I was walking back from dropping Moshe (now 3.5 years old) at gan this morning. A young man in his twenties approached from the other direction (after dropping off his child at a different  gan). Short beard, pe’ot, wearing his tzitzit out and his tefillin on his head. Huge smile. As he came close to [...]

Read about Yaakov Moreshet and his Hilat Shoham investment fund in this article from Haaretz. What makes this investment fund special is that it only makes “halachic” investments: He wont invest in Jewish companies that work on Shabbat No investing in Jewis Car Rental companies that rent out cars on Shabbat No purchasing bonds from [...]

I saw this on this blog, as well as in an email that was sent to me: Rabbi Frand, at his weekly shiur (broadcast via satellite from Baltimore), told over the following incredible story. He related how he had received a letter this past week from a person involved in rabbanut in Israel. The Rabbi [...]

Quick Only-In-Israel story that happened tonight: there is a hachnassat Sefer Torah (dedication and completion of a new Torah scroll) tonight at one of the shuls on the yishuv. I had seen some announcements and flyers up over the past week, but wasn’t planning on attending. Still, around 5pm I started to hear some music [...]

The windshield wipers on my car have been slowly failing over the past few months. They were not exactly brand-new when I got the car (the car was a 2002 model, so I am pretty sure it still had the original wipers on it when I got the car). Of course, during the Summer this [...]

If you are looking to part on the side of a street in Jerusalem, there are four different options: Parking is illegal (signified by a red circle side with a diagonal blue line running through it and/or red and yellow stripes painted on the curb) Parking is legal…but you have to pay (signified by black [...]

On my way back from Yerushalayim this afternoon, I stopped in the local supermarket (Rami Levi at Shaar Binyamin). The main reason was to get some pizza for dinner (they have a small take-out pizza place right there, with the cheapest pizza in the area by far – 24 shekel for a pie with toppings [...]

Literally. Yesterday I was walking in Meah Shearim for a few minutes, and right there on the street corner, there was a pile of little cages, each one containing a chicken or three. Kaparot refers to the custom of slaughtering a chicken on Yom Kippur eve and giving it to someone poor. Although it should [...]

On the street above me, there are two shuls. Both were built as attachments onto private homes. One of them is home to the local Kolleh Chatzot, where people come to learn all night, every night. The other one is not a beit midrash, just a shul, but it is the davening home to a [...]

Adina was going to a lecture in the adjoining community (Tel Zion) tonight. On the way, she gave a tremp (hitchhike/lift) to someone she knew, along with this person’s baby and 4 year old brother (yes, you read that correctly). Another detail: her family (ie: parents, and the ten or so kids still in the [...]