The Folly of the Israeli Government

We are living through tense times. For one thing, it seems that the deciding moments for the draft law are at hand. We will soon see whether the Knesset manages to pass the law that has been under discussion for many months. This topic will be covered in a separate article, with Hashem’s help. In this column, I will comment only that this is a painful and oppressive time for the religious community. We know that the situation is not optimal, and the entire community is operating under circumstances that are far from ideal. The chareidi politicians are promoting the current law only for lack of an alternative. It is tragic that Torah learners are persecuted specifically in Israel, the Jewish state. What a terrible black stain on this country.

On that note, I heard a story this week from Rav Nissim Harari, a distinguished talmid chochom from the neighborhood of Bayit Vegan in Yerushalayim and the head of Kollel HaChida. Rav Hararai is a former member of Kollel Chazon Ish in Bnei Brak and a former talmid of Yeshivas Ohr Torah, and he shared his recollections of the stories told by the rosh yeshiva during his youth, Rav Dovid Malinovsky, who was a close associate of both the Chazon Ish and the Brisker Rov. In 1949, the first year after the State of Israel was founded, Rav Dovid joined the Chazon Ish to bake matzos in advance of Pesach, and when they had completed the process to his satisfaction, the Chazon Ish remarked, “I am surprised that they are still allowing us to bake matzos.” Less than a year had passed since the state was founded and the Chazon Ish was amazed that the government wasn’t interfering with the performance of this mitzvah! The Chazon Ish, with his innate prescience, apparently intuited that a day would come when the Israeli government would persecute those who observe the mitzvos.

Naturally, this reminds me of a comment attributed to the Brisker Rov, which I heard many times from Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro: Let no one make the mistake of thinking that the State of Israel was first established and only then decided to wage war against the Torah and the chareidi community. Rather, the state was founded for the purpose of fighting against the Torah and chareidim. That is a chilling thought indeed.

Today, everyone can see that the middas hadin is in force. Our country has been beset by troubles and tragedies, yet the government has only added insult to injury by compounding its sins on a regular basis and continuing its determined battle against the Torah. This is sheer folly. If they were wise, they would recognize their errors and realize that they are inviting disaster. But they have no wisdom or understanding, and they fail to grasp the fact that they are undermining the basis of their own survival. The Torah itself tells us that it is the source of our very existence. And that is why we must turn to Hashem with pleas to be saved from the government’s evil designs.

The politicians who inhabit the government give us plenty of reason for disillusionment on their own. The leftist parties, old and new alike, are vying among themselves to take the harshest and most rigid stance against the chareidi community, while the average chareidi citizen watches with dismay and horror. They, too, are guilty of drilling holes in the bottom of the proverbial ship that carries all of us. The era of Moshiach has undoubtedly arrived, when we are told that Torah learners will be persecuted and darkness will cover the land.

The Left Unites in a Bid to Unseat Netanyahu

Perhaps a few more words are in order about the current players on the political field in Israel. This would technically be worthy of a much longer report, but we will settle for a brief overview of the situation for now.

There are several parties on the center-left vying for seats in the Knesset. First, there is Bennett 2006, the party headed by Naftoli Bennett, which has performed very well in the polls and is shown in some surveys reaching over 20 mandates. The Democrats party, the union formed by the remnants of Meretz and the Labor party, is headed by the anti-religious Yair Golan, a general in the reserves, and hovers around 10 mandates in all the polls. Next is Yashar, the party headed by former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot, who resigned from the party led by Benny Gantz (another former chief of staff) and seems poised to rake in between six and eight mandates. Yair Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid, is shown in some polls failing to cross the electoral threshold, while other polls show Lapid winning four or five mandates. According to most polls, Benny Gantz’s party, Blue and White, will not make it into the Knesset at all. This week, a new initiative was floated, as all these parties discussed uniting into a single list that they believe will receive 45 to 50 mandates and then, together with the Arab parties, will unseat Netanyahu. Avigdor Lieberman, who is supposedly on the right side of the political map, approached the left-wing bloc this week to offer his support for their bid for power. In exchange, he asked them for a simple pledge: no government without a universal draft (which must include the Arabs as well), and zero government aid for anyone who does not enlist.

In any event, Lieberman’s proposal doesn’t stand a chance of being accepted, solely because he insists on drafting the Arabs.

