Israel’s Latest Innovation in Battlefield Technology: A Synagogue in a Backpack

The current war has allowed the IDF to make use of some of its most recent and impressive technological innovations, including the Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile and the Eitan armored fighting vehicle. But the latest gizmo has come out of the military rabbinate, and is designed for prayer in the battlefield. It is, JNS reports,

“a portable holy ark containing a Torah scroll that army rabbis designed to be worn like a backpack and which can be converted into a small podium, or bimah,” on which the scroll can be read.

“When it comes to transporting a Torah scroll, an ark is necessary to prevent damage from humidity,” said Colonel Rabbi Shoham Orkabi, the head of the operational department of the military rabbinate. . . . Prior to the design of the portable holy ark, troops transported Torah scrolls in receptacles that were neither comfortable to carry nor waterproof, Orkabi added.

The case has short legs that allow it to be placed on the ground without getting water, mud, or dirt on the case’s body. The legs are also important to avoid placing the Torah scroll on the ground, which is forbidden in Judaism.

Read more at JNS

More about: IDF, Israeli technology, Prayer, Torah

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict