Who Needs An Army When You Have Bench Kvetchers - Part 5 - Purim Come Early!

" Let it be as clear as the noon sun in a cloudless blue sky, without the Israel Defense Forces at full force, all of the yeshiva students in Israel wouldn’t survive more than ten minutes before Ishmaelite murderers stormed into their yeshivot and slit their throats from ear to ear until their blood reddened all of their pages of Gemara, just as the Arab terrorists did to the devout holy Jews in Hebron and the Old City during the pogrom of 1929 when there was no Israel Defense Forces to protect them, the students at Otniel and Merkaz Harav yeshivas.

Just as the Torah alone didn’t protect all of the millions of devout holy Jews from Nazi firing squads and gas chambers. Just as Hashem brings healing through doctors and medicine, He brings security to the Nation through the tanks and holy soldiers of the IDF. All of the Jews in the Holy Land today can live here in the Holy Land precisely because the Holy One Blessed Be He has enabled us to have our own Jewish army after being slaughtered helplessly for 2000 years in foreign lands at the whims of the goyim.

No one is demanding that all yeshiva students be drafted. But there are many who can serve and indeed they must for the future of the Jewish Nation."

 

Chief Sephardic rabbi turned comedian says ultra-Orthodox will leave Israel if forced into army

 

‘All these goyim (secular Jews), not really people, don’t understand that without kollels and yeshivas, the army would not be successful,’ says Yitzhak Yosef & Jackie Mason, sparking backlash across the political spectrum

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Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef moonlighting at the Improv.

 

Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef warned Saturday that ultra-Orthodox Jews will leave Israel en masse if the government ends exemptions of mandatory military enlistment enjoyed by the community.

“If they force us to go to the army, we’ll all move abroad,” Yosef said during a weekly lecture. “We’ll buy a ticket… We’ll go there.”

“The [biblical] tribe of Levi was exempted from the army,” he noted by way of comparison, referring to the biblical tribe from which the priesthood was drawn in Temple times. “They didn’t take them; absolutely not.”

Yosef is the son of the late Shas party spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef and wields major influence with the faction, which is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

“All these secular people don’t understand that without kollels and yeshivas, the army would not be successful,” he said, referring to institutions where religious men study Jewish texts rather than working or enlisting. “The soldiers only succeed thanks to those learning Torah.”

Pressure is mounting for the coalition to end the exemption from military and national service for the ultra-Orthodox community, especially amid the war against Hamas.

The IDF’s Personnel Directorate told a Knesset committee last month that some 66,000 young men from the ultra-Orthodox community, the fastest-growing sector of the population, received an exemption from military service over the past year, reportedly an all-time record. Some 540 of them decided to enlist since the war started, the IDF said.

In 2022, the Haredi population was some 1,280,000, about 13.3% of Israel’s total population, according to the Israel Democracy Institute. By 2050, nearly one-quarter of Israel’s population will be ultra-Orthodox, according to projections by Israel’s National Economic Council.

Impassioned reactions poured in after Yosef’s remarks were publicized.

National Unity chairman and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz called Yosef’s words “a moral blow to the Israeli state and society.”

“Everyone should take part in the sacred right to serve and fight for our country, especially in this difficult time — our ultra-Orthodox brothers included.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, chair of the centrist Yesh Atid party, said the remark “is a disgrace and insult to IDF soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the defense of the country.”

“Rabbi Yosef is a state employee, with a salary from the state — he cannot threaten the state,” he wrote on X.

 

A police officer removing an ultra-Orthodox protester from the street, Route 4 near Bnei Brak, March 3, 2024.

 

Avigdor Liberman, chair of Yisrael Beytenu, wrote: “Without duties, there are no rights.”

“It’s a shame that Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and the ultra-Orthodox hustlers continue to harm the security of Israel and act against halacha,” he said.

Even the coalition’s far-right Religious Zionism party lamented the remarks: “Drafting to the military: A good deed! We are grateful for the privilege of serving the people of Israel, learning Torah, and helping Israel in a time of need.”

“After two thousand years of exile, we will never leave our country. A community that is willing to pay with its life for the Land of Israel will not give it up under any conditions,” it said.

Religious Zionism party leader and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose cousin Amishar Ben-David was killed in Gaza on Friday, noted that his relative was “a son of Torah and a hero of Israel, who fought to defend the homeland and fell sanctifying the name of God, the people and the Land.” Referring to Yosef’s comments, Smotrich went on, “Comments to the contrary contradict the Torah, cause pain, and deepen the wounds, and I hope that he who uttered them will be wise enough to recognize his error, backtrack and apologize.”

The ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party said that “army service is a huge privilege for a Jew who defends himself in his country and a great deed.”

 

Ultra-Orthodox Jews block a road during a protest against drafting of Haredi Jews to the IDF, Route 4 near Bnei Brak, March 3, 2024.

