Yitzchak Tshuva, one of the investors in the Tamar gas field said that no desecration of the Shabbat or Pesach holiday happened with the gas flow, according to a report in Kikar Shabbat.

“Shabbat is the source of our blessing,” Tshuva said. He emphasized that no ceremony was held on Shabbat or the Holiday.

Tshuva said that all the work was being done by Noble Energy, the operating partner in the gas field, and they began the process weeks ago. The gas arrived into Israel on the eve of the last day of Pesach, and that the flow of the gas is an ongoing process which took time until it reached Ashdod.

Yitzchak Tshuva expressed regret that the gas flow’s arrival physically into Israel was being presented as having desecrated the Shabbat or the Pesach Holiday.

A music segment from a 2012 flash mob performance, from Paris, using decidedly non-traditional versions of the traditional Passover songs ‘Ma Nishtana’ (םה נשתנה) ”What has changed,” and “Let my people go,” by the band Cigarillos en el Shtruddle.

Visit CifWatch.

Temple Mount in Jerusalem was closed on Sunday morning to Jews and tourists, as Arab rioters threw stones at Jews on Temple Mount as well as the Jews praying by the Kotel.

According to Reshet Bet Radio, the incident began when a 4-year-old girl had to relieve herself at the edge of the Temple Mount compound. The girl was accompanying her father, who was among the Jewish activists visiting the holy site. There are no bathroom facilities available in the area which is permissible for Jews to access, and so the father had to take his child to a secluded area.

Arab youths in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount who heard about the “offense” started throwing stones indiscriminately at all the visitors at the site. They threw stones at police and then at the large crowd of Jews praying below the Mount, at the Western Wall. No one was hurt and police forces repelled the attackers and arrested six suspects.

The child’s father told Reshet Bet he had no intention to provoke the Arabs, but absent a proper facility, he had to take care of his child as best he could.

Jewish Temple activists said that closing Temple Mount on Jewish holidays has become a predictable ritual, as Muslims incite rioters over their websites to storm the site, and Israeli police never lifts a finger to prepare for the rioters. Instead, they let the riots begin and then use them as an excuse to close off the site.

Followers of the Passover story can rightly wonder why frogs were such a terrible plague. Was God really showing His power to the Egyptians by sending against them an army of reptiles? Would the nation that would eventually produced Cleopatra, who purportedly killed herself by grabbing a poisonous snake, really have cared?

But the true plague of the frogs was how the din of their incessant ribbetting robbed the Egyptians of all peace. We who inhabit the modern world have a unique understanding of the utter agony represented by a world that is never silent.

When the United States invaded Panama in 1989 to oust General Manuel Noriega, he took refuge in the Vatican Embassy. The United States Army brought huge loudspeakers and blasted AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” in order to drive him out of his refuge, a tactic that was also employed by the FBI at Waco.

Forty years ago John Lennon made the observation that when he grew up what was always heard in the background of homes was the soothing crackling of a fire, only to be replaced by the incessant noise of televisions that are always blaring in the background.

That noise has actually so much closer today with ear buds that pumps music directly into our eardrums. The net result is that we are rarely ever afforded any peace.

Even today harsh interrogations methods against terrorists involves keeping them up for days by constantly blasting music which drives them to the bring of insanity. Many argue that this is a form of torture.

The inability to ever shut out noise is a plague. But beyond the pain caused by the utter lack of peace there is the further consideration of the drowning out of the inner voice of conscience.

Each of us is immersed in a culture that throws various voices at us. Hollywood and the fashion industry hits us with the aesthetic voice, telling us that what most matters is beauty. Best to spend our time in front of a mirror and at a gym. Wall Street and Madison avenue hits us with the monetary voice which tells us that the most important thing in life is money and affording the material objects that will bring us pleasure. Washington and politics hits us with the power voice which tells us that the most significant thing in life is acquiring dominion over others. And the NFL and NBA hits us with the physical voice which whispers that life has meaning through great athleticism. We should be spending our time on the sports fields.

But beneath all these noises which are so central to the fabric of modern life and its aspirations is the inner voice of conscience which whispers to us that we are born for lives of compassion and goodness. It’s nice to be pretty. But it’s even nicer to be nice. It’s wondrous to be sporty and adventurous. But even more spectacular is to teach our child how to throw a spiral and catch a ball. Through doing so we grant our children a feeling of significance. It’s a blessing to be wealthy. But even more important is to live lives of charity and humility where we make others feel that they matter too.

There is no human being that is born without that voice and to the extent that it is lost it is because it is drown out by all the other voices that surround us.

The Egyptians, like all human beings, had an innate sense of morality and fair play. So how could they have enslaved a helpless people? Because the soul’s voice of fraternity and brotherhood was drown out by Pharaoh’s voice of dominion and power. As the Bible related, “Look, he said to his people, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” The Egyptians allowed the foreign voice of the will to power to override the voice of sensitivity of compassion. In this sense, the racket of the frogs-plague was an external manifestation of what had already occurred. The Egyptians could no longer hear the inner song of their own souls. They could only hear the clamor of the artificial, external voice that slowly erodes our spiritual peace.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç delivered a Passover message Thursday to Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, the head of the local Jewish community.

“It is our basic stance and principle to enable Jewish citizens to perform their beliefs and traditions freely,” Arınç said. “I celebrate the Passover of Jewish citizens living in our country and all Jews.”

He did not specifically mention Jews in Israel, which is trying to mend fences with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after three years of seriously deteriorating relations.