As for the Arab parties, they announced this past weekend that they intend to form a single combined slate to avoid losing votes. In the most recent elections, two of the Arab parties—headed by Ayman Oudeh and Mansour Abbas, respectively—received five mandates each, while the third Arab party, Balad, cost the Arabs almost three mandates by failing to cross the electoral threshold. The Arabs are convinced that a combined party will receive between 12 and 15 mandates in the upcoming election, which is a fairly realistic assumption. And they hope that increasing their power will make it possible for them to oust Netanyahu from the office of prime minister.

Given this overview, you may be wondering if the religious community should be worried, perhaps even extremely worried. An expert on elections had the following to say: “The union on the left will add between one and two mandates to the opposition bloc, which numbers about 54 or 55 mandates today. The union will not change the map of the blocs, just as Bennett’s entry did not change anything. The unity agreement calls for the four parties to be united as a technical bloc by running on a single slate, which can be disbanded after the election. Mansour Abbas plans to do the same—to separate and join the leftist parties. The other Arab parties will remain outside the bloc and leverage their political power to block the formation of a coalition. The goal is to increase the Arab parties’ power from their current ten mandates to 13 or 14. Therefore, in the best scenario for them, the opposition will add a total of two mandates to its bloc. Why only two? The answer is a bit more complicated.”

The expert goes on to present an exact calculation of how many seats would be lost and gained by the coalition and opposition, respectively, on account of the parties that would not cross the electoral threshold. He concludes, “I have explained on many occasions that during the three years of turbulence, there was a transfer of mandates between the blocs, but only on a small scale. Five mandates left the right-wing bloc immediately at the beginning of the protest movement, and seven mandates moved to the right from Gantz, Lapid, and Lieberman after the beginning of the war, the elimination of Nasrallah, and the bombing in Iran. That is what brought the right-wing bloc back to the vicinity of 64 or 65 mandates.” The expert argues that the right wing will receive even more mandates in the next election, since we are parting from about 200,000 voters who passed away, while about 600,000 first-time voters (youths between the ages of 18 and 22) will be coming to the polls for the first time, and the political right enjoys strong support within that demographic. That means that as of now, it seems that the right-wing bloc is poised to receive at least 66 mandates.

In short, we can relax while watching the premature victory celebrations and opening of champagne bottles in the opposition camp. They are experts at inventing a victory where none exists.

The Blood Libel Against the Day Care Operator

It has been a difficult and painful week in Israel since the tragic deaths of two babies at a private day care center in Romema last Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday, the owner of the day care program and her assistant were put through a nightmare. The media assailed them mercilessly, and the chareidi community was horrified by the reactions to the tragedy that circulated on the media. Dozens of people spewed hatred online. “Two fewer chareidim; so what?” was a common refrain. The secular media’s reports of criminal negligence, as well as the claims by a police representative in court that this was a case of negligent manslaughter, were a source of dismay to the religious community as well. I sensed at the outset that a blood libel was in the works, and my suspicions were confirmed as the story became clearer. It was soon revealed that the day care owner has been running her program for decades and is known as a woman who pours her heart and soul into caring for the babies who are entrusted to her every day. Now that her name has been cleared, I can identify her by name: Mrs. Miriam Friedman is the owner of a popular babysitting program in the neighborhood of Romema.

After the tragedy took place, the media was flooded with images that purportedly proved that the babies in the program were placed in bathrooms and closets to sleep. This was a lie. The babies were moved into these places by rescue personnel who entered the apartment and took charge of the situation. Of course, they did this with the best of intentions. They wanted to move the infants out of the room where they suspected that a gas leak or some other hazardous chemical was endangering their lives. But the journalists who published these images knew very well that they were distorting the truth. According to eyewitnesses, the baby who was seen in a closet was placed there on the direct orders of a paramedic who insisted that the infant must be placed on a hard surface. Someone suggested removing the board supporting a mattress, and he insisted that time was of the essence and ordered the baby to be placed on a closet shelf. And that is just one example. At this point, a theory is circulating that one of the deceased babies died of crib death, which could happen anywhere chas v’shalom, and the other died because of resuscitation efforts that were not performed professionally.