 

Successive Netanyahu governments have struggled to come to a consensus on legislation dealing with ultra-Orthodox military service since a 2017 High Court decision that determined blanket military service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to be discriminatory and unconstitutional while ordering the state to find a solution to the issue.

A law that authorizes the exemption expired in June 2023, and a temporary regulation to extend it is set to expire at the end of March, after which the military will not be authorized to exempt ultra-Orthodox men from the draft.

While the Haredi-backed coalition seeks to legislate a new law extending the exemption, the matter has become increasingly contentious, given the war in Gaza and the great strain it has put on the serving population.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced Wednesday he opposes extending blanket exemptions and that he would only back legislation on the matter that is endorsed by centrist ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who joined the cabinet for the sake of the war effort.

According to Gallant, manpower strains on the army during fighting in Gaza and on the northern border require the contribution of all sectors of society, making the exemption that ultra-Orthodox men receive in order to study in yeshivas impractical.

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/chief-sephardic-rabbi-says-ultra-orthodox-will-bolt-country-if-forced-into-army/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2024-03-10&utm_medium=email

Ask The *Wise* Rabbis Podcast!

 

Can I get the measles… again?

Can you get measles as a grown up if you had measles as a kid? Also, does a vaccine when you were a kid still protect you later in life? Kristin, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida Measles has been in the news a lot lately. As of Friday, there have been 45 cases reported in 17 states so far this year. For comparison, in 2023 there were 58 cases in the entire year. That uptick is concerning enough that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised doctors and other healthcare providers on January 25 to be on alert for measles cases.  “Most of the measles cases involved in these outbreaks are children and adolescents who had not received a measles vaccination,” says Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at University of Illinois Chicago.  Declining vaccination rates are the reason measles has had such a resurgence in recent decades. Measles was considered to be eliminated from the US in the year 2000. But in 2019, there were more than 1,200 cases, the biggest reported case load since 1992. It’s an extremely contagious virus. If one person has it, says Wallace, as many as 9 out of 10 people around them will wind up infected if they aren’t vaccinated. That’s why containing the spread of measles requires a very high vaccination rate, about 95%. And according to a CDC report from November, kindergarten immunization rates have dropped nationally to 93%. Misinformation about the MMR vaccine, which includes the measles, has proliferated in the last two decades, fueled further by vaccination concerns that arose during the pandemic. (I have a podcast episode on that topic you can listen to here.) But, says Wallace, adults are sufficiently protected from the measles if one of these four things applies to you: You had measles at some point in your life. You were born before 1957. You’ve had two doses of a measles-containing vaccine if you spend time in a high-risk setting for transmission, like schools or hospitals.  You’ve had one dose of a vaccine if you don’t spend time in high-risk settings.  Kids and teens need one or two doses for protection depending on their age.  If you aren’t sure whether you’ve been vaccinated or had the measles, you can get what’s called an MMR titer test, which is available commercially at various labs for about $129, Wallace advises.  Measles, she says, can cause severe complications and hospitalization. In November 2022, for example, there was an outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, among primarily unvaccinated children.  “It is never too late to get children vaccinated or catch up on missed doses,” says Wallace. “Or adults for that matter.” — Kristen V. Brown

Who Needs An Army When You Have Bench Kvetchers - Part 4 - The Need To Replace Fellow Dead Soldiers, That Happen To Be Proud Jews, Who Died Defending Their Homeland!

 

IDF chief again slams exemption of ultra-Orthodox Jews from national, military service 

 מי יימר דדמא דידך סומק טפי דילמא דמא דהוא גברא סומק טפי".  

סנהדרין עד ע"א

 

 

Halevi said that broadening the sectors of Israel's population that serve in the IDF and national service is the only way to replace the many Israeli soldiers who have died in the current war.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi seen on February 13, 2024

 

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi on Thursday slammed the exemption of haredim from IDF and national service for the second consecutive day.

Speaking at the graduation of the IDF officer course in the South, Halevi said that broadening the sectors of Israel's population that serve in the IDF and national service is the only way to replace the many Israeli soldiers who have died in the current war.

Further, he said that Israel as a country and the IDF as an organization would only remain united if all of the sectors of Israel's population become part of the IDF and national service - clearly referring to a need to draft haredim.

Just yesterday, Halevi appeared to issue a veiled rebuke of any government officials who are considering maintaining the haredi sector's blanket IDF and national service draft exemption.

Calling on the hardeim

Speaking at the navy's captain's graduate course on Wednesday, Halevi said, "We promise at all times that our victims, those who have fallen, will not have been in vain. There is no other way to do this other than to be drafted for substantial service, to adorn the uniform, and to become commanders."

 

A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews blocked traffic and the light rail in Jerusalem demonstrating against a Haredi draft into the IDF. February 26, 2024

 

Halevi's comments came as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant lined up alongside War Minister Benny Gantz, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, and others against the government's haredi parties over the issue.

In addition, Halevi and Gallant's aggressive stances have also potentially pitted them against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, in principle, is in favor of additional haredi service but, in practice, has been a major enabler of their exemption to maintain their political backing for his various governments over the years.

