Five Towns Jewish Home 10.31.24

PAGE

Dear Readers,

Many Americans can’t wait for this election season to be over. Perhaps it’s social media that has extended the election rhetoric for far too many months. Years ago, when we consumed our news on the radio or in the newspapers, we didn’t feel as inundated as we do now. We read the papers every day – or week – and turned on the radio in the car going home from work. Whatever news was broadcast then was what we heard. But nowadays, there’s coverage around the clock. That means that every cough by a candidate is analyzed and disseminated practically in real-time. Things that used to be overlooked or seemed unimportant are now highlighted and over-examined. And we know that this won’t be over by Election Day.

I went to vote this week, perhaps because I felt that by voting early, I would be able to ignore the election news. True, the news won’t stop, but at least in my mind, I helped to bring Election Day closer.

When I went to vote at the Lawrence Country Club, the line was almost out the door. (Tip: bring something to do while waiting online if you’re going to vote early!) During early voting, anyone in Nassau County can go to any early voting center to vote. I saw many people from our community voting. But I also stood near people who didn’t live nearby who chose to vote in our neighborhood.

When I saw the line, I was almost about to leave. But I firmly believe that when it comes

to elections, every vote counts. In New York, one vote may not make a difference in a presidential election. But when voting in local elections, every vote truly does count.

Do you know that Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato won by just 15 votes in the election in Far Rockaway two years ago? That’s right. Less than 20 people chose to spend a few minutes of their time to show their hakaras hatov to Stacey for all she does for the community – and that led her to victory.

Local elections affect us the most deeply. Yes, it concerns us – profoundly – when it comes to who sits in the Oval Office. Their policies have far-reaching implications and consequences. But local officials are the people who advocate for you and your community on a micro level. They are the ones who make a difference in how your community looks and feels to you when you send your kids off to school on the bus in the morning. They are the ones you turn to when you have issues that matter to you in the community.

Our community is composed of successful, educated, intelligent people. We make sure we’re informed about the issues and the candidates. We understand that politicians look at which communities come out and vote, and they give credence to those who do. It’s worth the few minutes it takes to vote; it truly makes a difference.

Make sure you use that power this Election Day.

Wishing you a wonderful week, Shoshana

Yitzy Halpern, PUBLISHER publisher@fivetownsjewishhome.com

Yosef Feinerman, MANAGING EDITOR ads@fivetownsjewishhome.com

Shoshana Soroka, EDITOR editor@fivetownsjewishhome.com

Nate Davis

Editorial Assistant

Nechama Wein

Copy Editor

Rachel Bergida Shana Brecher

Lani White

Design & Production

Gabe Solomon Distribution & Logistics

P.O. BOX 266

Lawrence, NY 11559

Phone | 516-734-0858

Fax | 516-734-0857

Classified Deadline: Monday 5:00PM classifieds@fivetownsjewishhome.com text 443-929-4003

PAYMENT VIA CREDIT CARD MUST BE SUBMITTED ALONG WITH CLASSIFIED ADS

The Jewish Home is an independent weekly magazine. Opinions expressed by writers are not necessarily the opinions of the publisher or editor. The Jewish Home is not responsible for typographical errors, or for the kashrus of any product or business advertised within. The Jewish Home contains words of Torah. Please treat accordingly.

Dear Editor,

As we all focus on the upcoming election, eyes are mostly turned to the vote for president. However, in New York, there may be an even more important ballot item, and that is the vote regarding Proposition 1. This proposition, known as the Equal Rights Act, would drive a dagger through the heart of any remaining moral soul that our state still retains.

The name of the proposition sounds innocuous. Indeed, abortion rights activists are claiming that in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, this law would simply protect abortion rights in New York State. If that were the extent of the proposition, I would have no issue with it, since I believe that the restrictive laws passed by many states post-Roe are dangerous.

In truth, however, the Equal Rights Act would go far beyond abortion. That issue is pretty much a Trojan horse, since New York already has a very liberal abortion law. The true goal of the Equal Rights Act is to create new protected classes regarding discrimination, including gender identity. Translation: the state might be able to force companies, schools, and other organizations to permit men to “identify” as women and vice versa. The effect of this insanity would be devastating, as all defining barriers of morality may collapse. In practical terms, it may mean that your child could choose to change his or her gender by telling a school nurse that he/she would like to get hormone therapy that would change his/her physical characteristics! And there is also a likelihood that the school (or the child’s pediatrician) would not inform the child’s

parents about this “choice.” That means that, say, a twelve-year-old, who cannot even order an alcoholic drink, would be permitted to make a life-altering decision about his/her body without parental permission. Child abuse would effectively be ensconced in law. While there is a dispute about whether the Equal Rights Act goes this far, I am concerned that the law, if enacted, would eventually yield this horrible result.

I am urging all readers to take the time, while voting, to turn over the ballot and vote No on Proposition 1. Avi Goldstein Far Rockaway, NY

Dear Editor,

While national politics dominate coverage in an election year like 2024, we must not overlook the significant impact of state and local policies on our daily lives. We hear every election, but this time it’s no exaggeration: this one matter more than ever. My record speaks for itself—I have never backed down from a fight, and I’ve consistently stood up for my Jewish constituents.

Long before the horrific attack of October 7, I, along with four other senators, formed the New York State Antisemitism Working Group, with a long-term goal of crafting legislation to address the ever-increasing level of antisemitism. As part of our initiative, we held roundtable discussions in Nassau and Rockland counties, bringing together community leaders, law enforcement, educators, and the Jewish community to craft legislation

Continued on page 14

against rising antisemitism. These talks led to a comprehensive legislative package, including $100 million to fight hate crimes, mandatory antisemitism prevention training and reporting on campuses, loss of funding for higher education institutions who fail to comply, penalties for students engaging in antisemitic behavior, and criminalizing the vandalism of pro-Israel materials. Despite our calls for action, the Governor and legislative supermajorities failed to move on these critical measures.

It’s alarming that some far-left members of the State Legislature refuse to support Israel, instead echoing pro-terror narratives. By opposing Israel’s right to self-defense and minimizing the threat of groups like Hamas, they not only betray a key ally but also embolden those who seek Israel’s destruction. This dangerous stance shows a blatant disregard for Israeli safety and democratic values. I’m particularly concerned by the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America within the State Senate and Assembly, who push antisemitic legislation like the “Not On Our Dime Act” and advocate for protections for those harassing Jews, especially on college campuses. Additionally, some Albany policymakers are targeting Jewish communities by attempting to control private school curricula.

I didn’t just talk about combating antisemitism—I did something about it. While some politicians make excuses, I’ve been delivering results and holding those who hate accountable.

I’m not afraid to go toe-to-toe with anyone who stands in the way of safety and security for our Jewish community and will continue to do so. This year more than ever, it is important to vote for candidates who will support our Jewish communities.

Sincerely,

Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick State Senator, District 9

Dear Editor,

It’s amazing! Another purposeful “error” on the part of the Biden/Harris administration that requires FBI investigation. To date, the countless errors have included leaks of sensitive information on a draft of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision and cocaine found in the West Wing of the White House. Both remain mysteries despite the FBI investigations. Currently the FBI is investigating who in the U.S. government spied and leaked information on Israel’s choice of retaliation targets for Iran’s October 1, 2024 missile attack. Does anyone believe

that there will be a forthcoming revelation from the FBI?

For those Jews who believe that VP Harris is a supporter of Israel, let us examine her record. VP Harris is the one who said not to go into Rafah as “she looked at the maps” and Israel would cross a red line if they went. The Israelis went anyway, saving some hostages, and even eliminating the masterminded of the October 7, 2023, attack, Yahya Sinwar. In an unprecedented measure of chutzpah, VP Harris took credit, indicating U.S. intelligence was involved in Sinwar’s demise and said that now was the time to negotiate a ceasefire. Currently, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is in Israel attempting to broker a ceasefire in Gaza while rockets rain down on Israel from Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy. Is there any reason to doubt that a Harris administration would be catastrophic for Israel?

Jan Henock Woodmere, NY

Dear Editor,

In 2008, 74% of Jews ignored the fact that Obama’s middle name was Hussein, or that he “davened at a shul” run by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who refers to Israel as an apartheid state. To clear the air of any ambiguity, at the end of his second term, Obama refused to veto a security council resolution against Israeli settlements. Gee, I wonder why?

If that wasn’t enough, his response after October 7 said it all as he mentioned the massacre “was a result of occupation and the unbearable suffering of the Palestinians.”

Really? I’d say women being assaulted, kidnapped and children being burned alive is “unbearable.”

And then there is Kamala. No doubt, a pawn of Obama, she is a huge proponent of the woke establishment – an openly anti-Torah entity – and aligns herself with a squad of virulent antisemitic representatives (AOC, OMAR, Rashida Talib…) may their names be erased.

It has also recently been discovered that many of her current advisors have ties to radical Islamic fundamentalist groups, just as many of Obama’s advisors did…

But then this morning, I could not believe my ears when a protester interrupted Kamala during a speech and blamed Israel for committing genocide. Her response spoke volumes as she declared, “Listen to what he’s talking about. It’s real and I respect his voice,” prompting David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, to say that “she publicly

validated the false and vicious accusation that Israel is engaging in genocide.” He even went on further to say, “I always suspected that she held this warped view of Israel self-defense against Hamas barbarism, but the cat is now out of the bag. To give credence to this disgusting libel disqualifies Harris from holding any public office, let alone the presidency.”

Even comedian Jon Lovitz said the Democratic Party is antisemitic and filled with self-hating Jews (think Schumer and Sanders).

Let us not be like the Jews in Europe who ignored the writing on the wall. Antisemitism is at an all-time high throughout and the world’s silence is deafening. My fellow Jews, this is no longer a political decision, but rather, a decision of Jewish survival. For our brothers and sisters in Israel and throughout the world.

Avi Ciment

Dear Editor,

Our current national debt is $35.769 trillion, $105,959 per citizen and $271,577 per taxpayer. (Source: National Debt Clock – October 20, 2024). The federal government will eventually face consequences for continuing to spend more money than it raises in taxes.

The costs of high federal debt are evident. One-seventh of all federal spending in 2024 paid for interest payments on debt the government has accumulated. That’s almost equal to what Washington will spend this year on Medicare and more than it will spend on the military. (Social Security is close to twice as costly as Medicare, the military or debt interest.)

Interest payments will account for an even larger share of the federal budget in coming years, leaving less money for everything else. The interest payments mean that the longer the government waits to deal with its growing debt, the more painful the solution will need to be for all of us..

Sincerely,

Larry Penner Great Neck, NY

Dear Editor,

Rabbi Aaron Kotler, zt”l, often preached that teaching Torah is much

greater than studying Torah. Also, the Chofetz Chaim so often urge people to be marbitz Torah and to be mezakeh the public. The Ponevezer Rav was one of the people that the Chofetz Chaim prevailed upon. We see the great results of that. So many out-of-town communities would benefit from a community kollel and other teachers of Torah and people who make programs for spiritual benefit. We should have busloads of people traveling around to teach Torah in various communities, and we should have many moving out to these communities.

It has such a big impact on the communities.

When a person is a millionaire and doesn’t give to tzedaka it is a ta’anah against him. When so many are so rich in Torah and Yiddishkeit and don’t share it, it is similarly a ta’anah. We must make it a priority. Leading rabbis in Israel including Rabbi Shach urged kollel students to spend an hour a week teaching in not frum neighborhoods.

May we have much hatzlacha in reaching out.

Rabbi Eli Reit Lakewood, New Jersey

Dear Editor,

It is imperative as in the words of Rabbi Avigdor Miller that we Jews should vote according to what represents us as religious Jews. The Democratic Party of today represents the antithesis of family values, the security of the State of Israel, as well as weak on crime, border and the economy in general. We must vote for the Republican candidate which represents who we are as well.

If there is a candidate running on the Democratic ticket and a Republican has a chance of getting that seat, we, as religious Jews, must vote for the Republican without fear that we will lose financial support for yeshivas or institutions as Hashem runs the world and if we believe in Hashem then we do what’s right and not believe in people that stand behind the Democrat Party, as once we believe in people’s promises or past deeds and they belong to the Democratic Party of destruction, we lose what we are.

Reuven Guttman Lawrence, NY

Cuba’s Power Grid Collapses

For years, experts had warned that Cuba’s power grid was about to collapse. The structure was reliant on plants hundreds of years old and was importing fuel that the nation could hardly afford. Last Friday, the country was plunged into darkness as the entire island’s power grid sputtered to a stop.

Cuban energy officials managed to get power back up briefly to some parts of the island on Friday night. But early Saturday the state’s utility company reported another “total disconnection” of the system, the second in less than 24 hours.

Although government assurances promised that power would be restored over the weekend, many were less than certain.

“We are estimating there should be important progress today,” Lazaro Guerra, the electricity director for the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said in an interview on state television. “But I cannot assure you that we will be able to have the system fully connected today,” he added.

For years, Cuba has been plagued by rolling blackouts that last a few hours a day, often longer in the countryside.

But this time is different, residents say, recalling the nightmare of the socalled “Special Period” in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Havana residents described total darkness across the city late Friday, with lights twinkling only from hospitals and modern hotels that had their own generators. What went wrong last week? It was a perfect storm of a few factors: the government’s failure to tackle the island’s aging infrastructure; the decline in fuel supplies from Venezuela, Mexico and Russia; and a lack of capital investment in badly needed renewable systems, such as wind

and solar.

Cuba’s electricity grid relies on eight very large power plants that are close to 50 years old and usually have a lifetime of around 25 to 30 years.

Recently, Cuba has turned to leasing half a dozen massive ships that operate as mobile power stations, capable of generating 20 percent of Cuba’s electricity. The Turkish-owned ships have become a familiar sight in the Bay of Havana, but the lease agreement requires that Cuba supply the fuel. Cuba produces about 40,000 barrels of fuel a day, analysts estimate, but consumes about 120,000 barrels a day.

Until about a year ago, the deficit of some 80,000 barrels was covered by shipments, mostly from Venezuela, plus smaller amounts from Mexico and sometimes from Russia. Those imports appear to have decreased significantly.

N. Korean Soldiers in Russia

As an ally to Russia, at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers arrived in the country this month. The United States announced the news last week, adding that it is unclear what the soldiers are in Russia for, although it is a “highly concerning probability” that they will join the fight against Ukraine

“We assess that between early- to mid-October, North Korea moved at least 3,000 soldiers into eastern Russia,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “We assess that these soldiers traveled by ship from the Wonsan area in North Korea to Vladivostok, Russia.… We do not yet know whether these soldiers will enter into combat alongside the Russian military, but this is certainly a highly concerning probability. After completing training, these soldiers could travel to western Russia and then engage in combat against the Ukrainian military.”

Earlier Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was the first senior U.S. official to confirm on the record that North Korea had deployed troops to Russia as North Korea and Russia have forged increasingly friendly ties since

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We are seeing evidence that there are North Korean troops that have gone to Russia,” Austin told reporters traveling with him in Rome on Wednesday. “What, exactly, they’re doing is left to be seen.”

For now, the United States does not believe that North Korean troops have reached Ukraine.

“If they’re a co-belligerent, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue, and it will have impacts not only on in Europe. It will also impact things in the Indo Pacific as well,” Austin said.

In recent months, Moscow and Pyongyang have deepened their anti-United States military partnership and the growing alliance has concerned officials in Kyiv and Washington.

“I can tell you one thing, though,” Kirby said. “If they do deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game. They’re fair targets.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly warned that North Korean troops are joining the war on Russia’s behalf, telling a NATO summit last week that “10,000” soldiers and technical personnel were being prepared.

A source in Ukrainian intelligence

previously said that a small number of North Koreans have been working with the Russian military, mostly to help with engineering and to exchange information on the use of North Korean ammunition.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said on Friday that North Korea has shipped 1,500 soldiers, including special forces fighters, to Russia for training.

Fatal Storm Hits Philippines

Tropical Storm Trami wreaked havoc on the Philippines over the weekend, with the storm’s floods and landslides killing at least 126 people as of Saturday. The death toll, which is expected to rise, was announced by the Southeast Asian country’s president, Ferdinand Marcos, who

toured the devastated region of Manila on Saturday in the wake of the natural disaster.

Marcos said that the Philippines’ flood control systems were inundated by the rainfall triggered by the storm, noting that some regions saw one to two months of rainfall in the span of just one day.

“The water was just too much,” Marcos explained.

Forty-one people were missing on Friday, the day when the storm left the country’s northwest, with many emergency officials working to recover bodies and save survivors. On Saturday, a team of firefighters, police officers, and emergency workers are believed to have recovered the body of a 14-year-old girl who went missing after the storm hit the Batangas province’s Talisay town. As of Saturday, one other person in the town was missing.

“We’re not done yet with our rescue work,” the president said. “Our problem here, there are still many areas that remained flooded and could not be accessed even by big trucks.”

Marcos outlined his administration’s plans for a new flood control project –one that is powerful enough to protect the country from natural disasters such as Trami. On average, the Philippines is hit by twenty storms and typhoons a year. During an emergency meeting with his cabinet, Marcos shared that he was worried that Trami, the Philippines’ eleventh storm of the year, might make a U-turn, hitting the country once more.

Schools and government offices were closed on the island of Luzon on Friday for the third day, and inter-island ferries were paused, leaving thousands stranded. Vietnam is reportedly the storm’s next target.

Duterte: I’m

Responsible for Drug War

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte defended his so-called war on drugs in testimony before the country’s Senate on Monday, saying he took “full legal responsibility” for the campaign of

extrajudicial killings that left thousands dead and is being investigated by the International Criminal Court.

“I did what I had to do, and whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country,” Duterte, whose six-year term ended in 2022, told senators. He said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for the campaign, during which rights groups say as many as 30,000 people were executed by police officers and vigilantes.

Only a handful of people have been convicted in connection with the deaths, but the International Criminal Court in The Hague is investigating Duterte’s role in them. Even as he claimed responsibility for the bloodshed on Monday, Duterte showed the belligerence he was known for in office, saying that the campaign had been necessary to stop the spread of narcotics.

“I have warned all of you as a president, then and as a private citizen now,” he said. “Drugs will destroy the Filipino, it will destroy my country, and I will not allow it.”

Duterte’s testimony came five months into an inquiry by the House of Representatives into the drug war. Supporters of Duterte have dismissed those hearings as politically motivated, calling them part of a feud between his family and that of his successor, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.

Sen. Ronald Dela Rosa, who oversaw the antidrug campaign as Duterte’s police chief, and several other senators defended him. Others upbraided him, including Leila de Lima, a former senator and critic of the drug war who spent six years behind bars on charges that were later dropped. “We can destroy and we need to destroy drugs, but we cannot destroy lives,” de Lima said.

Duterte, 79, who arrived at the Senate using a cane, read his statement from a script, in contrast to his usual freewheeling style.

“For all of its successes and shortcomings, I, and I alone, take full legal responsibility,” he said of the antidrug campaign. “For all the police did pursuant to my orders, I will take responsibility. I should be the one jailed, not the policemen who obeyed my orders. It’s pitiful, they are just doing their jobs.” (© The New York Times)

India-China Border Deal

In June 2020, Indian and Chinese forces engaged in an unprecedented and violent clash along their shared border,

resulting in the deaths of twenty or so Indian soldiers and a disputed number of Chinese fatalities.

Since then, the two countries’ relationship has been frosty. But last week, the two Asian powers worked out a border agreement to resolve “the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020,” said Vikram Misri, the Indian foreign secretary. The agreement came after weeks of negotiations between the two parties.

“Now both sides have arrived at a resolution on the relevant matter, which China views favorably,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry. “Going forward, the Chinese side and Indian sides will implement those resolutions.”

India’s announcement of the agreement came one day prior to the commencement of this year’s BRICS nations summit, which includes China, India, and other emerging-market countries. On Oc-

tober 23, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met for the first time since 2019 and discussed their respective countries’ relationship.

The agreement pertained to patrolling on the Line of Actual Control, the 2,100mile Himalayan border that separates China and India, which was established in 1962 when the two countries were at war. Misri did not specify how such patrolling would work, but added that the agreement was crafted to prevent fighting on the border and to promote peace between the countries.

“Restoring patrolling rights is the closest we can get to attempting to reach the pre-2020 situation,” said retired lieutenant general Deependra Singh Hooda, who headed India’s Northern Command, which includes parts of the Line of Actual Control. “It also sets the stage for repairing the ties between the two countries.”

Auschwitz Survivor Dies at

100

Lily Ebert, a Holocaust survivor who used social media to recount her expe-

riences in Auschwitz, passed away last Wednesday at her London home at age 100. She leaves behind her two children, Ahron and Bilha, her sister Piri Engelman, ten grandchildren, 38 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandson.

Ebert was 20 years old in July 1944 when the Nazis forced her and her family out of Hungary and sent them to Auschwitz, where her mother and two of her siblings would perish. She would later dedicate her life to Holocaust education, writing a bestselling memoir called “Lily’s Promise,” and teaching millions of kids and teenagers about the Holocaust using the TikTok account she shared with her great-grandson, Dov Forman.

Born in December 1923, Lily was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and enjoyed a peaceful childhood in Bonyhád, Hungary. She had five siblings – two brothers and three sisters. When she was

18 years old, her father passed away. When the Nazis invaded Hungary, they limited the rights of all Jewish residents, setting curfews and stealing the possessions of whomever they wanted. After being deported to Auschwitz, along with 440,000 other Hungarian Jews, Ebert and her sister Bela were separated from their mother and two of their other sisters, who were sent to the gas chambers. In April 1945, Lily and over 2,000 Jews were forced into a death march and were then rescued by Allied forces. In 1956, after twelve years of being apart, Lily reunited with her brother Imi. In 1948, Lily married her husband, Shmuel Ebert, with whom she had three children, including Esther, who passed away in 2012 from cancer. They would live in Israel until the 1960s when the family relocated to London.

Lily would later start educating the masses about the horrors of the Holocaust, eventually helping establish the Holocaust Survivors’ Center and its sister organization in order to help survivors of the Shoah. She gave lectures at schools and in Parliament, dedicating her life to ensuring that the world never forgets about the atrocities of the Holocaust. For her contributions to society, she was awarded the British Empire Medal in

2015 and was made a Member of the British Order by King Charles in 2023.

In 2021, Lily started her popular TikTok account to share her story, ensure that the world never forgets about the Holocaust, and, perhaps most of all, show that despite her traumatic experiences in the concentration camps, she went on to live a happy life and have a big family.

In reaction to Lily’s passing, King Charles said she was “an integral part of the fabric of our nation.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, “With her passing today, we must now keep our promise to her… Together we will ensure that Lily’s message echoes eternally across the generations.”

“I would talk for my own sake, and I would also speak for those I loved who hadn’t survived,” Lily said in her book. “And for all the millions of people I never knew who died with them, all over Europe, I want the world to never forget this terrible crime against humanity.”

Georgia Protests Elections

On Monday, the Georgian Dream party was declared the winner of Georgia’s parliamentary race, with the Central Election Commission (CEC) saying that the party won around 54% of the vote.

That night, tens of thousands of Georgians gathered in front of the parliament, protesting the results of the election, which they say was rigged with help from Russia. Opponents of the party, including Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, spoke out against the election, noting that Georgian Dream used violence at polling stations and caused chaos, intimidating voters. The CEC reported that 445 district-level complaints of irregularities were made on election day.

In front of an assembly of people in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, Zourabichvili declared that the protesters were “coming very peacefully to say, ‘We have voted, we want our votes to be defended, and we want our European future … to be defended.’” She called for an international investigation into the election, claiming that the victorious party used all means possible to manipulate the results of the

election.

The United States urged Georgia to conduct a “full investigation” into the matter and noted the party’s “misuse of public resources, vote buying and voter intimidation.”

“We encourage Georgia’s governing officials to consider the relationship they want with the Euro-Atlantic community, rather than strengthening policies that are praised by authoritarians,” said Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the State Department.

Georgian Dream was founded by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a quiet billionaire. The party, known for its warm relationship with Russia, doesn’t align with the Georgian public, who, at large, want Georgia to distance itself from Moscow and join the European Union, said Zourabichvili. According to polls, over 80% of Georgian citizens want the country to join the EU.

Last May, the government, headed by Georgian Dream, signed a “foreign agent” bill into law that closely resembled the legislation of Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. The new bill, which some say is meant to censor government critics, convinced the EU to pause the process of granting Georgia membership. Officials from Georgian Dream claim that they want the country to join the EU and that the bill was in line with EU policies.

“Every move the Georgian government has made this year is clearly designed … to make sure that we don’t get the approval of the European leaders,” said Zourabichvili. “The Europeans have clearly said to the Georgian authorities … that you cannot pretend that you will join the EU (while) doing what you are doing.”

Ivanishvili has previously vowed to ban the United National Movement, the main opposition party, and imprison his political opponents once his party wins another term. In 2021, Mikheil Saakashvili, a former president of Georgia and the founder of the UNM party, was imprisoned for allegedly abusing his power. Zourabichvili has said that, although she risks a similar fate, she will continue to fight for Georgia because her “personal future … is not as important as the future of Georgia.”

China Holds on to Important Minerals

The vise-tight grip that China wields over the mining and refining of rare minerals, crucial ingredients of today’s most advanced technologies, is about to become even stronger.

In a series of steps made in recent

30 weeks, the Chinese government has made it considerably harder for foreign companies, particularly semiconductor manufacturers, to purchase the many rare earth metals and other minerals mined and refined mainly in China.

China produces almost all the world’s supply of these materials. The new restrictions solidify that market dominance.

As of October 1, exporters must provide authorities with detailed, step-bystep tracings of how shipments of rare earth metals are used in Western supply chains. That has given China greater authority over which overseas companies receive scarce supplies.

China is also taking greater corporate ownership over the mining and production of the metals. In a deal that has received almost no attention outside the country, the last two foreign-owned rare earth refineries in China are being ac-

quired by one of the three state-owned companies that run the other refineries in China.

Beijing’s recent moves to take charge of the supply chain include other obscure chemical elements that are also needed by semiconductor manufacturers. On September 15, China’s Ministry of Commerce restricted exports of antimony, a material used in semiconductors, military explosives and other weaponry. Last year, the ministry imposed export controls on two other chemical elements, gallium and germanium, also needed to make chips.

National security officials have tightened the flow of information about rare earths. They have labeled rare earth mining and refining as state secrets.

The materials are a battleground in the broader fight between China and the United States over advanced technology, including the semiconductors used for artificial intelligence. Each side is imposing export controls on the components it produces, while trying to develop supply chains at home or abroad, with trusted allies.

China’s Ministry of Commerce contends it is taking action to conserve scarce natural resources, discourage weapons proliferation and protect the country’s national security.

Rare earths from China are used in U.S.-made F-35 stealth fighters as well as in wind turbines, electric car motors, camera lenses and the catalytic converters on gasoline-powered cars. The International Energy Agency predicted that clean energy industries like wind turbines and electric cars would need seven times as much rare earths in 2040 as what they needed in 2020. (© The New York Times)

Smog Blankets India and Pakistan

Ahead of Diwali, India’s annual fiveday “Festival of Lights” celebration, northern India and eastern Pakistan have been consumed by thick, hazardous orange smog. Despite local bans, the air quality usually plummets before Diwali due to all the fireworks launched in anticipation of the holiday. And with the windless winter coming, the countries are bracing for even worse smog due to coal-powered plants, traffic, and the burning of agricultural waste by farmers.

Delhi, the capital of India, saw its air quality index at around 250, which is “very unhealthy,” on Monday. On that same day, Lahore, a city in Pakistan fifteen miles from the border with India, had an air quality index of over 500, which is considered hazardous.

Medical authorities say that exposure to hazardous air can lower one’s life expectancy and increase one’s chances of getting respiratory diseases. Many wonder why India, beyond implementing largely ignored laws, seemingly neglects the country’s air pollution crisis. While India started its ambitious Clean Air Program in 2019, progress has been very slow, and some experts have criticized the country for implementing temporary quick fixes instead of addressing the root causes of the issue.

While Delhi banned residents from using and selling firecrackers in the days before Diwali, the local government has struggled to enforce the law. Just a week ago, the Supreme Court of India criticized the Punjab and Haryana state governments for failing to stop farmers from illegally burning crop waste, a practice that contributes to pollution. Authorities

have, however, said that progress has been made in reducing the practice’s frequency.

Japan’s Governing Party Loses Majority

Japan’s governing party lost its majority in parliamentary elections on Sunday, as voters delivered an emphatic rejection of the status quo, throwing Japanese politics into its most uncertain period in years.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for all but four years since 1955, lost more than 50 seats in an election for the House of Representatives, the influential lower chamber of parliament, according to the public broadcaster, NHK.

