Papal Visit Purim Millennium Snow in Jer. Some of the invitees had been joining in her birthday celebrations for the best part of half a century, and several of those who attended this year said that, on a social level, it was like an annual reunion. A little-known tale about Vespasian and his son Titus, who respectively led the invasion of Judea and the destruction of Jerusalem, says that after the father imposed a tax on public urinals the son protested, saying the measure drew contempt on the Roman empire.
Money has no smell.
A great cry of joy arose this week at Finance Minister Avraham Shochat's announcement of the significant cut of purchase tax on electrical appliances. During these hot summer days, when mental anguish about matters of state and society, and individual concerns threaten to diminish national morale in inverse proportion to the rising temperatures, Shochat's news was a breath of fresh air. Over the past two weeks there occurred two incidents that touched upon the still-open wound of the Holocaust. The first, which received worldwide notoriety, was the speech that Rav Ovadia Yosef made to his Saturday night Har Nof class, advancing a kabalistic, reincarnation-based theory as to God's reasons for the Holocaust. Israeli teens are the unhappiest in the developed world.