13 minute read
Israel
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, z”l
Rabbi Adin Even Yisrael Steinsaltz, world-famous Talmudist, religious leader, and writer, passed away on Friday at the age of 83.
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Steinsaltz had been battling a slew of different ailments ever since suffering a stroke in 2016. He was buried shortly before Shabbat on Har Hazeisim in Jerusalem.
Born in 1937 to a secular communist family in Jerusalem, Rabbi Steinsaltz became frum while in high school and became Chabad. Later, he went on to become a noted educator and social critic, authoring more than 60 books on an assortment of different topics.
Rabbi Steinsaltz is famous for becoming Israel’s youngest-ever principal at the age of 24 and later founded the Religious Zionist Makor Hayim high school along with the first yeshiva in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
However, his lifetime work was indisputably the 41-volume translation of the Talmud into modern Hebrew, a project that he dedicated four decades to before completing it in 2010. The feat made him a household name in yeshivot across the world and led Time magazine to crown him “a once in a lifetime scholar.”
Rabbi Steinsaltz later said that he began the effort to translate the Jewish text from its original Aramaic into easy-to-read Hebrew in order to make it more accessible to the Jewish people. He had received immense opposition from the charedi world for bucking tradition, with the late Rabbi Elazar Shach, zt”l, banning his work completely. However, his translation was endorsed by other leading scholars of the day, including Reb Moshe Feinstein, Hacham Ovadiah Yosef, and the Grand Rebbe of Gur.
Despite the pushback, Rabbi Steinsaltz maintained that budding Torah scholars wasted years attempting to simply read the Talmud instead of understanding what it said.
“My translation not only doesn’t reduce the Gemara, but rather in a certain sense it allows for greater in-depth [study] and advancement,” Rabbi Steinsaltz told the Israeli Yediot Aharonot daily in 2010.
“In the end, my explanations primarily try to resolve the technical problems: the language difficulties, the associative problems, the problems that stem from the fact that the Talmud is not an organized text with a gradual build-up… Unfortunately, many times the traditional [method of] study dedicates so much time to overcoming the technical problems that, in practice, there is not much time left for in-depth and innovative [study].”
Rabbi Steinsaltz was awarded the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest civilian honor, in 2012 for his efforts, along with the President’s Medal the same year and was designated a “Yakir Yerushalayim” in 2017.
Infamous Terrorist Nabbed
The Shin Bet internal security agency announced that it had arrested the terrorist responsible for killing Major Eliraz Peretz a decade ago on the Gaza border.
The Shin Bet had arrested Abdullah Daghmah, 38, in July after he tried to enter Israel at the Erez Crossing in order to donate bone marrow to his brother. During the interrogation, he
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revealed that he was the ringleader of the attack that killed Peretz and his radioman, St.-Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky, in 2010.
Besides taking part in the shooting itself, Daghmah recruited the other two members of the cell on behalf of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
“In addition to his involvement in this attack, the investigation found that Abdallah [Daghmah] also served in a command position in the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades organization, was involved in terrorist activities against IDF soldiers, and served as an operative of the organization until his arrest,” the Shin Bet said.
Daghmah was indicted on Sunday on two counts of first degree murder along with charges of operating a terror group and being a member of an illegal organization. During his interrogation, he was kept under house arrest and was allowed to donate marrow to his brother who was hospitalized in Tel Aviv.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commended the agency for tracking down the person responsible for the infamous attack. “All those who seek to harm us should know that even as the years pass, the State of Israel will not let up until we settle the score with terrorists,” he said. Peretz and Sviatkovsky served st a i m a n . c o m st a i m a n . c o m st a i m a n . c o m st a i m a n . c o m st a i m a n . c o m in the Golani Brigade and were dispatched to the Gaza Border fence on March 26, 2010 after spotters witnessed a terror cell planting explosives on a road used by IDF vehicles. Upon their arrival, the two were hit by a fusillade of enemy fire and were killed instantly after a bullet hit a grenade in Peretz’s vest.
Peretz was the second member of his family to be killed in combat; his brother, Uriel, fell during a firefight in Lebanon in 1998. Eliraz had begged his mother to sign a waiver permitting him to serve in combat after the IDF barred him from serving in a frontline unit due to Uriel’s death.
Peretz’s mother, Miriam, later wrote a bestselling book in which she described how she coped with losing her two oldest sons in battle. She won the Israel Prize, the country’s highest honor, in 2018 and is a popular public speaker.
“The Shin Bet will continue to work tirelessly to maintain the security of Israeli citizens against terror and to bring to justice those involved in terrorist activities, even many years after the attack,” the Shin Bet announced.
Charedim to Leave if New Elections
Senior officials in the charedi Shas and UTJ parties informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week that they would end their longstanding alliance with him should he decide on new elections.
Shas and UTJ have been part of virtually every Netanyahu government since he was first elected in 1996 to Israel’s top job. Other than 18 months lasting from 2013 to 2014, the two parties have been Netanyahu’s strongest allies and are a bedrock of the governing coalition that has made him Israel’s longest serving premier.
All this may be a thing of the past, though, should Netanyahu continue his quest to dissolve the national unity government in favor of new elections. In a series of briefings to a number of media outlets, the parties said that they were not prepared to drag the country into another divisive round of elections amid the coronavirus outbreak and a devastating economic crisis.
“The option of finally breaking apart the right-wing bloc is closer than ever,” a senior UTJ official told the Walla news site. “It will leave Likud and Netanyahu alone on the path to elections.
“Netanyahu will understand that he’s going for such a move without our support,” he continued “We won’t back up this step, taken without justification.”
Later on Sunday, another charedi lawmaker made similar remarks to Arutz Sheva.
