Zamir left his position as former head of the Manpower Directorate several weeks ago and submitted the report on his last day in office.

Maj.-Gen. Elazar Stern blasted him for “lighting a fire and then walking away without dealing with it.”

The 30-page report criticizes the IDF for not integrating female soldiers into some units. In his remarks on Wednesday, Stern himself cited a recent incident during in which cadets at the Bahd 1 Officer Training School walked out of a ceremony when a female singer walked up on stage.

Tensions between the religious and secular often flare up in connection to the IDF. In recent weeks, the issue of whether to include a mention of Hashem in the official IDF Yizkor text was hotly debated.

“There are two problems,” Stern said. “The religious soldiers need to understand that the army is not a yeshiva, but the people who complain about the growing presence of religious officers in the IDF should ask themselves why they aren’t sending their own sons to those units.”

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Source: The Jerusalem Post

Cohen, who had been ill before her death, leaves behind two young orphans.

The family also lost Cohen’s father, Rav Shlomo Yachye, to illness. He was considered one of the leading avreichim in the Chazon Ish kollel in Bnei Brak.

Cohen’s brother, Yisrael Meir Yachye, was killed accidentally by security guards at a Netanya hotel in 2002. He had served as a Magen David Adom volunteer.

The levaya for Cohen was held Tuesday night at HaYarkon cemetery.

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Source: Kikar HaShabbat

Talks between the Israel Medical Association and treasury members were again at an impasse on Wednesday, which marks the 108th day of disrupted health system services because of the on-again, off-again doctor strikes.

Doctors at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, and Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Tzrifin staged mass walkouts. Shalvata, Geha, Ness Ziona and Eitanim psychiatric hospitals did the same.

In Tel Aviv, protesters shouted, “Bibi, don’t kill the public health system.”

“If the agreement [with the treasury] is not revised we will take our protest to the next level,” said a doctor protesting in Kfar Saba. “The government is dismissive of us and is trying to humiliate us. We’ll fight to the end.”

A petition signed by about 600 doctors said they no longer want to be represented by IMA and will instead form a new body called Mirsham (“prescription”). Another 400 people are needed for the group to be recognized as a legal union.

The National Labor Court is expected to rule later today on the state’s request for action against the strikers.

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Source: Ynetnews

Breakfast: Pancake vs. ‘brancake’

A stack of fresh pancakes and maple syrup also means you’ll be stacking up the calories. Instead, make a big ‘brancake’ by mixing together two eggs, three tablespoons of wheat bran, some sweetener (brown sugar or an artificial sweetener), a dash of vanilla and a splash of water.

Pour the mixture into a small frying pan sizzling with a bit of butter, and let it brown well on one side before flipping it over with a spatula and letting it brown on the other side. Top it with unsweetened jam and/or a dollop of low-fat cottage cheese.

If it’s french toast you want, try whole-grain bread instead of white, and opt to bake rather than fry. You’ll use a fraction of the oil or butter, and it still tastes great.

Lunch/dinner: Don’t pass the potatoes

For the meat-and-potatoes people: Add health to your meals by replacing white potatoes with sweet potatoes or celery root. This root vegetable also known as celeriac can be used as a side dish (think mashed potatoes) or as an alternative to french fries — just slice and roast them in the oven on a greased cookie sheet. Parsnips are also delicious as “oven fries.”

Sweet tooth tips

If you find yourself often craving ice cream, keep a few 3% chocolate or vanilla puddings in the freezer. Digging into one of these with a fork can be just as satisfying as the high-calorie, high-fat ice cream you’re used to eating, and the small containers help with portion control. A frozen banana can also be a great snack when you’re in the mood for something cold and sweet.

With a blender handy, you can make a variety of smoothies. For a no-guilt (and no-frills) iced drink, blend two handfuls of ice cubes with some chunks of honeydew until smooth and frothy.

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Source: The Jerusalem Post. Photo credit: Ctguitardude of Wikimedia Commons.

