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OPINION & COMMENT Already Violating the Coalition
Agreement
It has only been a matter of days since the chareidi
representatives in the Knesset, under the direction of the
gedolim, raised their hands in support of the current
government, in the expectation that the new Prime Minister
and all the partners of the coalition would keep their part
of the agreement that they just signed with United Torah
Judaism (UTJ) to make legal arrangements for yeshiva students
to continue their studies uninterrupted, and to maintain the
religious status quo. But days is all it took for these
agreements to be violated, both in letter and in spirit.
The following are excerpts from a pamphlet published by Rabbi Alex Schutz entitled "Of the Heavens" (Di Shemaya -- in Hebrew and English) in parallel with the current masechta of the daf yomi: Rosh Hashanah. The first part is from the Introduction, and the second is taken from a comment on the masechta itself. Every Day and Every Minute Counts There are several mitzvos in the Torah involving counting time. First the Torah (parshas Metzora) informs us of the mitzvah to count the seven clean days of the zovoh (this law does not apply at all today): "If she be cleansed of her zov then she shall count to herself seven days and after that she shall be clean" (Vayikro 15:28). They Act in Love and Are Content With
Suffering "And you shall love Hashem your G-d . . . with all your means (bechol me'odecho)' -- with every measure He metes out to you" (Chazal). The word me'od, exceedingly, in great measure, generally serves to emphasize the unique. When we seek to stress that we are not talking about "good" in the usual sense, or "great, big," in normal terms, we say tov me'od, good indeed, or godol me'od, exceedingly large. Surprise Ending I felt like a sociologist in a documentary film. Surrounded by at least a hundred dark-suited and for the most part black-hatted and bearded men, ritual fringes hanging at their sides, I -- a comfortably Reform Jew from the suburbs -- definitely stood out in the Friday night crowd at this particular synagogue. All material on this site is copyrighted and its use is
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