‘Or Yarok’ – A Start, at Least

A basic description from Wikipedia:

The Or Yarok Association for Safer Driving in Israel, known simply as Or Yarok (Hebrew: אור ירוק‎‎, “Green light”), is a not-for-profit traffic safety lobbyist organization dedicated to reducing road accidents in Israel through education, enforcement, and improvement of infrastructure.

Well?

… Or Yarok made headlines in late-2010 with their radio and billboard campaign which denounced Israeli Transportation Minister Israel Katz for increasing rates of traffic fatalities in Israel.

Besides general community-outreach activities Or Yarok maintains a research division that studies and reports on the state of traffic safety in Israel. One of the more notable reports released by Or Yarok was a scathing critique on local governments after Israel was found to have the highest traffic fatality rate in the modern world for children aged 14 and under.

It’s hard to blame secular Israelis for socialism when sad as this is, they hardly know better. At least one organization is pointing out all the “road socialism” deaths on government roads, and some apparent causes, even if many of their solutions are misguided.

Yes, I sound too moderate…

Here’s their (Hebrew) site. Check it out.

Mesirus Nefesh for Tzitzis

As part of my sentence for “sedition” against the Oslo Accords government, I did community service in a state nursing home. One of the old gentlemen there told me his own story about a different gulag:
“When I went to first grade in the Stalin-era public school in Russia, I made sure never to ask permission from my teacher to let me use the bathroom. It was very important to me to be sure that when I would need to ask permission to go to the bathroom, she would believe me and let me leave the classroom. I knew that I would need to use this escape route when the state nurse would come to check the personal hygiene of the students. If she would find the tzitzit (ritual fringes) that I had under my shirt, she would report me to the authorities and my father would be sent to his death in Siberia.”
My friend in the nursing home told this story very matter-of-factly. But it gave me the goose bumps. I was in awe of the father who would risk his life for his faith and the little boy whose fear of Heaven made him truly free at the ripe old age of six.

Beis Din’s Last Refuge

When establishment Beis Dins are trying to pin something on you for Nidduy (excommunication), and you refuse to help destroy yourself, what do they do?

Excommunicate on charges of “contentiousness”, and call it a day.