"You
coYou could it in the way Rav Elya Brudny’s voice cracked as he said the
word “achim”, the love, emotion and heart with which he spoke of the
brotherhood that is Agudas Yisroel: he spoke about the bond between all
Yidden, crying at the plight of families devastated by war in Eretz
Yisroel, fallen soldiers, injured soldiers, newly bereaved parents, wife
and children….Hashem yishmor!
Rav Yosef Frankel, who discussed the fact
that every Yid carries the situation in artzeinu hakedoshah on their
hearts at all times, you could feel the sense of achrayus and
connection.
The
Kol Koreis and emails calling for tefillos, signed by the members of
the Moetzes Gedolei Torah, have been coming all year, but seeing their
anguish and distress up close is a reminder of how personal it is: this
year, the convention was one long tefillas rabbim as well."
The Chairman's Take - One Agenda
Shlomo Werdiger
From:news@agudah.org
Amid multi-front war: IDF sees 891 soldiers killed, 38 suicides over 2 years
Some 558 soldiers died in 2023 and 363 in 2024.
IDF soldiers in northern Gaza Strip conducting operation
in the area of the Indonesian Hospital, where a Hamas launch site was
located. IDF SPOKESMAN’S UNIT
The IDF said on Thursday that 891 soldiers have died during the war years 2023-2024, including a jump in suicides to 38 during that period.
Five
hundred fifty-eight soldiers died in 2023 and 363 in 2024. Of those,
512 were killed in fighting and operations, three in local terror
attacks, 10 from natural health problems, and 17 from suicide.
Of
the 363, 295 were killed in fighting and operations, 11 by local terror
attacks, 13 from natural health problems, and 21 from suicides.
Over 5,500 soldiers have been wounded during the war.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Eliran Mizrahi's funeral at the Mount Herzl Military
Cemetery in Jerusalem
Of the 17 suicides in 2023, nine were mandatory service soldiers, four were officers, and nine were reservists.
Of the 21 suicides in 2024, seven were mandatory service soldiers, two were officers, and 12 were reservists.
In 2022, there were only 14 suicides, and none of them were reservists.
In
2013, 2018, and 2020, the suicide numbers were in single digits. The
highest number of suicides in the last 24 years was in 2005, with 36.
The
IDF said that all suicides were a problem and that the reservist army
had spiked considerably in size because of the war but that it was
throwing increased resources at addressing the problem for all soldiers
and, especially reservists.
However,
the negative trend created a hole in IDF arguments that it has done
enough in mental health areas to help soldiers, without even getting
into debates about how the IDF is handling post-traumatic stress
disorder on a broader scale.
Majority of soldiers killed in Gaza
Of the 891 deaths, 390 were mostly in Gaza in 2024, 329 were in 2023, including October 7, and others were in Lebanon, in the North, and in the West Bank.
In
terms of total losses, the 1948-1949 War of Independence was still the
worst, with over 6,000 Israeli deaths, including around 4,000 soldiers.
The
1973 Yom Kippur War is still second, with a loss of around 2,650
soldiers. However, if the current war continues, it could potentially
eventually pass this number given that 1,200, mostly civilians, were
killed on October 7, 2023.
Six hundred fifty-seven soldiers were killed during the First Lebanon War in 1982 and in the immediate years following.
In more recent years, the previous high in deaths of soldiers was in 2002, with 235.
Next, the IDF said that there were nine road accident deaths in 2023 and 20 in 2024.
The IDF said it is working on improving in that area but did not give much in terms of specifics.
The following is an edited transcript from the Making Sense podcast:
Well,
another year has elapsed, and 2025 is upon us. If you’re over a certain
age, every year now appears absurdly futuristic. (How young do you have
to be for 2025 to not look like the chyron at the start of a science
fiction movie?)
As
I look back over the year, and look ahead to what may be coming, it’s
hard to escape the sense that we are witnessing more than the usual
degree of change and chaos. Liberal democracies are under threat
globally. The conflict between Israel and her neighbors continues, and
there is the looming prospect of a proper war with Iran. There was the
fall of the Assad regime in Syria and uncertainty about what comes next.
