Last night, Adina made a frosted chocolate cake to bring to work, in honor of one of her coworker’s birthday (who wouldn’t want some cake for their birthday?). I forgot to remind her to take it this morning, and when I spoke with her, asked her if she had remembered. She had, and I said [...]

…we just had our first big rain storm of the season. Thunder and lightning galore (and no power outages!).
Anyone who is driving in Israel tomorrow, please remember that over the Summer lots of car oils and fluids collect on the road, and are not washed off until the first or second rain storm. So after [...]

About a month ago, we were driving on highway 60 in Jerusalem towards Pisgat Ze’ev, and we saw in the other direction that there were absolutely no cars coming from the other direction. I said to Adina that it is probably a חפץ חשוד (suspicious object – a suitcase or bag that might be a [...]

Over the last 6 years, I have lived in three different places where at some point or another we would say one or two chapters of Tehillim every morning (and sometimes evening as well) after davening. The reason ostensibly given for this is invariably “The Matzav” (“The Situation”), referring to the “situation” in Israel where [...]

From YNet:
Those Israelis whose income places them in Israel’s top 20th percentile pay 80% of the taxes that are levied in Israel, according to the yearly report published by the Finance Ministry’s State Income Authority Sunday.
In addition, the salary of almost half (47%) of salaried workers in Israel is not high enough to be subject [...]

To the person who searched Google for “can one take a job knowing that he wont be able to daven” and ended up at my recent Rules of Chazzanut post – why are you going to Google for this? If you know that this might be a halachic issue (it most certainly is), and you [...]

Aside from the fact that they do not mention Otzar Beit Din at all, the NY Times does a pretty decent job of reporting on what is going on in Israel with disputes over heter mechirah and yivul nachri (non-Jewish owned and grown produce). They even manage to quote a few pesukim from Shemot, do [...]

Over the past few years, whenever I have heard someone be chazzan who should not have been allowed near the amud, I have mentally compiled my own list of rules for Chazzanut. I am releasing it for public consumption below, in the hopes of achieving better communal harmony throughout the Jewish world (pun intended).

If you [...]

I remember motzei Shemini Atzeret last year – out first inclination was to wait to put away the schach from the sukkah until some later point. The reasoning behind this was mainly that we were too lazy to put it away right away. In the end though, we put it away that night, with the [...]