“We went to the mat for him again and again and again, over three election campaigns. Whenever he needed us, we were there. More signatures, more bloc discussions, more point
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Only two months since Israel’s first government in a year and a half was sworn in, Netanyahu is publicly toying with the idea of sending the country to its fourth election since 2018. According to Israeli law, the Knesset would automatically dissolve itself if the coalition doesn’t pass a budget by August 25, only two weeks away.
When hammering out the coalition agreement in April, Netanyahu and Kahol Lavan head Benny Gantz agreed to pass a two-year budget. Netanyahu has since gone back on the promise, contending that it would be irresponsible to pass such a funding bill for such an extensive period of time during a time of economic uncertainty.
However, Netanyahu’s claims are widely viewed as nothing more than a ploy to send the country to elections and prevent him from having to vacate his position to Gantz next year. According to an agreement signed by Netanyahu and Gantz, the latter would automatically become prime minister until election day in the event that the government collapses save for an instance where the Knesset fails to pass a budget.
New elections would also be particularly damaging to the charedi community, whose yeshivot and other institutions are going through an unprecedented fiscal crisis. With no budget since 2018, dozens of educational institutions are nearing collapse. The charedi parties have put passing a new budget as their highest priority.
Demolition of Terrorist’s Home Halted
Israel’s High Court of Justice banned the IDF from demolishing the home of the terrorist responsible for killing IDF soldier Amit Ben Yigal in May.
In the ruling on Monday, the High Court of Justice overturned the demolition order for the home belonging to terrorist Nazmi Abu Bakr. The 46-year-old Jenin native had been arrested in June for murdering Golani commando Amit Ben Yigal by dropping a cinderblock on his head during an arrest a month earlier.
In a 2-1 decision, Justices Meni Mazuz and George Kara ruled that destroying Abu Bakr’s home “entails a serious violation of a number of basic rights, including a violation of property and a violation of human dignity and a number of rights derived from human dignity.”
Israel frequently destroys the homes belonging to terrorists as a deterrent measure and had issued a demolition order last month to Abu Bakr’s family. However, a slew of radical left-wing organizations petitioned the High Court claiming that the policy of home demolitions infringed on the human rights of the terrorist’s family members.
The High Court ruling was greeted with anger and incredulity, with a number of prominent politicians accusing the justices of interfering with Israel’s security. Likud lawmaker Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet security service, said that the court had “dropped a boulder from above on the forces working to fight terrorism.”
Yemina MK Matan Kahane added, “It seems that the High Court has decided to systematically dismantle Israeli deterrence and award a prize to terrorism.” Kahane, a former fighter pilot, added that “the High Court’s decision to protect the home of a terrorist, the killer of an IDF soldier, is an inconceivable scandal.”
Ben Yigal, an only child who served in the Golani Brigade’s elite commando battalion, was killed on May 12 after being hit by a heavy cinderblock during an arrest in Yabed. He was evacuated to the hospital but was pronounced dead upon arrival.
The Shin Bet launched a massive manhunt for the perpetrator of the attack following his death, cordoning off Yabed and detaining hundreds of Palestinians for questioning. Ben Yigal’s death comes after Duvdevan
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Bomb Material was Meant for Israel
The thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate that led to last week’s devastating explosion in Beirut was being stockpiled by Hezbollah to be used against Israel.
According to Israel’s Channel 13, Hezbollah had been stockpiling ammonium nitrate to manufacture rockets meant to be used in the next round of hostiles with Israel. The highly explosive substance had been stored in such a sensitive location in the hope that Israel would be deterred from bombing important civilian infrastructure such as the Beirut port.
“The material that exploded in the port is not new to Nasrallah and Hezbollah,” said the report, which went on to list the numerous times Hezbollah operatives have been caught using the ammonium nitrate against Israeli targets. In one instance, a Mossad tipoff led to UK police arresting a Hezbollah cell in London with three tons of ammonium nitrate.
In another case, German federal agents rounded up a group of Hezbollah commandos who had enough of the substance “to blow up a city.” Ammonium nitrate was also found in a Hezbollah weapons lab uncovered in Cyprus in 2015 following another Mossad tip.
“That’s what Nasrallah intended to do in Europe,” noted the report. “Regarding what was stored in Beirut port, the assessment is Nasrallah intended to use it in the Third Lebanon War.”
Hezbollah has come under heavy criticism since the blast, with hundreds of thousands of Lebanese taking to the streets to blame it for the country’s worst civilian disaster. Numerous reports attributed the blast to a Hezbollah weapons warehouse; the terror militia is said to control the area of the port that detonated.
In his first public appearance since the blast, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah denied that his organization had anything to do with the disaster. In his address on Friday, Nasrallah contended that “we have never had any ammonium nitrate, not in the past and not in the present,” adding that “we know more about the Haifa port than the Beirut port.”
“We talk about resistance, we are thinking of a strategy of defending Lebanon, we did not intervene in Lebanese affairs,” said Nasrallah.
UAE Reunites Jewish Family
The United Arab Emirates, a country which does not officially recognize Israel’s right to exist, arranged for a charedi family to be reunited after 15 years apart.
The Yemenite Jewish family had not seen each other for 15 years until the UAE arranged for the family members in Yemen and London to be flown to the Gulf State. Pictures of the event show a large charedi family surrounded by a collection of children and an elderly woman in a wheelchair.
“My soul felt reborn the moment we were reunited,” said one family member.
“We never imagined we would reunite again after all these long, grim years,” added another. “We lived alone in exile in London without family and siblings. I was lost.”
The report did not mention why the family was separated and what role, exactly, the UAE played in reuniting them. The gesture was seen as part of Abu Dhabi’s efforts to establish ties with Israel by reaching out to world Jewry.
“It was nothing short of a miracle