The war in Ukraine continues to rage, and there is simmering hostility
between the US and China. Unlike most other periods in memory, if
someone came from the future and said, “Don’t you realize that World War
III started months ago?”—that would seem, if not plausible, at least
possible.
And
in this context, it remains hard to believe that we’re returning Donald
Trump to the White House. There are just so many reasons why this seems
like a bad idea. To name only one: He is the sort of president who
thinks that Pete Hegseth should run our Department of Defense. The list
of Hegseth’s disqualifying sins is so long and miscellaneous that it is
hard to perceive his nomination as anything other than a terrible
mistake—that is, until one recalls that Trump put forward Matt Gaetz to
run the Department of Justice. Happily, Gaetz is suffering the fate of
so many who come within range of Trump’s enthusiasm—humiliation and
oblivion (that is, until he resurfaces selling gold-plated rifles or
starts a podcast with Andrew Tate). These nominations really do seem
like some sort of troll or act of vandalism—both Gaetz and Hegseth could
be easily cast as villains in a Batman movie. Less obscene, but perhaps
even more dangerous, we have the prospect of Tulsi Gabbard serving as
Director of National Intelligence. Her well-documented patience, if not
fondness, for the Assad regime isn’t aging very well. Listen to her
describe her meeting with Assad on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where she directly responds
to all the criticism she received for speaking so diplomatically about
Assad. The level of naivete and frank delusion on display—given who we
knew Assad to be at that point—is just astounding.
When
the world could really use a shining city on a hill—that is, a healthy,
liberal democracy capable of leading, not merely by force, but by
example—we have decided to return a man to the presidency who refers to
his fellow citizens (Democrats who didn’t vote for him) as “vermin” and
“scum.” We can’t pretend that this is normal. And it has been, frankly,
nauseating to see the parade of business leaders—many of whom despise
Trump and his effect on our politics—race to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the
man’s ring (and much else). It’s tempting to ask these captains of
industry, all of whom are rich beyond imagining, “What’s the point of
having fuck-you money if you never say fuck you?” This was an
opportunity to say, “We’re rich enough, and our companies will be fine.
This is still a country of laws, and if the President targets us in any
way, our lawyers will be ready, and real journalists will be eager to
tell the story.”
I’m
not betting that everything Trump does in his second term will be
bad—and I’m certainly hoping for the best. But all these billionaires
should understand that normalizing Trump and Trumpism by purchasing
million-dollar tables at the Inauguration isn’t without risk of
embarrassment. Just take a moment to reflect on how this will look if
any of the darker possibilities of a second Trump term are realized.
Or just give another thought to January 6th.
It’s only decent to notice that no one is worried about what will
happen on that date this year. We won’t see Kamala Harris or Joe Biden
inspire a mob to attack the Capitol. How refreshing! Everyone who is now
sanewashing Trump and Trumpism should at least acknowledge the
difference here. And it’s worth reflecting on how much worse January 6th 2021 could have been, and how Trump played no role at all in preventing the worst possible outcomes.
If
you are someone who thinks that the significance of January 6th has
been exaggerated, what do you think would have happened if the people
who were chanting “Hang Mike Pence” had gotten their hands on him? Do
you actually think that people who had travelled halfway across the
country at the summons of the President, and just spent the previous
hours stabbing police officers in the face with flag poles—and who had
successfully breeched the Capitol as a result of this violence—and who
were now, by their own account, hunting for the Vice President and other
leaders in Congress—do you really believe that these people would have
suddenly turned docile and shown themselves merely eager to chat if they
had found their quarry cowering under a desk? What about the people
carrying zip ties, did they just want to talk to Nancy Pelosi? Do you
really not understand that what appears merely ridiculous in failure was
likely to have been horrific in success? Spend some time reading about
the French Revolution, or any other circumstance where the crowd
actually gets its hands on the people it is hunting. Perfectly normal
human beings regularly behave like monsters when they join a mob.
It
may seem strange to re-litigate an event from four years ago, but it
reveals the danger of treating Trump like a normal president. I really
think we escaped tragedy on that day as narrowly as Trump escaped
assassination in 2024. How strange would it be to normalize that? The
fact that Trump is still alive doesn’t make the attempts on his life any
less real, or disturbing, or significant of ongoing danger to him. Just
imagine if I said that the attempts on Trump’s life didn’t need to be
taken seriously—they’ve been blown way out of proportion—because the guy
was barely scratched. I know people who have been injured far worse in
their own kitchens! Would that make any sense? No. And yet no one who is
busy laundering Trump’s reputation seems to understand the obvious
parallel to January 6th.