It is still unclear whether the sides will reach some kind of compromise on the issue, whether Netanyahu will try to push through what the haredim want at the expense of losing Gantz and possibly even Gallant, or whether the disagreements over potential solutions will eventually cause the government to fall entirely.

Courage and bravery: These are the 248 soldiers who heroically fell in the war

These are the 248 soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice fighting terror.

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fallen soldiersGaza Regionfallen IDF soldiersSwords of Iron

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/379499?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Shovel Ready for Moshiach! “99.99%” of Lubavitchers believe the rebbe will return as the messiah."

 

 

Jacob Joseph Frank^[2] (Hebrew: יעקב פרנק; Polish: Jakub Józef Frank;^[3][4] born Jakub Lejbowicz; 1726 – 10 December 1791) was a Polish-Jewish^[1] religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) and also of the biblical patriarch Jacob. The Jewish authorities in Poland excommunicated Frank and his followers due to his heretical doctrines that included deification of himself as a part of a trinity and other controversial concepts such as neo-Carpocratian "purification through transgression".^[5][6]

Frank arguably created a religious movement, now referred to as Frankism, which incorporated aspects of Christianity and Judaism. The development of Frankism was one of the consequences of the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi. This religious mysticism followed socioeconomic changes among the Jews of Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia.

Sabbatai Zevi
שַׁבְּתַי צְבִי
Etched portrait of Sabbatai Zevi from 1666
Personal
Born	August 1, 1626 Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (modern İzmir, Turkey)
Died	c. September 17, 1676 (aged 50) Ulcinj, Ottoman Empire (modern Montenegro)
Religion	Judaism, later Islam
Nationality	Ottoman
Founder of	Sabbateanism

Sabbatai Zevi^[1] (Hebrew: שַׁבְּתַי צְבִי, romanized: Šabbĕṯai Ṣĕḇî; Turkish: Sabetay Sevi; August 1, 1626 – c. September 17, 1676)^[2] was an Ottoman Jewish mystic, false messiah and ordained rabbi from Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey).^[3][4] He was likely of Ashkenazi origin.^[5] Active throughout the Ottoman Empire, Zevi claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah and founded the Sabbatean movement.^[6]

Latest accessory in Crown Heights: A shovel lapel pin to signal support for the 770 tunnel

A lapel pin shaped like a shovel with a silhouette of Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway signals support for a tunnel that was dug there illegally.

 

Are lapel pins shaped like shovels the latest accessory in Crown Heights, Brooklyn?

 

Mendy Gerlitzky is shown wearing a shovel pin

The pin can be purchased for $3 at Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. 

Mendy Gerlitzky, a young Lubavitch man, wore the pin to a videotaped interview about an illegally dug tunnel at 770. A near-riot erupted when city officials ordered the tunnel filled in last month.  

IS THAT YOU?

Gerlitzky had the small gold-colored shovel pin conspicuously attached to the lapel of his black jacket as he spoke  on the Trauma Dump with Zach Adler podcast. The episode, titled “Interview with a Secret NYC Jewish ‘Tunnel’ Digger,” was posted on YouTube March 1.

“So he’s wearing a shovel on the lapel,” Adler, the podcast host, said. “I love that you’re wearing this and I want one by the way. Can you get me one?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Gerlitzky said. Pointing to details on the pin, he said, “Here it says, ‘Expand 770,’ and there is a little 770 in the shovel,” referring to a silhouette of the building on the pin.

“Oh my God, it’s beautiful,” Adler said. “I think I want to be on Team Expand. So I would like a shovel.”

Someone posting anonymously on the Orthodox Jewish news site collive.com also referred to the item, saying: “I have seen a new lapel pin of a gold shovel. The shovelist’s.”

The melee at 770

Police were called to Chabad headquarters on Jan. 8 after the building’s owners attempted to fill the tunnel in with concrete. The city Buildings Department described the space as a “linear tunnel,” 8 feet wide, 60 feet long and 5 feet high, and issued emergency work orders to stabilize nearby buildings that had been rendered unsafe by the digging near an abandoned mikvah adjacent to 770. 

Video of the ensuing fracas showed young Hasidic men throwing furniture and ripping tiles from the wall of a synagogue beneath the organization’s offices. Five people were arrested.

 

 

Gerlitzky disputed the use of the term “tunnel,” saying that those using the term to get attention for stories about the incident “owe an apology to all those people, all the hostages, who are sitting in tunnels for the past four months,” referring to hostages taken from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7. He said instead of calling it a tunnel, it should be called “a failed attempt to expand the shul.”

 

Shovel pin signaling support for the illegally dug tunnel at Chabad headquarters.

“Did you pick up a shovel at any point?” Adler asked.

“I’m not going to confirm or deny,” Gerlitzky responded.

“That’s a yes,” Adler said. 