There were two major developments that caused the turnabout in public opinion and in the media’s treatment of the case and that indirectly influenced the judges to order the two women released to house arrest. One of those developments was the testimony of Chani Katz, one of the bereaved mothers. Two days after burying her son, in the middle of shivah, Mrs. Katz appeared at the Magistrates’ Court in Yerushalayim to testify in favor of the two women. Outside the courtroom, she made further impassioned comments with the goal of clearing their names. “I hope that the truth will come to light,” she said. “My children’s second mother does not deserve to go through this…. We are like family, and an injustice is being done to them…. I have buried a child, but Miriam and Mali [the assistant] have also buried a child. This will never leave them. They are completely innocent. I am saying that as a bereaved mother. It was a decree from Shomayim. My Ari was supposed to die precisely at that moment. He needed to leave the world, and it had to happen in Miriam Friedman’s house.”

The second development was a letter of support for the day care staff published by other parents whose children had attended the program. The letter read, “We, the parents of children and infants in the day care center who were under the care of Mrs. M. and her assistant M., hereby declare publicly that the care, the dedication, the responsibility, and the loyalty of the day care staff are beyond all expectations. Every child received personal care and concern…. The loving bond between the children and their caregivers was always evident…. We await the day when they will return to work and we will be able to send our children back to continue receiving their devoted care…. All the reports and rumors that have appeared in the media contrary to the laws of the Torah are utterly false … and spilling innocent blood.” The parents signed their full names, adding their telephone numbers as well.

Government Destroys UNRWA Building, Angering Court

The judges of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Yitzchok Amit (whose status as chief justice is not recognized by everyone), have long been known to be the true rulers of the State of Israel. The events of this past week simply lend further credence to that characterization.

On Tuesday, the government demolished the UNRWA compound in the neighborhood of Maalot Dafna in Yerushalayim, near the kever of Shmuel Hanovi. The compound, which occupied a property with an area of about 46 dunams, was used over the years by various entities serving the organization and served as a headquarters and center of activity for the agency in the heart of the capital. The unprecedented eviction was carried out under the law for the cessation of UNRWA activities, which was recently approved and authorized the Israel Land Authority to take possession of the compounds that served the agency and evacuate them. Even though UNRWA’s official activities at the site were terminated over a year ago, the property was still occupied by local elements who used it unlawfully. The recent enforcement measure therefore put an end to the unlawful possession of the property.

The Land Authority has pointed out that the compound in Maalot Dafna was the first of the UNRWA compounds slated for evacuation after the law went into effect. UNRWA has another compound in the area of Kfar Akab in Yerushalayim, which will soon be seized and evacuated in accordance with the law. This act was carried out with the assistance of the Israel Police Force and in full coordination with the Foreign Ministry, the National Security Council, and the Yerushalayim municipality. The enforcement operation carried out by the Land Authority came after a series of revelations about the involvement of UNRWA employees in the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, and further revelations about the use of the organization’s facilities in Gaza to hide Israeli hostages.

Now, can you guess what happened at the beginning of this week? That’s right: Chief Justice Yitzchok Amit of the Supreme Court condemned the demolition of UNRWA buildings and declared that the state lacked the legal authority to carry out the demolition since a petition has been filed with the court against the law under which it was carried out. In his ruling, Amit ordered the government to explain on what authority the demolition was conducted, as opposed to the seizure or evacuation of the property. The court’s ruling cited a “significant legal difficulty” with the complete demolition of buildings during an active court case concerning the move. Amit explained that demolishing the buildings creates an irreversible situation that might render the judicial process meaningless: Even if the Supreme Court strikes down the law in the future, it will be impossible to restore the previous situation.

In other words, the justice took issue with the fact that the government was undermining the court’s authority. That is all that I wanted to point out.

More Than One Fatality a Day in 2025

One of the top news stories at the beginning of the week was a report on the rate of fatalities in road accidents in Israel. The media reported that 22 people had been killed on the roads in less than a month, and over the past weekend, four people lost their lives in accidents, including a child who had reached his seventh birthday just one month ago. The child was pronounced dead on Shabbos in the hospital after he was critically wounded in an accident while riding a buggy in the settlement of Rechasim. On Thursday evening, two people were killed in an accident on Highway 65, also known as Kvish HaSargel. The incident resulted in injuries to several other victims as well. On Friday, a resident of Chadera was struck and killed by a truck while riding a motorcycle near Zichron Yaakov.

