(IsraelNN.com) The IDF Rabbinate is hard at work on the development of a special touch screen that would make it possible to use vital computer systems without violating Sabbath, reports IDF magazine BaMachaneh (In the Camp).

Operational considerations mandate the use of computer systems like ‘Masua’ or ‘Sheder Cham 400’ during the Sabbath. These systems inform their operators of the location of IDF units during operations and battles. Other systems, like the IDF’s medical information system, named CPR, must also be used on Sabbath.

Rabbinic Conversion Court judges are more likely to reject prospective converts who were partially trained via the Internet, a senior source in the Conversion Authority said Sunday.
According to the source, about 70% of prospective converts who are interviewed by the conversion court are accepted. However, among prospective converts who were trained in part via the Internet, only about half are accepted, said the source.
The issue of conversions comes to the forefront ahead of Shavuot, which is celebrated with the reading of the biblical story of Ruth, the archetypical convert to Judaism.

According to the above-referenced conversion court source, the court can tell the difference between people who study partially using the internet, and those who study using only books and a face-to-face teacher. I maintain, however, that this isn’t a matter of the internet producing lower-quality students, or the internet providing lower-quality material, but students either not utilizing it properly, or students finding alternative oppinions of rabbis who don’t necessarily hold like the rabbis sitting on the conversion panel, and thus these students are disqualified. During my conversion studies in 1999/2000, if it hadn’t been for the internet, I would have never gotten the information I needed. I devoured JewFaq, and to this day I use it as a partial reference, along with Project Genesis and Aish Hatorah due to the almost complete inavailability of seforim in any sort of accessible format. And until this complete inavailability is changed, I’ll continue to do so, or I’ll have to buy print seforim and then scan them, correct the mistakes that creep in through OCR, and then, finally, read it. So in my eyes, this annti-tech decree strikes me as a luddite one at best.
Hat-tip.

(IsraelNN.com) Archaeologists from Israel’s Antiquities Authority (IAA) have revealed two important artifacts recently discovered in Jerusalem, both dating from the First Temple Period (8-7 BCE).

The first, a bone seal engraved with the name “Shaul” was found in an excavation being conducted under the auspices of the IAA, in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park, located in the City of David. The second artifact, an ancient jar handle bearing the Hebrew name “Menachem” was uncovered in the neighborhood of Ras el ‘Amud during an excavation prior to construction of a girls’ school by the Jerusalem municipality. The jar handle, inscribed with the name “Menachem” carved in Hebrew, was found among settlement remains dating to different phases of the Middle Canaanite period (2200 – 1900 BCE), and the last years of the First Temple period (8-7 BCE) that were recently uncovered during the excavation.

The name Menachem Ben Gadi is noted in the Bible as that of a king of Israel who reigned for 10 years in Samaria, as one of the last kings of the Kingdom of Israel. According to Kings II, Menachem Ben Gadi ascended the throne in the 39th year of Uzziah, King of Judah (Judea).

(Via)

Make Arafat a ‘martyr’ already!

By

Dafna Yee

director of

The Jewish Watchdog)

I think that the Israelis are being very cruel to make Arafat wait and wait
for the ‘martyrdom’ that he has always promoted as the best way to serve his
’cause’. Having read his exhortations to the ‘palestinian’ youth concerning
the joys available to those who kill Jews, (a good place to read his actual
words in translation is PMW – Palestinian Media Watch (

pmw.org.il/)

and who die in that action, I have concluded that that is his personal
desire. In addition, he has certainly earned his ‘martyrdom’ as he has been
responsible for more Jewish deaths than anyone has since Hitler. So, I
suggest that the Israelis stop waiting for him to give yet more proof that
he deserves that type of death and grant it to him already. Granting Arafat
his wish for the type of death he wants will allow many Jews to continue
with the LIFE that they want. See, everybody can get what he or she wants.

