Not Kedai for most people--Moving to the secular state of israel (SSOI)

  "You ask: 'Do we need more Chareidim in the army?' The answer is: No. About three thousand chareidim enlist every year – most of them into combat units; any more would just cause more [administrative] headaches. Every chareidei framework costs tons of money and inhibits our new project of increasing the number of women in combat units… In two years, the number of soldiers in the army is [expected] to grow to a surplus of 17,000. 17,000 soldiers that the army does not know what to do with. A committee has been established to find a solution for all those extra soldiers – how to let them go. In two years, we are looking at a surplus of soldiers… Everyone knows that the army has no need for chareidi soldiers… They cost too much: every chareidei soldier costs double that of a regular one. This whole debate was unnecessary." (Yossi Joshua, Military Correspondent for “Latest News,” on IDF Radio) So if the country doesn't need the Charedim in the military, if in fact, ...

Here's how the Israeli press talks about Haredim: "This is why the ultra-Orthodox and the nationalist ultra-Orthodox were bribed with immense budgets at the expense of productive citizens who serve the country."  ( Haaretz ) In Beit Shemesh , neighborhood after neighborhood turns Haredi, squeezing out others. (Times of Israel) Here's a typical chiloni: "They are also showering gold on parasitic ultra-orthodox (mostly Askenazis) in a war era to secure their support." (Israeli quoted by  Seymour Hirsch)  Here's  Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy: “The ‘haredization,’ the process of [religious] radicalization is bringing [societal] segregation and the deepening of a rift in Am Yisrael,” he said in an interview on Radio Kol Hai. “It is more serious and more dangerous than any external threat. "In the past, harsh and dangerous remarks were made against haredim but failed to gain much media attention. Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy compared the threat...

I came across a book called the Dawn of Redemption. It's a Zionist work which tries to make the argument that the long awaited redemption has begun in the form of Medinat Yisrael. It's a translation of אילת השחר which was written by Yaakov Filber a student of Tzvi Yehuda Kook.  I opened it with an open mind. Let me hear what the author has to say. Maybe it will offer a worthwhile counterpoint to the anti-Zionistic literature that I started to read after I moved to Israel and saw how I had been lied to about life here.  But the trouble begins on the first page, actually with the Table of Contents. Section I - The Land of Israel.  א - The Holiness of the Land ב - The Praises of Eretz Yisrael ג - The Land and the Torah etc. Let me ask, is that what redemption is about? Is the essence of redemption that we are returning to the land or that we are returning to Ha-Shem? Why is the first section of this book all about the land? What does the prophet have to say about redemption:...

I am reluctant to toss around the word truth, as if I possess it. That's Donald Trump's thing with his Truth Central. However, having lived in Israel for a decade I believe I can offer a perspective. If you don't live here, then I know much more about this place than you do  Israel is surrounded by mythology. I doubt that there has ever been a place in history about which people are less careful to speak accurately. I'm not talking about the so-called anti-Semites and so-called self-hating Jews (the former being an overused term, the latter being simply ridiculous) who "dare" criticize anything about the government or military, no matter how obvious or factual. Zionists  automatically accuse those people of lying about Israel. No, Zionists are the ones who lie about Israel. Let's talk reality now and undress some of the Zionist myths. Israel is not an affluent country. If you move here from America, your standard of living will drop by 75%. Read that figur...

  And I'm not showing the photos of "IDF Babes" in bikinis, like this with the skin covered up by me. The Prohibition Against Impure Thoughts: “Scripture (Ecclesiastes 12,14) teaches us that God judges every action according to the person's hidden feelings. If a man inadvertently happens to see a beautiful woman and allows himself even a momentary impure thought while looking at her, he should not think that he did not commit a transgression because he had not gone out on purpose to be attracted by her charm. The statement that God judges man according to his hidden feelings applies in such cases also. Even pleasure at the sight of an unexpected sensual stimulus is a transgression. We should regard as a punishment the mere fact that we were given occasion for impurity without our having gone out to look for it. On the other hand, one who gets an unexpected opportunity to perform a mitzvah should rejoice and give thanks to God Who has given him this unsought opportunit...