Now that the year 2025 has ended, the statistics on traffic accidents for the year have been released. Over the course of the year, 439 people were killed in traffic accidents, including 134 between the ages of 25 and 44. This is a shocking statistic. There are over 400 families in Israel who have been shattered by these tragedies, and hundreds of motorists who will forever bear a mark of shame for their involvement in fatal accidents.

These figures appeared in a report released by the National Road Safety Authority in a bid to raise awareness and reduce the phenomenon of fatal accidents. According to the report, 121 of the victims of fatal accidents were pedestrians. Just imagine the horrific scene of an innocent person taking a walk down the road that ends with his death and burial. Another important statistic is the fact that 161 young drivers were involved in fatal accidents. The list of common traffic violations that were a direct cause for fatal accidents hasn’t changed: There were 346 cases of failing to yield to pedestrians, 313 cases of failure to comply with a traffic light, 261 cases of driving between lanes, and 231 cases of failure to maintain distance between vehicles. The Ministry of Justice is weighing the possibility of imposing stiffer penalties for these infractions. However, in my opinion, the real problem lies in the realm of education. When a driver on the road causes a fatal accident, it isn’t because of a lack of effective punishments. It is because he doesn’t take the matter seriously enough. In addition, I believe that one of the main causes of fatal accidents is cell phone use. But while it is indeed important to be aware of the causes so that we can fight this epidemic, the number of fatalities over the past year, which averaged more than one death a day, is a mark of shame for this country and society regardless of the exact reasons.

How Many Chareidim Work for the Government?

I recently received a copy of a document produced by the Knesset Research and Information Center titled “Statistics on the Representation of the Arab and Chareidi Sectors in Government Companies.” It was a short yet fascinating document, which was compiled at the request of MK Ram Ben-Barak.

First, it should be noted that some government companies did not respond to the request for information at all. Of those who responded, the companies reported as having no Arab or chareidi employees at all were the Inbal insurance company, Kav Fuel Products, the Cross‑Israel Highway, the Israel Institute for Life Sciences Research, Mekorot Development and Initiatives, the Government Tourism Company, the Ariel Sharon Park Company, the Dead Sea Protection Company, the Dira Lehaskir Government Housing and Rental Company, the National Coal Supply Corporation, Correspondence Services, the Mediterranean Coast Cliff Protection Company, and Netzer HaSharon. There is one more company on the list that I believe was included in error: the Company for Rehabilitation and Development of the Jewish Quarter. I would be very surprised to learn that its nineteen employees do not include a single chareidi (or Arab).

It is fascinating to read the list of the 20 responding companies that do employ chareidim and Arabs. The largest numbers of chareidi and Arab employees were reported by the Israel Railway Company (with 260 employees out of 4,957 from those demographics, accounting for 5.2 percent of its work force), the Ashdod Port Company (with 51 out of 1,236 workers, or 4.1 percent of its employees), Shacham Mekorot Execution, and Arim. Israel Aerospace Industries has a notable chareidi presence (260 employees), but it still represents a low percentage (5.2 percent of the work force). Rafael has 102 chareidi employees out of its total work force of 9,466, and Alta has 119 chareidi workers out of 4204. There is one government company that naturally has a chareidi majority: the Center for the Development of Holy Sites. Out of its 25 employees, 14 (or 56 percent) are chareidim, one is Arab (accounting for 4 percent of the work force), and the remaining ten fit into neither category. The Akko Development Company, meanwhile, has an Arab majority of 72.4 percent in its work force, which is logical.

The main takeaway from this document is that the claims that chareidim are being integrated into the workforce are unreliable. There is also one detail that might call the significance of this document into question: The report does not include definitions of the population groups in question, especially the chareidi community. It is easy enough to define an Arab, but defining a chareidi is much trickier. And without clear guidelines for determining an employee’s chareidi status, one might conclude that the document offers very little in the way of reliable information.