At the time of the Hatzalah/MDA report, the team was trying to locate the source of the fire and working to extinguish it.

The building was apparently empty when the fire broke out, and no injures were reported.

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Source: Hatzalah/MDA

Children who lose both parents to terror would be treated similarly to widows and widowers under the new law. The bill is sponsored by MKs Dalia Itzik (Kadima) and Zevulun Orlev (Jewish Home).

Children orphaned by terror were previously eligible for state benefits through age 21. In 2008, a bill sponsored by Itzik and Orlev extended that to age 27, with partial benefits through age 37.

In her remarks to the Knesset this week, Itzik lamented the fact that it has taken years to get to this point.

“I am sorry for what we did to you,” she said, addressing Israel’s orphans of terror. “We did not help you in time and did you a terrible injustice. There is no justification for Israel’s existence if we are not here for you. I hope that now we can look you in the eye and say that we fixed a little of the wrong done to you.

“These people, who paid the highest and dearest price, were abandoned by the state,” she continued. “While others have received benefits and recognition, they were left on the side of the road and were forced to plead for help. This bill seeks to not only restore their dignity but to also to return to the state its beautiful face, which needs to embrace the orphans and not ostracize them.”

The bill now needs to get past the second and third readings to become part of Israeli law.

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Source: Arutz Sheva

Today marks the day that Babylonian troops breached the walls of Jerusalem on their way to destroying the First Beit HaMikdash. It is also the day Moshe Rabbeinu broke the first set of luchot after seeing the Jews worshipping the eigel ha-zahav, ands well as the day the korban tamid was stopped because of the lack of sheep.

Decades earlier, the Jewish king Menasheh had an idol placed in the heichal. Later on, during the period of the Second Beit HaMikdash, a Roman general did the same before publicly burning a sefer Torah.

The Rambam writes that the purpose of fasting is not just to recall hardships suffered in previous times, but to “awaken [our] hearts and clear the paths to teshuva.”

17 Tammuz begins the period of three weeks of national mourning that culminates in Tisha B’Av. This year, the Tisha B’Av fast falls out on August 9.

In Jerusalem, the fast of 17 Tammuz concludes Tuesday night at 8:14 p.m. According to some opinions, it ends at 8:26 p.m.

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See Arutz Sheva for additional information.

Not anymore. A new law aiming to provide greater clarity in Israeli advertising regulates the size of letters used in ads.

To be legal, the smallest letters appearing on an ad must amount to at least 30 percent of the size of the ad’s largest letters. The new standards apply both to printed and online advertisements.

The idea, lawmakers say, is to provide the consumer with an accurate picture of the sale being offered long before he hits the cash register.

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Source: Kikar HaShabbat. Photo Credit: Wolfen Silva of Wikimedia Commons.

The petitioners explained that the yeshiva boys who had seen the fellow student with the phone were concerned that the rosh yeshiva would expel the boy without a second thought.

Rav Elyashiv did not hesitate in his response. “Of course they have to report it to the rosh yeshiva,” he said. “He [the student with the phone] is destroying the entire yeshiva.”

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Source: Kikar HaShabbat. Photo credit: Chaim Hirtz.

A team of Israeli veterinarians from Hebrew University was recruited recently to care for Ariel, targeted for their expertise with large animals.

Caring for a lion with special medical needs is not cheap, but it became manageable for his owners when Ariel’s case hit the Internet.

Veterinarian Livia Pereira and Ariel’s owner, Raquel Borges, say the $11,500 needed each month to cover treatment comes from donations abroad. Who supplies the funds? Private individuals among the nearly 35,000 people who “like” Ariel’s Facebook page.

“When the Facebook campaign began in May, we had less than five followers, because it was designed to inform people of Ariel’s case not to ask for help,” Borges said. “But then we started asking for donations and the number of people following Ariel’s case soared.”

Ariel was born in the shelter that Borges and her husband run in Maringa, Brazil, where they care for sick or abandoned animals.

“He was a perfectly normal and docile lion that slept with me until he was 10 months old,” she said.