Since the cost of buying a car is double in Israel, I don't own one. Occasionally, I rent. Yesterday, I rented a car for a chol moed trip. Cost? 480 NIS which is $130.00, with insurance. And that's with a 50 NIS saving from prepayment. What would the same car have cost me in Denver, Colorado? $50, plus insurance which would have been around $15.  I drove 70 miles roundtrip.  Cost for gas in Israel 109 NIS which is $30. Cost in the USA? $7.58 Total cost in Denver? ~$73. Total cost in Israel ~$160. That's more than twice the price. Now where did I go, to the Zoo in Ramat Gan. Not a bad zoo by the way. I once came here via public transportation. I took a bus, to the train, to a taxi. Return trip I took a long walk to a bus to a train to a bus. Traveling time was at least three hours each way. So public transportation really isn't an option, certainly not with children. Denver has a zoo. Ticket prices: Ramat Gan: Denver Zoo tickets would have cost me $166. The Zoo in Ramat ...

At the Seder, I said a few words about the holiness of the night and I almost said that it's especially holy because we are in the land of Israel. But I remembered Rabbi Soloveitchik saying this: “It means chovos ha’mitzvos in chutz l’aretz is not to be considered a prologue or introduction to kiyum ha’mitzvos in Eretz Yisrael . They are of the same importance. A Jew who takes an esrog in chutz l’aretz has the same reward, the same schar , as the Jew who takes an esrog in Eretz Yisrael .”  [ Holzer, The Rav Thinking Aloud , p. 231] I almost fell for the Zionist line that your mitzvos are different in Israel, that they are better in Israel. But that shows a lack of faith in the Divine will that HaShem invested in every mitzvah. The seder is the same in Chicago as Jerusalem. The power of the mitzvah is the same no matter where you perform it. There's one caveat: if you perform it with less enthusiasm because you are unhappy in Israel  then it will be LESS powerful there. L...

Glen Greenwald: Just since last Friday night, 72 hours ago, several of America's most accomplished academic institutions – including Harvard, Columbia, and NYU – saw increasingly aggressive attempts to punish, fire and silence, not students, but academics and professors, for the crime of opposing Israel: all as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly celebrates his control over the discourse on American campuses. We are – according to the Trump administration itself – only at the beginning, nowhere near the end, of the systemic assault on free thought in American academia: the place free thought is supposed to thrive most robustly. What's most amazing of all is that this free speech attack is not being waged in defense of Americans or American values, but instead in defense of a foreign country often cheered most by those who call themselves part of the America First movement, a staggering irony among many.   Deportations of students who denounced or protested the Isra...

Do I think it’s better to be in Eretz Yisroel because of the Nazi march in Skokie. And I say it’s a very big error because America is just as secure as Eretz Yisroel. Now I won’t say America is less secure than Eretz Yisroel or Eretz Yisroel is more secure. Because nobody knows what’s secure. The fact that the Nazi marched in Skokie, it’s ridiculous because of that to say therefore I’m going to flee. There’s no place to run to. You run to Eretz Yisroel, what’s going to happen? More people have died in Eretz Yisroel from the terrorists than have died in America from murderers…. Wherever you go, Jews are urged to leave. In New York, they say it’s not safe. You have a lunatic who is inviting and wishing Jews go home. Go home where? Where is home? Eretz Yisroel is not home yet. It’s just as unsafe as any other place. And it’s a propaganda for the purpose of getting the Jews to go to the one big mouse trap.  Rabbi Avigdor Miller, tape #221. The march was in 1978. I was 15 years old when...

  Nazi Germany: Adolf Hitler describing the essentials of the Nazi state: "The state form, the army. and the civil service formed the basis for the old Reich's wonderful  power and strength." (Mein Kampf, Vol. I, chapter 10) Adolf Hitler describing army service in Nazi Germany, May 1, 1934: "a national and social melting pot for the education of a new German human being."   (Daily Life in Hitler's Germany, Dr. Matthew Seligman, Dr. John Davison, John MacDonald, Thomas Dunne Books, p. 168) Hitler also predicated citizenship on army service:  " The rights of citizenship shall be conferred on every young man whose health and character have been certified as good, after having completed his period of military service.  This act of inauguration in citizenship shall be a solemn ceremony. And the diploma conferring the rights of citizenship will be preserved by the young man as the most precious testimonial of his whole life. It entitles him to exercise all th...