What the rebbe wanted

Gerlitzky also said “770 is my life,” and that he goes there daily to pray. He said that Chabad’s Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, had at one point said he wanted the synagogue expanded to accommodate increased numbers of supporters. A few years ago, Gerlitzky said, some of those young Lubavitchers took matters into their own hands and began digging the space out without permission from the Chabad establishment. 

Litigation has been ongoing for years between Chabad officials and the group that occupies the synagogue. “They’ve been in court for 20 years over who should be in charge of the shul. The establishment within Chabad wants to take control of the shul because they don’t like the meshichist (messianist) stuff that goes on there,” Gerlitzky said.

“This is a Game of Thrones at 770!” Adler exclaimed, adding that it was a “power struggle” between the “old guard” and “the young guys” who were “going ahead and doing what they thought was right.” 

Gerlitzky also said, without evidence, that “99.99%” of Lubavitchers believe the rebbe will return as the messiah. But he said the belief is kept under wraps because Chabad leaders “think it’s going to make Lubavitchers look crazy.”

Officially, the movement maintains an anti-meshichist stance. It does not list meshichistic Chabad outposts on its website’s synagogue lookup tool. Its spokesperson has publicly disavowed activists who post “Messiah Is Here!” posters around New York.

The big reveal

Asked by Adler whether those doing the digging had considered safety issues, Gerlitzky said they had informally consulted contractors who told them, “I’m not going to tell you, dig or don’t dig, but if you’re going to do it, put a beam there.” He said the group’s intention was to “reveal” a finished space at some point with lights, tiles, plumbing, benches, floors and tables. 

Adler also asked him about the video footage that showed a soiled mattress and high chair in the excavated space. Those objects helped fuel baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories online that the tunnel was being used for a child-sex ring. 

Gerlitzky said mattresses were used to soundproof the digging and that the high chair was being stored there along with other unused items by someone in the community who didn’t need it but hadn’t thrown it away. 

“Just this guy keeping his old crap by the abandoned mikvah,” Adler said. 

https://forward.com/fast-forward/588719/tunnel-chabad-shovel-pin-770/?

Dr. Shalvi said the dye probably created both the argaman (purple) and techelet (azure) mentioned dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible. Techelet was used for dyeing tzitzit (tassels) on tallits (prayer shawls) used in Jewish religious rituals, and inspired the blue of the Israeli flag.

 

In Israel, a 3,000-Year-Old Purple Factory

 

Archaeologists have revealed a major production site for one of history’s most luxurious, and smelliest, colorants.

 

Tyrian purple, one of the most expensive dyes in ancient times, is extracted from the mucus glands of murex sea snails.

The most prized pigment of antiquity was processed not from a tangle of root or the frothy extract of a weed, but by drawing out a slimy secretion from the mucus glands behind the anus of murex sea snails — “the bottom of the bottom-feeders,” the historian Kelly Grovier has written. The common name of the dyestuff, Tyrian purple, derives from the habitat of the mollusks, which the Phoenicians purportedly began harvesting in the 16th century B.C. in the city-state of Tyre in present-day Lebanon.

Because each snail yielded little more than a drop of the discharge — a clear, malodorous liquid — some 250,000 were required to produce an ounce of dye, by some accounts. Purple was labor-intensive, but so widely produced that piles of shells discarded millenniums ago are now geographical features in the region. The dye was also so pricey — worth more than three times its weight in gold, according to a Roman edict issued in 301 A.D. — that its use was reserved for priests, nobility and royalty. “Though purple may have symbolized a higher order, it reeked of a lower ordure,” Dr. Grovier writes in his book, “The Art of Colour.”

Where all this purple came from has long been a mystery. Just a few locations along the Levant’s southern coast and in Cyprus show evidence of dye-making at the start of the period, and all were on a modest scale. But a new study by researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel suggests that through most of the Iron Age biblical era, from roughly 1150 B.C. to 600 B.C., a small promontory called Tel Shiqmona on Israel’s Carmel coast was not a residential settlement, as previously supposed, but a major purple-dying factory.

“Tel Shiqmona fills in this gap with continuous production, most of the time in massive quantities,” said Golan Shalvi, a postdoctoral student in archaeology at the University of Chicago and the lead author of the paper. “For the majority of the Iron Age, it is the only site where manufacturing can be demonstrated with certainty.”

Archaeological evidence from Tel Shiqmona, on Israel’s Carmel coast, suggest it was a major purple-dying factory from roughly 1150 B.C. to 600 B.C

Aaron Schmitt, an expert on Phoenician culture who teaches archaeology at the Heidelberg University in Germany and who was not involved with the project, hailed the study for shedding new light on the neglected ruins. “To find a site that really specialized in this economic branch is highly significant and special,” he said

The research, published in the Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv, proposes that during the first half of the ninth century B.C., the Israelites took over Tel Shiqmona and set about cornering the lucrative purple-dye market by converting the small dye installation into a fortified manufacturing plant surrounded by a casemate wall. (This was at about the same time that Ahab ruled the Kingdom of Israel.)

