Israel Matzav

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameyach!

See you all Sunday night!

Labels: personal stuff, Sabbath observance, Shavuoth

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:10 PM 0 comments

Will Yair Lapid's Sabbath press conference become the excuse to undo the coalition?

No one is fooling himself that Yair Lapid is a Sabbath observer. But the Israeli government nominally observes the Sabbath. And when the Finance Minister calls a press conference on the Sabbath to announce that there will soon be a solution to the 'budget crisis' (not exactly a matter of life and death that would permit desecrating the Sabbath), it could lead to the undoing of Lapid's agreement with the Jewish Home party and the end of the current coalition.

It should be noted that in December 1976, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin broke apart his coalition with the Mafdal religious Zionist party over tensions, after an IAF ceremony at an airbase welcoming the arrival of the first three F-15 fighter jets to Israel desecrated the Sabbath.

Jewish Home, the offshoot of Mafdal, has yet to issue a response to Lapid's Shabbat gaff, which comes mere days before the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana) on Wednesday.

However, Jewish Home MK Shuli Muallem hinted that Lapid's move may indeed cost the coalition, saying on Saturday "Yair Lapid has the right to do as he pleases in his private home - to cut down trees or pump water (forbidden acts on Sabbath - ed.) - but Yair Lapid works on Shabbat and desecrates the day of rest with the goal of gathering a few lost mandates."

"Jewish Home as a religious party in the coalition can not sit in the government with someone who gathers mandates and desecrates the Sabbath as if it's a normal work day," said Muallem, without elaborating on what exactly her statement will mean in terms of practice.

Surprisingly, the criticism of Lapid didn't just come from the Right.

Surprisingly far-left Meretz party chairperson Zehava Galon joined the criticism of Lapid on Saturday.

"While you were enjoying your day of rest, Finance Minister Yair Lapid decided to drag all the financial journalists from their homes in the middle of Shabbat, inviting them to park at the entrance to his house in Tel Aviv so that they could hear him read off a thoughtless announcement," charged Galon.

"The reading took exactly a minute-and-a-half, but it certainly was enough to destroy the Shabbat of the camermen and journalists forced to arrive to hear the utterances of his excellency the finance minister," added Galon tongue-in-cheek, noting the "unfairness" towards Sabbath observant journalists wasn't the only problem about his "futile announcements" on Shabbat.

Hmmm.

Labels: Jewish Home party, Sabbath observance, Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid party, Zehava Gal-On

Come o' bride

The Amazing Maccabeats spent Shabbat in Austin Texas with Rabbi Klatzko of Shabbat.com. After Saturday evening's beautiful concert for University Of Texas, the Maccabeats lent their voices and support for Shabbat.com, a network whose aim is to unite every Jewish person in the world!

Thank you Maccabeats. You truly are a light!

Let's go to the videotape.

Thanks guys. I found out this week that I just might be in Austin, Texas this fall, and didn't know whether there was an Orthodox Jewish community there (I hadn't had time to look into it yet). I just got my answer.

Shabbat Shalom everyone.

Labels: Boee Kallah, Maccabeats, Sabbath music video, Sabbath observance

Keep the Sabbath, stay alive

An Orthodox Jewish travel agent's refusal to book a ticket for a Friday night flight for a customer saved the customer's life according to this report on Dan's Deals' web site (Hat Tip: Mrs. Carl).

The travel agent, an Orthodox Jew, proposed the following business class itinerary, slightly altering the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight from Saturday to Friday.

Andy loved the price, but again requested the Saturday morning flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing:

The travel agent responded that he would not be able to book travel for him over the Sabbath, but that he was free to book that flight by himself:

What did Andy do? For the shocking conclusion, read the whole thing.

Labels: Malaysia, Sabbath observance, terrorism, travel

Beitar Jerusalem soccer team: No more Sabbath games

In a move that's both the right thing to do and a smart business move (given the steadily increasing percentages of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem), the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team has announced that it will no longer hold its home games on the Sabbath.

Beitar Jerusalem FC said Sunday that it had come to an agreement with Israeli broadcasters to ensure that its home games will only be played on Saturday night or on weekdays.

The Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday evening and ends at sunset on Saturday night.

Israel's league games are often played before the end of the Sabbath, especially in the summer when the sun sets later in the evening. While some religious groups have voiced concerns over that in the past, this is the first time an Israeli team has pushed to make a definitive move on the issue.

Beitar spokesman Oshri Dudai told The Associated Press that the club was aiming to make it easier for the more religious or traditional Jewish Beitar fans to attend the team's games at Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium.