Ran Gvili’s Body Recovered from Gaza

There is much more to report. For instance, the investigation into Tzachi Braverman is a major news story this week. Braverman is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s chief of staff and, until recently, was one of the last members of his inner circle who wasn’t under investigation by the police. He is scheduled to depart for Great Britain soon, having been chosen to serve as the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom now that Tzipi Hotovely has left the position. But now Braverman is under investigation as well after the famous Eli Feldstein was interviewed in the media about a month ago and claimed that Braverman had summoned him to a meeting at the Kirya in Tel Aviv in the middle of the night and informed him about the investigation into the document leaked to the Bild. At that time, the investigation was taking place covertly. According to Feldstein’s version of the story, Braverman warned him about the impending investigation and claimed that he was capable of shutting it down. Feldstein also claimed that Braverman had given him a list of the suspects. Based on this interview, the police summoned Braverman for questioning under warning on the grounds that he was suspected of tampering with an investigation. (This was despite the fact that it was essentially Feldstein’s word against Braverman’s.) This week, Braverman was summoned for questioning again, and a leaked report from the police indicated that the suspicions against him had been strengthened and that investigators believed that Braverman had received the information on account of his position. The District Court in Lod issued a gag order on the case on Friday due to concern that the Shin Bet’s methods and means of investigation would be exposed.

The country’s attention has also been largely occupied over the past week by the fate of Ran Gvili, the final deceased hostage in Gaza. Gvili was a 26-year-old police officer who fought the terrorists and was severely wounded on Simchas Torah. His body was seized and abducted to the Gaza Strip that day by Hamas terrorists. In January 2024, it was confirmed that he was no longer alive. His body was the last to remain in Gaza after the living hostages were freed and the other hostages’ remains were returned to Israel. Even though Gvili’s family and the Israeli public had been promised that the second stage of the agreement with Hamas would not begin until Ran’s body was returned to Israel for burial, this promise was not kept, and the government began talking about moving on to the next step. Hamas was feeling pressure, mainly from Trump, and released an official announcement this week shrugging off any blame: “We have dealt with the issue of the prisoners and the bodies with complete transparency. We have fulfilled all of our obligations under the ceasefire agreement and have handed over all of the prisoners and bodies in our possession as quickly as possible, without delay, despite the noncompliance of the occupying force [i.e., Israel] and the dozens of violations and the slaughter that it has committed. We are eager to close this case completely, and we are not interested in procrastination, in light of the interests of our people. We have worked under complex and almost impossible circumstances to collect and hand over the bodies of enemy prisoners, with the knowledge of the mediators. We now call on them to fulfill their responsibility and to compel the occupying force to implement the agreement. Regarding the body of the soldier Ran Gvili, we confirm that we have provided the mediators with all the details and information that we possess about the location of the prisoner’s body. The fact that the enemy is searching in a specific place now, based on the information provided by the Izz a-Din Al Qassam Brigades to the mediators, confirms our statement.” Rumor has it that the IDF actually determined the whereabouts of Gvili’s body on its own, despite Hamas’s efforts to conceal the information, which prompted the terror group to hastily announce that they had aided the Israeli army. The wicked terrorists would obviously have preferred to hold on to the body as another bargaining chip.

On Monday afternoon, the IDF spokesman announced that Ran’s body had been located, brought to Israel, and identified in the Institute for Forensic Medicine. Prime Minister Netanyahu announced in the Knesset on Monday, “Ran is on his way home right now. This is an extraordinary accomplishment for the State of Israel. We promised to bring everyone home and we have done so.”

In another story related to the hostages, the details of the retrieval of Oron Shaul’s body in January 2025 were revealed this week. The reality of this story is far more extraordinary than anything that anyone might have imagined. Oron’s body was retrieved due to a brilliant intelligence operation involving the Shin Bet, the Military Intelligence Directorate, the Southern Command, and elite IDF units, along with a Palestinian collaborator who ultimately saved the operation. Oron Shaul was killed in battle between July 19 and July 20, 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, while traveling in an armored personnel character that was heading toward the neighborhood of Shejaiya but came under fire from Hamas terrorists. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah in 2024, IDF soldiers captured a computer containing records of correspondence between a Hamas operative and the head of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza. The operative had written, “Among the prisoners in the hands of the Israelis in the Shifa Hospital in Gaza is one of our members who knows the whereabouts of the soldier Shaul.” Israeli intelligence operatives soon determined the identity of the detainee with the relevant information, and after “intensive questioning” (I will leave it to you to guess what they meant by that), he informed them that he had met two other Palestinians who told him that Israel had recently arrested the Palestinian who placed Oron Shaul’s body in the possession of a Gazan named Ibrahim Chilu, who was still holding it to that day. The story is much longer and is replete with complicated machinations and overt miracles that ultimately resulted in the recovery of the soldier’s body.

