- Someone please explain this to me. Please, please, please. They claim this is some sort of "key", but that's certainly not what my filthy mind came up with.
- Vishnitz decides that it's tired of Satmar and Bobov having all the fun. Which dynasty will be the next to splinter. Ger? Skver? Krotchsnif? Please let it be Krotchsnif, that would make for a really fun few weeks. Also, is it just me, or did Satmar have much better faction names? Sure, Aaronis and Zalis didn't sound super-cool, but compared to Srulists and Mendelists? The Mendelists sounds like a short-lived Social Democrat group in Tsarist Russia. Oh, and Ynet and Haaretz really aren't very good at giving background information on this stuff. Some entertaining lines, though.
What is different about Vishnitz, one of the world's largest and wealthiest Hasidic sects, originating in Romania, is that neither side in the feud bothers to attribute the struggle to ideology. This is a soap opera, each of whose chapters is lapped up in the ultra-Orthodox world and beyond.
...The Mendelists say this is the latest in a series of "acts of terror" against them. The other side says the attack was precipitated by a break-in a few days earlier into an office in Kiryat Vishnitz, in which the only copy of a collection of lessons given by the grand rabbi in his younger years was stolen. "These are the words of the living God that we keep and publish each Sabbath, and we live by them," a source said. "Then came this gang and sowed destruction; they took our soul. There is mourning and shoa in Vishnitz."
Godwin?
And why is nobody pointing out that Vishnitz already split thirty years ago when Moshe and Mottel Hager divided up their fiefdoms into America and Israel? This is a sub-split.
- The Conservative seminary in Israel has said it won't admit gay and lesbian students, as this is a violation of halakha. As a friend pointed out, this would be slightly more notable if the Conservative movement in Israel wasn't so small, both in comparison to the total population of the country, as well as the Conservative movement itself. If the Schechter Seminary wants to follow in the path of Joel Roth, more power to them, but it remains to be seen whether this will have any substantial effect on the implementation of the Law Committee's decision. Interesting commentary from Roth in that last link, btw.
- A father in Israel is working to change the way people think about victims of terrorism, particularly when it comes to memorials and monuments.
Yossi, a Haifa resident who works as a project manager at Amdocs, has been dedicating every free moment in the past few years to make Israeli citizens remember terror attack victims as they remember fallen IDF soldiers.
"I believe there is a terrible discrimination on the moral level between fallen defense establishment members and murdered civilians, and I am doing my best to change the current situation," he says.
Some fascinating stuff.
- And the winner is...
Man, talk about desperate for chametz. Still, it all goes to charity, so it's a nice little story (until the guy's wife sees the bill).
- Another item showing us the slippery slope of telling everybody and their grandmother they're a lost tribe. I hope someone's taking notes. Incidentally, if the Pashtuns are really Jews, does this mean Karzai can make aliyah?
- And lastly, a shocking note from our friends at Yated- apparently non-religious Jews who sell chametz only because the Orthodox force them to may not ACTUALLY believe in the legality of the sale!
Many manufacturing plants and stores that are owned by non- religious Jews make the customary sale of their chometz before Pesach. The problem is that they do not regard it as a sale in any actual sense. They are just carrying out the instructions of the Rabbinate or other kashrus supervisory body so that they can retain their kashrus certification. Is such a sale effective?
...HaRav Eliashiv told us that the sale of chometz by a nonobservant Jew who signed on the commonly-used document empowering an agent to sell his chometz for him to a non-Jew, cannot be relied upon. Such a document has no validity whatsoever and is worth no more than the paper on which it is printed. The chometz must be regarded as having remained the Jew's property over Pesach and its consumption or any other form of benefit is forbidden. The proof that there has been no sale is that if the buyer wanted to actualize the transaction, the nonobservant seller would object that he only signed the document for religious purposes, not to be carried out.
The illustrious Maran's solution? Rewrite the contract so it's super-legally binding. As Yated puts it,
The document must therefore be written in a way that makes it legally binding. When the signatory knows that its terms can be enforced legally, the transaction can be regarded as valid.
Got it. If they know you can sue them, they won't break the contract, and everything's kosher. I guess lawyers are one way to put the fear of Heaven into these folks. (And what holiday celebration would be complete without notarized contracts of sale?) Then again, I guess it's better than having to have haredim threaten the chametz sellers or something- "and just so we understand each other- if you don't sell the chametz with the right kavannah, I'll break your legs."
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