Vekol ha’am ro’im es hakolos. When the Torah was given to man on Har Sinai, we are told, the Jewish people gathered around the mountain and not only heard the sounds of nesinas haTorah, but also saw them.

The obvious difficulty is that sight and sound are separate senses. Sound is heard and not seen. Sights are experienced visually, not aurally.

Last week, I was in Eretz Yisroel for the Yom Tov of Shavuos and had the occasion to experience the answer to this question three separate times during my three visits to the Kosel Hama’arovi.

The threat to Israel’s Torah populace continues. Aside from the authorization of an austerity budget tailor-made to target the chareidi way of life, the Peri Committee is putting finishing touches to a new yeshiva student enlistment law. Various anti-Torah proposals are in the process of being turned into law. The bright side is that not all is going well for Yair Lapid.

Israel’s 2013-14 austerity budget was approved by a 21-1 cabinet majority and was sent back to the Finance Committee where it will be prepared for final implementation in August. Environmental Protection Minister Amir Peretz was the only dissenter. Half the document was devoted to cuts against chareidim, including the removal of haftachat hachnasah support from 10,000 avreichim unless they prove they cannot work.

No federal agency excites more negative emotions from most citizens than the Internal Revenue Service, and for a very understandable reason. Each year, it collects, on behalf of the federal government a sizable chunk of every middle class American family’s income, while at the same time posing the small but real threat of requiring any taxpayer to undergo an audit, with potentially stiff penalties if found that their tax returns do not pass muster, a scary prospect, at best.

As the federal government expands under Obama, and with it, the complexity and reach of the federal tax code, the IRS has been given growing power to impact American lives in new ways, and to collect a greater portion of incomes, especially for those fortunate enough to be doing well financially.

Did the White House cover-up of the terrorist attack on Benghazi succeed in saving President Obama’s re-election? We will never know the answer to that question for a certainty, but new evidence which has emerged in recent weeks showing how the administration, aided by the media, misled the voters about the attack last September 11 in Libya, lends more credence to the charge that Obama won the election under false pretenses.

In mid-October of last year, after Mitt Romney scored a surprise upset win over Barack Obama in the first presidential debate, the outcome of the election seemed to be, for the first time, very much in doubt. The debate had raised serious doubts about Obama’s ability to lead the country, while, for the first time, depicted Romney as a plausible alternative. At the same time, Obama’s boastful claims that he had won the war on terror were being contradicted by the rapidly unraveling Benghazi cover-up.

It’s post Shavuos
And we’re set
Without much rhyme or reason
To begin
A bit of fret
Another camping season!

Some will go to
Bungalows
And others sleep away
While some will stay back
In their towns
And go to camp by day