There was an article in this weekend’s Makor Rishon. It was about fulfilling the mitzvah of Korban Pesach, the Passover sacrifice, in this day and age. The article went through the Halachot and obligations. It is a unique mitzvah in that it terms of Taharot, you don’t need to do more than dip in the Mikvah.

At the end of the article was a telephone number and the cost to participate (NIS 12) to get your piece of the Korban.

I was so excited.

While I already have plans for this Pesach that put me outside of Jerusalem on the first day, I started making plans with my wife and how we’ll be in Jerusalem next year and fulfill this mitzvah.

(Yes, I’m aware that there is an Issur d’Rabanan to not do it, but if the people don’t start this back up, who will? The Rabbis?)

Anyway… a friend and I called up the number (Israel: 1-800-800-455). He was more subdued about it, because he figured it was a gimmick.

We talked to them. It turns out it was Machon HaMikdash. The article was an “As if” article, describing the process and how it will be fulfilled.

But unfortunately, they were not sacrificing a Korban Pesach this year, and no we couldn’t join a group, and there was no piece of the meat we would get to eat in Jerusalem during the Seder.

I am so disappointed.

Visit The Muqata.

A group of Israel Haredi rabbis for the first time have placed cigarettes on the list of Passover goodies that need a special “kosher” certification, while the Chief Rabbinate blew smoke on the idea, declaring that poison is never kosher.

Every Jew, and many non-Jews, know that Jews may not eat anything on Passover that might have ingredients of grains that could ferment and be considered leavened. Ashkenazi Jews have an added restriction on consuming anything that contains “kitniyot” vegetables such as peas and corn.

Every year, many Jews come up with all sorts of a “humras” – a stringency. One authority forbids using balloons on Passover because they might have been coated with a material that is considered kitniyot.

Some Haredi Jews several years banned drinking water on Passover that comes from the Kinneret because someone may have dropped a piece of bread in the lake, or God forbid, a fisherman used bread as bait that fell apart in the water before a fish could grab it.

Two weeks, we reported that there is an argument between Rabbinic groups in the United States over quinoa, which is not a grain. One group of rabbis claims that winds in some South Americana field, where quinoa is grown, might blow a barley seed into a field of quinoa, and that single seed might not be sighted in packaging, leaving the quinoa not kosher.

And then there is the case of Jerusalem Haredim who rent out laundered “shrteimel” hats during Pesach because, who knows, maybe a crumb was stuck in somebody’s fur hat.

But cigarettes?

Leave it to the group of Beit Yosef rabbis to add it to their list of certified products, for which, of course, there is a fee for the label for three local cigarette brands.

A spokesman for Israel’s chief rabbinate responded, “Poison is not kosher. For all days of the year, not just Passover.”

Beit Yosef justified the kosher for a Passover label, using the old “when in doubt, be stringent,” argument.

Its chief supervisor Rabbi Yigal Ben Ezra explained that the kosher for Passover label is for a number of Israeli Haredim who won’t buy any products that are not labeled “Kosher for Passover.”

He said the British rabbis inspected the Dubek cigarette factory and determined that no leavened bread came in contact with the cigarettes, which must go down as one of the great non-discoveries of the year.

The four cups of wine that we drink at the Seder are symbolic of the four expressions of freedom that God used in telling Moshe about our salvation: v’hotzesi (I will take you out of Egypt): v’hitzalti (I will deliver you from slavery); v’goalti I will redeem you); and v’lokachti (I will take you for a people). The question arises as to why we pour a fifth cup? And why do we not drink from it?

This cup is called the kos shel eliyahu, (the prophet) Elijah’s cup. After Birchas HaMazon (the blessing on the meal) – we pour a large cup of wine and immediately open the door and read a passage from the Hagadah.

Legend has it that Eliyahu comes to each door on Pesach and drinks a tiny bit from that cup. I recall as a child looking to see if I could tell if there was any less wine in the cup after we closed the door than there was before we opened it. The thinking was, of course, that Elijah’s cup was indeed meant for Elijah himself… that somehow even though we can’t see him that he came in a drank a little wine… and the reason that he drank so little is because he had to drink from all of the cups in every house of every Jew who had a Seder and opened his door for him.

That is a cute story for little children… but of course not true. We do not open the door for Eliyahu. We open it to say a specific portion of the Hagadah unrelated to that cup.

There are many reasons given for this custom. The one which I like and makes the most sense to me is the one given by another Elijah, the Gra.

The fifth cup is based on a machlokes in the Gemarah. There is actually a fifth word used by God in that section of the Torah, v’ heveisi (I will bring you into the land which I promised your forefathers).

Those who say this is a fifth expression of freedom – say that a fifth cup of wine is required. Those who say it is not is because it does not speak to being freed but rather to the promise made that will occur in the future well after the Bnei Yisroel have been freed – say that we do not drink a fifth cup.

Our custom is based on the second view… so we only drink four cups. But we recognize that this question remains unresolved. So we compromise. We pour a fifth cup, but we don’t drink it.

Why is it called the Kos Shel Eliyahu? Because we have a tradition that says that all unresolved issues in the Gemarah – including this one – will be answered by Eliyahu when he comes to herald the coming of the messiah.

I would like to extend my best wishes for a happy and Kosher Pesach for the entirety of the Jewish people.

Note: The source for this piece is Torah L’Daas by Rabbi Matis Blum.Visit Emes Ve-Emunah.