Israelis have the power to keep him from having to hold his head down in
shame when he is among his followers who already took that route. He has
even let people know that his preferred method of killing is using bombs.
So, let him have the type of death he wants so badly and drop a bomb on his
house (although if someone wants to shoot him and put him out of his — and
our — misery, please go ahead). I mean wouldn’t it be a terrible shame if,
after all his efforts to fulfill the stated destiny of Islam — dying while
killing Jews (and other non-Muslims), he died of a heart attack or something?
Of course it would. So, make Arafat a ‘martyr’ already!

Before you react, realize that the juxtapositions are used to prove a point.

When Should We No Longer Support Israel?

By Victor Davis Hanson
VictorHanson.com
March 30, 2004

[TTAI-*]

The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans
the question-at what point should we reconsider our rather blanket
support for the Israelis and show a more even-handed attitude toward
the Palestinians? The answer, it seems to me, should be assessed in
cultural, economic, political, and social terms.

Well, we should no longer support Israel, when.

Mr. Sharon suspends all elections and plans a decade of unquestioned
rule.

Mr. Sharon suspends all investigation about fiscal impropriety as his
family members spend millions of Israeli aid money in Paris.

All Israeli television and newspapers are censored by the Likud
party.

Israeli hit teams enter the West Bank with the precise intention of
targeting and blowing up Arab women and children.

Preteen Israeli children are apprehended with bombs under their
shirts on their way to the West Bank to murder Palestinian families.

Israeli crowds rush into the street to dip their hands into the blood
of their dead and march en masse chanting mass murder to the
Palestinians.

Rabbis give public sermons in which they characterize Palestinians as
the children of pigs and monkeys.

Israeli school textbooks state that Arabs engage in blood sacrifice
and ritual murders.

Mainstream Israeli politicians, without public rebuke, call for the
destruction of Palestinians on the West Bank and the end to Arab
society there.

Likud party members routinely lynch and execute their opponents
without trial.

Jewish fundamentalists execute with impunity women found guilty of
adultery on grounds that they are impugning the “honor” of the family.

Israeli mobs with impunity tear apart Palestinian policemen held in
detention.

Israeli television broadcasts-to the tune of patriotic music-the last
taped messages of Jewish suicide bombers who have slaughtered dozens
of Arabs.

Jewish marchers parade in the streets with their children dressed up
as suicide bombers, replete with plastic suicide-bombing vests.

New Yorkers post $25,000 bounties for every Palestinian blown up by
Israeli murderers.

Israeli militants murder a Jew by accident and then apologize on
grounds that they though he was an Arab-to the silence of Israeli
society.

Jews enter Arab villages in Israel to machine gun women and children.

Israeli public figures routinely threaten the United States with
terror attacks.

Bin Laden is a folk hero in Tel Aviv.

Jewish assassins murder American diplomats and are given de facto
sanctuary by Israeli society.

Israeli citizens celebrate on news that 3,000 Americans have been
murdered.

Israeli citizens express support for Saddam Hussein’s supporters in
Iraq in their efforts to kill Americans.

So until then, I think most Americans can see the moral differences
in the present struggle.

If the Palestinians wish to hold periodic and open elections,
establish an independent judiciary, create a free press, arrest
murderers, subject their treasury to public scrutiny, eschew suicide
murdering, censure religious leaders who call for mass murder,
embrace non-violent dissidents, extend equal rights to women, end
honor killings, raise funds in the Arab world earmarked only to build
water, sewer, transportation, and education infrastructure, and
pledge that any Jews who choose to live in the West Bank will enjoy
the same rights as Arabs in Israel, then they might find Americans
equally divided over questions of land and peace.

But all that is a lot of ifs. And so for the present, Palestinian
leaders shouldn’t be too surprised that Americans increasingly find
very little in their society that has much appeal to either our
values or sympathy. If they continually assure us publicly that they
are furious at Americans, then they should at least pause, reflect,
and ask themselves why an overwhelming number of Americans-not
Jewish, not residents of New York, not influenced by the media-are
growing far more furious with them.

www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=775