The new operation was more or less a joint venture, run by the Israelites and staffed by skilled Phoenician workers who held the secrets to making the dye, Dr. Shalvi said. Whether the locals had continued the operation by coercion or cooperation is unclear.

In theory, the goods assembled at Tel Shiqmona, mainly purple-dyed wool or textiles, were distributed to the elite and temples across the area, including Israel, Phoenicia, Philistia, Aram, Judea and Cyprus. Dr. Shalvi said the dye probably created both the argaman (purple) and techelet (azure) mentioned dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible. Techelet was used for dyeing tzitzit (tassels) on tallits (prayer shawls) used in Jewish religious rituals, and inspired the blue of the Israeli flag.

“The purple manufacture at Tel Shiqmona overlapped with the existence of the First Temple in Jerusalem,” Dr. Shalvi said, referring to the house of worship that, according to Jewish tradition, was built by King Solomon on the spot where God created Adam. “For most of that time, it was the only place known to make the dye. Therefore, it is the only candidate to provide the color for the scarlet and sapphire hues of the temple’s robes and tabernacle curtains.”

It took guts

Tyrian purple was the sole colorfast dye known to the ancients; fabric tinted in the color grew brighter with weathering and sunlight. Shades ranged from bluish-green to a purplish red, depending on how the dye was prepared and fixed in textiles. The most vibrant tone was the deep crimson of “clotted blood” tinged with black, the Roman historian Pliny reported.

In imperial Rome, sumptuary laws restricted the buying and wearing of purple-dyed fabrics to the emperor (purple silk was to be used only at his direction under penalty of death) and, to a lesser extent, senators and consuls, who were allowed to wear broad bands of purple at the edges of their togas.

The name and provenance of Tyrian purple were inventions of the Romans. As far back as 1900 B.C., the Minoans of Crete were already preparing a purple dye from marine snails, spawning an industry that then caught on and flourished throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The center of production is thought to have moved to the port of Tyre, although Dr. Schmitt said it could not be corroborated by primary sources, either textual or archaeological. At the port, the snails were gathered from shallow waters and left to rot in large vats before being distilled into the purified dye. (Phoinike, the area’s corresponding Greek name, is related to phoinix, meaning “reddish purple,” leading some scholars to speculate that Phoenicia was “the land of purple.”)

Pieces of an ancient vat of purple dye from Tel Shiqmona.Credit...Moshe Caine, via Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem

Julius Pollux, a Greek scholar and grammarian from the second century A.D., attributed the discovery of the color to Tyrian Hercules, known to the Phoenicians as Melqart, guardian deity of Tyre. In his “Onomasticon,” a 10-volume thesaurus, Pollux relates that a nymph named Tyrus was walking along the beach when her dog bit into a sea snail, staining the dog’s mouth an intense purple. Tyrus was enthralled by the brilliance and told Hercules, her lover, that she wanted a robe of the same color. Hercules complied and purple became a royal rage.

In the 17th century, the artist Peter Paul Rubens recreated the yarn in the oil painting “Hercules’ Dog Discovers Purple Dye.” Alas, he got the shell wrong, depicting a spiral nautilus snail instead of a prickly murex.

Shell game

Tyre is 30 miles north of Tel Shiqmona, where the purple pigment was created from the dried and boiled guts of three species of predatory sea snails: the spiny dye-murex (Bolinus brandaris), the banded dye-murex (Hexaplex trunculus) and the red-mouthed rock shell (Stramonita haemostoma). Each added a slightly different cast to the mix.

Tel Shiqmona had long confounded archaeologists, who wondered why what looked to be some kind of fort had been erected far from agricultural lands on a rocky stretch of shoreline that didn’t offer safe harbor to ships.

From 1963-77, the eight-acre site was excavated extensively by Yosef Elgavish, an Israeli archaeologist. Working on behalf of the Haifa Museum, he unearthed weaving and spinning equipment, large purple-stained ceramic vats and evidence of human habitation dating to around 1500 B.C. Although some archaeological layers harbored Phoenician pottery, Dr. Elgavish also found a four-room house and olive presses, which he identified as typical of the 10th-century B.C. settlements of the Israelites.

Salted glands of murex snail dry in the sun during the production of Tyrian purple

 

“Dr. Elgavish had a hunch that Tel Shiqmona had some role in the production of the purple dye, but he didn’t delve into the amount of production or who ran the dye process,” Dr. Shalvi said.

For the next four decades, the site was almost completely ignored for academic research. “The results and finds of the early expeditions were neither researched nor published,” Dr. Shalvi said. In 2016, he and Ayelet Gilboa, his doctoral adviser at the University of Haifa, began a project to save what they called the “cultural and intellectual assets” hidden in the forgotten finds.