One day last year, Ariel began limping after several hours spent chasing balloons. Days later, he could no longer move his two hind legs, and after surgery to remove a herniated disk, he also became unable to move his front legs.

The lion’s white blood cells are now attacking his healthy cells because of a degenerative disease, Pereira explained. His symptoms are similar to those of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which can cause paralysis.

Borges and her husband continue to work towards Ariel’s full recovery. “One thing we will never lose is our hope that Ariel will recover and start walking again,” she said.

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Source: Ynetnews

Emergency teams from Hatzalah and the Jerusalem branch of Magen David Adom provided initial treatment at the scene on HaMagid MiMezritch Street.

The girl was then transported to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital.

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Source: Hatzalah/MDA

Infogan is a web-based program that provides a database of Israeli ganim organized by address on an interactive map. Teacher details, contact information and curriculum schedules are also available on the site.

CEO Lior Shalev says the idea was born out of “a conversation with a friend, complaining that kindergarten search is a nightmare, since kindergartens rarely have much easy-to-access information available.”

Shalev says the company’s goal is to become to the go-to place for parents of young children. “Today, people already search for kindergartens via the web, but it provides them with a non-suitable solution, since most of the results are index-sites,” she said. “Infogan’s site is designed to become a ‘One-Stop-Shop.’”

Infogan also includes information on relevant legislation, age-appropriate book recommendations, and nutritional advice for kids. Its video section boasts educational video clips on child safety.

The site is currently only available for Israeli kindergarten programs but plans to expand to the United States and the United Kingdom.

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Source: The Jerusalem Post. Photo credit: Rob of Wikimedia Commons.

Gamliel, who is the current deputy minister for the Advancement of Young People, Students and Women, says her appointment to that position was “the first step” toward creating a full-blown Women’s Affairs Ministry — and that it’s time to take things to the next level.

“There is no doubt that women’s standing in society has improved greatly, but we still have a lot more to do to get to the point where there is total equality,” Gamliel said. ”We should not have to wait another 60 years to make this happen.”

Creating a ministry to focus on women’s issues would be an improvement in a country seen as behind the times in promoting female equality, she said. Israel has a relatively low number of women serving in official state capacities.

Of the country’s 254 mayors and municipal council heads, just six are female; among the roughly 3,000 representatives on local city councils, only about 370 are women.

“We are talking about a very small percentage of women who are politically active and involved in making the real decisions,” Gamliel said.

But Gamliel remains optimistic. “The decision on whether to create a ministry for women must come from the prime minister, but I believe we are heading in the right direction,” she said. “I am pretty sure that the first chance he has, he will take up this issue.”

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Source: The Jerusalem Post

Under the regulation, all of Israel’s public buildings will be required to make adjustments to ensure accessibility for all its citizens. The changes would include creating access paths without stairs, special elevators and bathroom stalls, and signs for visually impaired people.

The private sector will be required to complete the changes by the end of 2015, local authorities by the end of 2021, and all other public authorities by the end of 2018.

Though accessibility won’t come overnight, the progress is considered significant.

“This is a day of celebration for people with disabilities,” said Ahiya Kamara, head of the Commission for Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities.

“Today we start the countdown to the day when all public buildings in Israel will be handicap-accessible, and these people will no longer be banned from the public sphere.”

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Source: Ynetnews

Magen David Adom workers transferred the boy to a Kfar Saba hospital, where he remains in moderate condition.

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Source: Hatzalah/MDA

The National Planning and Building Council voted in recent days in favor of the master plan for Charish 1, which would include several residential charedi neighborhoods and a business center. Plans to expand to Charish 2 are already underway, and altogether, there would be 8,800 new housing units.

Yigal Shahar heads the committee behind the city plans. He says he’s come to terms with the government decision to create a charedi city in the area, even one that dramatically changes the character of a currently secular area.

“This city is planned for charedim,” Shahar said. “Other people can continue living in it, but they’ll have difficulty obtaining services such as education, since there won’t be enough secular residents to warrant building [secular] schools or kindergartens.