For more than a decade, elections in Japan had taken on a rubber-stamp quality for the conservative Liberal Democrats. This time, a wearied public angered by a long-simmering political finance scandal, rising inflation and the burdens of raising families inflicted a humiliating blow to the party just one month after it anointed Shigeru Ishiba as the new prime minister.

The defeat was even more pronounced as the LDP could not even secure a majority in the 465-seat chamber through the party’s coalition with its traditional partner, Komeito.

The Liberal Democrats, who went into the election with 247 seats, ended the night with fewer than 200, with some Cabinet ministers losing in their districts. Together with Komeito, the political arm of Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist sect, the coalition won fewer than the 233 they needed to retain a majority. The opposition, led by the Constitutional Democratic Party, won at least 250 seats.

Just two weeks earlier, such a result had seemed unlikely. But in the early hours of Monday morning, the Liberal Democrats were forced to consider whether they could expand their coalition to retain power or whether a group of opposition parties could come together to form a government.

Speaking to NHK on Sunday night,

Ishiba, looking somber, said that the Liberal Democrats would have to “try to accept this result” after the “voters have handed down a very harsh vote.”

He said he would consider working with other partners, with an eye toward negotiating with parties that “had gained trust from the public” when his own had not.

The question now, 26 days into his tenure, is whether Ishiba will survive as prime minister. If he doesn’t, the country might return to the kind of revolving door leadership that has characterized Japanese politics in the past. (© The New York Times)

ing facilities and rocket launching sites, including ones used on April 14 and October 1, the two times when Iran fired missiles into Israel.

Iran downplayed the attack, claiming that the Israeli strikes caused “limited damage,” with Iranian air defenses intercepting most of the strikes. However, Israel denied such claims, and many Israeli officials have said that Iran’s air defenses failed to intercept any attacks.

Dozens of fighter jets, refuelers, and spy planes took part in the “complex” operation, which was known as the “Days of Repentance,” a codename referring to Yom Kippur. According to the IDF, “all goals [were] achieved” and thanks to the successful strikes, the IAF could now enjoy a “wider freedom of aerial action in Iran.”

Israel Strikes Iran

On October 1, Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. On Saturday, nearly four weeks later, Israel responded to the attack, targeting several Iranian military sites with a series of “precise strikes,” according to the Israeli military.

The barrage’s first wave started at about 2:15 a.m. local time and the last wave ended at around 6 a.m., with the Jewish state successfully hitting sites in Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan, and Shiraz. In the midst of the strikes, Iran closed its airspace, and Israel immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The Israel Defense Forces said the strikes were Israel’s retaliation for “months of continuous attacks from the Iranian regime against the State of Israel.”

Some of the hit sites were 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away from Israel. The strikes demonstrated the Jewish state’s power, as the attack was unparalleled in size and duration.

The attack’s first wave hit Iranian air defenses, allowing the Israeli Air Force to freely carry out this mission and potential future operations as well. Subsequent waves targeted the Islamic Republic’s drone and ballistic missile manufactur-

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7 — on seven fronts — including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” said the IDF. “Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.”

“If the regime in Iran were to make the mistake of beginning a new round of escalation — we will be obligated to respond,” stated IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. “Our message is clear: All those who threaten the State of Israel and seek to drag the region into a wider escalation will pay a heavy price. We demonstrated today that we have both the capability and the resolve to act decisively, and we are prepared — on offense and defense — to defend Israel and the people of Israel.”

Although Israel reportedly considered targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities and oil fields, the Jewish state refrained from doing so in line with the Biden administration’s requests.

Huge Hezbollah Tunnel

The IDF recently discovered an underground tunnel network built by Hezbollah beneath a Lebanese village just kilometers from the border.

The tunnels, which were 2 kilometers in length and in some places had a

depth of forty meters, were the biggest the Israeli military has ever uncovered in southern Lebanon and was much bigger than even the largest Hamas tunnels in Gaza. The tunnels were big enough to comfortably host hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists and contained dozens of rooms, such as bedrooms with mattresses, working generator rooms, kitchens, bathrooms — with toilets and showers — an armory, and a food storage room. Some rooms even had 13-foot ceilings.

According to the army, the uncovered underground bases were constructed by the terror group over the last fifteen years.

“This isn’t a ‘tunnel,’ it’s an underground combat site, extremely significant, which the enemy constructed over years for the purpose of an invasion of Israel — we estimate targeting the northern towns,” said the 98th Division’s commander, Brig. Gen. Guy Levy, during a press tour of the tunnels.

Levy explained that the tunnels were

der is given,” said Lt. Col. Yoni Hacohen, the commander of the Paratroopers Brigade’s 890th Battalion, adding that the tunnel’s discovery was a “huge victory” for Israel.

Hacohen was part of the raid on the tunnel network, during which the IDF encountered some terrorists.

Numerous weapons were scattered about on the tunnel floors, including grenades, mines, assault rifles, and RPGs. One bed even had an AK-type gun and a grenade on it.

The village under which this tunnel network was situated has yet to be named.

On Saturday morning, the Israeli military blew up the subterranean Hezbollah base using 400 tons of explosives, setting off an underground explosion that was so powerful that it registered as an earthquake, rumbling the ground of northern Israel.

Knesset Bans UNWRA

Israel’s Knesset on Monday made it illegal for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to operate in Israeli territory and for state officials to cooperate with the agency.

The two laws were passed by a large majority following the exposure of UNRWA staff complicity in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre and despite pressure from the United States and other countries against the move.

The Biden Administration was “deeply concerned” about the legislation, according to an unnamed U.S. State Department official cited by Axios.

meant to be used as part of a planned Hezbollah invasion of northern Israel.

Right before such an attack, terrorists from the Radwan Force would be able to exit the tunnel through its various emergency exits, bringing them above ground to the Lebanese village, from where they could storm the northern border, the IDF said.

“Everything here is ready ahead of the action they planned to carry out in Israel. It’s a warehouse ready for the day the or-

Josep Borrell, the E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, tweeted that the new laws “would de facto render UNRWA’s vital operations in Gaza impossible, and seriously hamper its provision of services in the West Bank.” The laws stand “in stark contradiction to international law and the fundamental principle of humanity,” he added.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini tweeted that the legislation “opposes the U.N. Charter and

36 violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law.”

However, experts on UNRWA, including former Israeli lawmaker Einat Wilf, who has written an acclaimed book about the agency, dispute that the legislation contradicts international law. Israel is not party to any treaty compelling it to engage with the group or allow its activities, Wilf told JNS.

The two laws are by far the most robust parliamentary push by Israel against UNRWA, the largest donors of which are the United States and the European Union. The agency has for decades has been accused of providing cover and income to Palestinian terrorists while undermining peace efforts.

The law that bans UNRWA activity in Israeli territory, authored by Knesset member Boaz Bismuth (Likud) and six other coalition lawmakers, was passed by a majority of 87 of the Knesset’s 120 lawmakers. Nine MKs present voted against the law, one did not vote. The remaining 23 lawmakers were not present for the vote.

“UNRWA—United Nations Relief and Works Agency will operate no representation, provide no service or hold any activity, directly or indirectly, in the sovereign territory of the State of Israel,” the law co-authored by Bismuth states.

The second law, passed by 92-10, states: “No state authority, including entities and individuals who legally hold public office, will engage in any contact with UNRWA or its representatives.” This legislation was coauthored by MKs Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beiteinu), Dan Illouz (Likud) and Ron Katz (Yesh Atid).

“UNRWA will not operate in Israel, their benefits will be canceled, their entry to Israel will be banned. Total Disconnect,” Malinovsky tweeted following the votes.

According to its website, UNRWA employs some 30,000 staff, most of them Palestinians, including 13,000 in the Gaza Strip. It also has staff in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. UNRWA also operates in Jordan and Lebanon.

Being banned in Israel could end UNRWA’s work in Jerusalem and greatly complicate its operations in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, where the organization is at least partially dependent on Israeli cooperation.

In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, in which Hamas terrorists murdered at least 1,200 people and abducted another 251, evidence surfaced about the complicity of UNRWA staff in those atrocities and other acts of terrorism. For example, UNRWA worker Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami and a colleague were

captured on video loading the body of Israeli Yonatan Samerano into a vehicle in Sderot.

According to Israel, over 450 terrorists belonging to terrorist organizations in Gaza, mainly Hamas, are also employed by UNRWA. UNRWA’s Lazzarini has flatly denied these allegations.

On Sept. 29, Hamas admitted that Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amin, chairman of UNRWA’s Teachers’ Association, was its commander in Lebanon. The agency had suspended Abu al-Amin in March, yet after his death denied knowing he was involved in terrorism.

In July, Israel’s foreign ministry published a list of names and ID numbers of 108 UNRWA employees Israel accuses of being Hamas terrorists. It was a “small fraction,” a Foreign Ministry official wrote, of a much larger list including hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members who also worked for UNRWA. The wider list could not be released due to security considerations.

UNRWA had a budget of about $1.1 billion in 2023. Eighteen countries suspended funding to UNRWA following the Oct. 7 attack, including the United States, which provides roughly a third of the organization’s budget. The United States froze its donations to UNRWA until March 2025. Only it and New Zealand have not yet reinstated their funding.

While it has been obvious for years that Hamas is stealing money from UNRWA and using its installations, the organization has refused to put safeguards in place, Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor organization, noted, emphasizing that the agency itself is to blame for the Israeli move.

“If UNRWA indeed plays such a vital role, then the international community must implement reforms as well as bring criminal charges not only against UNRWA employees who participated in Oct. 7 but also officials who not only allowed Hamas to exploit UNRWA’s facilities and money but looked the other way,” she told JNS.

Through UNRWA, the United Nations employs a unique refugee definition to Palestinians. The agency defines as refugees not only those who fled the 1948 war but their descendants in perpetuity until a “just solution” emerges for their status. The United Nations employs a different definition for all other refugees, who cannot pass the title to their descendants and often lose it when they are naturalized elsewhere.

This has perpetuated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict according to many critics, including Hillel Neuer, the founder of U.N. Watch.

“What the Knesset did yesterday is extremely significant,” Neuer told JNS on Tuesday, though he too said that the new legislation would not close UNRWA down.

“Beyond the concrete consequences, a very important message was sent, which is ‘no more,’” he said. “No more will Israel tolerate an agency that has a pathological agenda. The aim of UNRWA is not distributing aid, it is teaching Palestinians that they will dismantle Israel,” he continued. (JNS)

Fighting Continues in Lebanon

On Thursday night, five Israeli reservists were killed in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah terrorists, and another nineteen were injured, four of whom sustained serious wounds and were evacuated to hospitals.

The following day, the Israel Defense Forces identified the fallen soldiers as Maj. (res.) Dan Maori, 43; Cpt. (res.) Alon Safrai, 28; Warrant Officer (res.) Omri Lotan, 47; Warrant Officer (res.) Guy Idan, 51; and Master Sgt. (res.) Tom Segal, 28. The troops were part of the 8th Armored Brigade’s 89th Battalion.

Idan, a volunteer reservist from Shomrat, was cousins with Tsahi Idan, who was kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7 and remains in captivity to this very day. Maori, the deputy commander of the battalion, was from Beit Yitzhak-Sha’ar Hefer. Safrai was from Jerusalem. Lotan was a Bat Hefer resident, and Segal came from Ein HaBesor.

The slain soldiers had been accepting logistical supplies in southern Lebanon in a building that was then attacked by Hezbollah terrorists. Simultaneously, several rockets hit areas near the building.

Since October 8, 2023, a day after the tragic October 7 massacre, Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting. Nearly a year later, Israel launched a ground campaign in southern Lebanon to defeat the terror group and ensure that the 60,000 Israeli citizens living near the northern border can return home safely.

The IDF estimates that more than 2,000 Hezbollah operatives have been

killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups, along with hundreds of civilians, have also been reported killed in Lebanon.

Fatal Car Ramming

On Sunday morning, Bezalel Carmi from Rishon Lezion was killed when a terrorist rammed his truck at people standing at a bus stop in Herzliya outside the IDF’s Glilot base. Carmi was 72 years old.

Thirty-two people were wounded in the terror attack, five in serious condition, seven moderately wounded, and 20 lightly hurt.

The terrorist, Rami Nasrallah, was shot and “neutralized” by armed civilians in the area. He was an Arab Israeli driver from Qalansawe in central Israel.

According to the police’s initial probe, a bus had stopped at the station outside the base to drop off passengers, and then a truck rammed into the stop, hitting the people there. Many of the injured were senior citizens who had disembarked from the bus ahead of a day trip to a nearby museum to mark the national memorial day for those killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and subsequent war.

Hamas put out a statement a short while after the incident, praising the “heroic ramming attack” that was carried out near “Mossad headquarters.”

The Glilot area near Herzliya is home to the Mossad headquarters, along with several IDF intelligence units, including the high-profile signals intelligence Unit 8200.

Without taking responsibility for the apparent attack, the terror group said that it was “a natural response to the crimes of the Zionist occupation against our Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, and its ongoing brutal massacres, especially in the northern Gaza Strip.”

In a separate incident on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said a Palestinian motorist who tried to carry out a ramming and stabbing attack against IDF troops near the West Bank town of Hizma was shot dead.

38 According to the IDF, the assailant accelerated his car toward troops of the Binyamin Regional Brigade’s 43rd Battalion, as they were operating near Hizma.

“The terrorist drew a knife…and tried to carry out a stabbing attack,” the IDF said, adding that the soldiers opened fire at the terrorist, killing him. He was identified as Amudi Sami, an East Jerusalem resident of the Shuafat refugee camp.

Too Many Injuries

It’s been over a year since Hamas terrorists burst into Israel and slaughtered at least 1,200 Israelis, captured 251 others, and burned homes and businesses. Since then, 365 Israeli soldiers have lost their lives in the war. This week, the Defense Ministry’s Rehabilitation Department announced that it had admitted approximately 12,000 wounded individuals

since the war began on October 7.

According to the department’s data, 93% of the wounded are men, 66% are reservists, and 51% are between the ages of 18 and 30.

Fourteen percent of the wounded are classified as having moderate to severe injuries. Among them, 377 sustained head injuries, including 23 with severe cranial damage requiring 3D-printed skull replacements. Another 308 individuals suffered eye injuries, of whom 12 lost their vision and needed prosthetics. Additionally, 104 sustained spinal injuries, and around 60 required advanced prosthetic limbs, tailored to fit their lifestyles.

Around 5,200 (43%) of the wounded have developed various psychological responses (such as anxiety, depression, adjustment difficulties, PTSD, and more).

Each month, an average of 1,000 wounded from the ongoing war are admitted, along with about 500 new requests for recognition from past events.

Wounded individuals under 30 years old make up 51% of the war’s casualties. That’s a huge increase from October 6, 2023, when approximately 50% of IDF disabled veterans were classified as seniors, while only 8% were under 30.

The division is adapting its rehabilitation programs for younger wounded

individuals, emphasizing support for returning to education, vocational training, and job rehabilitation.

As part of this initiative, ten rehabilitation farms have been established nationwide to help wounded individuals build a daily routine. Created in collaboration with the Zahal Disabled Veterans Organization (ZDVO), these farms provide body and mind workshops, discussion groups, and diverse agricultural activities. In the future, family members will also be able to participate in farm activities.

The department estimates that by 2030, there will be around 100,000 disabled IDF veterans, with 50% expected to face mental health challenges.

Hezbollah’s New Leader

This week, the Hezbollah terror group announced a leader to succeed Hasan Nasrallah, who had been killed by an Israeli strike last month. Nasrallah had led the Iranian-backed militant group for three decades before he was killed.

Naim Qassem, Nasrallah’s former deputy, was put into Nasrallah’s place as secretary general. Qassem had said after

Nasrallah’s killing that the group was

pared for a “long” battle with Israel.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted a photo of Qassem on social media, together with the words: “Temporary appointment. Not for long.”

Israel has devastated Hezbollah’s senior leadership since ramping up its attacks in Lebanon in mid-September. Last week, Israel confirmed that Hashem Safieddine, who was widely expected to become the group’s next leader, had been killed in an Israeli attack in Beirut’s southern suburbs weeks earlier.

Despite the blows to its leadership, Hezbollah has been determined to terrorize the Jewish state, launching rocket, missile and drone attacks against Israel and fighting against Israeli ground forces, who first crossed into Lebanon on October 1. Last week, the militant group damaged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea in a drone

attack and said a “new escalatory phase” was coming.

Qassem began his political career with the Amal Movement in the mid-1970s but left the group in 1979, influenced by the Islamic Revolution that shaped the ideology of a generation of Lebanese Shiite activists. He played an integral role in the formation of Hezbollah, founded with funding and guidance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in 1982.

Naim was appointed deputy secretary general of Hezbollah in 1991 by Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack the next year. Qassem continued to serve in the role when Nasrallah assumed leadership of the party and has been one of the group’s most prominent spokesmen for decades.

Exiled Turkish Leader Dies

Fethullah Gulen, the Islamic cleric who had been accused of orchestrating a failed 2016 coup in Turkey, died last week in the United States.

The Alliance for Shared Values, a New York-based group that promotes Gülen’s work in the U.S., called him a “towering figure of faith, wisdom, intellectual and spiritual leadership” whose “impact will be felt for generations.”

Gulen believed in a philosophy that blended Sufism — a mystical form of Islam — with staunch advocacy of democracy, education, science and interfaith dialogue. Over the past few years, Gulen lived in self-exile in a gated compound in Pennsylvania. He had not been involved actively in his movement in recent years. At one point, Gulen had been an ally of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but that eventually changed. Gulen called Erdogan a dictator, accusing him of accumulating power and crushing dissent. In response, Erdogan cast Gulen as a terrorist, charging him with orchestrating the attempted military coup on July 15, 2016, when factions within the military used

tanks, warplanes and helicopters to try to overthrow the government.

During that coup attempt, thousands took to the streets to oppose the takeover attempt. The coup plotters fired at crowds and bombed parliament and other government buildings. A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were wounded. Around 35 alleged coup plotters were killed.

Gulen vehemently denied involvement in the coup. Turkey put Gulen on its most-wanted list and demanded his extradition, but the United States showed little inclination to send him back, saying it needed more evidence. He was never charged with a crime in the U.S., and he consistently denounced terrorism as well as the coup plotters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said last week that Gulen’s death “will not make us complacent or relaxed. This organization has been a threat rarely seen in the history of our nation.” He called on Gulen’s followers to turn away from “this treasonous wrong path.”

In Turkey, Gulen’s movement — sometimes known as Hizmet, Turkish for “service” — has been subjected to a broad crackdown. The government arrested tens of thousands of people for their alleged link to the coup plot, fired more than 130,000 suspected supporters from civil service jobs and more than 23,000 from the military, and shuttered hundreds of businesses, schools and media organizations tied to Gulen.

Gulen called the crackdown a witch hunt and denounced Turkey’s leaders as “tyrants.”

Baltimore Bridge Collapse Settlement

Last March, Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after the Dali container ship slammed into it, killing six workers and forcing authorities to close down the Port of Baltimore for nearly a dozen weeks.

On Thursday, the ship’s owner, Grace Ocean, and operator, Synergy Marine, settled a civil claim brought against them

in September by the U.S. Department of Justice. The settlement was reached after the companies, both Singapore-based, agreed to pay over $100 million.

A spokesperson for the companies, Darrell Wilson, clarified that the agreement was “not indicative of any liability, which we expressly reject,” but was only to cover “costs related to clearing the channel.” Wilson noted that the costs were entirely insured.

As per U.S. law, in the event of a disaster similar to the Baltimore Bridge collapse, owners of vessels can limit the amount of money they have to pay by proving they weren’t aware of the ship’s flaws prior to the incident – a claim that Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine made in a filing in April.

The DOJ, however, noted numerous preventable mishaps with the Dali in the department’s federal suit on March 26.

“None of the four means available to help control the Dali — her propeller, rudder, anchor, or bow thruster — worked when they were needed to avert or even mitigate this disaster” due to poor maintenance or “jury-rigged” solutions to the ship’s serious issues, according to the suit.

While on its way to Sri Lanka, the ship lost power, regained power, and then lost power again, at which point it smashed into the Baltimore Bridge. Still, Wilson maintains that the companies bear no responsibility for the incident and are “prepared to vigorously defend themselves.”

The companies have also been sued by the state of Maryland, which will need to reconstruct the bridge – a project that will likely cost $1.9 billion and take four years. Additionally, the families of three victims said in September that they would sue the companies. Many other companies, including the one that employed the deceased workers, sued the ship’s companies. The Justice Department is also carrying out a separate criminal investigation into the matter.

WaPo Won’t Endorse

Last week, The Washington Post said that it would not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. As a result, three members of its editorial board stepped down. At least 200,000 digital subscribers cancelled their subscriptions to the paper.

Will Lewis, the Post’s publisher and CEO, said the non-endorsement was his decision, although it has been said that owner Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon,

made the call.

Molly Roberts, David Hoffman and Mili Mitra resigned from the paper’s 10-member editorial board due to the decision about the endorsement, but they are remaining on the Post’s staff. That is the same number of editorial board members who resigned from the Los Angeles Times’ board in protest of that newspaper’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate.

Also on Monday, USA Today said it would not endorse a presidential candidate this year. The Gannett-owned newspaper, one of the largest papers by circulation in the United States, in 2020 broke its longstanding tradition of not endorsing presidential candidates when it urged readers to pick President Joe Biden over Trump.

Will Lewis, the Post’s publisher and CEO, has said that it was his decision to break the tradition of endorsing a candidate – dating back decades – at the paper and not endorse a presidential candidate this year — or in any future election.

Announcing her resignation from the editorial board in a letter to Post Opinions Editor David Shipley, Roberts wrote, “I stand against silence in the face of dictatorship. Here, there, everywhere.”

She also posted a statement online. “To be very clear, the decision not to endorse this election was not the editorial board’s,” Roberts wrote. “It was (you can read the reporting) Jeff Bezos’s.”

“I’m resigning from The Post editorial board because the imperative to endorse Kamala Harris over Donald Trump is about as morally clear as it gets. Worse, our silence is exactly what Donald Trump wants: for the media, for us, to keep quiet.”

Lewis said in a statement Saturday that “reporting around the role of The Washington Post owner and the decision not to publish a presidential endorsement has been inaccurate.”

“He was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft,” Lewis said. “As Publisher, I do not believe in presidential endorsements. We are an independent newspaper and should support our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”

On Monday, USA Today spokeswoman Lark-Marie Anton said, “While USA

TODAY will not endorse for president, local editors at publications across the USA TODAY Network have the discretion to endorse at a state or local level.”

“Many have decided not to endorse individual candidates, but rather, endorse key local and state issues on the ballot that impact the community,” Anton said. “Why are we doing this? Because we believe America’s future is decided locally — one race at a time. And with more than 200 publications across the nation,

our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”

Six Figures Isn’t Cutting It

According to a new study by Bank of America, around 20% of households with

that make somewhere between $50,000 to $75,000 and live paycheck to paycheck is only a little bit higher than those making over $150,000.

Inflation is the obvious culprit. Prices are 20% higher now than they were in February 2020, before the coronavirus, and wage growth has slowed considerably as the labor market cools.

There are several reasons why many households that are making six figures aren’t doing much better financially than those who aren’t making as much money. As one of the authors of the study notes, “Higher-income households may have bought larger, more expensive homes and consequently have bigger mortgages. And often along with bigger homes come bigger insurance costs, property taxes and utility bills.”

Households with higher salaries may be taking out larger mortgages “on the aspiration that they’re going to be getting raises and promotions,” said David Tinsley, a senior economist at the Bank of America Institute. Additionally, those making over $150,000 may have more financial challenges because they tend to have many young children and thus have to deal with tuition costs.

The analysis team noted that they didn’t differentiate between different types of necessity spending. For example, one who pays tuition for a prestigious preschool was still considered to have been spending money on a necessity.

Bloomberg Gives $50M to Harris

an annual income of $150,000 are living paycheck to paycheck. The bank considers those who spend over 95% of their household income on necessities such as food, internet, public transportation, utilities, gas, housing, and child care to be living paycheck to paycheck.

In comparison, about 35% of households with an annual income of less than $50,000 are living paycheck to paycheck, according to the analysis. And strangely enough, the percentage of households

44

Kamala Harris, recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization that is supporting her presidential run, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The donation followed months of arm-twisting from associates such as Bill Gates, investor Ron Conway, and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. Bloomberg recently spoke with Harris in a private phone call, according to two people briefed on the conversation.

Bloomberg’s decision conforms to a strategy that has become his trademark: confounding Democratic operatives by refusing to make early investments — only to come in hot and heavy in the homestretch. But unlike his previous big gifts, this one was intended to be kept under wraps, and that secrecy has made unaware Democrats more anxious than they have been most autumns.

His contribution was made to Future Forward USA Action, the dark-money vehicle of Future Forward, Harris’ main super political action committee.

Bloomberg, 82, who has an estimated net worth of $105 billion, is the second largest disclosed individual donor to Democrats in this election cycle, after investor and philanthropist George Soros. But publicly, Democrats observed that

Bloomberg was donating nowhere close to what he had spent during the presidency of Donald Trump.

The $47 million he had given in federally disclosed political contributions during this election cycle, before his new nonprofit donation, was less than half of the $95 million he disclosed to help Democrats retake Congress in the 2018 midterms.

And so in recent months, frustrated Democrats in his close orbit had urged him to consider a large donation to help Harris in an election expected to be decided by razor-thin margins. Bloomberg’s advisers, to say nothing of the man himself, have fielded jittery queries for months about what Democrats saw as his relatively conspicuous absence.

Mike Smith, the head of House Majority PAC, which has received almost $70 million from Bloomberg over the past decade, including $10 million this year, defended Bloomberg’s “deliberate” and “sophisticated” approach to late spending.

“There should be no expectation that any individual donor is just going to give to you,” he said. “Mike’s not giving money to anyone just to give money.” (© The New York Times)

Rubber Duck Threats

Karen Read is on trial in Boston for killing Police Officer John O’Keefe. The trial is charged, with many people saying that Read should be free. One of those people, Richard Schiffer Jr., took justice into his own hands with a dangerous weapon: a rubber duck.

Schiffer is accused of peppering homes and businesses of key witnesses with rubber ducks and fake $100 bills bearing messages supporting Read. He is charged with witness intimidation, criminal harassment and littering for his alleged role in the incidents and will appear in court for what many are calling “Duckgate.”

Canton police say they used traffic cams, surveillance footage, witnesses and other evidence to connect the ducks and fake $100 bills to Schiffer, who is 65 and lives in neighboring Stoughton.

The rubber ducks appear to be a reference to a statement at a pre-trial hearing in January, when defense attorney Alan Jackson told the court, “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

In an online fundraiser seeking help with his legal fees, Schiffer admitted to putting rubber ducks around Canton and surrounding areas.

“Through the First Amendment and my right to free speech, I expressed my opinion and belief that Karen Read is innocent. The fundamental right of free speech is afforded to us by the Constitution of the United States,” he wrote.

In supporting language for a second online fundraiser, Schiffer wrote: “Charging innocent citizens with manu-

factured crimes is weaponizing our justice system to silence law-abiding citizens.”

He sounds like a quack.

We the People

Last week, the only known private copy of the U.S. Constitution changed hands.

The copy had been printed by Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, and was found in a filing cabinet of a North Carolina home. It sold for $9 million at auction.

The document had been collecting dust in a metal filing cabinet for many years until it was discovered in 2022 in a home in Edenton, North Carolina. The house had once been owned by Samuel Johnston, the state’s governor from 1787 to 1789, and was being cleared out. It’s not clear how it ended up in the cabinet in the first place.

Thomson printed about 100 copies of the Constitution during the Continental Congress’ existence, and only eight are known to still exist, seven of them in public ownership.

“This is the point of connection between the government and the people. The Preamble — ‘We the People’ — this is the moment the government is asking the people to empower them,” auctioneer Andrew Brunk, who owns Brunk Auctions, noted.

It took just seven minutes for the gavel to come down at $9 million at auction.

“I get calls every week from people who think they have a Declaration of Independence or a Gettysburg Address, and most of the time it is just a replica. But every so often, something important gets found,” historical document appraiser Seth Kaller said before the auction. “This is a whole other level of importance.”

The document was printed in 1787 after the Constitutional Convention, during which the framework of the Constitution

Did you know?

and America’s government was drafted. It was then sent to Congress so it could be ratified by the states. Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution; Rhode Island was the last.

Hey, it’s a free country.

Stick With It

Do you eat sushi with chopsticks? How about plain rice?

Sumaiya Khan has infinite patience. The 24-year-old from Bangladesh used chopsticks to lift one grain of rice at a time and managed to eat a record-breaking 37 pieces in one minute.