Dr. Shalvi soon realized that defining Tel Shiqmona’s as exclusively Israelite did not reflect the region’s complexity. He divided the site’s Iron Age chronology into four main episodes: a Phoenician village (1100 B.C. to 900 B.C.); a walled enclosure controlled by the Israelites (900 B.C. to 740 B.C.); an ephemeral resettlement after the destruction of the kingdom and the facility (740 B.C. to 700 B.C.), and an unfortified industrial compound under Assyrian domination that survived until the Babylonian takeover of the territory (700 B.C. to 600 B.C.)

Three years ago, after carefully reviewing the thousands of finds from Dr. Elgavish’s excavation, Dr. Shalvi had an epiphany. ”I discovered purple traces that no one else had observed,” he said. “As soon as my eyes were opened to the purple staining pattern, I noticed it everywhere.”

That afternoon he called Dr. Gilboa and told her about his revelation. “We discussed whether it might be a good idea for me to see a psychiatrist,” Dr. Shalvi said with a dry chuckle. “Fortunately, chemical analysis demonstrated that in every case the purple was real.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/science/archaeology-tyrian-purple-murex.html

Who Needs An Army When You Have Bench Kvetchers - Part Three - The Idiot Brigade - “If all the soldiers studied Torah, we wouldn’t need an army,” the boy replied.

 

Ultra-Orthodox Jews block Israeli highway in protest of IDF draft

 

The protesters can be seen blocking vehicles and clashing with police officers at the intersection near the Coca-Cola factory in Bnei Brak in footage shared on social media.

 The Idiot Brigade:

In Bnei Brak, a city east of Tel Aviv that is considered Israel’s ultra-Orthodox capital, there are few posters of the Israeli hostages who were captured on Oct. 7 and whose photographs are ubiquitous in secular neighborhoods.

Rabbinical leaders in the city remain unmoved by calls for Haredim to serve in the military. Within Haredi communities, many fear that the fabric of their insular life would begin to fray if men were forced to skip the full-time study of Scripture.

 

FIVE STAR GENERAL OF THE IDIOT BRIGADE Rabbi Meir Zvi Bergman, center, a revered religious leader, said the way to help Israel is to study Scripture.

 

“The way to help is to study Torah,” Meir Zvi Bergman, one of the most revered rabbis in Israel, said during a rare audience with journalists from The New York Times. “No one can give up on the Torah,” he added.

To show how Rabbi Bergman reflected mainstream Haredi opinion, a Haredi commentator took us to meet boys from a nearby school.

“How are we going to win the war?” the commentator, Bezalel Stauber, asked. “With guns?”

“Not with guns,” one boy replied.

“With what, then?” Mr. Stauber asked.

“Just with prayer,” another boy shot back.

“So where are we going to get our soldiers from?” Mr. Stauber said.

“If all the soldiers studied Torah, we wouldn’t need an army,” the boy replied.

 

Gaza War Is Shifting Ties Between Secular and Ultra-Orthodox Israelis 

Dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters blocked Highway 4, near the haredi city of Bnei Brak, in a demonstration against recent calls for equal IDF conscription rules on Sunday afternoon.

The protesters can be seen blocking vehicles and clashing with police officers at the intersection near the Coca-Cola factory in Bnei Brak in footage shared on social media.

According to Israeli media, the protesters were affiliated with the Peleg Yerushalmi sect.

Some protesters had called the police "Nazis." Ultra-Orthodox Jews block a road during a protest outside the city of Bnei Brak, March 3, 2024

During the protest, an Israeli border police officer was seen kicking a protester.

Israel Police released a statement on the matter, saying: "Traffic arrangements on Highway 4 following an illegal demonstration: Israeli police officers are on the scene directing traffic to alternative routes.

Route 4 to the North - traffic is diverted to Route 471. Highway 4 to the South - traffic is directed towards Am Moshevat, Bnei-Brak. We recommend traveling by alternative routes."

Later, the Israel police provided an update, signaling that the protest had ended while summarizing the event and claiming that some protesters had called the police "Nazis."

 

 

The update read: "All the roads are open to traffic following an illegal demonstration starting at noon, hundreds of protesters began to break the order and block highway 4, clashing with the police, while they laid down on the road under the vehicles accompanied by calls of "Nazis" at the police. During the evacuation of some of the protesters, the police had to use force in order to stop the offense and the violation of freedom of movement.  The Israel Police considers the right to protest as a cornerstone in a democratic country and allows protests as long as they are held within the framework of the law. At the same time, the police will not allow disturbances of any kind or damage to freedom of movement or any behavior that may endanger the safety of the public."

Gallant sets ultimatum for haredi IDF draft

The haredim's protest comes after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for the first time, publicly called for a "wide consensus" bill that would end the blanket exemption given to the ultra-Orthodox on Wednesday evening. Gallant said that there was a "real and direct" need to lengthen the service of mandatory and reserve IDF soldiers but that "the war has proven that everyone must enter under the stretcher."

A day later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he believed he could pass a draft law arrangement that would not tear the nation apart and would be supported by a majority in the Knesset. 

