Chareidim have it good when it comes to government representation.

When they build their towns and neighborhoods, everything gets built at once, shuls, shopping centers, schools, and they even get transportation lines. But when we non-Chareidi settlers build, everything is a fight. Even just to improve the hours for a bus line can take years.

And look what happened yesterday and today. Yesterday, 112 new homes in Beitar were announced. And today in Ramat Shlomo (part of Jerusalem, so it's not really a big deal), 1600 new homes were announced.

Where are our Settler representatives? Why aren't they fighting and succeeding for us, like the Chareidi representatives fight and succeed for their constituencies?

In his previous term, Bibi made a big deal out of reciprocity. Yet that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Right now, the good people of this country are suffering through Bibi's settlement freeze. And the funny thing is, Bibi has inadvertently created a perfect tool to fight the incitement and violence of the Palestinian Authority.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll have noticed that the PA (and the family of organizations supported by the NIF) have been organizing and sponsoring more and more violent and dangerous protests throughout the country.

And as we get closer to "Peace Talks", Abbas and the PA raise their rhetoric, incitement, and violence.

Meanwhile it seems that Israel simply doesn't know how to respond to these threats at all. I mean, not at all.

Well here is one idea.

Israel should announce a new policy of reciprocity.

Anytime the PA praises, awards or promotes a terrorist, a new outpost should be built.

After every joint PA-Lefty protest another Yishuv should be allowed to build.

Put a price on their actions. And make it clear they are footing the bill.

Will Bibi do this? No.

So why suggest it?

Because this country is led by a bunch of frierim. We do and give up everything for a fake Peace and just get more violence and hate back. We're acting like a bunch of Turkish Jews.

Break the cycle people.

Jews are an amazing breed. You can kick them and beat them over and over, and still the message won't get in.

This past Shabbat, Turkish authorities raided a Synagogue during prayers. Come on people, what kind of wake up call do you need? Yellow badges like they're now planning in Iran?

Considering the US finally recognized the Armenian genocide by the Turks, you would think that the precedent of then and the acts of now would be enough.

Move to Israel while you still can.

The Kinneret Color System is confusing. There's a red line, another red line, a black line, and probably a few others. It's probably a reflection of Israel initially setting the red line under which there isn't enough water to draw water from the Kinneret, and then when the water passed that red line, they set another red line, that said, OK, that first red line was just a warning, the next one is really important.  (Sort of the way Israel negotiates peace).

Anyway, with all the rain we've had, the water level has gone above the red line, which apparently is more like a yellow warning line. It hasn't reached the level where they open the sluice gates to prevent flooding (that's a few more meters higher). But all in all it's brought back the Kinneret to a level it hasn't seen in a long time, though it could use more.

I assume the aquifers (which no one is mentioning) are also in better shape too with all the rain we've been having.

Heard this at the Seudah:

Why is Haman called Rasha, but not Pharaoh?

Because we only got a one day vacation from Haman, but from Pharaoh, we got 7 (8 if you live in Chul).

Sometimes it's easy to forget, Purim is a very serious holiday.

Haman makes a deal with the king. He's going to guarantee the king 10,000 talents of silver (approximately two-thirds of the kingdom's normal annual tax revenue) within a year. Money needed after the coffers the have been depleted from war. Haman's plans is to extort one of Persia's client nations, and when they can't pay up the full amount, he's going to have them all killed and take their property for the state (and what's left over for himself).

The king agrees, perhaps (or perhaps not) knowing that Haman specifically meant the Jews. He doesn't really care. He's told the victim is weak, disunited, unloved, and most importantly unable to fight back.

The plan begins. Perhaps Haman is already collecting from his Jew tax and adding the money to the king's coffers, and the Jews are starting to be impoverished, and they certainly realize they can't make up the missing sums.

The threat of death looms closer.

And then the miracle of Purim happens, and everything is turned around.