“My heart goes out to the residents, but things need to be taken in proportion,” he added. “I believe a large part of the people living here today, people who maintain a traditional or religious lifestyle, can continue living here.”

It isn’t only the secular residents of Charish fighting the plans for expansion. Members of nearby kibbutzim, moshavim and Arab towns are worried the government is building a city of 150,ooo people, and that it could hurt their own development.

Shahar says that simply isn’t true, and that Charish will become home to just 50,000 people. ”We have not and are not planning a city like that, nor has any such request been made to the municipal boundaries committee,” he said.

Relly Prengler, an environmental planner advising the Charish planning committee, added that Arab towns are not expected to suffer from the expansions. “We did an inspection of all the Arab towns in the area and all have surplus area for planning in the years to come,” she said.

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Sources: Ministry of the Interior and Haaretz.

The survey questioned 500 Israelis on family reading patterns to determine whether, and how often, parents and children read together. Sifriyat Pijama, launched in 2009, works to improve literacy rates in Israel by giving books to local families for free.

A whopping 85 percent of respondents with children through age six said they read with their children two or three times a week. More than half the respondents said they read together daily or nearly every day.

“We are thrilled with the results of this poll, and inspired to carry on the Sifriyat Pijama mission of providing parents with quality books to read to their children,” said executive director Galina Vroman. ”Not only are we helping to build libraries in homes, this is also a vital channel of reinforcing a common legacy of Jewish heritage.”

Vronam also heads Keren Grinspoon Israel (Grinspoon Foundation Israel).

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Source: Ynetnews. Photo credit: Tim Pierce.

UTJ is an alliance of two smaller charedi parties, Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael.

Turning Har Hotzvim into a neighborhood makes sense because of its location near Sanhedria, Kiryat Sanz, Ezras Torah, Ramat Shlomo, and Ramot, said party chairman Yaakov Halperin.

“There is no doubt that a regrettable historic mistake was made in building the park in its present location,” Halperin wrote in a letter to Mayor Nir Barkat.

“In retrospect, the person who decided on its location lacked sufficient forward perspective to realize that Jerusalem would grow and develop to the present situation in which the industrial park is in the heart of residential neighborhoods.”

Halperin’s plan calls for halting further construction at Har Hotzvim and “moving it in its entirety in the coming years.”

“The park at Har Hotzvim is an environmental nuisance to the residents of the neighborhoods bordering it, including traffic and transport to and from it,” he added. “It would be historic negligence not to stop this nuisance at the present stage and with a proper view to the future.”

Halperin’s letter did not go unnoticed. Councilwoman Rachel Azaria penned a reply directed at Barkat, coming out strongly against what she referred to as “the double standard of the charedi politicos.”

“On the one hand, [they] claim that there are no jobs for their constituency, while on the other hand [they] seek to close the most important jobs in the city,” she wrote, calling the request to turn Har Hotzvim residential “unmitigated chutzpah.”

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Source: Globes. Photo credit: Gila Brand.

More than 450 dermatologists and non-physician scientists gathered in Jerusalem recently for the four-day 15th Annual Meeting of the European Hair Research Society (EHRS).

Prof. Abraham Zlotogorski, who presided over the event, called it “the Western world’s largest medical and scientific conference on hair to date.” Zlotogorski is director of the hair clinic at Hadassah University Medical Center and director of the hospital’s Center for Genetic Diseases of Skin and Hair.

Hair may seem simple, (think rinse, shampoo, rinse) but is in reality quite complex. “There are few organs that undergo such renewal, with cells dying and then growing again,” Zlotogorski said, adding that the last two decades have seen a rise in hair research findings.

The average person has five million hairs spread over the entire surface of the body, except for the lips, palms and the soles of the feet.

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Read more at The Jerusalem Post.

The robbery occured Monday morning at a branch of Bank Leumi on Rechov Hausner in Tel Aviv.

According to Israel police the bank was robbed by a thief using a toy gun, money was stolen and the thief got away.