This took a lot of practice. For the past few years, Khan has been using chopsticks to eat all her meals.

“I had a thing for ramen back in the day. I was obsessed with ramen and loved

Korean culture so that’s when I got my own personal chopsticks, and since then I’ve eaten almost all of my food using them, and especially since I’m Bangladeshi I eat rice almost every single day,” she explained.

A coworker took note of Khan’s rice-eating skills and suggested she might be able to break the record for the most rice grains eaten in one minute using chopsticks, which previously stood at 27 grains of rice.

“It feels surreal, it feels amazing, and everyone around me is proud of me for actually attempting it,” Khan said. “I feel proud of myself for doing it too because it’s such a great thing to actually achieve, having your name out there in the world and being part of something so big, it’s actually amazing and I’m honored and blessed and proud and every other good thing that I can say about it.”

She’s happy she sticks out.

Conkers Controversy

Ever heard of conkers? Don’t feel bad. The unusual sport is British in nature and pits two competitors against each other

using a chestnut on a leather string to try to break their opponent’s chestnut. Sounds fun, no? Guess you have to live in the UK to appreciate this type of entertainment.

This year’s World Conker Championships featured more than 200 participants. David Jakins, known as “King Conker,” won his first men’s title at Sunday’s event in Southwick, Northamptonshire. Jakins lost the overall contest to women’s title winner Kelci Banschbach, 34, an Indianapolis native who became the first American to win the competition.

But the 82-year-old men’s champion is causing controversy, after Jakins was accused of cheating in the men’s event and officials found a steel chestnut in his pocket.

“Allegations of foul play have been received that somehow King Conker swapped his real conker for the metal one later found in his pocket,” World Conker

Championships spokesman St. John Burkett said.

“Players select conkers from a sack before each round. There are also suggestions that King Conker had marked the strings of harder nuts. We can confirm he was involved in drilling and lacing the nuts before the event.”

Jakins denied marking the leather strings to give himself an advantage, asserting that he’s “nut guilty.” He also denied using the steel chestnut in the competition, explaining it was a novelty item for amusing children.

“You get them to hit it with their conker and then their conker breaks and they can’t believe it,” he told the BBC. “It’s impossible to cheat at conkers – it’s a load of nonsense.”

Event chairman Jim Packer said he believes Jakins, saying he examined the steel chestnut and “it’s very obvious it’s not a real one.”

The investigation is ongoing.

The World Conker Championships is no stranger to controversy – officials came under fire in 2023 when a soggy chestnut harvest led to the conkers used in the competition being baked for the first time in the event’s history.

Conkers is making everyone go bonkers.

Around the Community

Teach Coalition Opens First-Ever Voter Centers in Jewish Communities Nationwide

By TJH Staff

As Americans head to the polls on November 5, a second, unprecedented campaign is in high gear alongside the presidential one: Teach Coalition is on a mission to get as many Jewish community members as possible to vote in the upcoming election and every one after it.

Active in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Nevada, California and Florida, Teach Coalition is a division of the Orthodox Union and a non-partisan grassroots movement that advocates for equitable government funding and quality education for non-public schools including 90 percent of yeshivas and day schools nationwide. Through the activism of 36,500 community advocates, Teach has succeeded in helping secure resources in the areas of special education, busing, security, scholarships and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, among others.

“Historically, efforts to encourage Jewish community members to vote have been fruitful,” says Teach Coalition Founder and Chief Executive Officer Maury Litwack. “Yet beyond robocalls, text messages, and emails to potential voters, Teach Coalition wants to facilitate people’s ability to vote and combat any potential misconceptions they have about the process by educating them in person.”

Among these misconceptions is the belief that registering and voting are complicated and time-consuming. While this may have been the case in the past, Litwack says the current process is seamless and takes about 12 minutes.

“People also believe that their vote doesn’t matter,” he notes. “They say that they voted once but didn’t get the outcome they wanted. To me, that only underscores our collective responsibility to vote and to ensure that our friends and family vote, too. True, the official of your

choice may not win. But if you and 20 of your friends vote, the outcome may be affected.”

He adds, “If we want our elected officials to defend Israel, combat antisemitism, and recognize our concerns around security and the costs of private education, we must make our voices heard as a community by voting for people who will champion and fight for the issues we care about.”

Earlier this year, Teach Coalition opened a local voter outreach center in a storefront in Westchester’s Jewish community, centered around a key primary election, in addition to a center in Philadelphia. They later launched similar centers in the Five Towns, Beverly Hills, Boca Raton, and Miami, and a new center in Philadelphia, in addition to several mobile voter centers, all focused on turning out the Jewish vote for the General Election.

“The centers have been very impactful and we’re proud of the initiative,” says Litwack. “It’s not just a megaphone; it’s a two-way communication. The Jewish community has rallied around it and other voting organizations and politicians countrywide have been calling us and saying, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this before. How do we start a voter center in our community?’”

While each is staffed by three to five Teach Coalition employees, over 1,000 Jewish community volunteers have stepped up to promote the cause. These include school educators, who encourage and register their high school seniors to vote, shul captains, who engage congregants and equip them with necessary voting information and resources, and regular citizens. As a non-partisan organization, volunteers never recommend candidates; their objective is strictly to encourage voters to turn up.

“I think that especially after October 7, people are looking for ways to help out,” reflects Litwack. “The Jewish community is an incredible place, and people

want to volunteer. Our dedicated volunteers work in and out of the voter centers, helping people in person, calling potential voters, and even knocking on their doors. Volunteering for this cause doesn’t require a specific skill set or a monetary donation. Every single person has friends and family they can contact. Every single person lives in a community they can mobilize and support.”

Rachel Miller of Merion Station, Pennsylvania, is one such volunteer who is fully invested in Teach’s voter campaign. Miller has long appreciated the instrumental role Teach PA has played in getting the EITC (Educational Improvement Tax Credit ) funding for Jewish schools, and began volunteering for Teach ahead of her state’s primary election in the spring.

“Our primary election was held on the first day of Pesach, which meant a large segment of the Jewish population wouldn’t be able to vote,” she recalls. “It was truly inexcusable, especially after the year we’ve had as Jews. Teach PA’s regional director, Hadassa Levenson, shared Teach’s initiative to encourage the Jewish community to vote by mail and invited me to get onboard. Our efforts worked; scores of people mailed in their votes. When Hadassa told me we’d

be working to get more Jewish voters to vote in this upcoming election, I was in.” Miller says the goal of the voter centers is to help as many people as possible to cast their votes.

“Whether through the mail, early voting, or showing up on Election Day, we are here to help our community vote,” she says. “Each volunteer serves as a liaison to a segment of the community so that each part of the community is reached.”

Each volunteer also serves as a role model to others. For her part, Miller is passionate about exercising her own right to vote.

“My brother serves in the United States Army,” she says. “He and his fellow brave soldiers sacrifice so much for our democracy. With that sacrifice, comes a right and a responsibility to vote. We can all think of times in history when Jews were not allowed to vote. Now we are able to, and we must make our voices heard. This year in particular, I will vote because since October 7 the world has tried to silence us. Never again. We will hold our heads high and we will fight for freedom and democracy both here in America, and in Israel. Even if it doesn’t change the outcome, every single vote tips the scale.”

A voter registers to vote at Teach Coalition’s voter outreach center in Cedarhurst, NY

Rabbi Katz’s sixth grade class in Yeshiva Darchei Torah hearing divrei Torah from Rabbi Pinchus Weinberger of BTI in Rabbi Katz’s sukkah

Celebrating Sukkos with the Nikolsburger Rebbe

Student Life at YUHSG: A Personalized Experience

If you want to get a sense for any school community, there’s only one place to get the real story: the students. At the Yeshiva University High School for Girls (Central), the array of extracurricular activities and special programming on offer enables students to design their own, personalized high school experience, complete with learning in and out of the classroom.

One of the oldest and most prestigious programs at Central is its Science Institute. Directed by Science Department Chair, Mrs. Ruth Fried, the Institute gives aspiring scientists a chance to begin their careers right here at Central. While all Central students receive science literacy training and lab experience, the Institute deepens this training with college-level math and science curricula, the development and defense of independent research, and exclusive summer research internships at YU’s Einstein School of Medicine, among other places.

Senior Shira Fisher has been a program participant since her sophomore year. Now in her last year of the program, she regards her time at the Science Institute as one of her biggest influences. As a Science Institute participant, Shira has taken on two internships – the first during her junior summer, at the Einstein College of Medicine. “I was set up in a lab focused on hepatology,” she said. “That internship made me realize what research is all about – and in a professional lab setting.” The following summer, Shira attended Stony Brook University’s Garcia High School Scholars Summer Research Program. “We had lectures every day and were mentored by faculty – guided, but with the freedom to pursue whatever research we wanted. It definitely built up my confidence in a lab setting.” Shira also stayed in campus dorms at the university during the week for the duration of the internship. ”That was a learning experience,

too,” Shira laughed. With fellow Science Institute senior, Sarah Yagudayev, Shira is currently working on a project developing a liquid embolic agent that will be targeted at treating brain aneurysms. “That part of the process when you realize that everything is coming together for that click moment– that’s the best part of research, for me,” she said. Shira and Sarah have been selected to present this project at the upcoming Materials Research Society (MRS) Conference in Boston. An additional summer experience: Shira recently served as an intern in the emergency room at Mount Sinai Brooklyn, and hopes to pursue emergency medicine. “Central’s resources are amazing,” Shira said. “Our Science Department is incredible. Mrs. Fried, Mrs. (Miriam) Chopp, Mrs. (Shulamith) Biederman – they prepared me for lab work and guided me every step of the way. The Science Institute experience has made me love science.” Her advice for incoming eighth graders: “Don’t be afraid to ask teachers and students questions. That’s how you learn. Keep asking questions until you have your own click moment.”

Just down the hall from the lab, future leaders are building their own skill sets. One of the newest, and most popular, programs at Central is its Leadership Track. A new initiative launched in partnership with Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership, the track is designed to nurture Central students with an affinity for leadership, exposing them to a tailored curriculum, leadership training workshops, and pairing them with YU Leadership Scholars for mentorship. One of the newest participants in this track is sophomore Bailey Rosenstock, whose path to the program started with Central Student Government. “I served as a grade representative as a freshman and am serving again this year,” she said, “so I was excited to be asked to join the Lead-

ership Track.” The year has gotten off to a rigorous start, with a recent field trip to the YU campus. “We met with leadership students from the Stern College for Women and did some workshops to demonstrate to ourselves that we have leadership qualities – that we were chosen for this program for a reason. We learned what it means to be vocal and confident, but also humble. And I can see these tactics being useful in group projects: knowing when to take a step back, when needed, or when to get more involved.”

The trip included a surprise visit from YU President, Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman. “We didn’t know we were going to get to meet Dr. Berman, and it was definitely a privilege to be able to hear from him,” Bailey said. “I felt more connected to Yeshiva University after that trip. Going to visit campus made that connection real – and it introduced me to opportunities that I might have in the future.”

Another new program adding dimension to Central’s extracurricular life: the Adira Rose Koffsky A”H Humanities Program, an exciting new immersive experience that will support and nurture Central students who demonstrate talents in literature, creative arts, and the performing arts. Cultural trips into the city, live performances, and guest speakers from a variety of industries are also part of the program. Junior Lana Bahn is a part of this year’s Humanities cohort. Lana’s love of art and literature drew her to this program. “I love reading, history and art,” she said. “And I was interested in doing this, because the experience is less of a class than an open discussion. Everyone gets to express how they feel, and I really enjoy that aspect” The program’s current selection: the mythology classic Antigone. “I really like it,” she said. “Not only is this main character making her own decisions, she’s taking the little freedom she has to try to do what’s right.” Lana – who is also the captain of Central’s Ro-

botics Team, a captain of the Track Club, and a member of Torah Bowl and the Model Chinuch League – is most enthusiastic about the program’s writing focus. “When I write, I want it to be a Lana Bahn essay, with humor and varied vocabulary and a wide worldview,” she said. The program will also concentrate on the writing process via group workshopping. In December, each member will submit workshopped pieces to the national Scholastic Arts and Writing Contest. “It’s so fun to work together in a group, especially when you’re surrounded by people who are also interested in what you’re doing,” she said. “Collaboration is key.” As is the program’s faculty advisor, Humanities Chair and Director of College Guidance, Mrs. Rena Boord. “Mrs. Boord is the best,” Lana continued. “She brings something special to the program.” Lana cites the Humanities program as one of the most impactful aspects of her time at Central. “Even though, for most of my life, I have lived about a block away from whatever school I’ve attended,” said the Cedarhurst native, “I’ve never felt more at home than I do at Central.”

All Central students – and these programs, with many others – will be celebrated at the YUHSG Open House, scheduled for Sunday, November 3.

Men and boys learned together at the Bais Tefila of Inwood pre-Sukkos learning program

Leil Iyun for DRS Mothers

In the spirit of the Yomim Noraim, DRS was proud to host a special Leil Iyun for DRS mothers, honoring the memory of Samara Papilsky, a”h. The event, graciously hosted at the home of Bailey and Brian Sigman, offered an evening of reflection, learning, and connection.

Samara Papilsky, a beloved member of the HALB and DRS communities, was known for her dedication to her children and love for Torah learning. A regular attendee of shiurim and an active participant in the yeshiva, Samara embodied

the values of devotion to family and commitment to spiritual growth.

The evening began with an introduction by Rabbi Kaminetsky, setting the tone for the meaningful program ahead. Attendees then had the opportunity to choose from two short shiurim delivered by DRS Rabbeim, designed to inspire and prepare participants for the Yomim Noraim.

The Leil Iyun was a fitting tribute to the memory of Samara, whose legacy of love for Torah and family continues to inspire those who knew her.

Big Sib-Little Sib at HAFTR

By Emma Zelmanovich

Students at HAFTR High School recently participated in one of the first Big Sib events of the year. The Big Sib program pairs seniors with three to four freshmen, allowing the upperclassmen to serve as mentors throughout the ninth graders’ first year in high school. The seniors answer any questions the freshmen may have and help to guide them to success. Throughout the year, this program offers team-building events that foster relationships between the big and little sibs. Being a big sib myself, I

DRS Varsity Teams Wins Magen David Tournament

The DRS Wildcats varsity basketball team is off to an incredible start, capturing the championship at the prestigious Magen David Pre-Season Invitational Tournament! This thrilling victory is not only a testament to the team’s hard work and dedication but also a promising indicator of what’s to come this season.

With this win under their belts, the Wildcats are setting their sights on a strong season ahead, hoping to carry this momentum into their regular season games. The championship at Magen David has not only given the team confidence but has also cemented their place as a team to watch this year.

can speak to the success and meaningful nature of these events.

After a long day of classes on Monday, September 30, freshmen and seniors excitedly made their way to their respective programs: boys headed to an outing of batting cages, while the girls participated in a Chopped competition. The Chopped competition was run by renowned chef, cooking teacher, food columnist, and recipe developer Mrs. Naomi Nachman. When students arrived, they were divided into teams comprised of two seniors, the “big sibs,” and their freshman “little sibs.” Once the game began and

the mystery items were revealed, we all immediately jumped into action. Meanwhile, Mrs. Nachman made her rounds and was pleased to see everyone’s ideas and creations. When the adrenaline subsided, my team realized we had missed an important and necessary ingredient, the chicken! Mrs. Nachman gave us an idea to make chicken wontons, which nearly saved us. With five minutes left, my team had our dish finished. We made chicken wontons and vegetable lo mein, topped with pomegranate seeds, and served with a special Rosh Hashanah party mix incorporating apples, honey

drizzle, crushed apple chips, and dates. Even though my team did not win, the experience opened my eyes to the greater meaning behind this program.

The Big Sib program is the perfect way to give freshmen the support of someone who has been through all of the ups and downs of high school and can guide them through these times. It also gives seniors a chance to reflect on their experiences through high school and find a deeper meaning in this climactic year.

Chazaq Celebrates Sukkos with the Kalever Rebbe

The relationship between Chazaq and the Kalever Chassidus has been strong for over a decade, and this past Sukkot, Chazaq celebrated Simchas Bais Hashoeva in the magnificent sukkah of the Kalever Rebbe in Williamsburg. The event brought together members of the community for an unforgettable night of joy, inspiration, and dancing.

Attendees were treated to a sumptuous meat buffet, featuring a variety of delicious dishes that delighted the palate. The evening was further enriched by guest speakers including the Kalever Rav (son of the Rebbe), Rav Doniel Lander (Rosh Yeshiva of Ohr Hachaim), Rav

A Deep Connection

Over Chol Hamoed, Mr. Richie Altabe and his family presented the rabbi and CEO of Beit Levenshtein Rehabilitation Hospital with photos of HALB students marching in the Salute to Israel parade with the flag of the hospital. The patients appreciate the connection HALB has made with them and how deeply the HALB community cares about our IDF heroes.

Sophia Feiler Awarded Reagan Leadership Medal & Named NSDA Academic All American

By Alexandra Fuchs

SYitzchak Yisraeli (Chief Bukharian Rabbi), Rabbi Michael Mansour (Head of the Chazaq Kollel and Beth Midrash), and many others who shared insightful teachings and reflections that resonated deeply with all present.

One of the highlights of the night was a captivating performance by a special boys choir, whose uplifting melodies added to the festive atmosphere and created a sense of unity among participants.

Chazaq extends its heartfelt thanks to all who attended and contributed to making this event a resounding success. We look forward to more opportunities for the community to come together in joy and celebration.

ophia Feiler, a HAFTR High School senior, was named Academic All American (AAA) in the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA), a prestigious designation awarded to only two percent of debaters throughout the United States. Academic All Americans are students who achieve Superior Distinction by earning 750 NSDA points through competition and meet rigorous academic standards.

In addition to earning AAA status, Sophia was also awarded the Reagan Leadership Medal for her extensive accomplishments on the HAFTR High School Speech, Debate and Model Congress team, where she serves as President. This medal recognizes her leadership and commitment, not only to HAFTR, but also to the entire Citron Online NSDA District, which she also serves as president. The Ronald Reagan Leadership Medal acknowledges Sophia’s continued commitment, humility, and leadership to the team. Specifically, she has spent countless hours training students, helping with organizing events,

and brainstorming debate topics.

“I am very proud that Sophia was able to achieve these two major milestones in her Debate and Model Congress career,” said HAFTR’s Coach and Chairman of the Citron Online District Alex Libkind. “Her commitment to the team throughout her high school career has been exemplary, and she has been both a role model and a leader on the team and the district. Additionally, her personal achievements of qualifying and competing in two National Tournaments and earning the AAA has made Sophia one of the most outstanding Speech, Debate and Model Congress competitors in our district.”

Hebrew Immersion at Yeshiva Har Torah

At Yeshiva Har Torah, Hebrew is not simply a subject – it’s a living language that our students are immersed in from their earliest years at the school. Hebrew immersion is woven into the fabric of daily life, reflecting one of our core educational principles: the belief that fluency in our national language is key to building deep connections to Am Yisrael, Medinat Yisrael, and our rich heritage. Strong Hebrew language skills are also essential in giving YHT students access to original Hebrew texts and advanced Jewish learning. The YHT Judaic Studies curriculum systematically builds in sophistication beginning with Chumash in 2nd grade, and adds Rashi, Navi, Halacha, Mishna, Gemara and classical commentaries in subsequent grades, all studied in the original Hebrew.

In our Limudei Kodesh classes beginning with 1st grade, teachers are speaking exclusively in Hebrew, be it as part of the lesson or outside of class time. This constant exposure helps students build fluency in a natural and organic way. For our students, communicating in Hebrew

is a part of the typical school day, and this constant exposure to Hebrew allows the students to develop a deep comfort with the language.

At a time when all of Klal Yisrael must unite behind Medinat Yisrael, it is all the more important to speak our ancestral tongue. Yeshiva Har Torah’s emphasis on Hebrew immersion helps our students strengthen their ties to the Jewish nation, to our rich history, and to Torah study as a lifelong pursuit. Fluency in Hebrew allows our students to feel deeply connected to Israeli culture and effectively communicate with our brothers and sisters Israel, which is critical to fostering Jewish unity.

Yeshiva Har Torah is fortunate to have two beautiful campuses, and each is assigned two Bnot Sherut who run programming pertaining to Medinat Yisrael and Jewish life. These Bnot Sherut communicate with our students and teachers in Hebrew and bring a unique passion and flavor of Medinat Yisrael to the Yeshiva. Their special Israel-based programming provides another genuine outlet for He-

brew speaking and an additional connection point to the State of Israel.

Last year, we inaugurated a special Hebrew language program for our kindergarten students: Chalav U’Dvash. Through this program, our students use games, puzzles, songs, and pictures to build a significant foundation in the Hebrew language. After a successful launch last year, we are expanding our use of Chalav U’Dvash to reach more students and provide them with a broader background in Hebrew language. Students are more adept at learning new languages at younger ages, and therefore this program will set up our students for long-term success with Hebrew for years to come.

Hebrew immersion at Yeshiva Har Torah is not just about teaching a language; it’s about building a connection to our shared history, our future, and the

world of sophisticated Torah study. By speaking Hebrew fluently, our students can connect to something greater than themselves – an enduring nation, Torah values, and the legacy of the Jewish people.

Success Space for Single Women

For Sukkos, Success Space for Single Women coordinated a Lulav and Esrog Event for its single mother participants. Each mother received a beautiful lulav and esrog set, as well as sets for older sons. Single mothers are often overlooked within a community, especially during a chag such as Sukkos. These brave, beautiful women deserve to feel that they too can participate in the chag with their children to the fullest. Success Space was able to provide 68 sets of lulav and esrog sets to the many families that participated. The feedback also beautiful; the women were so grateful

that JCCRP thought of them and enabled them to participate in this mitzvah. Success Space aims to aid and empower women. In addition to this initiative, other opportunities are available to support our brave single mothers during the holidays and throughout the year. JCCRP gives single mothers gifts and gift cards, as well as referrals to a financial counselor, a life coach, and a career counselor, enabling them to feel seen and heard within the Jewish community. For more information or to join Success Space, please email msweet@jccrp.org

Reuven Guttman, Lawrence Village Historian, with Amy Vecchio, Director of Rock Hall Museum, at the annual Rock Hall Country Fair

Sensational Science at YCQ

Kindergarten students at YCQ recently completed an exciting Science unit on the Five Senses with Morah Michali! Through hands-on activities, the students learned to observe, identify, and appreciate the unique ways we experience the world around us. Each sense – sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell – was explored in fun, interactive lessons, sparking curiosity and a love of discovery. The students are eager to continue their journey of exploration, building foundational skills that encourage observation, inquiry, and critical thinking about the world around them.

Learn more about the Kindergarten experience at the YCQ Open House on Sunday, November 3! The event will also feature a special performance by the Torah Tots! RSVP is required at ycqweb. com/openhouse. Looking forward!

Did you know?

George Washington was the only president ever elected unanimously.

Haas & Zaltz, LLP: To Help You Plan Your Legacy and Protect Your Family

It’s an uncomfortable conversation for many, yet it might just be the single most important conversation people will ever have in their lives: estate and legacy planning. Emanuel Haas and Ari Zaltz of the law firm Haas & Zaltz, LLP are there to help their clients navigate the highly complex and sensitive issues that arise when making decisions that range from long-term care to inheritance distribution.

One of the biggest concerns Haas and Zaltz work to address with their clients is the prospect of needing long-term care as they get older. In fact, they caution that not making appropriate provisions for long-term care is one of the biggest and costliest mistakes families can make, even though it is one that can be easily avoided.

Haas explained that very often an individual receives a diagnosis or experiences a trauma or other type of debilitating incident that creates the need for long-term care. If a plan is not in place, issues can crop up that make navigating this significant life change much more challenging for everyone. But when a plan for long-term care is already in place, it’s much easier for all involved to react with confidence.

“If you ask a random person who they think covers care as they get older, many

people will tell you it’s their health insurance. Other people will tell you Medicare. Unfortunately, neither of those answers are true,” explained Zaltz.

“Sometimes, a parent needs money and care immediately. If it’s not done properly and you don’t avail yourself of an elder law attorney, you can really get wiped out. A nursing home today is just an unbelievable amount of money,” he cautioned.

Haas and Zaltz advise clients to plan early, as young as 55, and when everyone is still well. “We try to do traditional estate planning but with an added level to make sure that our clients’ assets are protected for themselves, first and foremost, and subsequently for the next generation,” Zaltz said.

Otherwise, chaos can and will surely ensue. Not only will adult children be faced with how to provide long-term care for a parent, but also with the difficult prospect of how to pay for it. If a parent’s care is not being covered by Medicaid, the cost is nothing short of astronomical.

Many people don’t realize that a person only qualifies for Medicaid once his or her wealth has been depleted. Medicare is only available to those 65 and older (and with certain disabilities) and offers very limited benefits for long-term care.

Haas explained that when a person opts to become dependent on Medicaid

for long-term care, a lien will be placed on his or her property and possibly any other assets.

“At least in New York, Medicaid cannot force a sale of a home because even if somebody is in a nursing home and will never come back, there is always an ‘intent to return home’ for that individual,” Haas said. Upon that person’s passing, however, Medicaid will recover what it spent on the decedent’s care, typically by selling the property.

Haas and Zaltz explain that, in fact, Medicaid can go after any asset someone owns, but by setting up a trust, the home and any other assets placed in the trust will be protected. “Very often, the home is the most valuable asset, and in some sense, creating a trust is a really straightforward way of addressing that problem,” Haas said.

Haas and Zaltz advise their clients that if they have assets in their name, which could be as simple as a home, they should place them in certain kinds of asset-protection trusts. That way, if a parent should require care as they get older, they will still immediately qualify for Medicaid and be entitled to government benefits. Upon their passing, the government won’t be able to claw back those assets which the parents may have intended to leave to their children.

A trust allows a person to say they no

longer own the home and instead, the home is “owned” by a trust. Although a “trustee” is a nominal owner, it doesn’t actually belong to them, nor are they necessarily the beneficiary of the trust. In a trust, it can be stipulated that the parents maintain the right to live in the home until their passing. If the trust sells the home, possibly because the parents living in the home wish to downsize, the parents can still maintain the right to reside in any residential property owned by the trust.

It is extremely important to note, however, that the person(s) creating the trust must wait a period of 60 months from the time of the transfer in order to become eligible to receive Medicaid.

“The reality is that the seniors who transferred their home to a trust won’t even notice a difference,” Haas said. “They’ll live in a home just the way they always lived. They can move. They can sell the property and buy a different property and have the same right to live there, and nobody will know the difference. The only difference is that the asset will be protected.”

To learn more about what you can do to protect your assets for yourself and your children visit www.haaszaltz.com or email them at info@haaszaltz.com. To make an appointment call 516-979-1060.

Rabbi Boruch Oppen had the opportunity to meet with alumni of his Yeshiva, Ateres Eitz Chaim, in Eretz Yisrael over Sukkos

NY Women Come Together to Raise Funds for American Friends of Yad Eliezer/B’ezri

The recent women’s event held at the Young Israel of Avenue K in Brooklyn, attended by women from across New York, was a beautiful display of unity and compassion, as the community gathered to support American Friends of Yad Eliezer/B’ezri’s Widows and Orphans Fund (Keren Almanos) and milluim families (IDF reservists) in need. Community members had expressed a desire to come together around the Yamim Noraim, recognizing this as an opportune time to connect deeply with their brothers and sisters in Israel who are facing profound challenges.

Led by the historian and renowned educator Chani Gotlieb, the evening was both enlightening and uplifting. Born and educated in Israel, Chani creatively interwove discussions on tefillot (prayers) and the nuances of different nusachim (prayer customs), adding rich historical and spiritual insights. Her words were beautifully complemented by a musical interlude from Zohar and Pen-

ina Soibelman, the talented pianist and singer duo’s performance enchanted the audience. Zohar’s fingers danced across the keyboard, filling the room with warmth and inspiring ruach (spirit). The event culminated in an eruption of joyous dancing, as attendees felt a renewed sense of community and connection.

The success and heartfelt response to this event have inspired plans for similar gatherings in Belle Harbor, Riverdale, and beyond. Attendees were moved by the creative approach, Chani’s powerful message, and the incredible music, making the evening truly memorable.

Every dollar raised went to support the essential work of American Friends of Yad Eliezer/B’ezri’s Keren Almanos program and milluim families. The Keren Almanos, a program with an annual budget of $10 million, provides critical monthly stipends to over 900 Israeli widows, ensuring they can meet the daily needs of their families—over 6,000 children in total. The program also includes

Pheffer Amato Celebrates Simchas Torah With Community

New York State Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato joined members of the community for Simchas Torah. The Assemblywoman walked to nearly every shul in Far Rockaway at the start of Simchas Torah and nearly every shul in Bayswater during

supplemental support for emergency situations, such as urgent home repairs or extra holiday expenses, giving these women a sense of security and stability during difficult times. Funds are transferred directly to recipients’ accounts, maintaining their dignity and ensuring that essential needs, from food to rent, are met discreetly and reliably.