How
would Trump and Trumpism seem if a couple of Senators had been beaten
to death or hurled out of windows on that day? How would Trump’s
continuous lying about the election having been stolen seem? Again, ask
yourself, what would have happened if the mob had gotten hold of Nancy
Pelosi or Mike Pence? It’s no credit to Trump that this didn’t happen.
He knew that the people he had turned loose on the Capitol were calling
for Pelosi and Pence to be killed—for hours, he
knew this, and he just sat on his hands. Whether he actually said that
Pence deserved to be hanged, as Cassady Hutchinson testified, will
surely be doubted by Trump’s defenders. But what cannot be doubted is
that he declined to lift a finger to defend his vice president, or any
other member of Congress, for hours. He just watched the violence on
television and refused to do anything useful. Of course, he has done
nothing but defend the rioters ever since and has promised to pardon
them. And he still claims that he won the 2020 election.
This
is the person who will be president of the United States in a few
weeks. This is the person you are honoring with your million-dollar
tables at the Inauguration. He is capable of making your efforts to
normalize him more than a little embarrassing.
Anyway,
stepping out of politics and looking ahead to the new year, I think
it’s worth reflecting on why we are tempted to reflect at all at the end
of each year. What is it about the calendar change that matters?
We may as well ask the question that lurks behind every New Year’s resolution: What is a good life?
Or, put another way: What makes life good? Or, with a slightly different emphasis: What is life good for?
Of
course, there are many answers—or parts of answers. Love and
friendship. Creative work and enjoying the creativity of others.
Learning—that is, growing in our understanding of some sliver of
reality. Or learning new skills—doing things that are hard or beautiful,
or are just fun. And, of course, there is pleasure, of all kinds. If
your life is full of laughter, sunsets, sex, ice cream, and rewarding
work—you’re probably not miserable. Though you might be—amazingly, you
might still be miserable. Of course, there is also compassion. There is
so much suffering in the world. Relieving some portion of it is one of
the good things we get to do here.
However,
there is a deeper answer to the question of what makes life good, and
one can be led to it if one interrogates any of the answers already
given. What makes love and friendship, or creativity, or learning, or
fun, or laughter, or compassion good? And how are
they different from all the things that seem to make life less than
good—hatred, terror, boredom, despair, envy, resentment, contempt…
There
is a deeper answer that is more philosophical, or spiritual—and,
therefore, tends to be unhelpfully bound up with religion. When I talk
about this, I tend to talk about meditation. And
while it is a helpful starting point, and even a necessary one, it is
also misleading. Meditation sounds like a practice—it is something you do,
something you add to your life. In the beginning, it certainly seems
this way. Did you meditate today? “No, I forgot.” Or, “Yes, for 10
minutes, right before lunch.” But meditation isn’t something you do—it
is something you cease to do. It is just non-distraction. It is the
freedom to notice what is already here. When you meditate, you’re not
changing anything about yourself—which itself is a profound change in
attitude. In real meditation, you are recognizing the condition in which
all apparent changes occur—the very nature of your mind.
So
the question about a good life becomes, what is there to notice, right
now, that matters? What is available to your powers of attention in this
moment that is important, or even sacred? (Again, the language one
reaches for begins to have religious connotations.) There is a freedom
to be found here in recognizing what it’s like to be you—what life is
actually like in each moment, rather than what you think it’s like, or
hope it’s like, or fear it’s like. Meditation is simply noticing what is
real, as a matter of experience, now and always—but always, and only,
now.
If you are alone in a room, what is in that room with you? What are you, really, as a matter of experience? And where are you? And where is the room? Are you in it, or is it—in some sense that is philosophically and scientifically interesting—in you?