Ukrainian Immigrants Collected Benefits and Left

One of the most deliberately hushed-up stories in Israel is the immigration from the former Soviet Union, which was intended to balance the growth of the chareidi population. It began when Yitzchok Shamir was the prime minister, and a strategic decision was made to bring as many immigrants as possible to Israel from Russia and Ukraine, even those who were not halachically Jewish. The basic presumption was that all the immigrants would have right-wing leanings and would vote for the right-wing parties, especially the Likud. This projection turned out to be correct, although the immigrants voted mainly for immigrant parties, first supporting Natan Sharansky and then Avigdor Lieberman. It was clear that there would be an influx of non-Jewish immigrants, many of whom might even despise Jews, but the State of Israel, driven by folly and fear of chareidim, felt that it was worth the tradeoff. At that time, the government feared that spies might enter the country as well, since many of the immigrants were not Jewish.

No one has ever wanted to discuss the contribution of these immigrants to the crime statistics in the country, for fear of being labeled a racist. Everyone also ignored the economic burden created by these immigrants—not only the disabled and needy who were entitled to millions in funding from the National Insurance Institute, but also the tens of thousands of immigrants who had escaped from their countries of origin to safer shores in Europe and America and merely used Israel as a temporary stop along the way, since Russia and Ukraine did not permit them to travel directly to America or Europe. While they were here, they also took the opportunity to scam the government out of benefits and stipends intended for actual immigrants who planned to stay. It is believed that some of the departing immigrants even kept their addresses in Israel and continue to pocket government aid to this day.

This is an old story, but it surfaced again this week when the Israeli media began discussing the topic of migration. For the first time, Israel has recorded negative migration, meaning that there have been more people leaving the country than immigrating. The opposition, led by Yair Lapid, seized that statistic to bombard the government with criticism during the most recent 40-signature discussion. Netanyahu took the podium again to respond to Lapid and said, “I have no intention of refuting all the erroneous statements made by the leader of the opposition, but I will mention two things. You said that about 60,000, or 70,000, or 80,000 people left the country; the exact number does not matter. To the best of my knowledge, and I invite you to check this, tens of thousands of them are Ukrainian citizens who immigrated to Israel, or claimed to do so, and then returned to Ukraine.”

Perhaps Netanyahu was slightly inaccurate in his statement. They did not actually return to Ukraine, but instead moved on to other destinations. But the bottom line is that tens of thousands of non-Jewish “immigrants” came to Israel briefly for the purpose of pocketing government benefits and then left the country, and others, who are likewise not Jewish, remained here. Netanyahu did not mention the fact that they are not Jewish, however, since it would not be politically correct.

A Loss and a Gain

You may find the following story hard to believe, but it is a true story that took place as I sat at a red light at the entrance to the neighborhood of Neve Yaakov. My car was in the lane heading into the neighborhood. My destination was the Bais Tefillah shul on Rechov Tzukerman, where my granddaughter was celebrating her bas mitzvah. That isn’t to say that grandfathers were invited to the simcha. I was simply playing the role of a driver, as I had been recruited to bring my other granddaughters home. Beside me, in the lane for cars turning left, sat two men. One of the men reached through his window and tried to hand me a folded bill. “Take this and fill your gas tank,” he said.

“I don’t collect tzedokah,” I replied.

The driver leaned toward me and said, “It’s from me. Take it and say Tehillim for Harav Eyal.”

“Eyal the son of whom?” I asked.

He was a bit irked, presumably because I didn’t add the title harav before the name, but he said, “Harav Eyal ben Shoshana, for success and health.” I had no idea who the driver was, nor did I have any clue as to the identity of the mysterious “Harav Eyal.”

Let me add a few pertinent details. This encounter took place last Tuesday, during a massive rainstorm. I left the Knesset building with my hands full that afternoon, and the wind was so powerful that I was barely able to push the door open. As soon as I stepped outside, the wind tore my yarmulka off my head, and it disappeared somewhere. When my efforts to locate it proved fruitless, I headed for Neve Yaakov with just my hat. I presume that the men sitting in the car beside me believed that I was a distinguished personage of some kind, which is the reason they handed me that hundred-shekel bill. But the bottom line is that the loss of my yarmulka resulted in a gain of one hundred shekels!

And the other bottom line is that I would appreciate it if you, too, would recite a perek of Tehillim for Harav Eyal ben Shoshana.