The hall was generously provided free of charge, and the catering was spon-

sored by Mr and Mrs. Yanky Feureisen in memory of Mrs. Feureisen’s parents, Eliyahu Yochanan ben Aharon Yosef, z”l, and Pesya Bracha bas Rav Shmuel Cohen, z”l. This memorable evening served not only as a celebration of the community’s strength and unity but as a powerful act of chesed for those in need in Israel.

the morning and afternoon the following day. Pheffer Amato, the only Jewish elected official in South Queens, has organized an annual “Simchas Torah Walk” every year in the community to wish everyone a Chag Sameach.

Young supporters of Stacey Pheffer Amato eating in the sukkah

Celebrating Sukkos at Shulamith

Where could you find the Shulamith family on Chol Hamoed last Sunday night? At our annual Simchat Beit HaShoeva, of course! Featuring an uplifting night of Torah, music, food and fun at Mrs. Michelle Farbman’s sukkah, this was a meaningful celebration to be remembered.

Mercaz Academy First Grade Hebrew Detectives

Kitah Aleph students at Mercaz Academy in Plainview have been sharpening their aleph-bet skills and are aware that differentiating between some look-alike letters can be challenging. To assist them, Morah Shani Kaufman has taught her students a new Hebrew word, balash (detective). Suddenly, the game was afoot! After carefully selecting a correctly gendered detective badge (a boy is a balash, a girl is a balashes), each student printed his or her name on it, chose a magnifying glass (megdeles) and set out to determine the difference between two nearly identical letters, shin and sin.

Kitah Aleph students have learned that if there’s a dot on the upper right side of the letter, it’s a shin, and must be sounded as “sh.” However, if there’s a dot on the upper left side, it’s a sin, and must be sounded as “s.” Students in Kitah Aleph scoured the room for the letters shin and sin, noting every location in which they appeared. These eagle-eyed

detectives even caught a typographical error on a purchased Simchat Torah flag that publishers had missed!

Kitah Aleph students know that it’s important to pay attention to detail to become excellent readers of Hebrew. This meticulous approach to learning–combined with the joy of discovery and heightened lesson retention of learning through play–makes the distinction between shin and sin more than just another lesson. For Kitah Aleph, letter detection is elementary!

Parsha Comes to Life at TAG

Parsha comes to life in the TAG’s Early Childhood Division. The kindergarten and nursery classes created a new display for Parshas Bereishis, and for Parshas Noach, there were a “couple” of animals going into Noach’s teiva.

Sensory water play in conjunction with Parshas Noach at Shulamith ECC

Around the Community

HANC High School Pre-Simchas Torah Dedication

HANC High School held a pre-Simchat Torah celebration that brought together students, faculty, and community members in a beautiful expression of joy and unity. The event featured lively music, spirited dancing, and a shared sense of purpose as everyone gathered to prepare for the Chag. The highlight of the celebration was the dedication of a new Torah cover gifted to HANC High School by Ariel and Shelley Serber, proud parents of current junior, T.J. Serber. This was done in conjunction with the Simchat Torah Project in memory of Major Dvir David ben Fima who was killed in battle in December 2023. (thesimchattorahproject.org)

The dedication ceremony of the Torah cover was a poignant moment for all in attendance. Created to honor a life tragically taken, the cover symbolizes resilience,

faith, and purpose. Students and staff took turns to hold and admire the Torah with its new mantl (cover). As the menahel, Rabbi Slomnicki spoke of the significance of the new Torah cover, students were focused to honor both Dvir’s memory and the spirit of renewal that Simchat

Torah represents. Rabbi Slomnicki commented, “It was yet another moment of synthesizing dual-emotions while experiencing Jewish pride, ahavas HaTorah and a sense of peoplehood. These are the moments that animate a yeshiva education.”

This pre-Simchat Torah event at

HANC High School was a deeply meaningful and uplifting experience. Thank you to Student Life for organizing this event and to the Serber family for this meaningful dedication.

Masbia Serves Thousands of Food Packages and Holiday Meals to Those in Need

New York, NY – In honor of Tishrei 5785, Masbia Soup Kitchen Network distributed millions of dollars worth of food to ensure that no one goes hungry during the High Holidays. With the help of a major charity campaign and countless generous donors, Masbia was able to bring nourishing holiday meals to thousands of Jewish families in need.

Several kosher food companies partnered with Masbia by donating large quantities of food, and the international delivery company DoorDash contributed significantly by covering delivery costs. This support enabled many families to receive food packages directly to their doors, providing much-needed sustenance in a dignified way, reminiscent of the “manna in the desert.”

The initiative began in late Av, with Masbia organizing community lists through shuls and organizations. Recognizing that not everyone has access to digital communication, Masbia set up a special robo-call system, allowing anyone without email or texting capabilities to connect. In the first week of Elul, individuals confirmed their need for deliveries, and the list of recipients grew.

From the three weeks leading up to Rosh Hashana till Sukkos, Masbia delivered close to 30,000 packages, each containing around 25 pounds of food. Most families got multiple deliveries especially larger families.

For those not registered for delivery, Masbia hosted special Monday and Tuesday pick-up appointments, even on Chol HaMoed, by coordinating through on-

site kosher supervisors.

Masbia’s on-site Yom Tov meals in Boro Park were executed with care and elegance, providing nearly 30 festive meals from Rosh Hashanah through Shabbos Bereishis. Each guest received a full setting, including a becher, challah cover, and real tableware, all served by dedicated staff. Meals included wine, fresh challahs, honey, gefilte fish, dips, soups, kugels, and many other traditional dishes. Guests also enjoyed simanim for Rosh Hashanah, kreplach for Erev Yom Kippur and Hoshana Rabbah, and stuffed cabbage for Simchas Torah. Sukkos meals took place in Masbia’s grand sukkah, allowing guests to partake in daily seudos in a festive setting.

Masbia also prepared packages with cooked Yom Tov meals for locations

where kosher supervisors (mashgichim) could not be present during Yom Tov. Due to the three-day Yom Tov period, a large number of meals needed to be packaged at once, so Masbia sourced ready-made Yom Tov meals from Greenfield’s. Known for the quality of its pre-packaged Shabbos and Yom Tov meals, Greenfield’s enabled Masbia to efficiently prepare large packages to meet the needs of these locations.

In total, Masbia served 6,000 cooked meals for nearly 30 Yom Tov seudos, facilitated close to 30,000 deliveries, and provided raw food packages for approximately 5,000 families (over 15,000 children and nearly 10,000 adults) through pick-up and delivery options.

MTA Enjoys Special Yeshiva Programming Over Sukkos

It is great for MTA to be back in school after an extended break, but YUHSB had meaningful programming over Sukkos and Simchas Torah that brought their talmidim back together even outside of yeshiva. On Leil Hoshana Rabbah, Rabbi Balsam, MTA’s Rosh Beis Medrash, addressed talmidim and their fathers in Queens about simchas yom tov. Rabbi Konigsberg, MTA’s principal, discussed the sense of security each person feels from the sukkah, to fathers and sons in West Hempstead. Rabbi Schenker, Menahel, joined a community event in Teaneck and addressed talmidim from several yeshivos and schools. MTA talmidim appreciated the opportunity to come together and learn, while reuniting with friends.

For those talmidim who were in the Teaneck area for the second days of yom tov, there was a special program at Zichron Mordechai, MTA’s Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Taubes’ shul. The program began

with Mincha followed by a shiur by Rabbi Cohn, MTA’s Ninth Grade Dean and Mashgiach. He addressed the unique nature of this year’s Simchas Torah following the tragedies of October 7. Following Maariv, an all-star cast of seniors led the spirited hakafos well into the night.

MTA seniors helped run several aspects of the program, and brought so

much ruach to the shul’s hakafos, which were a combination of celebratory and more subdued hakafos, as was appropriate. “The highlight of the night was definitely having the opportunity to get together as a Yeshiva, even on Yom Tov. We danced together and truly enjoyed the experience,” Akiva Parver (‘25).

The program concluded with a de -

licious seudas yom tov and inspiring words by Rabbi Taubes. It was incredibly special and meaningful for both the talmidim and rebbeim present to have the opportunity to celebrate Simchas Torah together as a Yeshiva!

Ohr Chana Open House: Experience Our Present, Discover Your Future

Ohr Chana High School, providing over 20 years of excellence in high school girls’ education, launched this September with a blast of new innovations for the coming school year. With just a month of school having elapsed, the school has already introduced themes and goals for their G.O., Mishmeret, Chesed, Tech, Tzniut, Events, Chagim, Ruach, and Birthday committees. Students spent most of Elul preparing their hearts, minds and neshamot for the uplifting chagim. Sever-

al classes have bonded on grade trips and have also been hosted by the Kew Gardens community and at Congregation Ner Mordechai during their annual High School Elul Shabbaton. Since October 7th, Ohr Chana’s students daven while keeping in mind the hostages, soldiers, and the Jewish nation. Ohr Chana’s programs give the girls a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters in Israel. What a special nation we are privileged to be part of, and at Ohr Chana, the students feel that unity.

Academically, Ohr Chana offers tracks in both Judaic and General Studies. Girls have opportunities to join the Honors track, which allows them to earn college credits during their high school journey. This upcoming month, Seminary and College guidance counselors are ready to assist seniors in their search for the right college or seminary experience. We are excited for the phenomenal year ahead. Join the legacy of Ohr Chana High School students. The Orthodox Sephardic school that has a place for any Jewish soul seeking to discover and reach its ultimate potential. Don’t miss our Open House this Sunday, November 3. For more information, call 718-4269369, extension 614.

HANC ECC in West Hempstead is getting ready for Parshas Noach through hands on learning

Sunday program Isru Chag edition at the Special Children’s Center

Rav Druck on Chumash, Sefer Bereishis by Rav Yisrael Meir Druck

“And as for you, take yourself of every food that is eaten and gather it in to yourself, that it shall be as food for you and for them” (Bereishis 6:21).

R’ Yehudah said in the name of Rav: It is forbidden for a person to eat before he gives food to his animal, for it is stated first in the verse (Devarim 11:15), “V’nasati eisev bisadcha l’vhemtecha, And I will provide grass in your field for your cattle,” and only then does the verse state, “V’achalta visavata, And you will eat and be satisfied” (Berachos 40a).

The phrase “v’hayah l’cha v’lahem l’achlah,” that it shall be as food for you and for them (the animals), seems to directly contradict the halacha that a person may not eat before his animals. Shouldn’t the pasuk have said that it shall be as food for them and for you?

The Yad Ephraim commentary on Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 167:6) gives the following explanation for why a person may not eat before his animals, based on an account of the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 33:1) regarding Alexander the Great of Macedonia.

Alexander went to see a king at the other end of the world, and when the king came out to greet him, Alexander expressed his desire to see how justice was dispensed in that country. The case that Alexander witnessed involved a litigant who told the king that he had purchased a plot of land, and when digging in it, he discovered a treasure.

He claimed that the treasure belonged to the seller, since he had purchased only the land, while the seller insisted that he had sold the plot with everything in it, so the treasure belonged to the buyer.

Alexander was astounded by this unusual lawsuit and waited to hear the king’s verdict.

“Do you have a son?” the king asked the first litigant.

“Yes,” he replied.

“And do you have a daughter?” he asked the other litigant.

When he responded in the affirmative, the king ruled that the two should marry their children off to each other and give the treasure to the couple.

Alexander could not believe his ears. Noting his consternation, the king turned to him and asked, “Have I not judged well?”

“Yes, you judged well,” Alexander responded.

“Had such a case occurred in your land,” the king inquired, “how would you have judged?”

Alexander responded, “We would kill both the seller and the buyer, and the kingdom would then confiscate the wealth of both parties for itself.”

The king asked Alexander, “Does rain fall in your land?”

“Yes,” Alexander responded.

“Does the sun shine in your land?” the king continued.

“Yes.”

“Are there animals in your land?”

“Yes.”

“Now I understand why all this prosperity comes to your land,” the king said. “In truth, your land should not be blessed, since your judgment is neither just nor kind, but involves murder and thievery. Now that I hear that you have animals in your land, I understand that this abundance is in their merit alone.”

This idea is implied in the verse “adam uv’heimah soshia Hashem,” You save both man and beast, O Hashem (Tehillim 36:7), which can be understood to mean, “You, G-d, save man in the merit of the animals.”

We never know the calculations of Heaven, and at times, people may receive blessing in the merit of the animals. When rain falls and blessing abounds, people assume that this is for the sake of man and that the animals benefit incidentally. In reality, however, the opposite may be true, for people who are unworthy are actually receiving blessing in the merit of the animals.

We can now understand the precision with which the above pasuk is worded. Earlier, the Torah states, “Ki hishchis kal basar es darko al ha’aretz,” for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth (6:12), and Rashi cites Chazal’s observation that even the animals had relations with other species, meaning that even the animals were corrupted.

Clearly, then, Noach was saved from the Flood not due to the merit of the animals, but due to his own merit, as Hashem told him, “Ki osecha ra’isi Tzadik lifanai ba-

dor hazeh,” for it is you that I have seen to be righteous before Me in this generation (7:1). The animals, too, were saved in Noach’s merit.

If so, the halacha that one may not eat before his animals did not apply to Noach, for, as the Yad Ephraim writes, the reason for this halacha is that at times, a person does not possess his own merit and is able to eat only in the merit of the animals. Since the animals were kept alive in Noach’s merit, and not the reverse, this reasoning was not relevant to him, and he was allowed to eat before the animals. The phrase “v’hayah l’cha v’lahem l’achlah,” that it shall be as food for you and for them, is therefore perfectly understandable.

TJH Centerfold

He Said What?

Match the quote with the person who said it

1. “This election is about who’s going to be the next President of the United States!”

2. “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”

3. “The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election; the people who count the votes do.”

4. “As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”

5. “If elected I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same.”

a) Gore Vidal

b) Abraham Lincoln

6. “I regard voting as the most sacred right of free men and women.”

7. “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”

8. “We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.”

9. “Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.”

10. “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

A pollster calls a voter who goes into a rant against Trump, stating that “if Trump gets elected I don’t know whether I will hurt myself or leave the country!” The pollster says: “OK, I will put you down as ‘undecided.’”

c) Emma Goldman

d) Ambrose Bierce

e) Otto von Bismarck

f) Winston Churchill

g) Dan Quayle

h) Frank McKinney Hubbard

i) Ronald Reagan

j) Joseph Stalin ym”sh

1- G; 2-E; 3-J; 4-A; 5-B; 6-I; 7-C; 8-H; 9-D; 10-F

2024 Election Trivia

1. According to Kamala Harris, in the middle-class town where she grew up in (yes, she grew up in the middle class, just in case you don’t know), what were people very proud of?

a. Their lawns

b. Getting into good universities

c. Their children excelling at sports

d. Their charity work

2. Where does Kamala claim she worked to help her pay for school?

a. World Salads

b. Kacklin’ Kamala’s Komedy Klub

c. McDonalds

d. The library

3. According to Trump, what do people in Springfield, Ohio, eat?

a. Hot dogs

b. Corn dogs

c. Hush puppies

d. Pet dogs

4. According to Robert F. Kennedy, what did he one time dump in Central Park?

a. A dead bear

b. A bag of old Styrofoam cups

c. A MAGA cap

d. Old pictures of his father and uncle JFK

5. What did Joe Biden put on while visiting Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2024?

a. A MAGA cap

b. A hearing aid

c. A hardhat worn on 9/11

d. A tie with a U.S. flag on it

6. How many loaded guns did J.D.

Vance find in his grandmother’s house when she died?

a. 2

b. 5

c. 8

d. 19

7. Why did the Secret Service Director say that agents were not on the roof in Butler, PA, (depicted below) from which an assassin attempted to kill Trump?

a. Because it was outside the security perimeter

b. Because it was too hot on the roof

c. Because they had a drone hovering over the roof

d. Because it was too sloped

8. What type of doctor is Dr. Jill Biden?

a. Cardiologist

b. Anesthesiologist

c. Neurosurgeon

d. A Doctor of Education (AKA a teacher)

9. During the vice presidential debate, how did Democrat VP candidate Tim Walz explain the fact that he lied about serving in Iraq and about being Hong Kong in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests?

a. “I meant that I was not in Iraq and I was not in Hong Kong”

b. “I’m a knucklehead at times”

c. “I never said those things— my comments were taken out of context”

d. “All politicians lie!”

10. What does Kamala Harris love most?

a. Venn diagrams

b. Yellow school buses

c. Word salads

d. Having visions of seeing through visions of what it’s like to be not burdened by being unburdened by the visions of the past and therefore having visions of a future that is not seen through a vision of being burdened

e. All of the above

Answers:

Wisdom Key:

8-10 correct: You are the next Ben Shapiro! (Just talk on double speed.)

4-7 correct: You are in the middle of the road. You must be one of three undecided voters left in the U.S.

0-3 corect: Call 911 and ask for Dr. Jill Biden…there’s a typo here!!!

As we journey through the months of the year, we find mitzvos that are connected to each month and each holiday. The month of Mar Cheshvan seems to be an exception. There is very little mentioned about this month in the seforim. What, then, is the unique spiritual service of this month?

The Zohar HaKadosh comments that there is one specific mitzvah that appears to be a passing event in Parshas Noach, but, in reality, is a mitzvah for all generations. This mitzvah is found in when Hashem told Noach, “Come into the teiva [ark], you and all of your household” (Bereishis 7:1).

According to one widely accepted opinion among the Kabbalists, the month of Mar Cheshvan is a time designated for flooding, and the most intense flooding in Noach’s time occurred during this month.

I prefer air travel rather than traveling on arks or boats. Aside from occasional row boating on the lake with my family, I prefer to avoid these types of activities. Nevertheless, it behooves us to explore how we can perform the mitzvah of “come into the teiva, you and all of your household” in the times we live in now.

Our Rabbis teach us that the mitzvah of “teshuva (repentance) preceded the creation of the world” (Midrash Tehillim Ch. 90). The Rashbah (Siman 9) and other commentaries have difficulty accepting this statement at face value. How can one discuss chronology before the creation of time itself which began with the word “Bereishis”?

There are other similar comments in the Gemara that refer to creations that occurred before the creation of the world. For example, the Gemara states, “The Torah was hidden away 974 generations… before the world was created” (Shabbos 88b). The usual explanation offered in mussar seforim for this phenomenon is

From the Fire

Parshas Noach Surviving the Flood

By Rav Moshe Weinberger

Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf

based on the Gemara (and other sources) which states, “Reish Lakish said: Hashem does not afflict Yisroel unless He creates the cure first” (Megilla 13b). If we apply this principle to the statement regarding teshuva, one could posit that Hashem knew that the world would begin coming apart when people sin. He therefore preempted this by creating the teshuva process. This explanation does not adequately answer the question, and I believe our sages never used this explanation with regard to teshuva.

A deeper explanation involves redefining the meaning of the word teshuva. While it is conventionally translated as repentance, this definition is just a small portion of the totality of teshuva. When the Gemara uses the term “preceded” to describe teshuva, it is not simply describing a chronological event but refers to the purpose and goal of creation. In other words, teshuva is the objective and purpose of creation. How can we understand this more clearly?

When the world was created, there was a separation between Hashem and His creations. The soul was separated from its source and implanted into a body. The purpose of teshuva is to return the creations to Hashem and to a state of “closeness to G-d is my good” (Tehillim 73:28).

It is understood that a natural consequence of returning to Hashem involves removing obstructions that are in the way, including sin. If a husband, G-d forbid, lost his way, so to speak, and his wife is willing to give him a second chance, he must change his lifestyle and stop doing the destructive actions that were an obstruction to his relationship with his wife. The goal is to return to his wife, and the means to this end is entering into a “clean” reality. Similarly, regarding teshuva, the inner meaning is to return. In the process of returning, we remove the obstructions of sin and enter a clean reality.

Let us return to the teiva of Noach. The Ramban points out that any boat

maker knows that the dimensions and shape of the teiva do not describe a seaworthy vessel. The Torah delves into the details of its dimensions, in an unusual way, similar only to the descriptions of the dimensions of the Mishkan and Bais Hamikdash. Superficially, it seems that the purpose of the teiva was to rescue a family from a flood. But there are many other ways Hashem could have saved them. The teiva was certainly a means to save a family from a flood, but this was not its main goal and purpose.

To understand the ultimate purpose of the teiva, we must know more about the flood in the time of Noach. The Zohar HaKadosh tells us that the flood appeared as water but was actually a flood of impurity. The pasuk states, “And it [the Flood] blotted out all beings that were upon the face of the earth” (Bereishis 7:23), meaning, a torrential downpour of impurity was unleashed into the world and it destroyed all of creation, except for those who found refuge in the teiva.

Ramchal explains that Hashem revealed something Noach called “the teiva of Noach” that would serve as a barrier between the impurity that was destroying the world and Noach and his family. We do not understand how this physical structure served as a protection, just as we cannot understand all of the benefits the Bais Hamikdash brought to the world.

The teiva was clean reality and “Hashem shut him in” (Bereishis 7:16). Hashem closed and locked Noach and his family inside the teiva so that they would remain untouched by impurity.

When the Zohar tells us that the mitzvah of “come into the teiva , you and all of your household” is a mitzvah for every generation, it does not mean physically entering a boat. Even with

regard to Noach, his physical protection was simply a natural consequence of being sealed in the spiritual world of the teiva . This bears a great similarity to entering the world of teshuva. Once one enters this world and establishes a true and deep relationship with Hashem, sin naturally becomes irrelevant. So how does the mitzvah of “come into the teiva, you and all of your household” apply for all generations?

There is a custom in German Jewish communities that when reciting the blessing for the new month, they use a melody that is relevant to the holidays contained in that month. For example, they sing the blessing during the month of Adar to the tune of Megillas Esther and they sing the blessing for the month of Av to the tune of the lamentation “Mourners of Zion.” What tune is used for the month of Mar Cheshvan? The niggun (tune) that is used while studying the Gemara.

Surviving the Flood

The Baal Shem Tov teaches that the word “ark – teiva” can also be translated as “word,” referring to a Jew’s words of Torah and prayer. Based on the pasuk, “In the six hundredth year in the life of

Noach…all the wellsprings of the great deep burst open, and the windows of Heaven were opened” (Bereishis 7:11), the Zohar states “in the 600 th year of the sixth millennium, the gates of supernal wisdom will be opened as will the springs of earthly wisdom” (I Zohar 117a). Indeed, the 56th century from creation corresponds with the period beginning in the mid-1700’s in the secular calendar. During these years, a confusing flood of information, both pure and impure, entered the world. To counteract the flood of impurity, Hashem revealed more openly the wisdom of the inner world of Torah, as personified by the Baal Shem tov, the Vilna Gaon, and others.

We are living in a time of great flooding. If one disagrees with this, it is probably because he or she has already drowned. If one care about holiness, he realizes how we must struggle to keep our heads above the water of impurities that surround us. A person who desires sanctity must enter into the teiva , the words of Torah and prayer, with every fiber of his being. This translates into coming to study Torah on time and putting one’s soul into the learning. At the end of time, the only way that we can

hope to achieve “closeness to G-d is my good” is by sealing our hearts, minds and souls into the teiva

My Rebbe, Rav Dovid Lifschitz, zt”l, was one of the happiest and most loving people I have ever met, but there were certain things he could not tolerate. He could not understand how a person could lean back and tilt his chair while studying Torah, as if he were watching a baseball game. Putting aside the damage he is causing to the chair, how could he approach Torah in this manner? Similarly, I have observed people walking with their hands in their pockets during davening or sitting with their feet crossed as if reading the Wall Street Journal . While we may have lost some of our sensitivities over time, we must realize the importance of entering into the spiritual teiva with our entire being.

This applies whether one is studying Torah full-time or working. If a person is living in the world of the teiva, it will not occur to him to bring a phone into the beis midrash. He does not refrain from doing so because of fear that his teacher will penalize him, but because he exists in a place of purity. To avoid drowning, a person must delve deeply into the inner Torah. If he sticks his head out of the teiva for a minute, he is finished.

The World of Illusion

One wintry Friday, the Chiddushei HaRim (Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, founder of the Gerrer Chassidic dynasty, zy”a) once had a tremendous desire to go to Kotzk to be with the Kotzker Rebbe for Shabbos. After much effort, he found a simple Jewish wagon driver (who was not particularly mitzva-observant) willing to take him, but the wagon driver did not appear healthy and neither did his horses. They began the difficult journey and soon a heavy snow began to fall. The Chiddushei HaRim tried to dissuade the driver from continuing, offering to stop in a nearby town for Shabbos. The wagon driver refused to be deterred, and he pushed his horses to go even faster. Suddenly, one of the horses collapsed and died.

The wagon driver persisted in continuing the journey to Kotzk despite the Chiddushei HaRim’s protestations. They arrived in Kotzk just before candle-lighting, and immediately the other horse collapsed and died. The Chiddushei HaRim gave the wagon driver a hug, thanked him, and ran to the mikvah and to pray. He sent a group of chassidim to assure the wagon driver that he would purchase two new horses for him at the

conclusion of Shabbos. But the messengers reported back the unfortunate news that the wagon driver had also died, most likely as a result of the strenuous journey. The Chiddushei HaRim was distraught and did not conduct himself regularly the entire Shabbos. At the conclusion of Shabbos, he locked himself in a room, and the chassidim could hear him screaming and crying. Finally, he emerged with a smile on his face. He offered the following explanation:

When the wagon driver passed on to the next world, there was a judgement against him in the Heavens because of his many sins, stating that he was deserving of Gehinom. At that moment, a great defending angel stood up and proclaimed, “How can we allow this Jew to go to Gehinom when he gave up his life to bring a tzaddik to Kotzk?” There was a big tumult in heaven and finally it was decided not to send him to Gehinom. However, because of his sins, he could not be allowed into Gan Eden either. Instead, he was relegated to the “World of Illusion” where he would continuously imagine himself as a wagon driver in Poland, driving his customers on a beautiful sunny day, in a handsome wagon, with four fine horses. This scene would continue for eternity, and he would not realize that he was in the World of Illusion. The Chiddushei HaRim could not leave this Jew in such a sorry state for all eternity, and he stormed the Heavens on his behalf until the man realized the false nature of the world in which he found himself and begged for whatever atonement would be necessary to bring him into Gan Eden.

Entering into the teiva is the only way to avoid the World of Illusion that exists in our day. These delusions and fantasies may present as driving a nice car, going on elaborate vacations, enjoying popular entertainment, professional prestige and success, or an infinite number of variations on the wagon driver’s smooth Polish highway. The average Jew does not understand his purpose in this world. Closeness and attachment to Hashem is our purpose and anything that prevents this is “the flood.”

May each of us be blessed to sing the niggun of Torah and prayer, not only in the month of Mar Cheshvan, but throughout our lives.

Rav Moshe Weinberger, shlita, is the founding Morah d’Asrah of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, NY, and serves as leader of the new mechina Emek HaMelech.

Under the Rainbow

By Ra BB i Moshe Ta R agin

Afierce flood wiped out all of humanity, reshaping the natural world in its wake. Humanity’s repeated rebellions and betrayals followed by divine retribution had reached a breaking point. After the Flood decimated humanity, it became clear that man could not be relied upon to consistently fulfill the divine will. A new approach was needed – one that could offer stability and a sustainability for an imperfect world.

Responding to this reality, Hashem established a covenant with Noach, assuring him that He would no longer subject the world to universal destruction. Though natural interventions would still occur, the fundamental order of creation would remain intact. The cycles of nature would persist, providing a foundation for stability and renewing humanity’s confidence in the continuity of life.

To mark this new covenant, Hashem emblazoned a rainbow across the sky. More than a mere sign, the rainbow symbolized a profound shift in the relationship between Hashem and man. For millennia, mankind had mistakenly believed that Hashem was perpetually angry, punishing humanity with unrelenting severity. Witnessing one judgment after another—Adam’s banishment from Gan Eden, Kayin’s curse to wander the earth, a partial flood in Enosh’s generation that

devastated a third of the habitable land, and finally the great deluge that erased all but a remnant—people assumed that Hashem was vengeful, constantly hurling down arrows from heaven.

The rainbow debunked this false perception that Hashem is angry. It resembled an inverted bow, a bow no longer aimed at the earth. By turning the bow away, so that it no longer aimed at earth, Hashem signaled the end of His anger and offered a new vision of the divine— one characterized by compassion rather than wrath. A weapon was transformed into an arch, a symbol of divine protection. Though moral failings would still bring consequences, humanity came to understand that Hashem’s desire was not to punish endlessly but to protect, sustain, and guide.