 

Some Were Persuaded To Take Up Arms

 

WATCH VIDEO:

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article

19,000 Israeli kids physically or mentally injured since Oct. 7 ---- UN EMERGENCY RESOLUTION UPON HEARING THIS NEWS - JEWS EAT TOO MUCH!

 

19,000 Israeli kids physically or mentally injured since Oct. 7 

 

A new report shows the devastating impact of the war on the children of the Jewish state. 

 

Israeli children in their Sderot classroom on their first day of school since the Oct. 7 massacre, March 3, 2024.

An alarming new report demonstrates the devastating impact of the Hamas-led terrorist attack of Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza on the children of Israel, including nearly 20,000 physically and mentally injured in hostilities.

From Oct. 7 to Feb. 28, the National Insurance Institute recognized 19,407 children as physically or mentally injured, according to the data published by the Child Safety Council on Sunday. About 37% of them (7,257 children) are under the age of 6.

Other notable data points published include 84% of parents responding to a national survey saying that their children aged 2-12 were in emotional distress, 64% reported fear and 62% reported anxiety.

A jump in reports of violence, sexual abuse and neglect towards children was also reported. In the month of October to December, there was a 28% increase in calls to the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services’s 118 support and guidance hotline compared to the same period a year earlier. There was also a 37% increase in calls regarding violence against children in the family.

In those months, 13 investigative cases were opened against adults suspected of committing criminal offenses against minors in hotels, where many of the tens of thousands of evacuees from the north and south have relocated after Oct. 7. Twelve of those cases were for violence and one was for sexual abuse.

During the Hamas-led rampage across the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, terrorists murdered 38 children and kidnapped 42 others under the age of 18 to Gaza. Three of the murdered children were under the age of 3 and four were between the ages of 3 and 6. Two of the hostages are still in Gaza—Kfir Bibas, 9 months old at the time of his kidnapping, and his older brother Ariel, 4 years old, who were kidnapped along with their parents from Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Fifteen of the kidnapped children, including those released and the Bibas brothers, have parents still held hostage in Gaza.

In addition, 116 children were left orphaned after the massacre of some 1,200 people, including 20 kids losing both parents and 96 losing one parent.

Nearly 50,000 children of school age as of December 2023 lived in areas that the government forcefully evacuated after Oct. 7, of whom 17,725 were children of preschool age (up to 6 years old). That is in addition to the many families who voluntarily relocated away from the northern and southern border areas.

As of December, there were 8,000 children who had not been integrated into the education system, and if a military campaign is launched to remove Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon, many more will be evacuated.

There is a shortage of about a thousand educational psychologists and also a shortage of educational counselors, according to the report.

Attorney Vered Vindman, CEO of the Child Welfare Council, sent an open letter on Sunday to members of the government ahead of a meeting on the state budget, calling for billions of shekels to be allocated for the field of mental health for children and youth.

“Caring for their fate cannot be satisfied with nice words, it requires budgets and putting the acute needs of children and youth for health, education and welfare as top priorities,” Vindman wrote, adding that if this isn’t prioritized then “the meaning is that we, as a society, are on the sure path to the abyss, with our eyes open.”

The data was presented to Israeli President Isaac Herzog as part of the “Children in Israel 2023” report.

https://www.jns.org/19000-israeli-kids-physically-

Muslim Hatred Of Jews Is Embedded in their DNA, in their mother's milk - It Is Ubiquitous - Peace With Them Is Impossible!

 

On 30th anniversary of her son’s death in a terror attack at the Brooklyn Bridge, Devorah Halberstam decries ‘plague’ of hatred

 

Devorah Halberstam, center, at a Brooklyn Bridge ceremony marking 30 years since her son's death. At left is New York Attorney General Letitia James and at right, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, March 1, 2024

 

(New York Jewish Week) — Devorah Halberstam, whose son Ari was killed in a 1994 terror shooting at the Brooklyn Bridge, decried rising antisemitism at a commemoration of the attack’s 30th anniversary.

“Hate has seeped into our society like a plague and we need to make changes,” Halberstam said at the event Friday afternoon at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, where her 16-year-old son was gunned down. 

“Each day, men women and children are being targeted,” she said. The event occurred during a spike in antisemitism in New York City, and Halberstam emphasized that Jews especially are seen as “fair game.”

The Halberstam family belongs to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and on the morning of March 1, 1994, Ari had visited the movement’s ailing leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Rebbe, at a Manhattan hospital.

While traveling back to his home in Brooklyn in a van with 14 other Chabad students, attacker Rashid Baz opened fire on the vehicle, wounding Halberstam and three others. Halberstam succumbed to his injuries five days later.

Baz later confessed that he had targeted the group because they were Jewish. He was sentenced to 141 years in prison. The FBI designated the case as an act of terrorism only in 2000, following a years-long campaign by Devorah Halberstam. 

During her push for the terror attack designation, Halberstam forged ties with New York leaders and emerged as a community activist. She played a leading role in founding the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights, which is dedicated to her son and aims to counter hate through teaching. She now serves as the museum’s director of external affairs.

