With the Queen of England celebrating her Jubilee Year, and this week’s worshipful MP visit to hate-preacher Abu Hamza in a high-security prison, I think the time has come for a few words about what is going on in Britain.

To be quite honest, I started life as an Anglophile.

My bedtime story was David Copperfield. As I suffered and ultimately triumphed with that poor, handsome orphan lad, I was infused with a sense of longing for the streets of London, waiting for the magic moment when my feet would wander where ...

...continue reading A Jubilee Year

“No woman should wait to hear the last kaddish for the obvious reason that women should make their exit before the men, lest they mingle with them… No woman aged less than forty should attend the synagogue for the afternoon and evening services…whether on a weekday or on the Sabbath, with the exception of the New Year and the Day of Atonement.” New regulations in Beit Shemesh? It wouldn’t be hard to believe. But actually, the above paragraph refers to regulations adopted by the Jerusalem Rabbinate in 1854 and is taken ...

...continue reading The Tipping Point

Last week, after five long years of my being dragged through the courts, defamed, libeled and slandered, Israel’s Supreme Court issued a ruling in the Michal Tal case that stated: “There is not and never was any basis whatsoever for any claim of plagiarism or copyright infringement brought against Naomi Ragen in the Jerusalem District Court.”

Far from a mere technical victory, this ruling was an acknowledgement by Tal’s own children, one of whom is a lawyer, who had attended the court sessions and listened to testimony throughout, that this case was frivolous and baseless. For had they had the slightest ...

...continue reading Bleak House – The Sordid Story of the Michal Tal Case

Dr. Factor has confirmed what I have believed all along, that I have done nothing wrong, and given me hope that I will ultimately prevail in this case, as I prevailed in the Michal Tal case.

From Dr. Factor’s blog entry:

To find Ragen guilty, Judge Joseph Shapira performed legal gymnastics to have the case admitted at all, since there were strong grounds ...

...continue reading More about “Copyright Infringement”

פסק הדין, שאושר השבוע ע”י בית המשפט העליון (כב’ הנשיאה בייניש , כב’ השופט גרוניס וכב’ השופטת ארבל) דחה את התביעה ,וקבע כי “אין ולא היה כל יסוד לטענה כלשהי בדבר ביצוע של “העתקות” ו”הפרות” זכויות יוצרים אשר הועלו בתביעה כנגד  גב’ רגן בביהמ”ש המחוזי”.

בפברואר 2007, שלח עו”ד גלעד קורינאלדי מכתב לרגן שבו דרש “לפצות את מרשתי בגין הפרת זכויותיה ובגין רווחיך שהעשירו אותך שלא כדין בסכום ראוי ביותר” תוך “חמשה ימי חסד”, אחרת “מרשתי תגיש תביעה כספית (מיליוני שקלים)” ...

...continue reading בית המשפט העליון קבע שהסופרת נעמי רגן לא העתיקה

In 2007, Tal’s lawyer, Gilad Corinaldi, sent Ragen a letter in which he demanded that Ragen “pay my client, in light of the copyright violation and the profits you have made from ...

...continue reading Supreme Court Rules: Author Naomi Ragen Innocent of All Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement in Tal Case

Traveling to the Givat Shaul neighborhood in Jerusalem from her home in Ashdod, she’d boarded the 451 Egged bus from Rova 7 in Ashdod, which would leave her a five-minute walk from her destination. Innocently, she selected the seat behind the driver simply because she wanted to ask him when to get off.

The driver didn’t say anything. What ...

...continue reading Fed Up

In the beginning, there was one woman in Beit Shemesh (where else?) who decided to cover her head and face with a shawl. Since she herself was indicted and convicted of child abuse, and her children admitted to engaging in incest, one would think it unlikely she’d engender a following.

How little you know. The movement is not only alive and kicking, but apparently growing. How much is a matter of great debate. Some ...

...continue reading A Modest Proposal

MK Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) declared (I’m assuming with a straight face, even if his head was screwed on backwards) that “1984 is already here, and it’s awful.” Kadima leader Tzipi Livni called it a “silencing law.” A Tuesday protest organized by (who else?) Peace Now and Meretz which met (where else?) on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv chanted: “Bibi, Bibi, you have gone too far. Israel is not Iran.” Later, at Tel Aviv’s Cinematheque, journalists and wanna-bes ...

...continue reading Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Law?

The recent stabbing of a teenager in the northern Jerusalem suburb of Ramot, apparently by a resident of Beit Iksa, hit me hard. I lived in Ramot for 23 years, 16 of them directly across the wadi from Beit Iksa. All during the intifada when buses were blowing up all over the country, the men of Beit Iksa walked across the wadi and up the steps next to my house to work as laborers, without incident. Often, they passed me by in groups, watching as I tended my fruit trees and grape vines. Sometimes I even offered them fruit, which they smilingly declined or accepted. The sound of their muezzin and darbuka (drums) filled my ...

...continue reading The Fence Nobody Wanted