Filed under: Israeli Life — westbankmama @ 5:01 pm
The yishuv email list has a lot of interesting things on it. In addition to community news, requests for rides and favors (anyone have children’s tylenol to lend us? can we borrow someone’s mei-cham for Shabbat?) there are intersting announcements.
One of these struck me as the perfect “only in Israel” moment – this time on the road. It seems that someone is organizing spontaneous mincha minyanim (the afternoon prayer which needs a quorum of men) on Route 6. At every rest stop there will be a minyan 15 minutes before sundown, for those who have not prayed yet. They want to spread the word far and wide so that these minyanim take hold.
So the next time you are traveling late afternoon on Israel’s only toll road, stop for gas and a cup of coffee, and add a daily prayer too.
We are used to being attacked in many ways here in Israel, but getting hacked has not been one of them – until recently. First, a Saudi hackers published the credit card and personal details of thousands of Israelis. Then yesterday they made news again by taking down the Israeli stock exchange and the El-Al site.
Intelligence agents have used the latest technology (especially computers)in warfare for quite some time – but it isn’t something you usually read about in the news. It is somewhat strange to see this kind of battle going on in public.
I hope these guys will be recruited by the IDF, if they haven’t been already!! (Do they make pocket protectors in olive green???)
Filed under: Musings,Terror — westbankmama @ 10:43 am
I was disconcerted to read this article about a synagogue in Bergen County getting hit by Molotov cocktails. It was even worse to read that this comes after other synagogues set on fire and were spray painted with anti-Semitic graffiti! What is happening across the pond?
I must be getting more Israeli. When I first came to the country and I would hear about the confrontations in the Knesset and I would be slightly embarrassed.
Now I enjoy them.
Today’s confrontation was between MK Anastasia Michaeli and MK Ghaleb Magadele, who called her a fascist. She then poured a glass of water on him and vowed to complain to the ethics committee, saying that he should learn how to speak to a woman. Michaeli, part of the Israel Beiteinu party, is well known for her feistiness, as well as being the first MK to give birth while in office – to her eighth child, no less. Recently she has received death threats for her proposed bill to ban the use of the PA system by mosques when calling their members to prayer. (After twenty years in my yishuv I can tune them out, but during Ramadan they can get pretty loud).
There will be another joint drill between United States and Israeli troops in the next coming weeks. The drill will be to test air defense systems here in Israel against incoming rockets and missiles.
A note to the Americans that sometimes complain about military aid to Israel: where would you rather the defense systems that America is developing be tested? In Israel, or in your back yard? And, G-d forbid, if these are tested “for real” – where would you prefer the bombs be blasted out of the sky? Over Tel-Aviv or over New York City?
It seems that I am not the only one who thinks there will be another war in Gaza, although I am not sure that it will be coming so soon. Fighting during the winter is no picnic…especially when the IDF tries to limit civilian casualties. This depends very much on surgical strikes, and bad weather limits visibility.
Dry Bones just about sums it up for me here about today’s date. The only significance that January 1st had for me is that I needed to start some new Excel sheets at work for financial information. Otherwise, it was a blessedly normal day here in Israel…
The Israeli Air Force has killed a terrorist cell just seconds before they would have launched rockets into Israel. This follows a successful targeting killing of terrorists in Gaza earlier this week, on Tuesday.
Unfortunately the rocket fire has continued off and on this past month, although thankfully the rockets landed in open areas and did not cause damages. Next month I will post a roundup of rocket fire for the year 2011.
Knesset Member Yuli Edelstein was born in the former Soviet Union and was imprisoned there for three years for the crime of teaching Hebrew (although they trumped up a drugs charge). He was released from prison and made aliyah to Israel in 1987. His biography in English is here.
He has served in the Israeli government five times, as part of the Yisrael BeAliyah party (founded jointly with Natan Sharansky) and as part of the Likud. He is now the Minister of Information and Diaspora. You can hear him speak in English here, addressing the Taglit/Birthright trip last night. His blog (sadly, only in Hebrew) is here.
My kids listen to a lot of pop music, both Israeli and international. They like to look at youtube videos of music, and occasionally I learn about singers from them. The other day my son was looking at videos of “Music School”, which is an Israeli reality show where kids audition, and if they are “accepted” they get a famous singer to tutor them, and then they perform.
All of the kids had good voices, of course. Some were precocious to the extreme (one nine year old actually turned my stomach). Then I heard Michel Cohen, and I knew I had to put up the videos of him singing, at both his audition and his subsequent performance onstage.
Part of the charm of the show is showing the child with his family at home. Michel is from a traditional home and lives in Dimona, and he learned to sing while in the synagogue. The following video is a combination of his audition and the home visit. At the end of the audition he has two stars fighting with each other to be his teacher, and eventually Yehoram Gaon wins. (Sorry, all of this is in Hebrew, but the charm comes through even without translation).
He performs “Barcelona” on television, and I get goosebumps listening to him. Michel’s father is shown backstage, and at the end of the performance, when he greets his son after his big triumph. The real kicker, for me at least, is that they interview Michel’s father for a few seconds after the performance, and he says that “thanks to G-d Michel is a good kid, and he learns Torah and prays nicely.” I got nachas from this father, who is proud of his kid for all of the right reasons.