A Bow Became a Dome

On October 7, we faced a barrage of arrows, an overwhelming onslaught that left us reeling in a dark moment of hester panim—a period when Hashem’s presence felt hidden. How could He allow such animalistic violence to be unleashed upon us? It seemed as if a bow and arrow were aimed at us from the heavens, and for twelve agonizing hours, we struggled to grasp the divine will amidst the chaos.

Over the past year, the bow and ar -

row have become inverted, evolving into a shield of protection. We have felt the presence of a protective dome suspended above us, sheltering our skies and instilling a sense of security and hope. Hashem has granted us the ingenuity to defend against distant aerial threats. Just as the original rainbow arched over humanity as a sign of divine protection after the flood, we have witnessed our own modern version of that shelter—a profound reminder of divine mercy amidst our trials.

Sunshine and Clouds

However, the rainbow is more than just an inverted bow or a protective arch shielding us from heavenly dangers. Its vibrant colors emerge after a heavy rainfall, and it first appeared following the yearlong deluge which devastated humanity. A rainbow forms in a sky where part is still shrouded in clouds while another part is illuminated by sunlight. Some Meforshim (the Ran) suggest that, for this reason, rainbows were not visible during the first 1,500 years of human history. The pre-flood world was covered in dense, rain-laden clouds that concealed the appearance of rainbows. These rain-laden clouds unleashed the Mabul. Only after the natural order changed, with clouds becoming less saturated, did the beauty of the rainbow become apparent.

A rainbow emerges when the sky is a blend of dark clouds and streams of sunlight, reminding us that even when gloom hangs overhead, there is still hope. It reassured Noach and humanity that even in moments of failure and shadow, light can break through. There will always be righteous individuals who bring illumination into a darkened world. Though the world may remain imperfect, Hashem acknowledged the frailty of the human condition and extended His mercy accordingly.

Set against the backdrop of both light and darkness, the rainbow signals a complex reality—a world where good and evil coexist, where shadows and light intermingle, and where clouds and sunshine share the sky. It symbolizes that life is a complex mixture of triumph and tragedy, of joy and sadness.

Our Rainbow

The initial months following the October 7 war were shrouded in darkness and heavy clouds. We endured a horrific pogrom, an assault of unimaginable brutality. We faced an axis of evil determined to annihilate us, while the world seemed to quickly turn its back. Acts of murder were rationalized, and resistance was equated with heinous crimes, as antisemitism surged across the globe. Haters seized the opportunity to unleash

their venom, leaving us in a darkened state of despair.

Yet, in recent months—and particularly in the last few weeks—we have witnessed extraordinary nissim. From the blunting of two major missile offensives to the dismantling of our enemies to the north and south, we have seen divine hashgacha unfold in stunning ways. A glimmer of hope has emerged, as light begins to break through the darkness. Yet, despite these promising developments, we still endure the heartbreaking loss of too many soldiers and the persistence of repeated terror attacks.

Our skies remain both clouded and radiant, a blend of shadows and brightness. We have glimpsed a rainbow that promises a brighter tomorrow, yet we still live under the weight of ominous dark clouds. It is a time of contrasts, where hope and sorrow, triumph and loss coexist, reminding us that the path ahead is complex, even as a new dawn is slowly taking shape.

It is crucial to see both the clouds and the sunshine. As triumphant as some moments have been, and as remarkable as the miracles are, we must avoid oversimplifying the situation. The dangers remain grave, and we must continue to

pray for Hashem’s assistance. Beyond the immediate threats, there is also deep darkness and enduring suffering. It will take decades to heal the trauma that has touched so many lives.

emies and have begun to reclaim a semblance of stability.

We must embrace the full picture. The darkness and light together tell the story of our struggles and resilience. As we strive

A rainbow emerges when the sky is a blend of dark clouds and streams of sunlight, reminding us that even when gloom hangs overhead, there is still hope.

Yet, even amidst the dark clouds, we must not overlook the radiance of the sunshine and the promise of the rainbow. Had Hezbollah invaded, the devastation would have been far more severe than what we experienced from Hamas. We have dealt strategic blows to our en-

to regain normalcy, do not lose sight of the hope and blessings that shine through, even when clouds still linger overhead.

A Sober Future

The partly cloudy, partly sunny horizon should serve as a profound lesson

for our overall condition in Israel. After 2,000 years of utter darkness in galut, we experienced the euphoria of returning to our homeland. Even as we faced constant hardship and fought unending wars, we experienced an undeniable upward surge—a spirit of renewal and progress. Yet, particularly over the past two decades, we became somewhat intoxicated with the comforts and triumphs of life in Israel, as if the journey toward redemption was nearing completion.

The rainbow should remind us that until this world is fully repaired and healed, our life in Israel will resemble the rainbow’s blend of radiant colors and shadowed skies. Resplendent hues of joy and accomplishment will mingle with dark clouds.

Sun and Clouds. Light and Darkness. Rainbows.

The writer is a rabbi at the hesder Yeshivat Har Etzion/Gush, with YU ordination a master’s degree in English literature from CUNY. He is the author of Dark Clouds Above, Faith Below (Kodesh Press), on religious responses to Oct. 7, as well as the soon-to-be published Reclaiming Redemption: Deciphering the Maze of Jewish History (Mosaica Press).

Think. Feel.Grow.

The Deeper Purpose of Torah Wisdom

By Rabbi Shmuel Reichman

As we begin the new Torah cycle, let’s take a moment to contemplate the deeper purpose of Torah. Some may refer to the Torah as a history book; others may think of it as a book of law or a source of Jewish wisdom. While these are all true, they only scratch the surface of the Torah’s true nature. Torah is not simply a guide to living a life of truth within this world; it is the blueprint and DNA of the world itself. Our physical world is a projection and emanation of the deep spiritual reality described in the Torah. This is the meaning behind the famous Midrash, “Istakel b’Oraisa u’bara alma — [Hashem] looked into the Torah and used it to create the world” (Bereishis Rabbah 1:1). Torah is the spiritual root of existence; the physical world is its expression.

Imagine a projector: the image that you see on the screen emanates from the film in the projector so that everything you see on the screen is simply an expression of what’s contained within the film. So, too, every single thing that we see and experience in the physical world stems from the spiritual root — the transcendent dimension of Torah. To illustrate further, the trees you see outside originally stemmed from a single seed. Similarly, each and every one of us originated from a zygote, half a male and half a female genetic code. From that single cell ultimately manifested a fully developed and expressed human being. You are the expression of your original seed, just like the world is the expression of its original seed and root, the Torah. Thus, the world in which we live is an avenue to the spiritual; we can access the spiritual, transcendent world through the physical world because the two are intimately and intrinsically connected.

To relate to this concept, think of the way in which other human beings experience and understand you. All they can see

of you is your physical body. They cannot see your thoughts, your consciousness, your emotions, or your soul. All they can see are your actions, words, facial expressions, and body language, i.e., the ways in which you express yourself within the world. They cannot see your inner world, but they can access it through the outer expressions that you project. The same is true regarding human beings trying to experience Hashem and the spiritual. We cannot see the spiritual; we cannot see what is ethereal and transcendent, only that which is physical. However, we can use the physical to access the spiritual; we can study the Torah’s expression in this world to understand its spiritual root.

To fully grasp the depth of this concept, we must understand the nature and purpose of a mashal. A mashal is an analogy, an example one gives in order to explain an abstract, conceptual idea to one who does not yet understand it. If a teacher wants to share a deep principle with his or her students, he or she might share a story or analogy that depicts the idea through a more relatable medium. While the mashal does not fully convey the idea itself, it leads the listener toward it, aiding

him or her in the process of understanding. Deep ideas cannot be taught, as they are beyond words. They can only be hinted to and talked about. The job of the teacher is to guide the student toward the idea until the idea falls into the student’s mind with clear understanding. A mashal serves as a guiding force in this process, leading the student toward an understanding of that which defies simple explanation.

This process itself can be understood through a mashal. You cannot teach someone how to ride a bike. You can only help them, holding on while they practice, and perhaps showing them an example of how it is done. Ultimately, though, you must let go, and the student will have to learn how to ride independently. (This is a mashal to help explain the concept of a mashal. Think about that.) Once you learn how to ride a bike, it’s hard to imagine not being able to ride one. We often can’t understand what took us so long to learn. Yet, despite the fact that we now know how to ride a bike, we will not be able to explain how to ride a bike to someone else. It is simply beyond words.

A mashal is the only tool a teacher can use to teach spiritual truths; the learning and understanding must be done within

the inner mind of the student. If this is true, how can we relate to and understand the spiritual world? We cannot see, touch, or feel the spiritual. Thus, if all learning occurs through the use of analogy, what mashal did Hashem give us to help us access spiritual truths?

The ultimate mashal is the world itself. The physical world guides us toward deeper, spiritual truths. Everything in this world is a mashal — a tool guiding us toward a deeper reality. Every physical object, every emotional phenomenon, every experience in this world is part of a grand mashal leading us toward the root of all existence. With the Torah as our guide and teacher, we can navigate the physical world and understand how to trace ourselves back to our ultimate Source, Hashem.

Rabbi Shmuel Reichman is the author of the bestselling book, “The Journey to Your Ultimate Self,” which serves as an inspiring gateway into deeper Jewish thought. He is an educator and speaker who has lectured internationally on topics of Torah thought, Jewish medical ethics, psychology, and leadership. He is also the founder and CEO of Self-Mastery Academy, the transformative online self-development course based on the principles of high-performance psychology and Torah.

After obtaining his BA from Yeshiva University, he received Semicha from Yeshiva University’s RIETS, a master’s degree in education from Azrieli Graduate School, and a master’s degree in Jewish Thought from Bernard Revel Graduate School. He then spent a year studying at Harvard as an Ivy Plus Scholar. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife and son where he is pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago.

To invite Rabbi Reichman to speak in your community or to enjoy more of his deep and inspiring content, visit his website: ShmuelReichman.com.

The Simcha of a Siyum

By Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

Amishnah in Ta’anis declares that the most joyous holidays on the Jewish calendar are Yom Kippur and Tu B’Av. The Gemara says that Yom Kippur was joyous because the nation was forgiven for its sins. But what was special about Tu B’Av? Several reasons are offered. The Rashbam (Bava Basra 121a) says that these Amoraim are not arguing with each other; rather, each one is declaring the reason he heard from his rebbe.

Rabbah and Rav Yosef explain that on Tu B’Av, they stopped cutting wood for the altar, because afterwards, the summer heat is less intense and any wood gathered would retain its moisture and not be optimal for burning. Furthermore, moist wood may become wormy, which may not be placed on the Mizbei’ach, as it would be like offering a blemished sacrifice.

It is not immediately clear what Rabbah and Rav Yosef’s intent was. Why is the fact that they could no longer cut wood a reason for celebration? Just the opposite – there is a mitzvah they are no longer able to perform, so they should be sad!

Rabbeinu Gershom explains that those who were previously occupied with gathering wood were now able to learn Torah! Embarking on an intense period of Torah study is cause for celebration. In fact, the Gemara continues that the nights start becoming longer from Tu B’Av and on. In an agricultural society, most work was limited to the daytime. Now that the nights start becoming longer, everyone is expected to learn more Torah at night.

The Shulchan Aruch rules that a rebbe should learn with his talmidim during the day but also learn some at night. The Vilna Gaon says that his source is from this very Gemara. Children should not be trained that the mitzvah of learning Torah is only a day-

time pursuit. Just the opposite – when they enter the workforce, perhaps their only free time to learn will be at night.

Incidentally, my rosh yeshiva, Rav Henoch Leibowitz, zt”l, remarked that as a youngster in Europe he would go to the local shul to learn Torah at night, but there were generally no seats available! Everyone came to learn Torah at night, and he was forced to sit on the leg supports of his father’s shtender.

Rabbeinu Gershom’s position is that the cause for a celebration was the beginning of a new mitzvah. The Rashbam disagrees. He says they celebrated because they had just completed a mitzvah. From Nissan until Tu B’Av, they were gathering wood for the altar. To finally bring this great mitzvah to its conclusion was cause for celebration. Our Sages teach us that the credit for a mitzvah goes to the one who completes it. Although all the participants earn reward, there is something unique about being the one who completes the mitzvah. Similarly here, although gathering wood was a mitzvah that lasted for months, bringing it to its completion is

cause for celebration.

In fact, this idea is codified by the Mishnah Berurah in the midst of a discussion about Simchas Torah (669:6). He writes that indeed completing a mitzvah is cause for celebration, although he does not specifically state what mitzvos he is referring to.

The most famous application of this Gemara was stated by the Nemukei Yosef. He writes that this passage is the source that one should make a seudah upon completion of a mesechta. The Rema states (Y.D. 246:26) that it is a mitzvah to rejoice and make a seudah upon completion of a mesechta, and the poskim write that one can likewise make a siyum on the completion of Tanach.

Rav Vozner, zt”l, writes that one can make a siyum on erev Pesach upon completing a sefer of Navi and this will exempt the firstborns from fasting. And Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, famously told a student to make a siyum on one daf of Gemara! A student used to study Gemara with his father every time he went home for Shabbos. After a while, they finished a daf. Rav Moshe instructed the

talmid to make a siyum and informed him that he would personally attend.

The Maharshal was so convinced that a siyum is a seudas mitzvah that he ruled that during bentching one should recite, “Baruch Elokeinu she’ha’simcha bim’ono,” which is recited at a sheva berachos or a wedding. The Maharshal reasoned that certainly a siyum also brings joy to Hashem. However, at the first siyum when the Maharshal was ready to put his new ruling into practice, something terrible happened. The Maharshal does not go into detail, but he attributed the occurrence as a punishment for his inventing a new halacha. Already in Mesechta Shabbos (118) Abaye states that he made a siyum whenever a talmid completed a mesechta. So the idea of making a siyum dates back to then, yet no Rishon mentioned this halacha of reciting “she’ha’simcha bim’ono.” Therefore, the Maharshal retracted his ruling.

Joey Newcomb suggested that perhaps even Rabbeinu Gershom agrees that one should make a seudah upon completion of a mitzvah. However, in this situation, where the mitzvah is no longer available because wood can no longer be cut for the altar, it may seem like one is celebrating freedom from the burden of doing a mitzvah. Therefore, it is better not to celebrate the completion of the mitzvah. However, at a siyum on Torah, there is always more Torah to learn, and no one can misunderstand the nature of his celebration. Therefore, making a simcha upon the completion of a sefer is meritorious.

Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow is a rebbe at Yeshiva Ateres Shimon in Far Rockaway. In addition, Rabbi Sebrow leads a daf yomi chaburah at Eitz Chayim of Dogwood Park in West Hempstead, NY. He can be contacted at ASebrow@gmail.com.

It was a year of enormous tragedy for Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, with the loss of two remarkable Roshei Yeshiva within some 14 months of each other. On Sunday, HaGaon HaRav Shlomo Dovid Halioua passed away tragically at the age of 66. His father-in-law, Rav Aharon Schechter, zt”l, had passed away 14 months earlier. Rav Halioua acted in the role of “acting rosh yeshiva” during his shver’s illness the past few years.

It is a sad tragedy that the olam haTorah beyond the Yeshiva did not get such a chance to fully appreciate who this remarkable Rosh Yeshiva was by virtue of the short tenure that we had him. His brilliance shined forth in so many Torah techunos, as well as his remarkable middos and anivus He was clearly destined to play a pivotal leadership role in the Torah world, which is why the talmidei haYeshiva are in a state of despair and shock. The talmidim noticed that in the past few months he was visibly weaker, but whatever illness he suffered from, he kept hidden from his talmidim.

After Mincha in the Yeshiva on Sunday, they announced that the Rosh Yeshiva was niftar. The news was met with crying and screeching. The news came as a complete shock to everyone. Rav Halioua, zt”l, demonstrated remarkable brilliance as a talmid chochom, who gave masterful shiurim. He also had a full mastery of the entire oeuvre of Rav Hutner’s Pachad Yitzchock and was fully comfortable in the world of Torah Machshava as well. The Rosh Yeshiva’s mastery of the Ramchal’s writings was demonstrated in his many shmuessim that he delivered to the talmidim. Every erev Shabbos in

Headlines Halacha

A Tragic Loss Rav Shlomo Halioua, zt”l, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

the morning he gave a shiur to the Kollel in Maharal.

The talmidim were enamored by the down-to-earth nature of Rav Halioua’s maamarim as well as synthesis of the machshava of Rav Hutner, zt”l, the Maharal and the Ramchal. Rav Halioua veritably introduced the talmidim of the Yeshiva to the deeper understanding of the Ramchal’s greatest talmid, Rav Moshe Dovid Valle, zt”l. He was also a baal mechadaish who could derive deep insights from their writings which we otherwise might have missed.

Rav Halioua was rushed to the hospital on Tuesday afternoon right before Hoshana Rabbah, and yet he was still delivering maamarim until the last week of Yeshiva and during the Yom Tov. He gave a maamar on Monday during the Yeshiva’s Simchas Beis HaShoaiva.

His father, Rav Avraham, zt”l, immigrated from Morocco to the United States at the age of twenty in Novem -

ber of 1948 and was a rav in Flatbush. He passed away in December 1988. Rav Shlomo was thirty years old at his passing and took over the shul. He had a close association with Agudath Israel even while in Morocco. They helped sponsor his arrival in the U.S.

The Rosh Yeshiva, zt”l, was also a talmid muvhak of Rav Binyomin Paler, zt”l, and mastered the Brisker mehalech from him. Rav Paler was one of Rav Velvel Soloveitchik’s closest talmidim and a chavrusah of Rav Berel Soloveitchik, zt”l, father of Rav Avrohom Yehoshua, shlita, the current Rosh Yeshiva of Brisk in Yerushalayim.

Rav Halioua also learned under HaGaon haRav Yonasan David, shlita, Rav Hutner’s son-in-law and the rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok in Yerushalayim. Rav Halioua considered Rav Yonasan, shlita, as his primary Rebbe. He was his father-in-law’s shliach to be menachem avel him when Rebbetzin

David, a”h, passed away.

The Rosh Yeshiva was very close to a number of Gedolei Torah. Among them were Rav Shmuel Auerbach, zt”l, as well as yblc”t, the mashgiach of Chevron, Rav Chaim Yitzchok Kaplan, who learned in Yeshiva Chaim Berlin and later went to Pachad Yitzchok in Yerushalayim.

Rav Halioua was a Rosh Kollel of the yeshiva, when Rav Aharon Schechter, zt”l, was the Rosh Yeshiva, along with yblc”t Rav Binyomin Cohen, shlita. The transition between Rav Schechter, zt”l, and Rav Halioua was seamless. Everyone realized and appreciated his genuine ahavas habrios.

His anivus was such that even after he was officially appointed Rosh Yeshiva, he did not change his seat for a number of months – not until Pesach.

It is a somewhat rare occasion for a Sefardic talmid to take the helm of a Litvish yeshiva. The fact that Rav Halioua did so is a testament to the high esteem that he was held by all that knew him.

He leaves behind his family, headed by his eldest son, the Gaon Rabbi Yosef Haloua, who is currently the Rosh Kollel and the son-in-law of the gaon, Rabbi Chaim Israel Weinfeld, rav of Kehal Toras Chaim in Flatbush.

The picture above was taken when Rav Halioua was maspid his father-inlaw, the Rosh Yeshiva, just 14 months ago. May the Rosh Yeshiva be a meilitz yosher to all of Klal Yisroel.

This article should be viewed as a halachic discussion and not practical advice. The author can be reached at yairhoffman2@ gmail.com.

We were very much enjoying the joyous days of Sukkot when I got sick. I have not been this laid low since the awful days of Covid. Thankfully it was not that nor the flu, but it did a number. And I’m still not where I need to be to take part in the good times.

I’m playing hardball to get back on track.

Speak to any recently or long-time retired senior “pensioner” oleh, and you will be told the same thing, “I am doing something or going somewhere from morning to night, and I was never so busy.”

We have built our lives around routines, family and jobs, our kids, our parents, our spouses; enjoying the special feeling you get when things go according to plan. You get used to the routines and the comforts that having them give you.

For as long as I remember, my day usually begins with gym classes, now mostly centered on Pilates classes. Like everything else, you take out what you put in, and old bones and muscles are not made for heavy weights and sustained runs; Pilates is very flexible, easy on muscles, and keeps you limber and strong.

After the gym, two days a week, we go to Ulpan – oy vey, Ulpan. It’s a work in progress with small but some goals being made. Despite my best efforts, I still go left when everyone goes right when following instructions. My dikduk is shameful and cause for brutal teasing by both friend and foe; I can take it.

Two days are spent at two different wonderful classes for women, and Bob goes to a local retired guys’ kollel. He loves it.

A day is spent food shopping in the shuk – what a place – for Shabbos prep, and different days are designated across the week for all kinds of appointments.

We usually have two or three special events scheduled, dinner with friends or family, and we also try to do something that we never had time for when we worked long hours. In preparation for our aliyah, we bought a huge Apple TV; in the three months that we have lived in Israel, we have never turned it on.

School of Thought

Messed Up Plans

By Barbara Deutsch

Our paintings are up; from certain angles, they look like they once did hanging in Cedarhurst, all but six book boxes are unpacked (waiting for one last bookshelf to be built). Everyone who notices the boxes marked, “librery,” stacked in the hall note our poor spelling. For the record, we know how to spell library.

All was going as planned. pretty smoothly, until this vicious virus felled me and my ambitious plans for getting

been in your life.

The big question burdening everyone was whether we could celebrate hakafot. Some have suggested there be a silent hakafah to commemorate that awful day of loss . Everyone figured it out, joy and celebration seasoned with the tears of loss and the numbness of alcohol. As we do, we triumphed.

I remember walking that day with Bob to our friends the Weinerkhurs; we

Despite my best efforts, I still go left when everyone goes right when following instructions.

what I dreamed out of Sukkot fun. Our son and daughter-in-law, their daughter Ayelet, husband and baby Ez joined us. Having them here made us miss all who did not join us this time. Every second together we savored.

Hopefully, more loved ones will come in the future. I cried during Yizkor for everyone I miss and love; it is hard to be apart from the people who have routinely

have celebrated one chag or another with them for years. We consider each other siblings. Rabbi W. was recently given the honor of naming our newest great-grandchild after Bob’s dad. Rabbi Weinerkhur, the baby’s father, the father’s father and the great-great-grandfather he is being named for are all known and highly respected by the extended families on both sides.

On the way to the Weinerkuhrs’ house, everyone seemed to be crying, confused and wondering what to do, say, think about. Rabbi had no words of comfort. He actually could not believe it.

One year later, war rages, hostages are held, and we still don’t know what to do.

When you get sick, lose track of routines and don’t feel right, it’s hard to get back to your mojo.

I am determined to be okay soon; I’m better already. My friend Grace, new and already beloved, told me that people forget to tell you that with aliyah you lose your tried-and-true antibodies that beat off American bad germs. In Israel, you need tougher and stronger ones; the Kupah system takes a lot of patience and work and may cause recuperation to take longer.

When will we be in a better place? When will the bombs stop flying? When will going to a safe house no longer be the routine?

They turn the clocks back here on Motzei Shabbos. Pinchas Shmuel represents a new life, a new legacy, and a new year. We pray that we will finally be able to move forward in how we celebrate joy with no more questions about how to celebrate.

Pinchas Shmuel, zt”l, survived atrocities. His baby namesake Shmuel and his generation of comrades will lead us into the future carrying a future of survival and strength for our people. We hope and pray that it will be a future of joy.

Let’s pray for no more illness and no more pain. We pray that next year will be better and hopefully we will be waiting for Moshiach.

Barbara Deutsch is the former associate principal at HANC, middle school principal at Kushner, and Dean of Students at Yeshiva of Flatbush. A not-retired educator, she is trying to figure out life in Israel through reflections on navigating the dream of aliyah as a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend.

Established in 1922 during the British Mandate era, Talpiot is one of Jerusalem’s historic neighborhoods, nestled in the city’s southeastern corner. Situated just south of Baka and east of Katamon and Mekor Chaim, Talpiot borders Arnona to the west and the emerging Givat Hamatos neighborhood to the south.

The name “Talpiot” is drawn from the biblical Song of Songs (4:4), symbolizing the neighborhood’s historical connection to the Temple Mount, which is a 45-minute walk away. According to tradition, the word is a blend of Tel (hill) and Piyot (mouths), referring to the site of the former and future Temple, toward which all mouths turn in prayer.

In its early days, Talpiot stretched far beyond its current boundaries, extending east of Derech Chevron, in what is now part of Arnona. Today, the neighborhood is synonymous with the Talpiot Industrial Zone, which was established in the 1960s when Jerusalem was still a divided city. Despite its prime location, development in Talpiot lagged behind its neighbors, such as Baka and Arnona, which flourished more rapidly after Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967.

My Israel Home Revitalizing Talpiot

By Gedaliah Borvick

Like many industrial areas worldwide, Talpiot witnessed a decline as factories moved either abroad or to less densely populated parts of Israel. However, the past few decades have witnessed its gradual transformation from an industrial hub into a key destination for shopping, culture, and entertainment. One of the

plan that will reshape the Talpiot Industrial Zone into a vibrant urban center, blending residential, office, retail, entertainment and cultural spaces. A crucial part of this transformation will be the expansion of Jerusalem’s light rail system, with three new lines planned for Talpiot, alongside improved roadways for better

Over the next five years, the master plan will transform this once-sleepy industrial zone into a 21st century urban hub.

neighborhood’s more striking examples of repurposing is the Hadar Biscuit Factory, which has been transformed into the bustling Hadar Mall. Despite its strong commercial identity, the edges of Talpiot have long housed residential buildings, many dating back over 50 years.

Now, Talpiot is on the brink of an even more dramatic evolution. The city has approved an ambitious new master

connectivity both within the city and to other parts of Israel.

Construction is already underway, with new commercial and residential projects taking shape. However, a surge of activity is expected to begin shortly, fast-tracking Talpiot’s makeover. Over the next five years, the master plan will transform this once-sleepy industrial zone into a 21st century urban hub, which

will address the city’s growing demands for modern housing and office space. Talpiot’s revival also aligns with what we call the “sandwich effect,” a pattern we’ve observed over the past dozen years in other successful developments. Neighborhoods like Baka, Arnona, and Mekor Chaim, which surround Talpiot, have experienced significant growth, and their vibrancy is now spilling over into Talpiot. This combination of prime location, growing infrastructure, and new projects makes Talpiot a neighborhood on the rise.

For years, Talpiot’s upside has been clear, and the neighborhood is finally on the verge of realizing that potential. With its central location, growing retail and entertainment options, and close proximity to Jerusalem’s most desirable communities, Talpiot is poised to become one of the capital’s most dynamic areas.

Gedaliah Borvick is visiting NY/NJ and is available for private meetings plus he will be running several public presentations. For more information, please contact him at gborvick@gmail.com.

Since the terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 it has been widely felt that the underlying “cause” of the attacks was the lack of unity amongst the Jewish people. In the months leading up to the attacks, the Jewish people, especially in Israel, were embroiled in an all-but-forgotten controversy known as Judicial Reform, a governmental effort to modify certain privileges held by the Israeli Supreme Court, which morphed into a “Right versus Left,” “Religious versus Secular” battle, and there was no middle ground. You were either “neged ” (liberal) or “b’ad ” (too religious and narrow-minded).

While there have long been disagreements between the religious and secular camps in Israel, many would agree that the summer of 2023 was amongst the worst periods of “Sinat Chinam,” baseless hatred between Jews, since the destruction of the Second Beit Hamikdash Never in modern Jewish history had there been such a deep and wide chasm between Jews. Name calling turned into ugly riots, nasty accusations, and ultimately physical violence, including

Voice N tes

One Year Later

October 7 & The Shemini Atzeret War

By Moshe Bodner

the disruption of outdoor Yom Kippur prayer services and, a week later, interference with a public prayer service on Chol Hamoed Sukkot, during which the prayer leader, Rabbi Leo Dee, who had recently suffered the loss of his wife and 2 daughters in a terrorist attack, was assaulted by anti-religious protestors.

What does the rift between different groups of Jews have anything to do with the Simchat Torah Massacre?

When we Jews are in a troubling situation, we are told to do a “cheshbon hanefesh” to try to determine why bad things are happening. As we look inward, we also look back, into history, and we find that the most recent tragedy of the scale of October 7 that we suffered on the soil of the Holy Land also occurred during a period when we could not get along, resulting in the destruction of the Temple, and ultimately, the loss of any form of Jewish autonomy over the Land of Israel for nearly 1900 years.