Every
religion will tell you that there is something you have to believe at
this point—there is something to profess, if only in the privacy of your
mind—some set of propositions that must be added to your solitude to
redeem it and make it sacred. But this is demonstrably untrue. You can
believe all sorts of things, but belief is not enough. Ideas are not
enough. Thought is not enough to make solitude and silence matter. In
fact, thought is the very thing that makes the privacy of our minds
often feel like a prison.
What
is life good for when you are alone with your thoughts? And aren’t you
always alone with your thoughts? Even when you are out in the world with
other people, there is a veil of opinion, judgment, prejudice, and
pointless chatter that comes between you and everyone and everything.
Don’t you see how every experience, no matter how pleasurable or
intense, gets distorted by your mental efforts to grasp it, secure it,
prolong it, rehearse it, narrate it, compare it, or change it?
I’m
not saying that thoughts aren’t useful, or even necessary. They
obviously are. And their character matters, because we spend most of our
time lost in them. If we spent most of our time dreaming, our dreams
would determine the quality of our lives—so they, too, would matter. And
the truth is, dreams are nothing other than very vivid thoughts—and
ordinary thoughts are dreams, of a kind.
Meditation
is nothing other than the act of waking up properly, if only for
moments at a time. That’s why we called the app “Waking Up”—it’s more
than just an analogy. There really is something dreamlike about our
default state of thinking every moment of the day. I haven’t talked
about this topic much on the podcast of late, because it’s my whole
focus over at Waking Up. If you want to know more about meditation, and
why I think it’s important—and why much of what people think they know
about it is mistaken—you can find all of that at in the Waking Up app.
As
for New Year’s resolutions, I have one this year that I hope will cover
more or less every aspect of my life. It’s not a concrete resolution,
exactly—it’s more like a new conceptual frame that I will try to place
around everything. I’m going to try to live this year as though I knew
it would be my last. I’m perfectly healthy, as far as I know. And I
don’t mean to be morbid. But I think it is very powerful to put the
finiteness of life at the very center of one’s thoughts, more or less
all of the time. The question, “Would I do this if I knew I only had a
year to live?” is quite clarifying of one’s priorities. It might seem
like too stringent a filter—it would seem to prevent any long-term
planning, for instance. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I
have kids, and I obviously care about their future. And I care about the
future of society generally. There are many things I might do that
could, at least in part, be motivated by a time horizon that stretches
beyond 2025. For my New Year’s resolution, I’m going to work with this
thought: “Would I do this, would I pay attention to this, would I care
about this, if I knew that 2025 would be my last year of life?”
Would I watch a bad movie? Probably not. Would I watch a bad movie with my girls? Absolutely.
This
year, I’m going to do my best to live in a way that would be impossible
to regret. I know I can’t control everything. Almost everything that
will happen in the world, and much that happens in my life, will be
outside my control. But I can pay attention. I can cease to be
preoccupied with things that don’t really matter. I can let my hopes and
my fears vanish—I can notice that they are always in the act of
vanishing. And I can increasingly enjoy life as it is in the present.
Perhaps you’ll join me.
Let
us acknowledge the Hakarat Hatov that we as a people owe what Rav Moshe
Feinstein called a “Medina shel Chesed”. From the time of our first
exile, over 2,500 years ago, we have never been as welcomed as a people
as we have been in this country. Banishments, exiles, inquisitions
expulsions pogroms and worse, followed as wherever we went. In this
country, we never faced the ignominies that were heaped upon us in other
lands. No doubt, we faced difficulties like many other groups and
ethnicities, but we were given opportunity and we grasped it. My grandfather
felt as if the Statue of Liberty had spread out her arms to embrace him
as his ship sailed into Ellis Island in 1913.
Feds settle with Katz’s Deli over ADA violations
The kosher-style restaurant agreed to pay a $20,000 fine and improve its facilities for disabled people.
Katz's Deli (founded 1888) in New York City
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the
Southern District of New York announced on Monday that it settled a
lawsuit with Katz’s Deli over violations of the Americans with
Disabilities Act at the Lower East Side landmark.
The kosher-style restaurant agreed to pay a
$20,000 fine and improve its facilities for disabled people through a
consent decree.
“The main entrance of Katz’s Deli is not
accessible, the restaurant does not provide sufficient dining surfaces
for persons with disabilities and despite having been renovated in 2018,
its restrooms fail to comply with the ADA,” the U.S. attorney’s office
stated.
