Did You Hear That???

There really is a lot going on and it is eerily quiet at the same time. I did think a war was going to start yesterday , it didn't, but that could change by the time I post this. Also, this being the nine days I was expecting some little girls to get hit for wearing the wrong clothing in the wrong neighborhood, but even that has not happened.

Very Quiet

Strange

Well, as I mentioned last time I think that the Hardei parties and Netanyahu are trying to set up Lapid. This too has taken the back burner but since I promised let me explain.

Netanyahu is by far the most popular politician in Israel. He would have to do something very dumb not to stay in his job ( he is working on it). The only person that comes close to threatening him is Yair Lapid.

One of Lapid's main issues is to try to clip the wings of the Haredi parties. When he was in the government 3 years ago he did just that but when he decided to go into the opposition , Bebe just took the haredim in and reversed what Lapid did.

So whats the plan you ask?

The supreme court has told the government that they must come up with a law concerning the haredim and the army. They can not just leave it the way it is because the way the court ( and any other thinking person) sees it , you can not ask one group of citizens to risk their lives for the country and give others a pass. So the army came up with a compromise . The haredim would have to give up 4000 students a year to the draft with that number increasing to 7000 a year over the next 10 years. If they do not hit that number, then the government will deduct money from the Yeshivas that don't provide recruits.

Now, I could write a whole blog on how this smells like something else but I won't because it isn't. Also, none of this should be necessary because they should all just go like everyone else.

Now you would think the haredi parties would be indignant about this. They say they are.

Yet...

No riots, no hitting policeman, no one being called Nazi ....????

I think this is a show. The Haredim will say they are against but they are really not. The numbers they have to provide include anyone who was born Haredi but no longer is. That makes up more than half the recruits they need to provide.

They are getting Lapid to vote for this so that the issue, the drafting of the Haredim,  Lapid's main issue, is off the table for the next election.

Pretty smart actually.

I am not sure if I am right but who knows. We will see.

So much to say this time .

Next Up

It seems that although great strides have been made to crack down on money laundering in Israel there seems to be one segment of society that feels they want to keep at it. They are not sure why that bothers anyone except for the fact that Israel might find themselves outside of the international banking system.

Can anyone guess who I am talking about???

The issue seems to be with the system of Gemach's. Those are free loan societies. They are actually very important, especially for the poor . The problem is they are being abused.

It works like this.

Lazer  in Anatevka  donates to The Fruma Sarah Gemach for Second Wives in Israel. He then comes to Israel  and Motel gives him 90% of his money back under the table. The Gemach keeps 10% and Lazar lives it up as a rich bachelor in Israel .

Everyone wins.

We won't get into the Halachic aspects of this since that would be too easy.

You can't do it.

It is illegal.

It is a Chilul Hashem. You are putting other Jews at risk  etc..........

Oy vey

Moving on.

I don't want you to think that everything I hear about the Hardei community is bad. That is not true.  There was a story a few weeks ago about an Elal Flight that was held up for an hour because a group of 4 Haredi men would not sit next to women. Not only that, one of them claimed he was so pious he did not look at women, so he stood with his eyes closed and would only talk to the male stewards or the pilots.

Your not going to believe this but it turns out that the story is not true.

It was not an hour. It was only 5 to 10 minutes.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story was true

This is getting long. I got a lot more but will wrap this one up with another bunch of fascinating facts. They released stats of the 400 Israel's who earned the most money in 2014. To get into that club you had to earn about $3.5 mil. The average was around $11 mil. ( I have converted all number into USD)

The more interesting stat was that out of the 400 , 165 donated an average of $80k to charity.

Pretty cheap huh

The remaining 265 gave nothing

0

Not a typo

In general only 40% of Israeli's give charity and the average amount is about .08%.

Now I am going to go out on a limb here because I do not have any hard proof but I am going to guess that this is one area where the harediam have the rest of Israel beat by a long shot.