What does this have to do with Shemini Atzeret? Aren’t our national tragedies typically reserved for Tisha B’Av?

Not exactly. In fact, many calami -

ties suffered by the Jewish people took place on or around other sacred days, and upon closer examination, during Jewish holidays.

On Shavuot of 1096, the Crusaders attacked three of the main Jewish cities in Germany –Speyer, Mainz and Worms, cities that were vibrant Torah centers.

These attacks are memorialized in the Tisha B’Av Kinah of Mi Yitein Roshi Mayim, the first of the Kinot to focus on destruction outside of the Land of Israel. This Kinah was included in the Kinot because the Crusades were the first time since the destruction of Bayit Sheini –over 1,000 years – that the Jews were surprised by an attack.

This Kinah is the source for the debate over the establishment of other days of mourning and makes clear that Tisha B’Av is our day of mourning for all tragedies. In other words, all national disasters are connected to Tishah B’ Av, even if they didn’t occur on that date.

Fifty years later, on Shavuot of 1146, the Crusaders again attacked Jewish cities, including a violent attack on the Beit Medrash of Rabbeinu Tam.

For many years, Passover was also a time that caused us great fear, mostly of “blood libels.” On Passover 1903, we experienced the Kishinev Pogroms, a massacre that took place during a period of relative calm and in the midst of a progressive shift which had provided the Jews of Russia with some hope from their plight under the oppressive Czarist regimes.

In 1944, the Nazi attack on Hungarian Jewry began around Pesach and continued through Shavuot; the Yahrzeits of many Hungarian kedoshim are observed in Nisan, Iyar and Sivan.

While Pesach and Shavuot have coincided with a number of national tragedies, the third of the Shalosh Regalim seems to have been sheltered from being marred by enemy attacks, until last year. Why did Hashem wait until Shemini Atzeret, davka last year, to tell us that He wants us to do an internal reckoning? Chazal tell us that Hashem commanded us to observe Shemini Atzeret because He wanted one more day with Am Yisrael. The korbanot of Sukkot represent the 70 nations, while on Shemini Atzeret we

100

offer only one special sacrifice, representing the Jewish people. Rashi notes that in granting this one extra day, Hashem declares, “Kasheh alai preidatchem,” after spending seven days of Sukkot alone with “us,” His people, in the holy Temple, it is “difficult” for Hashem to part from us.

A grammarian would intuitively note that if Hashem were sad to be parting from us, He would have said “Kasheh alai preidateinu , our parting from each other is difficult,” whereas “Kasheh alai preidatchem” is translated literally as “your parting from each other is difficult for Me.”

Rav Yitchak M’Vorka explains that Hashem’s use of the word “Preidatchem” is His lament that we will be parting ways with each other. “Because on the Sukkot holiday everyone makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and there they would all be in unity and brotherhood.”

After seven days of Sukkot, during which we are “all together,” Hashem is “sad” that we are going to separate from each other. The Ashkenazim will go back to their communities and the Sephardim to theirs. The Chassidim will return to the courts of their Rebbes and the Litvaks to the yeshivot. The “Modern Or -

thodox” will head back to Yeshiva University or other colleges, back to their careers and outside interests, and in general, the “frum” will remain distant from the not-so-frum, and in many ways, from each other. It will be another six months until Pesach, when all of Hashem’s children will reconvene for another week of Achdut.

So, Hashem tells us “Atzor,” stop. “Let’s spend one more day together, just Me and My firstborn.” No sukkah , no a rba minim, no extra k orbanot. Just the two of us. My Nation, brother and sisters, unified.

Last Shemini Atzeret, Hashem sent us a different message. The preidah between His children – a “spiritual” chasm that was so deep – was too much for Him to bear. If it wasn’t enough that the “left” and the “right,” the religious and the secular were on different wavelengths, we, Hashem’s beloved children, allowed minor issues to foster hatred and animosity.

The result: brother against brother, not only in the political ring but everywhere! A Jew interfering with another Jew’s efforts to daven? On Yom Kippur, no less? A Jew physically pushing another Jew for the brazen act of praying

with a lulav and etrog on Sukkot? The relationships between Jewish brothers had reached an unnatural place – Jew against Jew, simply because one brother is observant and the other not. When brothers don’t act like brothers, Hashem is distraught, devastated, and He decided that we needed that wake-up call.

More than one year later, we are still at war, and even more shocking, we are still lacking the unity that we so sorely need! The recent (and current) internal battles – public minyanim on Yom Kippur, Chareidi draft – are both nothing new and extremely painful. And while none of us could begin to fathom how the families of the hostages feel, the very public discord between the “Bring Them Home Now” camp and the supporters of the government actions is astonishing. Despite fact that we ALL want them home, desperately, the rift is so deep that each “side” had to have its own October 7 commemoration.

The past year has been a time for achdut ; today is a time for even greater unity. Let’s focus on living in harmony as a people, as Hashem’s children. We need not act uniformly, practice our religion in the same manner as our neighbor, or even

agree on anything – except on one thing: that we are and must act like brothers.

Shemini Atzeret was the yahrzeit of over 1,200 Jews who were murdered simply because they were Jews. They died Al Kiddush Hashem. Let’s honor our martyrs, our hostages, our brave soldiers, bereaved families, displaced Israelis, and ourselves by living Al Kiddush Hashem. By doubling down on acts of kindness, caring and tolerance for each other.

Hopefully Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah were both a time of simcha and, as Rachel Goldberg-Polin said in an interview recently, a time of nechama for all of us. May we all dance next year in Jerusalem, together, in yechidut with Hashem and in achdut with each other, on the day that Hashem set aside as a unique day just for us.

Moshe Bodner is the co-founder, together with Jeff Eisenberg, of the Israel Chesed Center, the largest private humanitarian organization established in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, to assist soldiers, displaced families and security response teams in Israel.

Political Crossfire

Sinwar’s Final Moments: On the Run, Hurt, Alone, but Still Defiant

By Mark Mazzetti, Natan Odenheimer, Aaron Boxerman, Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman

At the end, the fearsome militant leader who had helped unleash a vicious war seemed barely a threat.

In video captured by an Israeli drone, a man sat alone, badly wounded and caked in dust amid the ruins of a building in the Gaza Strip, wrapped in a kaffiyeh and staring directly into the camera. The man, Israeli officials say, was Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas.

The stare-down lasted some 20 seconds, then the man limply but defiantly hurled a broken piece of wood toward the drone. Not long afterward, officials say, an Israeli soldier shot him in the head, and a tank shell flattened part of the building.

So ended the long hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men. It began hours after the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that Sinwar helped orchestrate, and concluded amid the destruction of a Rafah neighborhood resembling so many parts of Gaza, leveled by the Israeli military in the year since.

The search involved Israeli commandos and spies as well as a special unit established inside the headquarters of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, and at the CIA. It used a sophisticated electronic surveillance dragnet and ground-penetrat-

ing radar provided by the United States.

New details about Sinwar’s movements over the past year have emerged since his death, including the fact that Israeli intelligence officers had seen mounting evidence since August that Sinwar, or possibly other top Hamas leaders, might be in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood.

They observed people there moving about with their faces covered, sometimes apparently surrounded by guards, suggesting that they were senior Hamas officials or hostages. And in September, they found Sinwar’s DNA in urine collected from a tunnel.

In the end, Sinwar was discovered and killed in Tel al-Sultan somewhat by happenstance, by a group of troops on a routine patrol. But Israeli forces had spent weeks scouring the neighborhood based on the intelligence that senior Hamas officials were hiding there, possibly with Israeli hostages.

Sinwar died aboveground, just a few hundred meters from a tunnel complex where he had been hiding this summer, according to Israeli officials, and where six Israeli hostages were killed in late August.

This account of the hunt for Sinwar, and his eventual killing last Wednesday, is based on interviews with Israeli and Amer-

ican government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence operations, as well as classified Israeli government documents obtained by The New York Times.

Sinwar had been a spectral presence since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks. There had been only glimpses of him over the past year, and he is believed to have spent most of his time hidden underground.

Yet he commanded Hamas’ forces in an ongoing war and managed to play an active role in the negotiations over a cease-fire and the release of Israeli hostages.

There had been near-misses along the way. On Jan. 31, Israeli commandos raided an elaborate warren of tunnels in Khan Younis— dubbed “The Kingdom” by Israeli officials — based on the intelligence that Sinwar was hiding there. It turned out he had been but had left the bunker just days earlier.

In addition to stacks of Israeli shekels, Sinwar left documents there that detailed years of secret meetings among Hamas leaders planning the Oct. 7 attacks, which the documents refer to as “The Big Project.”

The killing of Sinwar is perhaps Israel’s most significant military achievement of the war, and it raised hopes that the

elimination of the Hamas chief and the decimation of the group’s leadership might bring about a deal to end the conflict and release the Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7, 2023, and still held in Gaza. Since his death, however, both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Hamas have pledged to continue the battle.

In a statement issued Friday, Hamas said that Sinwar’s death “will only increase the strength, steadfastness, and determination” of the group’s fighters “to continue on their path, and to be loyal to their blood and sacrifices.”

Sinwar may have been hobbled and diminished in his final moments, but the Hamas statement sought to project an image of him as a defiant fighter, “advancing and not retreating, brandishing his weapon, engaging and confronting the occupation army at the forefront of the ranks.”

A Cold Trail Heats Up

Early this year, Israeli intelligence concluded that Sinwar had fled a bunker in the center of Khan Younis in response to news reports citing Israeli officials saying he was hiding in a tunnel beneath the city. From there, he retreated to the western part of the city before finally relocating to Rafah.

For much of the summer, Sinwar’s trail was cold. officials said he had abandoned electronic communications, allowing him to avoid the surveillance net set up by Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies. He was thought to be moving between Rafah and Khan Younis, staying in touch with Hamas operatives using a network of human couriers, but there was precious little specific intelligence about his movements.

Then, in August, came mounting evidence pointing to Tel al-Sultan.

On Aug. 31, Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six slain hostages, five of whom Hamas had captured at a music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, in an underground tunnel complex in Tel al-Sultan. Israeli military officials said they believed that the hostages had been executed by their captors just days earlier.

Weeks later, while investigating the same tunnel complex, Israeli forces confirmed through a DNA test of a urine sample that Sinwar — whose genetic and other information they had from his decades in Israeli prisons — had been hiding there at some point. But they never pinpointed his whereabouts, and there was discussion among Israeli intelligence officials that the Hamas leader might actually be dead.

Then, in late September, Hamas sent a message to the group’s political leaders in Qatar, saying that Hamas’ leadership in Gaza was committed to a cease-fire proposal that had been negotiated in July but fell apart.

Israeli and American officials did not believe that Hamas was serious about accepting a deal but saw the message as strong evidence that Sinwar was alive and still directing the group from the rubble of Gaza. He was also thought to be with the commander of the Tel al-Sultan battalion, Mahmoud Hamdan — one of the few high-ranking Hamas leaders still believed to be alive at the time.

Throughout the war, Israel had pieced together the whereabouts of several Hamas leaders with intelligence collected on the battlefield, using that information for lethal operations that killed most of the top echelon of Hamas’ leadership and other military commanders.

A Dragnet Tightens

The intelligence collection around Tel al-Sultan in recent weeks had prompted Israeli forces to increase patrols in the neighborhood, and one Israeli military official said that operations in the area were attempts by the military to gather clues, rather than raids guided by precise intelligence.

In this way, Wednesday’s killing of Sinwar was, for the Israelis, a stroke of luck.

That morning, soldiers from an Israeli training brigade operating in Tel al-Sultan spotted three men moving from house to house, one of them trailing the other two. They had no idea one of the men was Sinwar.

“Yahya Sinwar hid in an area that our

the upper floor, captured footage of a wounded man sitting in a chair, his face swaddled in a kaffiyeh to hide his identity.

The man hurled a stick at the drone, according to the footage. Israeli officials said a sniper shot the man in the head, and a tank fired at the building.

It was getting dark by then, and the troops decided to return to the two build-

Israeli officials have said that all

Hamas operatives in the tunnels — even the group’s leaders — must occasionally escape the dark, claustrophobic conditions and breathe fresh air.

forces had surrounded for a long time,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, said Thursday night.

“We did not know he was there, but we continued to operate decisively.”

It is unclear what brought Sinwar aboveground, although Israeli officials have said that all Hamas operatives in the tunnels — even the group’s leaders — must occasionally escape the dark, claustrophobic conditions and breathe fresh air.

Israeli officials said that a July airstrike that killed Mohammed Deif, the shadowy chief of Hamas’ military wing, was launched during one such occasion when Deif came to the surface.

In recent weeks, Israeli troops had stepped up ambushes and efforts to clear the many tunnels around Rafah. The army even pumped some of them full of thick nontoxic gas in an attempt to smoke out fighters when they assessed no hostages were in those parts of the tunnels, according to two Israeli military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press about sensitive military tactics.

After the Israeli troops spotted the three men Wednesday, a firefight broke out, and one Israeli soldier was badly wounded. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said that two of the three men fled into a building, and the third into an adjacent one.

The troops killed the first two militants and turned their attention to the man in the other building, deploying a drone to examine the building’s interior. The drone, entering a ruined house from

ings Thursday morning to lessen the danger from booby traps that Hamas often sets inside buildings it has evacuated.

In one of the buildings, they found automatic weapons, thousands of dollars’ worth of Israeli currency, a pamphlet with prayer verses and even a packet of Mentos

breath mints, according to photos from the scene provided by Israeli officials.

The troops found a man in the rubble who looked strikingly like Sinwar, with a large hole in his forehead and a gash on his knee. An electrical cord had been tied around his severely injured right arm to stanch the bleeding.

The Israelis cut off one of his fingers to use for DNA testing and took photographs of his teeth to match with Sinwar’s dental records on file from his years in an Israeli prison.

Based on fingerprints and dental records, Israeli officials determined that it was Sinwar. By Thursday evening, his body had arrived at Israel’s National Institute for forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, where Dr. Chen Kugel, the head of the institute, oversaw an autopsy.

l ater that night, Netanyahu announced to the country that Sinwar was dead, calling it a milestone in “the sunset of Hamas’ evil reign” in Gaza.

But he also appeared to rebuff the idea that Sinwar’s death might mean the end of the war.

“The mission before us is still unfinished,” he said.

© The New York Times

The Path to 270 Electoral College Votes –and the Presidency

Solid Trump: 219

Solid Harris: 215

Toss-Ups: 104

270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency. Each state’s number of electoral votes is proportionate to its population. Real Clear Politics average of polls has 219 electoral votes solid and leaning towards Trump and 215 electoral votes solid and leaning Harris. The states with the 104 “toss up” electoral votes are the battleground states, which is essentially the focus of the election.

Red States are for Trump, Blue States are for Harris, and Grey States are Undecided.

Minnesota (10)

Harris +4.7

2020: Biden 7.1

2016: Clinton 1.6

2012: Obama 7.7

This state should not be in play, especially since Harris’s running mate is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. However, the polls have tightened significantly in Minnesota over the past few weeks, and although it is a long-shot for Trump, simply based on the polling, it is a possible pick-up for him. If Trump wins Minnesota, that would mean that he will likely win the presidency in a landslide.

Nevada (6)

Trump + 0.7

2020: Biden 2.4

2016: Clinton 2.

2012: Obama 6.7

Nevada is the swing state with the most Hispanics. Trump is polling well with Hispanics. Trump unveiled his “No Tax on Tips” plan in Nevada. As a state with many hospitality workers, this plan is wildly popular. However, Harris adopted the same plan days after Trump announced his plan of service workers not being taxed on tips. As such, it remains to be seen who the voters believe more.

Georgia (16)

Trump +2.3

2020: Biden 0.3

2016: Trump 5.1

2012: Romney 8

Trump has had a complicated relationship with Georgia since the 2020 elections. He believes that Republican Governor Brian Kemp allowed cheating and publicly feuded with Kemp until a couple of months ago when they made peace and attended a rally together. Since then, Trump’s poll numbers have increased in Georgia, and he now appears to be leading in the Peach State.

Arizona (11)

Trump +1.5

2020: Biden 0.4

2016: Trump 3.5

2012: Romney 9.1

Arizona has traditionally been a Republican stronghold, but that has changed over the past decade. Trump lost by a razor-thin margin in 2020 and challenged the validity of the result, alleging many irregularities. More than 25% of voters are Latino. Even so, as a border state, it fits right into Trump’s focus on illegal immigration.

Pennsylvania (19)

Trump + 0.5

2020: Biden 1.2

2016: Trump 0.7

2012: Obama 5.4

True to its name as the Keystone State, Pennsylvania is the keystone to the 2024 presidential elections. Both candidates have spent more time there than in any other state. To date, over $1 billion has been spent by both parties in Pennsylvania. For many years, Pennsylvania has been considered to be “fool’s gold” for Republicans because they usually don’t win there. But Harris’s prior position of banning fracking is highly unpopular in Pennsylvania which has a significant fracking and fossil fuel industry which employs tens of thousands of people. Harris has changed her position on fracking and now claims to support it. If Harris loses, her decision not to pick Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate will likely be seen as the worst political miscalculation in modern history—he is popular and seen as a moderate that could have attracted some conservative voters. According to many reports, Harris was pressured not to pick him because he is Jewish.

Michigan (15)

Trump +0.1

2020: Biden 2.8

2016: Trump 0.2

2012: Obama 9.5

MWisconsin (10)

Trump + 0.3

2020: Biden 0.6

2016: Trump 0.7

2012: Obama 5

Wisconsin is part of the “Blue Wall,” along with Pennsylvania and Michigan. If Trump wins Wisconsin, he will likely win the election. The last two elections were decided by razor-thin margins, and it once again appears to be a squeaker.

North Carolina (16)

Trump +0.8

2020: Trump 1.3

2016: Trump 3.7

2012: Romney 2.0

Due to changing demographics, North Carolina has recently turned from a red state to a “purple” state. The recent hurricane that killed 96 people in North Carolina may also play a role in the outcome. Many rural areas—which tend to favor Trump—have been ravaged by Hurricane Helene. This may result in a lower turnout than could otherwise be expected in those areas. However, early voter turnout indicates that voters are coming out in force. According to the latest data, the Democrats have a 0.6 advantage in early voter turnout. By comparison, at the same time in the election process in 2020, Democrats had a 16.2 advantage in early voting.

ichigan has more than 200,000 registered Muslim voters. They have been vocal about their disdain for Israel and have blamed the Biden/Harris administrations for allowing Israel to defend itself against the savage Hamas beasts. According to polls, the Muslim community is almost split evenly between Trump and Harris. At a recent Trump rally, numerous Muslim leaders, including the mayor of Dearborn Heights, a city with a sizeable Muslim population, stated that they are endorsing Trump because they believe that he would end the war in the Middle East. Many Muslims in Michigan, including the mayor of Dearborn, the Michigan city with the highest number of Arab and Muslim-Americans in the country, are refusing to endorse either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican candidate Donald Trump and will instead vote for a third-party candidate. That may be equally problematic for Harris. However, it remains to be seen whether the Muslim community ultimately follows through on their protest vote or if they return to the Democrat tent on election day.

Nation

RWilliam Mehrvarz Escaping Iran to Embrace Judaism

By Eliyahu RosEnBERg

eza Mehrvarz always wanted to be close to Allah, but he just couldn’t be. There was simply a barrier between him and the being he so desperately wanted to worship. Reza wanted peace in the world. The god that he knew, however, craved war. Reza sought to admire the god of his childhood. But to the boy, it seemed impossible to love a being so full of hate.

In His Words…

The boy rarely saw things eye to eye with Iran’s version of Allah, or, for that matter, with the people he encountered while growing up in Tehran. Take 9/11, for example. Reza was only nine years old at the time, but when he saw on his TV the Towers collapsing, his heart broke. Horrified and confused, the innocent child wondered: “Why would anyone fly an airplane into a tower, killing

at this point, i have not yet been to israel, but that’s one thing that i really crave. i think it would be a very emotional experience for me. in some sense, it would be a homecoming. although i was never born Jewish, all the neshamos, all the geirim, were at har sinai..

i picked the name l iam avraham because i find many similarities between what i did and what avraham did. i ’m nowhere near where he is, but i [wonder] how he felt when he left his land, when he left his father, when he left his home and everything he knew. Was he scared? how did he have that much emunah, that much trust in the process, to just abandon everything to become the great person who founded our nation?.

Rest on shabbat is my favorite mitzvah. When i was going through the conversion processes, i had six days to deal with all the challenges in life that you can imagine. shabbat was the day when i could just go back, reset everything, sit down, relax, throw all my problems out the window, and recharge.

3,000 innocent people?”

But when he went to school the next day, he saw a completely different response to the massacre. Everyone was celebrating. Excitement filled the air. The school administrator handed out candy to the kids. His peers were so thrilled about the terrorist attacks. It was the best day of their lives, yet Reza couldn’t wrap his mind around how death could be something to rejoice about.

Unfortunately, antisemitism was (and still is) more than just a theme found in Iran’s schools, explains Mehrvarz, who now goes by William. Rather, antisemitism, along with anti-westernism and anti-capitalism, are some of the foundations of the country’s educational system.

“When I was five years old, I was a participant in a drawing competition,” recalls Mehrvarz. “It was a Palestine competition: whoever drew the best picture of Palestine wins. As a five-year-old, with all the education that I went through until that point, I drew Israelis as ferocious lions and Palestinians as innocent rabbits. Rabbits and lions is a very innocent theme for a five-year-old, but the way I drew that picture was violent… That’s how they infiltrate every child’s mind: through school, through other means of propaganda, and they inject antisemitism into them so that hatred is ingrained within their hearts.”

At the heart of the Iranian regime is barbarity. Iranian leaders founded the Islamic Republic through violence, and they continue to this very day to subject the country’s citizens to brutality and abuse. The government oppresses women and leaves them with virtually no rights.

Iran executes protesters in public stadiums, leaving the bodies out for all to see. And authorities tolerate zero deviation from the country’s draconian Sharia law, often punishing apostates with death. Indeed, it wasn’t rare for young Reza to spot bodies hanging from construction cranes during car rides with his family. And Fridays, Islam’s holiest day of the week, were no less violent.

“Every Friday, my father would take me to Friday prayers. After the prayers, which thousands of people would gather in the streets for, there was a sermon. So the Ayatollah – sometimes he was the Supreme Leader, sometimes he wasn’t –would stand up and deliver a sermon,” William shares. “In that sermon, he would usually curse the Jews, the West, and the Zionists and point to them as the root cause of all the problems that exist across the Muslim world. While the speaker would deliver the sermon, I recall them holding a rifle with their left hand to show that they were ready to fight for the cause. After the sermon, the masses would go out, riled up by the speech, and start chanting, ‘Death to the U.S.! Death to Israel!’... Stampedes would sometimes happen, and then someone would burn a giant flag. That was my understanding of what Fridays are: very violent and filled with hate.”

Yet, to some degree, Reza didn’t know better. The only thing he knew was Islamic extremism. At school, even secular subjects like science and math revolved around the faith. He had never been exposed to any other religions or non-Muslims, so what he saw in Iran seemed relatively normal to him. In fact, the

only thing he knew about non-Muslims was that, according to extremist Islamic scripture, 1) you shouldn’t be friends with them; 2) it might be a good idea to kill them; and 3) it would also be great to take their possessions and money away.

But when the boy was thirteen, he went to a summer camp that changed his life. There, he met a friendly Armenian boy who happened to be the first Christian that Reza would ever know. The Armenian boy had with him an Old Testament and a New Testament, and he offered Reza the chance to read them. Too curious to decline, Reza gave both books a read and found himself deeply attached not to the New Testament but to the old one. Young Reza Mehrvarz was so amazed by the Bible that, upon arriving back home, he innocently praised the book to his father.

“He was not pleased. I was the oldest of three boys, and he probably took a lot of pride in having me as his first son. He wanted me to be a role model for my other brothers, but that was not the case,” William shares. “He immediately threw the idea out the window. Maybe it was because he was a devout Muslim, but also potentially because the punishment for leaving Islam – even curiously touching any other religion – is very severe. Apostasy is a crime in Iran punishable by death or extreme prosecution.”

The boy’s father began freaking out. And in a desperate move to keep his son interested in Islam and unconcerned about other religions, he gave Reza an English copy of the Quran. But that didn’t work. Instead, the boy only became more and more curious about the outside world.

During Reza’s teenage years, he gained access to the internet, a tool that quenched his thirst for information. For him, the internet was a library of unlimited information, and he used the tech to learn about Israel, Judaism, and all sorts of topics that weren’t accurately touched upon in his society. The teen would chat with others on Yahoo Answers, engaging in conversations about religion and the Middle East. He would read the Torah online, and as he did so, he found himself becoming progressively attached to

Judaism. Soon enough, Reza’s favorite website became Chabad.org.

The teenager began noting similarities and differences between the Torah and the Quran, particularly when it came to the story of the Akeidah. In Jewish tradition, Hashem commands Avraham to offer Yitzchak up as a korban. Islamic scripture, on the other hand, claims that G-d told Avraham to sacrifice his other son, Yishmael.

“Those bits and pieces made me question things. These two books are very similar in some sense; one came before the other,” William explains. “Of course, whenever I would ask in school or my father or other religious figures, they would answer that the Jews changed the story to make it up. But that doesn’t add up. If the Jews had changed it, they would’ve had to have changed so many different fundamental things for that one thing. It makes more sense that Islam changed that little piece to be the victorious one in that story and to therefore inherit G-d’s nation.”

As the teenager became more and more exposed to the outside world, he became increasingly fed up with his life in Iran. And at age sixteen, he began participating in mass protests against the government. During the demonstrations, Reza witnessed things that no 16-year-old should ever see: authorities shooting protesters dead right before his eyes, bodies falling to the ground. The teenager eventually became depressed and wanted nothing more than to leave Iran. But getting out of the country was easier said than done.

In his late teens, Reza wanted to study abroad in Germany to finish high school and go to college. He went as far as to take an entrance exam for the study abroad program, but he unfortunately failed the test…or so he thought. As it turned out, he later found out that his father bribed the institution to give him a failing mark. Why? Because Reza’s dad was afraid of losing him.

Even though Germany was off the table, the teenager still needed a change of scenery. He needed some fresh air. Thus, with his parents’ permission, Reza moved to Kish, a remote island in southern Iran, 1,000 miles south of Tehran.

“I dropped out of high school and went to Kish. And because it’s an island, a little bit separated from the mainland, it had relatively more freedom and fewer prying eyes. I’m sure it has changed since then, but at the time, it was the right place for me to be in,” William recounts. “And I was able to create a routine for myself. I would go jogging, kayaking, biking, and things like that. I enrolled in high school to finish up my degree, and I was working to earn some cash on the side. But the main part of it was that I was able to read a lot more about Judaism. And that’s when I discovered the concept of Shabbos. I contrasted that with my version of Fridays as I was growing up. And I thought to myself: Maybe sitting down, resting, disconnecting from the world, singing, dancing, and eating is a better option for me than just going out in the heat of the sun or the cold of the winter, chanting, ‘Death to this! Death to that!’ and burning flags and then going home.”

While in Kish, Reza met an Iranian woman online. The two instantly hit it off and began chatting frequently. They would discuss their shared disdain for Islam and how they both wanted to escape from the religion. The girl had been living in India at the time since her father was the Iranian diplomat for the country. It was also around then that Reza decided to move back to Tehran to go to college. And when the woman also moved to the Iranian capital, the two met in person and developed a strong liking for one another.

“It seemed like a good match for the both of us to get together. Our parents would be happy because we would both pretend to be Muslim,” he explains. “I could do whatever I want to do, and she could do whatever she wants to do. In my case, I would be pursuing more of my Jewish interests, living more Jewishly. And for her, it would be being more secular, not having to wear the hijab, not having to adhere to those rules… We hit it off and got married. Everyone was happy. My father thought that that was the moment that his son was reincarnated back to his original Muslim self, and he was happy. Her father was happy because my father was injured in the war, so that’s a very high level of esteem that they would

gain from this marriage. It was a win-win in their eyes.”

In the months after the two married, they lived exactly as they had planned. At their home, she acted secular and he acted Jewish. Reza began experimenting with Jewish practices, adopting a kosher-style diet, lighting Shabbos candles, and making kiddush Friday night. He tried his best to live “Jewishly,” despite not knowing at all what he was doing.

But the couple’s secrets became progressively harder to hide. Every time a family member, friend, or guest would come over, the two would have to frantically hide all evidence of their alternate lifestyles. And eventually, living in secret became such a stress that the marriage started falling apart. To top it off, the girl had a miscarriage. And for her, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She wanted to end the marriage immediately.