I've always wondered about two things. The first is why didn't the Jew take the booty from the fighting. After all it was theirs by right. The second is why did Mordechai and the King implement a tax.

In his amazing book "Esther, Ruth, Jonah Deciphered" Stephen G. Rosenberg provides an answer (to the second question, for sure).

One traditional answer as to why the Jews didn't take the booty was to send the king a message. The Jews are just looking to survive and not take from other people, that the Jews are controlled and united in their actions, etc.

But Rosenberg, by explaining the background of the 10,000 talents of silver provides the background for a different explanation. The tax at the end of the story that was implemented, was a tax created to make up the shortfall in the budget (that Haman had promised), but one that was fairly distributed, instead of just on the Jews. (Rosenberg also explains that the other nations that "became Jews" doesn't mean they converted - the wording is unusual - but rather they helped the Jews pay the Jew tax).

And that actually helps explain why the Jews didn't touch the booty. Haman had planned to take the Jews property and give that to the king as part of the 10,000. The Jews here did they same thing. They left the booty to the king and filled up the King's coffers.

Suddenly King Achashveirosh learns quite a lot. His queen is a Jew. His best advisors are Jews. The people looking out for him (without expectation of reward) are Jews. The people able to help him fill his coffers are Jews. The most able fighters in his kingdom are Jews. The most united people in his kingdom are Jews.

From a disrespected people at the beginning of the Megillah whose holy Temple vessels are used for binge drinking parties, to a people that everyone fears and respects at the end, that really is a Purim miracle.

Please God, in our day too.

There's a pattern. Jews acknowledge their heritage, and the Arabs riot.

Netanyahu opened up the Kotel tunnel exit- a significant archaeological dig that publicly displays our historical connection to Jerusalem - the Arabs riot.

Netanyahu merely calls Kever Rachel and the Tomb of the Patriarchs historical Jewish sites (which they are) and - the Arabs riot.

Just recently headstones on the Mount of Olives - one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the world were vandalized again.

They don't seem to like it that everywhere one looks and digs, one finds more and more unquestionable proof of Jewish existence and sovereignty in Eretz Yisrael. I think it upsets them more that they can't find anything historically Palestinian at all - since there never was a Palestinian state or people in the first place.

And the riots are political violence, organized by their leaders - they're not spontaneous.

JPOST US displeasure with the designations of the Cave of the Patriarchs in the flash point town of Hebron and the traditional tomb of the biblical matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem had been conveyed to senior Israeli officials by American diplomats.

Hebron is one of the oldest Jewish cities in Israel - with the exceptions of the short periods after the Arabs massacred all the Jewish residents - Hebron has had a continuous Jewish presence for all those 3000 years.

(My extended family are among the landowners there.)

Kever Rachel goes back even hundreds of years earlier than Hevron becoming a Jewish city (in the time of Joshua). And our connection the Ma'arat Hamachpelah goes even further back to Abraham.


We know Obama has problems with historical facts relating to his own country, but does he really need to stick his revisionist nose into ours?

Someone's got a sense of humor.

If you go onto Facebook and start searching on the names of the Dubai assassins, you'll see that most of them have a Facebook page.

Obviously this was done as a joke.

But what this really means is that in the future spies are going to have to create even better background cover identities, because Dubai is going to hook up their passport control to compare their photos on Facebook and simply try to see if they exist in the online/real world.

At an OU Kashrut conference recently held at Lander College in NY, an OU rabbi was giving a speech on Kashrut certification in China and about Chinese culture in how it relates to doing business with them and certifying food as kosher.

A man in the audience called out the question, "How can you trust the Chinese? They're all a bunch of liars, thieves, and criminals".


Without missing a beat (or so I was told), the OU rabbi answers back, "Then I guess the Chinese have even more in common with the Jews than I previously thought.".

The man shut up, and the rabbi continued his speech.

I wonder if he davens at the Park East Synagogue.