“We must never give up the fight to destroy terrorism, to destroy antisemitism,” she said in her speech on Friday. “We are here in America, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The brave must stand up and speak out.”

Ari Halberstam in an undated photograph.

Before she delivered her speech, Halberstam visited the ramp where the shooting occurred, which has been named for her son. Standing in the cold winter sun alongside Mayor Eric Adams and other elected officials, Halberstam lit memorial candles for her son that were placed on the bridge’s railing. Halberstam and Adams, a former police officer, state senator and Brooklyn borough president, have become particularly close over the past 30 years, Halberstam said. 

Adams had been there for the family “for decades,” Halberstam said, and “not just when the cameras were there.”

She mourned her son in her emotional speech, describing how she had sat by his bedside for five days after the shooting and “cried from the depths of my soul hoping for a miracle.”

She said the grief still weighed on her after 10,957 days.

“I speak for all parents whose children were taken from them – there is no peace for us,” she said.

Speaking after Halberstam, Adams voted to “weed out hate no matter where it is.” The mayor said the 1994 shooting and Halberstam’s push for the terror attack designation had a lasting impact on the city’s security, forcing officials to confront “dangers that lurk in the shadows of our city.”

“This country takes a different view of terrorism because of what happened on this bridge,” Adams said. A number of attacks on Jews have taken place across the country since the 1994 shooting.

The event took place as Jews in New York City have grappled with a surge in antisemitism following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war. The NYPD has documented an average spike of more than 100% in antisemitic hate crimes since October. Jews are consistently targeted in hate crimes more than any other group in the city, according to NYPD figures.

During the memorial ceremony, a person in a passing car shouted anti-Israel epithets at the crowd while it was walking up the ramp where the shooting occurred, but there were no other protests.

New York Attorney General Tish James, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Ari Halberstam’s younger brother, Shea, also spoke at the event.

https://www.jta.org

Pastor Tiago Cardozo & Avrohom Mondrowitz Walked into a monastery after a stop at the bar .... (Then Mondrowitz probably) Took Him To A Yeshiva....

 

Brazilian pastor indicted in Jerusalem over pedophilia allegations

 

Cardozo committed sexual assaults against minors belonging to the community, according to the indictment. He would invite them to “hang out” and sleep in the monastery where he lived.

Pastor Tiago Cardozo, a Brazilian citizen, was in Israel as part of his priesthood studies, working within the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. He belonged to the Catholic community under the Monastery of Saint Simeon and Anne, where he was a recognized religious official.

Cardozo committed sexual assaults against minors belonging to the community, according to the indictment. He would invite them to “hang out” and sleep in the monastery where he lived in the Ein Kerem area in Jerusalem.

There, he would commit the indecent acts.

A history of 'befriending' minors at the monastery

In one case, Cardozo befriended a young boy on the autism spectrum as well as his mother and would regularly come to stay at their home, and the child would visit him at the monastery.

The monastery includes a room that serves as a living room for hosting, including sofas, video games, and a television – something children would enjoy.

According to the indictment, the minor would come to play video games and watch movies with the pastor. During one such occurrence, when the two were watching a film together sometime between 2020-2022, the pastor repeatedly attempted to touch the boy against the minor’s wishes, including near his genitalia.

A week later, Cardozo offered to buy the boy a game if the minor would provide him with manual stimulation. Shortly after being rejected, he forcibly pulled the boy onto his lap and forced his hand down the minor’s pants while the other hand was around the boy’s throat amid cries of dissatisfaction such as, “Leave me be” and “I don’t like this.”

Cardozo only stopped when he heard someone approaching, allowing the minor to run and hide in the restroom.

In another case, during one of the visits to the monastery of four minors aged 12-14, Cardozo committed sexual acts on them while they were in the living room of the monastery.

The four children belonged to the Catholic community and would regularly visit with Cardozo to play video games, watch movies, and have a sleepover. During one such occasion in the summer of 2022, Cardozo came into the living room where the children were hanging out and proceeded to touch each of them in their genital region over their clothing for a short period of time.

A year later, in 2023, Cardozo came to the boarding school in Gan Hapa’amon in Jerusalem, where one of the four children lives, so as to say goodbye before traveling to Brazil. They hugged, during which the pastor allegedly purposely touched the child’s genital region over his clothing once more.

He did so to the same child once more later that same year while the two were having dinner together.

The arrest of Cardozo

The indictment claims the pastor “did all this for sexual stimulation or satisfaction.”

Cardozo was initially arrested on February 18, and his arrest was extended the following day. The prosecution asked the court to order the pastor's arrest until the end of the legal proceedings against him. They continued to gather evidence, including through the search of the pastor’s cell phone, where they found “sexual-pedophilic content,” according to Israel Police.

The indictment alleges that the exact crimes committed by the pastor were indecent acts, indecent acts by force, and indecent acts upon a minor below the age of 16.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-789686