“One day, we were at her mother’s house, and we got into a fight. This fight became a little bit louder than the usual fights, and her mother intervened. She didn’t know anything about the challenges we were going through,” William recalls. “And I never expected my ex to reveal anything because I thought it was an agreed-upon matter that my abandoning of Islam and pretending to be Jewish has to be kept a secret. But in the heat of the moment, my ex-wife blurted out, ‘He’s not even Muslim!’ And that’s when everything erupted into flames.”

It was a few hours past midnight. And immediately after hearing the girl’s accusation, her sister had an epiphany. Everything suddenly made sense. Her sister recalled that time she spotted a menorah and other Jewish items in the couple’s home. Little behaviors, small pieces of the puzzle all came together in that moment, and it was clear to all that William was no true Muslim.

“We’re gonna put you behind bars! We’ll hang you, inshallah!” the girl’s sister screamed at him.

His wife’s mother ran to the phone and called his parents.

“You have to wait here until your parents arrive. We need to investigate this,” they told him. They then locked the doors.

A storm of confusing feelings seized

the man. On the one hand, he felt proud that they were acknowledging his semi-Jewish identity (he obviously wasn’t actually Jewish at the time, but he wanted to be). But on the other hand, he realized that there was no way this could end well for him. Thus, immediately when the door opened and in entered his parents, Reza made the split-second decision to run out the door. He said nothing to his parents; he just bolted out of the entrance as it was opening. He ran and ran and didn’t stop running until he got to his car. Reza drove away, went to his apartment, packed up his things, and boarded the bus to Armenia. He turned his cell phone off, and around twelve

hours later, he arrived at his destination. He never saw his family again.

* * *

From Armenia, Reza made his way to Georgia, where he obtained a U.S. visa. And on November 9, 2016, he landed in New York City. There, the man had one goal: to become a Jew. In September 2019, he completed his Orthodox conversion with the Rabbinical Council of America, becoming known as William.

Shortly after converting to Judaism, William began dating. In 2020, during the pandemic, he married his wife, with whom he has a daughter.

“One of the most powerful elements of my story that I’m very proud of is hav-

ing a daughter outside of Iran,” William shares. “She is not restricted by the religion or the government. She cannot be told how to wear, what to wear, where to go, and where not to go. She has the freedom to do whatever she wants. Most importantly to me is that she’s Jewish.”

One of William’s life missions is to show the world how evil Iran and Islamic extremism are. In his first few years in the States, however, he couldn’t handle the backlash he was facing, and he thus put his mission to the side for some time. But when the October 7 massacre happened, William knew he could stay silent no longer. He realized it was his duty to expose the evils he witnessed growing up in Iran

– and he has been doing so ever since. * * *

When William became Jewish, he picked the Hebrew name, “Liam Avraham ben Avraham.”

“I picked the name Liam Avraham because I find many similarities between what I did and what Avraham did,” William Mehrvarz says. “I’m nowhere near where he is, but I [wonder] how he felt when he left his land, when he left his father, when he left his home and everything he knew. Was he scared? How did he have that much emunah, that much trust in the process, to just abandon everything to become the great person who founded our nation?”

This article is based on a podcast, “Inspiration For the Nation,” hosted by Yaakov Langer. To catch more of this conversation, you can watch it on LivingLchaim. com or YouTube.com/LivingLchaim or listen wherever you listen to podcasts (just search for “Inspiration For The Nation”) or call our free hotline: 605-477-2100.

Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

My husband and I have been married for 38 years, b”H. We are very politically conservative. Our 30-year-old daughter who has been dating for 7 years has been out of the house for a while now. She came home over chag with a young man who is a staunch vocal liberal who she’s been dating. Our daughter does not seem to mind this, however, we REALLY don’t like him. This is not because of his political leanings; it’s because he seems utterly brash, unintelligent, and lazy minded.

We told our daughter after yom tov what we think and how we don’t think it’s a match and she say it’s probably just because of him “not being conservative” to our liking. How do we properly relay the message so she understands this is not about politics, it’s about his terrible temperament and middos?

Thank you, Brenda & Sam*

The Panel

Dear Readers,

We want to offer YOU an opportunity to be part of the discussion! Please email us at MichelleMondShadchan@gmail.com, subject line “reader’s response,” if you would like to participate in the new “A Reader’s Response” columnist spot. We will send you a question and publish your answer in an upcoming Navidaters edition. Looking forward!

Michelle, the “Shadchan”

The Rebbetzin

Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, M.S.

Brenda and Sam, you are in a tight spot. The art of influencing adult children is a fine art that takes practice and skill. At the same time, knowing your boundaries and limitations is essential. Certainly, you know that decisions are ultimately those of the child, but careful communication must be exercised in order to be heard. That is your goal: for your concerns about his middos, work ethic, and interests to be heard. (His intelligence is less important if he is good and kind.)

Saying what you think is not going to guarantee that you will be heard. And it is your daughter’s choice, not yours. Asking choice questions using proper context to get her to reflect on his comments may be helpful. However, your history of communication with your daughter may preclude your being heard. She may feel attacked, legitimately or not, and therefore resist taking in what you are asking her to reflect on. She may be insecure and feel good about herself because he is giving her attention and interest. You may have a stormy history behind you.

I would suggest that you seek professional help to learn how to master open-ended discussions about reading other people, to handle your role, and to be heard in all situations, from potential spouse material to other things. Keep in mind that your daughter brought him home over yom tov to meet your family. She does want to hear your

impressions and probably wants your approval of this fellow. Learn the skills to take things in, choose your times to respond, and keep things open without being confrontational. A professional can help.

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

Thank you so much for writing in with such an important question. I would guess that there have been years of stilted communication and/or a complex relationship with your daughter up until now that has come to a pinnacle to this point. The good news is that she brought him home, which clearly means there is something she would like you to see.

I believe the most effective way for you to get through to her, for now, is to heal your current relationship with her outside this nasty guy she’s dating. Try for the next couple months to focus on loving her, spoiling her, and talking to her positively. Work on yourselves (utilizing a therapist or professional if needed) to heal your relationship with her. Talk nicely, compliment, and make it clear to her how proud you are of her many good qualities and accomplishments. Only with this type of relationship as a backbone can you come to her with genuine concern about the man she is dating and expect to be heard. When you broach the topic once your relationship is better, make it mainly about how he treats her and how she

feels with him. Coming from a place of love and concern for her rather than your disdain for him will help you get the message out. Wishing you much hatzlacha!

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey Galler

Hmm. You make it very clear that you do not like the young man. But nowhere do you mention if he and your daughter love each other. Will they be good for each other? Will they take care of each other? Will they bring out the best in each other?

Here’s a news bulletin: This relationship is not about you. It is about your adult daughter and her boyfriend. There are many examples of famous

Saying what you think is not going to guarantee that you will be heard.

couples, with very different political beliefs, who have had very happy marriages. Republican activist Mary Matalin and Democratic strategist James Carville have been happily married for three decades. Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway was happily married to famous Trump-hater George Conway for 22 years. (Full disclosure – they did actually get divorced recently.)

In William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, there is a variation of the famous quote: “Politics makes for strange bedfellows.”

The point is that there is more to life than one’s political beliefs. We would all benefit from accepting that folks who are positioned very differently on our political spectrum can, nevertheless, be equally sincere, genuine, and intelligent.

If you continue to express your dis -

approval and disparage the young man, you will succeed in creating a son-inlaw who hates you and you will not be able to enjoy your grandchildren. Your only role here is to advise your daughter to date this boyfriend long enough in order to be sure that the young man is right for her.

And make sure that you do not wear your MAGA hats at their engagement party.

Pulling It All Together

The Navidaters

Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists

Dear Brenda and Sam,

Thank you for writing. We picture welcoming a warm, productive, kind and bright son- or daughter-in-law into our families. That’s the hope, the fantasy. And for some people, it seems to work out, and for others, it just isn’t so. I wanted to lay that out there first and foremost, because it’s the truth. And it’s a very bitter pill to swallow. I am sorry you find yourselves in this situation.

Just some food for thought... Your description of his character paints a pretty awful picture, and you may be right about that. These situations are always incredibly delicate and must be handled wisely and strategically. The bottom line is that you cannot stop her from marrying him, unless you are prepared ultimately to lose your relationship with your daughter. I would humbly suggest revisiting this conversation with a much softer tone in an attempt to come alongside her and get to know what she likes about him. If you were harsh or abrasive with your

opinions, you need to own that and take accountability or the conversation will be for naught. If she is willing to have this conversation with you, validate, validate, validate. For example, “I can see why you have feelings for him.” Ask her what she thinks about the behavior you witnessed over chag. Speaking poorly of him will likely drive her right into his arms (even more.)

If he does indeed have a terrible temperament and bad middos, I would invite your daughter to a therapy session together. You may need a safe, unbiased space to navigate this conversation. When I hear “terrible temperament and bad middos,” my mind immediately turns to abuse. I have seen way too many controlling, difficult, toxic, abusive relationships in my office, and I have to say that if you, as a parent, see this behavior, it is always worth asking your adult child to a therapy session.

Unfortunately, many people need

A Reader’s Response

The High School Teacher

Gitty Schonfeld

Iwill need to clarify some things first. You say you find him brash and unintelligent. Is it only in his political views? Is he unable to hold the conversation with your daughter? Is he brash in the way he answers your questions and when he talks to you? When talking to your daughter, ask her how he speaks to her privately. What is his tone of voice? What is his attitude towards other topics? Most people don’t like to be attacked and questioned about their decisions. I would try to get her to come to her own conclusions through questioning rather than forcing your opinion on your daughter with lectures.

Here’s a news bulletin: This relationship is not about you.

If the answers to the questions are, yes, he is brash and insensitive, then it is a question of middos. However, if it’s only in his political views when you’re having political discussions that the brashness and the unintelligence comes out, then I would recommend you just avoid those topics with him. In general, it is better to avoid political topics when families get together. Just because people share a different political view does not mean they cannot get along socially and peacefully.

to make this mistake. Is it part of their neshama’s journey? I’ve begun to think that for many people it just is. I hope not so for your daughter. If he is as you say, you must understand that your daughter is not seeing the red flags and we need to ask ourselves why. This is something she needs to explore. Where is the red flag blindness coming from? Is she used to this kind of behavior? Has she seen it before? Does she suffer from poor self-esteem? Is she people-pleasing? Is she tired of dating? This is her work and her choice to explore.

Revisit the conversation in the new way I shared above and invite her to a session with a qualified therapist. Hopefully she sees what you see and has strength to walk away, but if not, your work will be figuring out the kind of relationship you want with your daughter and if you will respect her choice and keep her close or not respect her choice and lose her or have at best a very strained relationship. I truly wish

the best for you and your daughter.

Sincerely,

Jennifer

P.S. To anyone dating someone with a bad temperament and bad middos: These things do not get better. A person is at his/her best during the dating phase of a relationship. In other words, it will only get worse. “But he/she also this good part. You don’t understand.” Abuse is the confusion. A healthy relationship is not confusing and there is no Jekyll and Hyde situation going on.

What is the telltale sign of an abusive or unhealthy person? Being mentally inflexible. This person doesn’t listen to your feelings, doesn’t validate you, shuts down, punishes you in all sorts of ways. Some of us do not realize this is happening. You should feel respected and desired in your relationship. Your stomach shouldn’t turn. There must be chemistry and respect for a relationship to work of course, but look for that mental flexibility and, above all else, kindness. Kindness to everyone.

Health & F tness It Starts With You How Parents Can Help Their Kids Succeed In School

By Chana Kaiman, LCSW-RPT

If you could imagine that there would be one change that would make all the difference to increase the chances of school success for your children, what do you think it would be?

For decades, researchers have isolated one key success factor that supersedes all others. It was not socioeconomic status or student background or the kind of school a student attended. What took the lead was parental involvement.

When parents, despite their busy lives, prioritize their children’s education and stay tuned in, it makes all the difference. Research shows that students whose parents stay involved in school have better attendance and behavior, get better grades, develop better social skills, and adapt better to school.

This is not a new concept for yeshiva parents. In fact, we find parental obligation in chinuch right in the Shema. “And you shall teach them (meaning the words and laws of the Torah) to your children until they know them thoroughly,” and “Velimadtem osem es beneichem ledabeir bam, and you shall teach them to your children, to speak about them.” Should the father be unable to teach his son for whatever reason, he is obligated to hire someone to teach him (Rambam, Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:3).

The concept of school is secondary to the obligation of the parent’s primary responsibility to teach their children. Group learning is credited to Rav Yehoshua ben Gamla around the time of the second Bais Hamikdash. He noticed that fatherless children had no instruction and Torah for them would be forever forgotten. He took the initiative, and despite danger and resistance, he courageously developed a sprawling educational network, trailblazing what we now know as mandatory universal Jewish education (Baba Basra 21a).

Still, a parent’s influence and involvement in the child’s education is a strong prerequisite for a child’s ultimate achieve -

ment as a student. Far beyond covering the tuition bill and arranging for extra-curricular activities after school, deliberate involvement is the seemingly insignificant details in the child’s life is constant and is all-encompassing.

Parental involvement is the active, ongoing participation of a parent or primary caregiver in the education of a child. Below are some examples of parental involvement:

• Reading with children

• Helping with homework

• Discussing school events

• Attending school functions, including parent-teacher meetings

• Volunteering in classrooms

You can’t just be present without deep-diving into the children’s world and meeting them right where they are at.

Both parental involvement and parental engagement in school support student success.

Why is It Important to Involve Parents in School?

It Benefits Students: Children whose families are engaged in their education

are more likely to earn higher grades and score higher on tests; graduate from high school and college; develop self-confidence and motivation in the classroom; and have better social skills and classroom behavior.

It Positively Influences Children’s Behavior: We now know from decades of research with crystal clarity: parental involvement in education improves student attendance, social skills and behavior. It also helps children adapt better to school.

It Benefits Teachers: Because it improves classroom culture and conditions, parent involvement also benefits teachers. Knowing more about a student helps teachers prepare better and knowing that they have parents’ support ensures that teachers feel equipped to take academic risks and push for students to learn more. If there is a simcha going on, if someone is, lo aleinu, sick in the family, if you are welcoming a new child…let the teacher know. It will help the teacher, child, and you.

How Can Parents Get Involved In Their Child’s Education?

1. Make learning a priority in your home, establishing routines and schedules

that enable children to complete homework, read independently, get enough sleep and have opportunities to get help from you. Talk about what’s going on in school.

2. Read to and with your children: Even 10–20 minutes daily makes a difference. And parents can go further by ensuring that they read more each day as well, either as a family or private reading time that sets a good example.

3. Ask teachers how they would like to communicate. Many are comfortable with text messages or phone calls, and all teachers want parents to stay up to date, especially if problems arise.

4. Attend school events, including parent-teacher conferences, back-to-school nights and others – even if your child is not involved in extracurricular activities.

5. Use your commute to connect with your kids; ask them to read to you while you drive and encourage conversations about school.

6. Eat meals together: It’s the perfect opportunity to find out more about what’s going on in school.

7. Prioritize communication with teachers, especially if demanding work schedules. Find out what resources are available to help get parents involved.

Experts urge parents to be present at school as much as possible and to show interest in children’s schoolwork.

The Danger of “Overinvolvement”

On the flipside, being overinvolved does more harm than good. Teachers say that “helicopter parents’” involvement — sometimes called “hovering” — limits the growth of children.

“Sometimes it’s harder to parent your kids to become independent than it is to helicopter — it can be exhausting, and it can be time-consuming,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, letting kids make mistakes and being there to support (and clean up after) them, can be more work than doing everything yourself. “Your kid will leave the house with their shoes on the wrong feet, and you’ll think, The teacher’s going to see this; what will they think? ” said Dr. Saltz. But the teacher has seen it all, and the kid will realize their feet hurt and figure out that they need to switch their shoes. “Little kids need little tasks,” said Dr. Saltz — like putting on shoes, brushing their own teeth.

Many parents automatically intervene with simple tasks, but it sets a precedent that can be hard to reverse later on in their development. It takes a lot of patience and endurance to teach kids independence. It’s not a set of tasks but an entire orientation that has to be maintained over the course of years. Repetition, correction, being available to help if something goes wrong — this is what teaching kids independence requires of us.

The Way You Think and Act Matters

Most parents want their children to receive the best possible education. They may demonstrate that to their children by their involvement in the process. They may talk to their children about their day at school, help them with their homework, participate in school activities, and encourage and motivate them to excel. These efforts will pay off in their students’ better attitudes toward school, increased efforts to achieve, and better behavior in and out of school.

Parents who have a negative attitude toward school may demonstrate that by their lack of interest in their child’s activities at school or their academic progress. They will probably not see the importance of participating in parent-teacher conferences or school activities. They will likely show little interest in their children’s activities in or out of school. Generally, these parents will find that their children show the same lack of interest or even disruptive behavior in the home. That is the power of the mirror effect that parents’ attitudes have on children. “A negative attitude of the parents regarding education and schooling can prevent their children from getting education” (Samal, 2013).

In today’s world, children have so many pressures to deal with that it is more important than ever for parents and teachers to do as much as possible to build and strengthen the self-esteem of our children. One powerful way to make that happen is by showing them that we are interested in their activities. Of course, there are various degrees of parental involvement necessary

for the child’s best interest depending on the development and specific needs of each individual child.

Children will appreciate school so much more if they know that they “own” their education and it is their roadmap to reach their goals in life rather than the popular mnemonic, “Seven Chaotic Hours of Our Lives.” It is not too early to discuss their lifetime goals and help them to work out a plan for reaching those goals, they will have no way of understanding how to get there. They need a GPS to follow.

Here is how some parents push back:

“I just don’t have the energy at the end of the work day to crack the books with my kid. Isn’t that what we pay teachers to do?”

the teachers to see how much homework to expect for your child.

Homework, even if routine, should not be viewed as optional any more than is an assignment or project at your place of work.

2. Be a cheerleader.

For a child to feel like they count, they are competent and are capable, they must first feel good about themselves. Encourage your child by praising them for their efforts. Express interest in their schoolwork.

3. Make no excuses.

Avoid giving your child a reason for making excuses. Even if you think your child will feel better if you do so, never say this sort of thing: “Some people just don’t have a head for math.” Your child may

A parent’s influence and involvement in the child’s education is a strong prerequisite for a child’s ultimate achievement as a student.

“Every child can’t be an achiever, right?”

“My kid just isn’t interested in doing homework. I’ve just given up. How do I help him turn things around in school this year?”

These are natural questions for parents to ask.

The good news is that children are curious about the world around them. They born to learn.

Here are some tips that parents can use to help their children be successful in school.

1. Get a plan and stick to it.

Set a specific “quiet time” every day for homework or general reading. Involve your child in setting the rules for this. Ask your child to come up with three rules. For example:

• Collect all needed materials before starting.

• No distractions during quiet time.

• Complete all work before stopping. Write the rules on paper and post them in your house. Children are more likely to follow rules that they helped create.

Some elementary school students have 20-30 minutes a day set aside for this “quiet time.” Junior and senior high school students may need at least 30-45 minutes for daily study time. Some schools expect students to spend at least 15 minutes per subject each day on homework. Check with

she will be about learning. Make sure your child sees you reading. Avoid using devices around your kids.

8. Don’t do it for them. Your child needs to learn to do their best even if it means poor or incomplete work. While you should be actively involved with being sure your child does her homework, don’t carry the whole load. Don’t do the long division, write the essay, or do the science project for your child. If you are getting overly involved in homework because of a concern that it is too difficult for your child, call or visit the child’s teacher and share your concern.

9. Encourage independent growth.

Eventually, a child must take charge of her own learning. This means that it is important for you to “let go” when your child pursues hobbies and starts reading for her own enjoyment. Doing a family activity, such as DIY activities around the house such as painting, fixing, or organizing using color coding, labeling and size order, can turn a chore into an adventure.

think that you think they are not able to handle the work. Success in a future job will require your child do the best they can. You will not help your child by encouraging them to make excuses whenever it is convenient. Validation could sound something like, “It seems complicated, but you can do hard things.”

4. Light a fire.

Be playful! It can be contagious. Pair homework with something fun. Homework does not have to be a boring chore. At home, you have the flexibility to make learning fun. Children who do well enjoy learning.

5. Make learning “real.”

The best learning is when it is applied to life. When you are working on your car, show your child what is under the hood. Ask for “help” when you balance the checkbook or write “thank you” notes and letters together. Have your child jot down notes, reminders and shopping lists.

6. Fight the frustration.

Listen carefully when your child talks about having difficulty with his homework. Encourage he/she to break down problems into small steps.

7. Set the right mood.

The example you set will make more of an impression than your words. The more interested you are in their activities, school-related or not, the more your child sees YOU learning, the more excited he/

10. Collaborate! School and home are connected and reciprocal. Get to know your child’s teachers and what they expect. Compare your goals for your child to those of the teachers. Make sure that your child knows of your interest in his school. This will send the message that what he is doing is important. Talk with your child and find out what his concerns are. If you learn that your child feels ignored or “picked on” in the classroom, talk with the appropriate school official. If you can’t find the time to visit in person, call the teachers or attach notes to homework your child is taking back to school.

Important Note: If the steps described here don’t help your child, see if he suffers from a physical or behavior problem or learning disability. Talk with a medical doctor, child therapist or other qualified professional for expert advice.

Chana Kaiman, LCSW-RPT is a psychotherapist, lecturer, author and clinical supervisor whose specialty is in working with children, adolescents and families. She integrates IFS Trauma Therapy and Filial Family Therapy as a technique to build resilience, competence and empathy both from an experiential and theoretical point of view. Chana directs Empowerment Insight - Na’aleh, a group practice with sites in Long Island and Prospect Heights/Crown Heights. She can be reached at 740-673-0440 or chanakaiman@gmail.com.

It’s exciting! It’s stressful! It’s momentous! It’s potty training!

This is a major milestone in a young child’s life. It’s one of the ways they transition out of babyhood and into childhood. Learning how to control their bodies and be like the “big people” is a step towards independence.

Many parents view this as a form of freedom. Changing soiled diapers isn’t the most beloved parental task, and it’s rather exhilarating to think of a child transitioning out of this phase. With all this excitement, parents are often unprepared for the difficulties during the early months after potty training. For example, a newly trained child needs to have easy access to a restroom wherever they go.

The Basics

While there are many methods to potty training, there are a few basic criteria that apply to all of them.

We tried for many days to train one of my children. He was the right age and was kind of getting the idea, but he still had frequent accidents. We made the difficult decision to put off the training and put back on the diaper. We tried again just two months later, and he trained immediately with minimal accidents.

Parenting Pearls Toilet Training Tips

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

Children need to be ready for this big step. Unfortunately, parents often begin training when the adults are ready, but if the child is not at that developmental stage, then it’s going to be frustrating and less likely to work. I know there is a major pressure to have little ones trained prior to beginning school. This rule is understandable but can cause conflict for parents who have a late potty learner. There is no single solution, and parents are advised to speak with their child’s morah weeks before the school year begins.

Children learn to use the toilet during the day before they’re trained at night. It can take a number of weeks – or even months – for children to stay dry at night and make it to the toilet as soon as they wake up. They also learn to urinate in the toilet before bowel movements, requiring days or weeks longer to accomplish this next step.

Pick which words you will use to describe what they’re doing (for example “pee,” “poo,” etc.). Be consistent and use the same phrasing each time. Choose something that won’t embarrass you when your child uses it in public. It should also be something others (such as teachers) will understand.

There are both stand-alone potties

and also little seats that can be placed on the adult toilet seat. There is no inherent advantage of starting with one or the other. Some children do have their preference, and it’s best to use what makes your child comfortable.

The adult toilet seat can be very large and scary for little kids. There is a real concern of partially falling in, and it’s hard to relax and use the restroom when you feel like you’re holding on to save your life. For the first year or two, little ones will appreciate having a small seat that can be secured to the adult version. Even somewhat older children will enjoy the extra feeling of security that comes with a smaller sized seat.

Even boys start off sitting on the toilet. It is much easier and requires too much coordination for new potty learners to switch each time between standing and sitting. Allow your son plenty of time to become comfortable using the toilet in a sitting position before introducing the concept of standing. It’s my personal experience that boys quickly learn this skill when they see others standing, and I’ve never had to teach it to them.

Accidents happen. This applies both in life and in potty training. No matter how well a child has been trained, they

will have accidents. Perhaps they were distracted, feeling ill, in a new environment, or they simply waited too long. It’s normal for occasional accidents to occur even months later. Major life adjustments or stresses can cause a temporary increase in accidents. Reach out to your child’s healthcare provider if the accidents become frequent. They will want to rule out (or address) any medical or emotional causes.

There is no shaming in potty training, and this is meant to be a pleasant experience for your child. They’re called “accidents” for a reason, and they’re inevitable. Adults should never criticize or embarrass a child who has wet/soiled themself. It can be frustrating for the adults, especially if they ruined a nice outfit, but it’s important to not pass that on to the child. Children can be asked to help clean the mess and be given a loving reminder that you know they’ll make it to the potty next time.

Bring extra clothes wherever you go. There is a reason preschool morahs ask for a change of clothing, and parents should keep a set in the car or stroller. This should include underwear, baby wipes, socks, a waterproof bag (for holding wet items), and a full set of clothing.

While not mandatory, it is very helpful to bring a small or travel potty on trips. Children are more likely to use a small toilet they’re comfortable with than to try precariously perching themselves on an adult-sized public toilet. Also, kids love to touch everything around them – including public toilets –and then they inevitably find a reason to put their hands in their mouth. A travel potty of their own will help prevent this.

Little ones will need a large supply of underpants while they’re learning this new skill. Children like garments that are cute and colorful and this can be very motivating for them, but the first pairs get dirty fast and should not be expensive. I’ve also noticed a tendency for early learners to want a new pair of underwear each time they use the bathroom. They’re used to a fresh diaper each time, and they start off assuming the same about underwear.

Many companies make “training” underwear. These garments look and feel like traditional underwear, but they have an added absorbent layer to decrease the mess – some better than others. Some parents may find these to be helpful and others will find them unnecessary. They can be used routinely or only for “spe -

cial occasions,” such as when accidents would be exceptionally problematic (e.g. shul, family simcha or long trips).

Personally, I’m not a big fan of using diapers for potty training, even the ones that pull on and off like underwear. Diapers are diapers, and toddlers know it.

There are many different methods to help a child learn to use the potty. Choose the method you think will best suit your child’s needs. If one method doesn’t work then try a different way or put off the training until the child is a little older.

Children need to be ready for this big step.

They can be helpful for overnight use or long trips when it’s likely there won’t be appropriate bathroom facilities.

Methods

Potty training is a full-time job, and parents need to dedicate a few days towards the goal. Choose a time period when both parent and child can be home, relatively relaxed and focused on training.

The child’s clothing should be easy for the child to remove by themselves. Choose clothing that you don’t mind getting wet – or worse. Have plenty of underwear and spare clothing on hand.

Most methods involve frequent reminders to use the potty and a reward system for successful usage. In addition to the agreed upon treat, children enjoy when their parents and siblings clap and cheer for them. Nothing motivates a child like parental attention and pride. I’ve also found that many children enjoy hearing their adults call grandparents and other relatives to proudly proclaim, “Guess who used the potty for the first time?”

With most of my children I gave them a small treat to enjoy and share with their siblings each time they used the potty. Other families give the child a toy at the end of potty training, once they’ve

transitioned into full-time toilet use. Even if they wet the floor, I considered it as “using the potty” as long as the child was sitting on the potty at some point. For example, if the child had a small accident on the floor but made it to the potty for the end (even if I carried them there), then I gave them their treat. This is especially important with boys who can sit on the toilet but still “miss” and go over the potty seat.

Some children will surprise their parents and train themselves. Maybe they saw an older child use the bathroom or they were randomly inspired, but one day they just decide to use the toilet and they’re trained. Thank Hashem, hug your child, and celebrate.

This milestone can be stressful and messy, but hopefully parents can focus on their child’s growth throughout the process. Both child and parent have much to be proud of when a little one declares, “I made in the potty!”

Sara Rayvych, MSEd, has her master’s in general and special education. She has been homeschooling for over 10 years in Far Rockaway. She can be contacted at RayvychHomeschool@gmail.com.

School of Thought

By Etti Siegel

Q:Dear Etti,

It was fun and chaotic, exhilarating and crazy, all at the same time. But now school is starting again, and I worry about bringing my family back to a normal schedule and back to reality without the screaming and tantrums that usually accompany these situations.

Any tips?

