Year: 2019

WE WEAR TEFILLIN ONLY ON SHABBOS אין מניחין תפילין אלא בשבת

The Sefer מדרש פליאה (The Puzzling Midrash )  is a compilation of puzzling statements and riddles.

Contrary to popular belief, they are not מדרשי חז”ל. They  were invented by Darshonim who made up statements that
sound illogical and then solved them.

Harav Hagaon Ovadyah Yosef זצ”ל (Yechave Da’as 5-3) quotes a מדרש פליאה and a solution from R. Akiva Eiger zt”l

“אין מניחין תפילין אלא בשבת”  You don’t put on Tefilin except on Shabbos.  The spelling of   בית שין בית תיו –are the Roshei Teivos of במקום שער במקום תפוח Rosh is placed where there is (was) hair. Yad is placed on part of the arm where the muscles are.

The מהרש”א in מהודרא בתרא  ( Shabbos 88b) explains, the פסוק in Tehillim (119 -164) “שקר שנאתי ואתעבה , תורתך אהבתי“. I have hated falsehood and abhorred it, your Torah I love.

Dovid Hamelech is referring to the Darshonim who fool the public with their lies. They say over מדרשים שקרים (invented Midrashim)  and then explain the Midrash with their lies. He only likes true Torah and not invented lies.

From Toras Aba, here.

Shomrim Cards: A Modern Battle Over the Minds of Jewish Youth

examples of some Shomrim Cards שומרים קארטלעך

The people behind these cards and their supporters, are of the belief that owning a smartphone is of the greatest dangers to Jewish life today and the cards offer a way to show what they believe to be the horrors of the smartphone to the children in an illustrative and fun way, in the form of trading cards. The cards show the smartphone users looking like animals and devils, they describe them as being on the way to hell or to jail as a result of their iPhones, and other cards show them as ending up abandoning their religion as a result of their smartphone addictions. A recent fundraising blitz to promote the cards, collected over $50,000. A recent advertising campaign sought volunteers to give out the cards to children.

Advertising the success of a fundraiser for Shomrim Cards, achieving $50,000

On the other side of the fence, are the growing number of people in the Hasidic Community fighting and protesting against the Shomrim Cards. Many people believe that the cards are instructing the children to be disrespectful of adults, lose all sense of proportion regarding good and evil and are a horrible way of educating children, even if they are in agreement on the danger of the smartphone. Recently, a fight broke out in Boro Park, outside a synagogue which had a Shomrim booth set up outside, promoting the cards, with their table being turned over by someone claiming that the cards were corrupting the youth. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Teitebaum, the son of the Satmar Rebbe (Williamsburg), though acknowledging the dangers of smartphones,  is said to have come out against the cards in his Shabbat Hagadol sermon, saying that they lacked Rabbinic guidance. Several schools have now banned the cards, and many parents have voiced their concern against the cards, both online and within the community. Others voice the concern of bringing children into a discussion that should be made between adults and that young school students shouldn’t be exposed to such things.

Search Yourself Online

Overview

You most likely have heard how important it is to protect your privacy and the information you share online. To demonstrate this, we are going to try something new; we are going to show you how to research yourself and discover what information is publicly known about you. The process is called OSINT, a fancy way of saying Open Source Intelligence. This means researching public resources online to see how much information you can learn about a computer IP address, a company, or even a person like yourself. Keep in mind, cyber attackers are using these very same tools and techniques. The more attackers can learn about you, the better they can create a targeted attack. This concept has existed for years, but the latest online tools make it so much simpler to accomplish.

How to Find Information

You will not find all the information on a single website. Instead, you start with one website, learn some details, then use those details to search on and learn from other sites. Then you combine and compare results to create a profile or dossier of your subject. A good place to start is with search engines such as Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. Each of these have indexed different information about you, so start your search with more than one search engine. Start by typing your name in quotes, but after that expand your search based on what are called operators. Operators are special symbols or text you add to your search that better define what you are looking for. This is especially important if you have a common name; you may have to add more information such as your email address or the town you live in. Learn more about operators and advanced search techniques in the Resources section at the end. Examples include:

• “FirstName LastName” > What information can I find online about this person
• “Firstname Lastname@” > Find possible email addresses associated with this person
• “Firstname lastname” filetype:doc > Any word documents that contain this person’s name

There are also sites dedicated to learning about people. Try one of these sites to see what is publicly known about you. Keep in mind these sites are not always accurate or may be country specific. You may have to search several sites to verify the information you find.

• https://pipl.com
• https://cubib.com
• https://familytreenow.com

Finally, there are numerous other sites you can search to learn more, such as Google Images, Google Maps, social media sites, and many others. For an interactive list of all the different websites you can use to learn about yourself, we recommend the OSINT Framework at https://osintframework.com.

How to Find Information

1. Learn what other people or organizations have collected, posted, or shared about you online (churches, schools, sports clubs, or other local community sites).
2. Understand that these same resources are available to anyone else, including cyber criminals who can use that information to target you. Be suspicious. For example, if you get an urgent phone call from someone claiming to be your bank, just because they know some basic information about you does not prove it is your bank. Instead, politely hang up, then call your bank back on a known, trusted number to confirm it is them. It is the same with email, just because an email has some known facts about you does not mean it is legitimate.
3. Consider what you share publicly and the impact that information could have on you, your family, or your employer.

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From Security Awareness, here.