Dudai described the move as "a big achievement," and said club owner Eli Tabib had held lengthy negotiations with the broadcasters over the plans.

"It was not easy to reach this agreement, but we are trying it out this season," Dudai said.
A statement on the club's official website said that "despite the economic risk, Tabib preferred to accommodate the crowd and give more sectors of the community the option to come and support the team."

Israel has always held sporting events on Saturdays and Jewish holidays, apart from Yom Kippur, considered the holiest day of the year.

I don't particularly care for soccer, but who wants to go out there with me to support their decision (after October 7, and preferably during the week rather than on Saturday night)?

Labels: Beitar Jerusalem, Sabbath observance, soccer

Israel Electric Company to become Sabbath observant?

It has long been the case that in communities that follow the rulings of Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz (the Chazon Ish), inhabitants have private communal generators for the Sabbath rather than use electricity produced by the Israel Electric Company, whose employees are overwhelmingly Jewish. The Electric Company's unions balked at the notion of their employees - who are among the highest paid in the country at their regular salaries - being replaced by non-Jews, because work on the Sabbath draws triple pay.

Now, due to automation, there may no longer be a need for Israel Electric Company employees to work on the Sabbath. The Israel Electric Company may become Sabbath observant (Hat Tip: Aryeh Z).

The automation process has actually been underway for several years, but new technology, such as the use of smart meters, has enabled the company to speed up the process, to the extent that Sabbath electricity generation could be fully automated as soon as a year from now.

The automation process is being supervised by several rabbinical organizations, such as the Tzomet group, which examines the halachic implications of technological issues.

An IEC spokesperson said that theoretically the automation process could be applied to the rest of the week as well. However, the spokesperson said, that was not on the agenda, so long as the IEC was still a government-controlled company, with its primary interest not necessarily the profit motive, but improving the lives of Israelis wherever possible.

Ah yes, that good old socialist ethos. You didn't expect your electric bill to go down (it's gone up 30% in the last year), did you?

Labels: Israel Electric Corporation, Sabbath observance, socialism

Something to think about

Share this with your environmentally conscious friends....

Labels: Sabbath observance

Ron Kampeas invades Jennifer Rubin's privacy

Poor Jennifer Rubin is being picked apart by the media for writing a post two weeks ago that made what seemed like a reasonable assumption at the time - namely that the Norwegian terror attacks had been carried out by Islamists - and then leaving that post untouched until after the Sabbath ended. Ron Kampeas was particularly nasty.

In any case, the Post's ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, clears her in part because she does not work on the Sabbath:
...What compounded Rubin’s error is that she let her 5 p.m. Friday post remain uncorrected for more than 24 hours. She wrote four other unrelated blog posts that night, through about 9 p.m. Police officials in Norway at 8:33 p.m. Washington time had made their first statement that the suspect had no connection to international terrorism or Muslims. Rubin should have rechecked the facts before signing off, and Post editors should have thought about editing her post more that night.Rubin has a good defense. She is Jewish. She generally observes the Sabbath from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday; she doesn’t blog, doesn’t tweet, doesn’t respond to reader e-mails.

When she went online at 8 p.m. Saturday, her mea culpa post on Norway was the first thing she posted, although its tone also hurt her, particularly this sentence, which struck many readers as borderline racist: “There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West.”

Rubin has a good defense. She is Jewish. She generally observes the Sabbath from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday; she doesn’t blog, doesn’t tweet, doesn’t respond to reader e-mails.
The problem with this “good defense” is that it’s anything but. This has nothing to do with Shabbat. Pexton says as much -- Rubin filed four additional posts over the next four hours, so she had time to check the facts and update her Norway post before signing off; and The Washington Post always had the ability to update the post even after she called it a night.

The issue isn’t when Shabbat started, but what Rubin did before sundown that Friday night and what the Post did afterward.

Hey Ron - did you ever hear of scheduling posts? I do it all the time.

It is entirely plausible - indeed likely - that Rubin posted those other three items within half an hour or an hour of her original post on Utoya, and then shut off her computer well before the Sabbath started, having queued the other three posts to go live on Friday night.

While I personally do not queue posts to go live after the Sabbath starts where I am located, or before the Sabbath ends where I am located, there is no prohibition of which I am aware under Jewish law from doing so.

I know that this post has nothing to do with Israel, but Jennifer Rubin is one of Israel's strongest advocates and deserves to be defended by the pro-Israel community, especially when it comes to matters of Sabbath observance.

Dan l'kaf zchut (judge another person favorably), Ron. Elul is just around the corner.

Labels: Jennifer Rubin, Ron Kampeas, Sabbath observance