in Doha or Cairo. The Prime Minister of Israel immediately welcomed this initiative and confirmed that his team will be there and that they’ll be prepared to finalize the details for implementing the deal. Qatar and Egypt are working on the Hamas side to bring them to the table as well. …
“We’ve seen some statements from some quarters in Israel, over recent days, attacking the deal. I just want to underscore how wrong this is, not only in substance, but also jeopardizing the lives of the hostages and running counter to Israel’s own national security interests.
“Some critics, like Mr. Smotrich, for example, have claimed that the hostage deal is a surrender to Hamas or that hostages should not be exchanged for prisoners. Mr. Smotrich essentially suggests that the war ought to go on indefinitely, without pause, and with the lives of the hostages of no real concern at all. His arguments are dead wrong. They’re misleading the Israeli public. And I want to take just a moment, if I could, to address some of those claims.”
In the 2020 election, Joe Biden carried Michigan with 50.6% of the vote to Donald Trump’s 47.8%. In the last 10 presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has won the state 7 times, while the Republican has won it 3 times. Michigan is a swing state par excellence. It sends 16 delegates to the Electoral College. There’s no Democratic victory on November 5 without Michigan.
No place like home: The relief of coming back to Israel
Sitting at the gate in the New York airport waiting for our return flight home after visiting family, I felt a sense of calm wash over me as the boarding area began to fill with Israelis.
Some were eating, others praying, still others were taking up seats with their oversized shopping bags. Many talked excitedly in rapid Hebrew.
Was it the loudness, the interactions, the not-so-well-behaved kids, the woman who asked me to watch her valuable belongings so she could go to the washroom, or simply the familiarity of “home” before I even left the ground that felt so wonderfully comforting? I knew I just wanted to be home already.
Leaving Israel is always difficult for me, but this year it felt even more so. My husband and I had not been out of the country in over a year, and with children in the reserves, I had mixed feelings about leaving Israel at all. It didn’t feel entirely right, and there was a sadness and longing that followed me wherever I went.
The country was just so unstable that I knew something could happen at any time. If it did, I wanted, or needed, to be close to home. Try to explain that to someone who doesn’t live here as they look at you as if you were crazy.
I also anticipated increased antisemitism outside of Israel, and I felt that few people would understand the difficulties we have endured over the past year.
Despite my dread, I saw pictures of our hostages plastered all over Manhattan, with few actually defaced. In the suburbs, many homes had Israeli flags, and others had signs on their front lawns declaring in big bold letters, “We stand with Israel.”
While pleasantly surprised, it was not enough to distract me from the news back home. Out of sight was definitely not out of mind.
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