“Notably, the consent decree provides for
staff to assist individuals with disabilities in using the main public
entrance, ensures that the required number of accessible dining surfaces
are provided and requires renovations to the men’s and women’s
restrooms at Katz’s Deli,” the Justice Department stated.
Founded in 1888 as Iceland Brothers across
the street from the current deli location, Katz’s bills itself as New
York City’s oldest deli and is famous for its towering pastrami-on-rye
sandwiches, matzah ball soup and other Ashkenazi staples in what was
once the center of Eastern European Jewish migration to the United
States.
It is also widely known for its depiction in the 1989 comedy “When Harry Met Sally….”
“During World War II, the three sons of
the owners were all serving their country in the armed forces, and the
family tradition of sending food to their sons became the company slogan
‘send a salami to your boy in the Army,’” per Katz’s site.
“During the peak of the Yiddish theater,
the restaurant was forever filled with actors, singers and comedians
from the many theaters on 2nd Avenue, as well as the National Theater on
Houston Street,” it adds. “Although the age of the Yiddish theater has
passed, Katz’s still has its fair share of famous customers, whose
photos now line our walls.”
The U.S. attorney’s office said that its
deal with Katz’s brings to a close its 13-year “Manhattan Restaurants
ADA Compliance Initiative,” which evaluated the accessibility of the 50
most popular restaurants in the borough, as rated by the 2011 Zagat
guide.
Versus A Country Run By Right Wing - Anti-Zionists - Ultra-Orthodox Jews:
Consumer body accuses Rami Levy supermarkets of violating bottle deposit law
Israel Consumer Council seeks court backing
for class action lawsuit after receiving over 1,000 complaints about
difficulties returning recyclables, getting refunds for deposits (OY VEY)
Israelis shop at a Rami Levy supermarket in Modiin
The Israel Consumer Council is seeking court approval of a class
action lawsuit against Rami Levy, after receiving more than 1,000
complaints about the supermarket chain’s stores refusing to accept
bottles for recycling and deposit fees.
The filing, submitted to the Beersheba District Court on December 18
and announced by the council this week, alleges that Rami Levy does not
allow bottles to be returned manually when collection machines are not
functioning, and limits the hours in which it accepts the recycled
bottles.
The request also cites cases in which stores have returned the
deposit through credit vouchers rather than cash, contrary to the law.
Since 2001, when the government passed the Deposit Law on Beverage
Containers, a refundable sum, usually of 30 agorot ($0.08), has been
added to the cost of all canned beverages, along with glass and plastic
bottles ranging from 100 milliliters to 1.5 liters in size, to encourage
people to return them after use. Since December 2021, the law has also
included containers of 1.5-5 liters.
But implementation has been anything but smooth.
According to a July 2023 report by the Knesset Research and
Information Center cited in the application, a bottle deposit complaints
hotline established by the Environmental Protection Ministry in
December 2021 and operated by the consumer council has received 9,010
complaints. Of these, 60 percent were filed over stores’ failure to
accept beverages marked with deposit labels.
Court rulings have since determined that the return of beverage
containers must not be limited to certain hours and that obstacles
should not be placed before those asking to return bottles in exchange
for a deposit.
The application said that between 2022 and 2024, the council received
1,017 complaints against Rami Levy — 139 in 2022, 323 in 2023 and 555
in 2024.
It alleged that Rami Levy stores refused to accept beverage
containers for which deposits had been paid on purchase, limited the
number of containers that could be refunded on a given day and the times
when bottles could be returned, issued refunds only as vouchers rather
than cash, and even refused to honor those vouchers after the day on
which they were produced. It further charged that the company refused to
accept beverage containers from minors, including in cases where
parents were present, and that customers had been subjected to
“humiliating and contemptuous behavior” by Rami Levy employees.
The council said requests to the company to change its behavior had
proved fruitless and that these were not one-off mistakes, or
oversights. “The evidence gathered indicates that the Deposit Law is
being systematically and intentionally violated by the respondent,” it
wrote.
The bottle deposit complaints hotline can be reached at 03-5100190.
A request for comment from the company’s legal adviser was not answered by press time.