-Juggling Mom

A:Dear Juggling Mom, Your letter really resonates! Yom tov was a great vacation from school for some children, and for some children, it was difficult to be off schedule. This past month offered many families a chance to relax, bond, and visit relatives, but for some children it meant being displaced as family visited and took over their home and their parents’ attention. During these times, routines shift, house rules might become more relaxed or non-existent, and unstructured play and mess often takes over. After a period of excitement or boredom, kids may struggle to readjust to their normal routines, particularly those with developmental, behavioral, or emotional challenges. While many children are adaptable, transitions can still be tough. For some children it could take a week or two until they are fully adjusted to being back on schedule.

Here are some tips to ease your child back into their schedules:

1. Discuss Expectations, Address Concerns They Have, and Provide Reassurance

Talk to your child about what to expect when returning to school or daycare. Highlight the fun aspects, like seeing friends and teachers, and clarify drop-off and pick-up plans. Focus on the positives by reminding them of what they like. Ask them to talk through their day; see how much they remember.

If your child has already returned to school when you read this article, encourage your child to share any worries they are feeling. Remind them that feeling nervous is normal and reassure them that they’ll soon feel comfortable again. Offer support and brainstorm solutions together. Sometimes a simple reminder from a loving parent gives them the fortitude to get through the readjustment with less angst.

While younger children often face understanding teachers who know transitions can be challenging, older children are entering a tough situation. School starts in earnest after Sukkos, with tests and reports assigned within the first few days back and a heavy schedule of learning.

Siegel

Encourage them to trust their teachers, who know best in this situation, and be their cheerleaders. It might be hard for the first two weeks or so, but then familiarity kicks in, it becomes the schedule they are used to, and they will be fine. Your children need you to encourage them and tell them they can do it, not to add to their negativity and make the situation worse than it really is. If your child has an actual issue, it may be helpful to communicate your child’s needs to school staff.

2. Create a Checklist and Establish a Routine If you haven’t already, make a checklist of tasks you and your child need to complete, like getting clothes and supplies ready. Consider a separate list for what goes in his/her backpack.

Help your child get back into a sleep schedule by gradually adjusting bedtimes and wake-up times before school starts. The American Academy of Pediatrics offers guidance on appropriate sleep times for children. Getting back to a normal bedtime is a huge adjustment after all the late nights, and this makes getting up more difficult as well. Promote a sense of positivity and try to restrain yourself as the nighttime battles and morning battles begin. It takes two to have a fight, and you don’t want to send your child off in a bad mood or have him/her to go to bed crying if you can help it. Stating expectations about bedtime is more effective when stated at dinner with times and then offering constant reminders. Morning go smoother when expectations are lovingly spelled out the night before (and remind them of the checklists!).

The clock is about to change so take this time to gradually adjust bedtime so the change is not so severe.

3. Schedule Meals and Limit Screen Time

Vacations are often about meals off schedule and a lot of munching throughout the day. Balanced meals and snacks at regular intervals help get children better regulated to a schedule. The CDC recommends three meals and two snacks daily, emphasizing fruits and vegetables.

Now is a great time to stop allowing screen time on school days. Encourage physical activity! Engage in mental activities like reading and other games, like board games, dolls and make believe, or building games, and aim for at least an hour of physical exercise each day. Teachers are reporting serious differences, all negative, in children who

have more screen time compared to children who don’t, and now is the time to change your family’s habits for healthier ones. Research backs less screen time (on any screens, phones included!).

4. Prepare the Night Before – Everything and Anything You Can

This might be repetitive, but anyone getting kids off in the morning knows it cannot be stated enough! Organize supplies and clothes the night before to simplify mornings. Have your child pick their snacks in the evening as well. Save as little as possible for the morning! Children who do not wear uniforms should be laying complete outfits out the night before as well. There should be no option of changing in the morning. (Remind them of this fact the night before.) Putting shoes near the chosen outfit means less time searching in the morning. A checklist of what clothing needs to be laid out can be made by your child and hung in his/her room.

5. Have Food and Downtime Ready

Ensure your child has time to unwind as they adjust back to a structured environment. It is a long day of school. Your child will come home “starving” and needs supper or a snack right away. Depending on your child, you might want to give them playtime before insisting on homework, or your child might want to get the homework out of the way. This might be a good time to include your child in the decision, making it clear that if it does not work you will have to make the final decision. Some families find that just discussing what has to be done for homework and then allowing for play makes everything run smoother.

Final Note: While some anxiety and dysregulation around returning to school and getting back into routine and a proper schedule is typical, if your child’s symptoms seem more severe, consider reaching out to their healthcare provider, counselor, or teacher for additional support. Headaches, stomachaches, nervousness, and separation anxiety are all considered normal for a short time. It is duration and severity that will help you decide if your child needs intervention.

Enjoy the back-to-schedule routines and grab the opportunity to adjust your schedule and implement better practices at this juncture.

-Etti

She will be answering

Health & F tness

Daily Habits That May Be Harming Your Gut Health

By Ariella Kaplan, BSc, ANutr

Gut health is a popular topic, and we often focus on the things that benefit it. However, it’s equally important to understand which daily habits may negatively impact your gut. The gut, a 30-foot-long digestive tract that stretches from your mouth to your colon, is home to trillions of beneficial bacteria, collectively known as the gut microbiota. These bacteria are influenced by various factors in our everyday routines, with significant consequences for our overall health.

Sleep

Sleep and gut health have a bidirectional relationship; just as poor gut health can lead to sleep disturbances, insufficient sleep can harm the gut. Lack of sleep raises cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, which can compromise gut lining integrity and increase intestinal permeability. This allows toxins to enter the bloodstream, resulting in inflammation and bloating.

Additionally, sleep deprivation impacts hunger hormones—ghrelin (the

hunger hormone) and leptin (the satiety hormone)—which often leads to poor food choices, such as consuming processed, sugary foods for quick energy. These foods can disrupt the gut microbiota by feeding pathogenic (bad) bacteria.

Melatonin, a hormone responsible for regulating sleep, also plays a role in gut motility. Low melatonin can impair digestion, causing conditions such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Staying up late can further disrupt digestion, especially if you’re eating close to bedtime, as the body should be focusing on resting, not digesting food. This can create a cycle of poor sleep and worsening gut health.

Artificial Sweeteners

Products labeled as “sugar-free” or “diet” often contain artificial sweeteners, synthetic sugar substitutes that research suggests may negatively affect gut bacteria. A study found that six common artificial sweeteners, along with ten sports supplements approved by the FDA, were toxic to the gut microbiota of mice. While

more research is needed in humans, these findings raise concerns.

Artificial sweeteners can be hidden in everyday items such as toothpaste, chewing gum, and sweets. These sweeteners may cause glucose intolerance and insulin resistance in some individuals, complicating conditions like type 2 diabetes. Moreover, regular consumption of artificial sweeteners can disrupt the balance of gut bacteria, leading to dysbiosis, which is associated with digestive disorders like IBS or IBD.

Artificial sweeteners are far sweeter than sugar, which can desensitize your taste receptors and drive a craving for sweeter, less nutritious foods. This can indirectly contribute to increased overall sugar consumption, further harming the gut.

High-Sugar Diet

A high-sugar diet is characterized by consistently consuming more than the recommended daily limit of 30 grams of sugar. This includes sugar from sources like honey, maple syrup, and high-fruc -

tose corn syrup. Diets high in refined sugar have been linked to increased inflammation and a higher risk of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.

Excess sugar consumption may weaken the gut lining, leading to increased permeability, which allows harmful substances to pass through the gut and into the bloodstream. High-sugar diets often lack fiber, fruits, and whole grains, all of which are essential for promoting gut bacterial diversity. Such diets are typically accompanied by high fat and salt intake, further disrupting gut balance.

Stress

You’ve probably experienced “butterflies” in your stomach during times of stress—this is the gut-brain axis at work. This connection between your brain and gut can cause digestive symptoms such as bloating, gas, or even exacerbate conditions like IBS.

The stress hormone cortisol disrupts gut function. From an evolutionary perspective, the body’s stress response diverts blood away from the digestive

system to prepare for a “fight or flight” situation. When stress becomes chronic, it can impair digestion long-term, leading to gastrointestinal discomfort or other gut-related issues.

Over-Exercising and HIIT

Excessive exercise, particularly high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or frequent running, may negatively affect your gut. When you exercise too intensely, the body interprets this as stress, releasing cortisol and adrenaline, which divert blood from the digestive system to your muscles. After a hard workout, digestion can remain compromised, resulting in gut discomfort.

Moderate exercise, on the other hand, is gut-friendly. Aiming for 30 to 60 minutes of exercise, 4 to 6 days a week, allows the body to benefit from physical activity without overloading it. Incorporating rest days is crucial for recovery. Low-intensity activities like weightlifting or brisk walking can also improve mood and digestion without straining the gut.

Mouthwash

Since the digestive tract starts in

the mouth, oral health plays a key role in maintaining gut health. Your mouth is home to its own microbiota, known as the oral microbiome. Many common mouthwashes are antibacterial, meaning they can kill both harmful and beneficial bacteria in the mouth.

Disrupting the oral microbiota can have systemic effects, as bacteria in the

to reduce the strain on your gut and improve sleep quality.

2. Long-term use of artificial sweeteners may disrupt your gut microbiota and increase sugar cravings.

3. A high-sugar diet can promote the growth of pathogenic bacteria, contributing to gut imbalance.

4. Chronic stress impairs digestion

Avoid eating 2-3 hours before bed to reduce the strain on your gut and improve sleep quality.

mouth are linked to overall health. Poor oral health has been associated with conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Maintaining a healthy balance of oral bacteria supports better digestion and overall gut health.

Key Takeaways

1. Avoid eating 2-3 hours before bed

through the gut-brain axis, leading to digestive issues.

5. Excessive exercise reduces blood flow to the gut, which can result in digestive discomfort.

6. Supporting your oral microbiome is essential for gut health.

Despite the demands of daily life, prioritizing sleep can benefit many as -

pects of health, including gut function. Managing stress through techniques like mindfulness, yoga, or meditation is equally important, as long-term stress can significantly impact gut health. Eating a varied diet rich in fiber, prebiotics, and probiotics will promote gut bacterial diversity. Limiting sugar and artificial sweeteners by opting for whole foods and water instead of sugary drinks can further protect your gut health.

Ariella Kaplan is a Registered Associate Nutritionist with a private practice at FIT, a women’s gym in Cedarhurst. She graduated top of her class from her university in London, where she wrote a thesis on vitamin D deficiency and autoimmune diseases. Ariella works with clients in-person and virtually, helping men, women, and teens achieve their health goals. Specializing in gut health and nutrition education, she has also spoken at local high schools to educate students. To schedule a free consultation, visit thebritishnutritionist.com or follow her on Instagram @thebritishnutritionist.

An Unexpected Encounter

He was a beautiful Yid!

Dressed in impeccable chassidishe garb, sky-blue eyes twinkling with recognition, he studied me from afar and then cautiously approached me. Gently caressing his long, blonde beard he asked softly, “Antshuldiks. Ir zent Country Yossi ?” (Pardon me, are you Country Yossi?)

Although I was standing on a street corner in the very heart of Boro Park, my home turf, I must admit, I am always amazed when somebody recognizes me. After all, radio personalities are not usually known for their good looks.

Now, Nachum Segal is another story altogether. He’s handsome, distinguished looking and 6-foot-7! No matter where you put him, he sticks out! I, on the other hand, can hide behind a fire hydrant. They always said I had the perfect face for radio, but even after 40 years on the air I am still surprised when people recognize me.

Case in point:

Some years back, my wife, daughter and I were just entering Bnei Brak in Israel when from high up in a third floor window two teenage yeshiva bochurim suddenly started pointing at us and shouting, “Hey, look, it’s Country Yossi!”

Now, I wasn’t wearing my big, black cowboy hat or riding on my trusty horse “Tzimmis,” but within 60 seconds, six boys dashed out of the building and surrounded us with their cell phone cameras clicking away. They were from Flatbush, they explained, and were learning in the yeshiva for a year. It was only when their angry-looking rebbi appeared, gesticulating wildly in the window, that they bid us farewell and ran back to class.

Getting back to our story, I sheepishly admitted I was he and waited, not sure what to expect. Was the chassid going to tell me that Tuki is corrupting our innocent youth, that Johnny Cash and

By Country Yossi Toiv

Kenny Rogers were stealing my songs, or that he wanted to strangle me for writing the KARS4KIDS jingle?

But no!

He leaned in close and whispered in Yiddish, “Are you still on the radio?”

the world.”

I gulped!

“Let me tell you a story,” he continued.

“A big Rebbe once had a chassid who sat and learned all day for years. One

I, on the other hand, can hide behind a fire hydrant.

“No,” I replied.

“Ah shud,” he said sadly. “You should know, today the children need you more than ever. With what’s going on out there even learning one halacha, one bracha, can make all the difference in

day, he told the Rebbe he had to leave the Bais Medrash, move away and get a job. He had a very large family and big financial problems. The Rebbe tried to dissuade him, but his mind was made up.

“Six months later, the Rebbe met

him in the street. He asked him how things were working out and the chassid replied that b”H he was working very hard day and night and was doing well.

“The Rebbe then asked him if had time to learn.

“The chassid sadly shook his head no.

“The Rebbe then asked if he would have the time to learn one Amud a day.

“The chassid said he didn’t have the time.

“The Rebbe then asked if he could learn 10 lines a day. The chassid still shook his head and said he couldn’t commit to that. The Rebbe continued and asked if he could find the time to learn one Mishnah a day. Sadly, the chassid still declined.

“Finally, the Rebbe said, ‘Promise me this: every night, take out your Gemara, kiss it and put it back. Do you think you can do that?’

“The chassid finally nodded in agreement.

“Skip ahead five years.

“The Rebbe once again meets the chassid. This time, he’s holding a Gemara under his arm. After exchanging warm words, the Rebbe asks him where he’s going. The chassid responds that he’s going to his nightly Gemara shiur.

“He explained that after kissing his Gemara every night for a while he was moved to open it up and look inside. Once he began reading it again, the geshmack came back, and he found the time to learn again. Not only that, but now he’s giving a shiur to others.”

After finishing the story, the chassid looked me in the eyes and continued.

“For so many years, you asked Shabbos shailos and halachos in an entertaining and fun oifin . Who knows how many lives you touched and perhaps changed? Oy, do we need you now!”

I stood there speechless.

Then, shaking his head sadly, the chassid walked away.

Fd for Thought Hibana Hibachi

By Nati Burnside

Why do people go out to restaurants?

Sometimes, the answer is simply based on convenience. Sometimes, it’s just the ability to eat food you can’t make at home. But for some, the reason is surely the experience. If the restaurant is able to give patrons something other than just food, that’s an attractive asset.

Perhaps the biggest example of a restaurant that isn’t just food on a plate is a hibachi restaurant. You aren’t just making a reservation; you are buying a ticket to a show. Hibana is one of only two kosher hibachi places in the tristate area, so your opportunities are few and far between to go see the action up close, but it’s certainly worth your time and money.

After six years of developing, building, and decorating the location, Hibana Hibachi became a reality in May of this year. If that seems like a long time, it both is and isn’t. When accounting for COVID-19 delays, the necessary time to build the hibachi tables and obligatory fire suppression systems, the artwork, and various other custom elements…the restaurant is quite an achievement.

A hibachi restaurant is the perfect place to take a large group of friends. Hibana has tables that can fit from 8-20 people and they even have a room in the back that can hold more people for something like a sheva brachot or other type of event. Sure, you can go with a smaller party, but why not share the fun with friends you haven’t seen in a while? Or family who come in from out of town where they likely don’t have hibachi as an option?

When I was invited to Hibana, I tried out some of the appetizers that are kind of like opening acts for the main show. These come out to your table much like they would in any other restaurant. That

said, all of my recommendations are easily shareable for a group if that’s the way you decide to dine.

First, try the Out of Control Roll. Filled with tuna, salmon, and kani, this roll of sushi is topped with white tuna and salmon which is seared with a torch at your table (this is a good time to get used to a proximity to fire) and drizzled with a spicy garlic mayo and sweet sauce. As much as I favor having vegetable components in sushi, this works really well to go along with your meal at Hibana because you’ll be getting plenty of vegetables later and this will likely be your only fish element.

Moving on to meat appetizers, don’t skip the Yaki Chicken Gyoza. These delicious pan-fried dumplings are filled with a mixture of crispy chicken, onion, and shiitake mushroom. I recommend cutting them in half and dipping them in the sauce so that the juice fills the inside. There’s nothing like a good dumpling, and these have a great texture on the outside from the pan-fry.

If you are looking for something a bit meatier, get the Beef Negimaki. Making negimaki is fairly difficult as it entails rolling scallions inside broiled strips of teriyaki beef. The result is a great savory bite as you get some crispiness from the broiling with the meaty inside of the roll. This dish isn’t often found in kosher restaurants, so make sure to try it here.

After the apps are gone, it’s time for the main show. Cooking at a hibachi grill (more accurately, a teppan) is a real skill so you will get a chef coming to your table to deal with the main courses. There will be fire. There will be fun. There will be flying objects.

You’ll be given a pretty deep list of choices to choose from for the protein of what will be your hibachi entree. This can be anything from tofu to chicken (dark or white), to different cuts of steak or

even lamb. The chef will first make some noodles on the flat top and give some to everybody. That will be followed up by freshly made fried rice. While this might not usually get you excited, it should. Fresh fried rice that was made right in front of you is much better than what you might get in most restaurants. Veggies (onions, zucchini, carrots, mushrooms) will also grace your plate alongside your choice of meat.

What meat should you choose? Honestly, I would say to just go with your gut here. Everything is going to be good in this context so it’s really just about what you prefer. Dark meat chicken or hanger steak? Ribeye or lamb? Pick your preference and enjoy. Just note that if you are dining with a group you can ask your chef to split things so you get to try more than one main component.

Honestly, if it was just the food being cooked right in front of you, that would be great. But this isn’t just dinner. It’s dinner

and a show. Your chef comes to the table with a kind of electric water gun that shoots sake into the mouths of guests (if you opt in, be prepared to get a bit sticky). He also does all the tricks with the instruments where spatulas are flipping and flying through the air. During the vegetable grilling, our chef built a volcano out of onion rings. And of course, he can catapult pieces of food through the air for you to catch in your mouth. It’s not really like anything else you can find at a kosher restaurant.

Speaking of the sake, the options from the bar also contribute to the fun atmosphere of the place. Hibana has a plethora of cocktails to go along with bottles of sake and Japanese beers.

So, if you are looking for something different than your regular restaurant experience, head over to Hibana. The food is good, the atmosphere is fun, and even if you don’t have leftovers for the next day, you’ll have memories forever.

Meat - Waiter Service 340 Central Avenue, Lawrence, NY 11559 (516)-200-9550 HibanaHibatchi.com

In The K tchen

Orange Salsa Chicken

By Naomi Nachman

Here is one of our family’s favorite chicken recipes. It’s always hard to please everyone in the family but this is one of our family’s winning dishes. It’s super-quick to make and freezes really well. You can also try it with fish for a parve alternative.

Ingredients

◦ 2 whole chickens, cut into quarters

◦ 1 cup salsa

◦ 1 cup orange jam

◦ 1 orange, zested

◦ 1 (11 oz.) can sliced mandarin oranges, drained

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Place chicken pieces in a large baking pan and season with salt and pepper.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the salsa, orange jam, orange zest and mandarin oranges. Pour over chicken.

Bake uncovered for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Naomi Nachman, the owner of The Aussie Gourmet, caters weekly and Shabbat/ Yom Tov meals for families and individuals within The Five Towns and neighboring communities, with a specialty in Pesach catering. Naomi is a contributing editor to this paper and also produces and hosts her own weekly radio show on the Nachum Segal Network stream called “A Table for Two with Naomi Nachman.” Naomi gives cooking presentations for organizations and private groups throughout the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan area. In addition, Naomi has been a guest host on the QVC TV network and has been featured in cookbooks, magazines as well as other media covering topics related to cuisine preparation and personal chefs. To obtain additional recipes, join The Aussie Gourmet on Facebook or visit Naomi’s blog. Naomi can be reached through her website, www.theaussiegourmet.com or at (516) 295-9669.

Hebrain Jewish Jeopardy

by Barbara Landesman

israeL’s deFeNse

1)

A violent confrontation took place in June 1948 between the Israeli Defense Forces led by Ben-Gurion and this paramilitary Jewish group led by Menachem Begin, resulting in the shelling of the ship Altalena on the Tel Aviv beach.

a) Irgun

b) Lehi

c) Shabak

2)

This name is the Hebrew acronym for “The Army for the Defense of Israel.” Founded in May 1948, this organization includes other existing paramilitary organizations, including ground forces, air force, and navy.

a) Mossad

b) Tzahal

c) Maglan

3)

Meaning “Chariot,” it is the main Battle Tank of the Israeli Defense Forces since 1979; four versions have been used.

a) Python

b) Merkava

c) Tavor

4)

Meaning “The Defense,” this Jewish paramilitary organization in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 until 1948 was created after the 1920 Arab riots and the 1921 Jaffa riots to protect Jewish farms and kibbutzim; it became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.

a) Palmach

b) Haganah

c) Magav

5) The Israeli Operation in the Sinai Peninsula was known by this name; this 1956 offensive was fought against Egypt by Israel, Britain and France; it would give Israel safe passage to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

a) Operation Opera

b) Operation Litani

c) Operation Kadesh

6) It is a group of Israeli bolt blowback operated submachine guns. Developed in the late 1940s and introduced to IDF Special Forces in 1954, its magazine is housed in the pistol grip for a shorter weapon.

a) Kolibri

b) Uzi

c) Tavor

aCCUsed

7) In 1938, Herschel Gynszpan was accused of assassinating German diplomat Ernst Vom Rath, thereby setting off this event.

a) Babi Yar

b) Kristallnacht

c) Kielce Pogrom

d) Kishinev Pogrom

8)

In January 1965, hired Soviet experts for the Syrians caught this Mossad agent sending messages to Israel. He was accused of espionage and was publicly hanged in Syria.

a) Gilad Shalit

b) Eli Cohen

c) Zvi Zamir

d) Peter Malkin

9) November 1278: 680 Jews were arrested and sent to the Tower of London. 293 were hanged. They were accused of shaving off a small portion of a precious metal coin for profit and melted into bullion. This is known as:

a) Money Laundering

b) Counterfeit Money

c) Coin Sweating

d) Coin Clipping

10) Following the 1263 Debate in Barcelona, he was accused of issuing blasphemies against Christianity and was therefore exiled.

a) Nachmanides

b) Maimonides

c) Judah Halevi

d) Abarbenal

11)

Distributed by Russian police during the late 1800s, this forged text held 300 Jewish leaders responsible for Europe’s major problems.

a) Mein Kampf

b) Der Jedenstaat

c) The International Jew

d) Protocols of the Elders of Zion

disCoV eries

12) On April 27, 2007, a team of archaeologists from Hebrew U discovered his tomb; the site is located at the exact place given by Flavius Josephus, atop tunnels and water pools, at a flattened desert site, 7.5 miles south of Jerusalem.

a) Herod’s Tomb

b) Ezra’s Tomb

c) Zechariah’s Tomb

13) The Taylor Prism was discovered in Nineveh, Iraq in 1830. These inscriptions recorded his siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC during the reign of King Chizkiyahu. It is presently located in the British Museum in London.

a) Sancherib

b) Nebuchadnezzar

c) Titus

14)

Discovered in 1908 in an ancient city 20 miles west of Jerusalem, it is a tablet of limestone and contains an inscription in Paleo-Hebrew script dating to the 10th century BCE. It describes monthly periods and attributes to each a duty such as harvesting, planting, tending specific crops. It is currently located at the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul, Turkey.

a) Siloam Inscription

b) Gezer Calendar

c) Tel Dan Stele

15)

A business letter written in the Judeo-Persian language was discovered by Marc Aurel Stein in the early twentieth century. The letter, 37 lines long, now housed in the British Museum, was dated at 718 CE and found in Danfan Vilia, along the Silk Road in this country.

a) India

b) Iraq

c) China

16) Discovered in 1896 at Thebes, Egypt, it is an inscription by this ancient Egyptian king (reigned 1213-1203 BC) which appears on the reverse side of a granite stele. Now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, it is the only ancient Egyptian document which mentions “Isrir” or “Israel.”

a) Mesha Stele

b) Meneptah Stele

c) King Ezania’s Stela

17)

These tablets were excavated from Babylon during 1899-1917. Dating from 6th century BC, they describe the rations set aside for this Royal captive. They are presently located at the Museum of the Ancient Near East, Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

a) Jeroboam, King of Israel

b) Omri, King of Israel

c) Jehoiachin, King of Judah

Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

I’ve never seen a more heroic figure than Liz Cheney.

- Chris Matthews on MSNBC talking about Cheney—whose father had a longtime feud with Trump—backing Kamala Harris

Temporary appointment. Not for long.

- Caption of a photo of newly selected Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, posted on X by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant

California Man Arrested for Showing I.D. To Vote.

- Babylon Bee headline

Progress: Trump Holds Most Ethnically Diverse, Pro-Israel Nazi Rally in History.

– ibid.

Democrats Explain Trump Was Going To Be Hitler During His First Term But He Forgot.

– ibid.

You’re kind of close to heaven while you’re up there.

- Eleanor Mann talking to a Missouri TV station after going skydiving for her 90th birthday

Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t [care] about the Latino community. Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.

- President Joe Biden

Trump is classless, and if he loses, he probably won’t concede, which proves that he’s classless.

– Len Berman, 710 WOR

Chuck Schumer is here looking very glum. But look on the bright side, Chuck. Considering how woke your party has become, if Kamala loses, you still have the chance to become the first woman president.

- Pres. Trump speaking at the Al Smith Dinner in New York

Joe [Biden] has almost disappeared from view. The only way he could be seen less is if he had a show on CNN.

- Ibid.

Unfortunately, Governor Walz isn’t here himself. But don’t worry, he’ll say that he was.

- Ibid.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

– Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, responding to intense criticism by the left after his newspaper declined to endorse Kamala Harris

The Washington Post and The New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves.

– Ibid.

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will be a return to the past, and some will be new inventions. Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new, of course. This is the way of the world. None of this will be easy, but it will be worth it. I am so grateful to be part of this endeavor. Many of the finest journalists you’ll find anywhere work at The Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They deserve to be believed.

– Ibid.

I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala at McDonald’s

- Trump, while “working” at a drive thru window in a Philadelphia McDonalds, poking fun at Kamala Harris who claims to have worked at McDonalds despite McDonalds having no record of that and her inability to say which McDonalds she worked at or when she worked there

People have threatened me with, “I’m going to cancel you.” That’s hard to do. I own the show, and so you’re not gonna get to cancel me. So you can leave, but you can’t cancel me.

- Finance guru Dave Ramsey while endorsing Trump on a recent show

Can you imagine Kamala doing this show? She’s be laying on the floor. If she did this kind of an interview with you, I hope she does, because it would be a mess. She’d be laying on the floor. Comatose. She’d be saying, “Call in the medics.”

- Trump during his 3-hour appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast

Donald Trump held his rally last night in Madison Square Garden. Why on Sunday? Well, unlike Democrats, conservatives had to go to work on Monday.

– Greg Gutfeld, Fox

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe is under fire for joking that Puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage, upsetting New Yorkers who said, “I thought WE were a floating pile of garbage.”

- Ibid.

The Jewish vote may go more Republican than any time since Ronald Regan, which is weird since Trump is Hitler.

– Ibid.

A new poll shows Trump with a slim lead over Harris with Arab Americans. Harris would attempt to speak to those voters but she hasn’t yet nailed the accent.

– Ibid.

Where does the requirement to murder and kidnap Israeli citizens appear in the job description of UNRWA employees? Does UNRWA pay its employees for every Israeli citizen they murdered?

- Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon while presenting a photograph of a UN worker hauling the body of a murdered Israeli civilian into Gaza

REPORTER LULU NAVARRO: There was a young child who was killed who was taking the pager to their parent.

SEN. FETTERMAN: It did unfortunately, tragically, because Daddy was a member of Hezbollah. That’s tragic. You know, he brought that danger and evil into their home.

I mean, so I know this sounds bizarre. It sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up—we gotta lock him up!

- President Joe Biden attacking Trump at a campaign event for Vice President Harris in New Hampshire, suggesting that lawfare should be used to stop Trump

The far left has often spoken about the need to “abolish billionaires.”

No nation has abolished more billionaires in the past month than Israel. Ismail Haniyeh, worth 4 billion dollars, has been abolished. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas’ multi-billion dollar empire, has been abolished. The far left should be cheering Israel on as it abolishes the billionaires of Hamas.

– Tweet by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY)

[Harris] won’t be pinned down. I think in some cases she’s lying. People are worried that if she walked by a polygraph machine, the dang thing would explode.

- Sen. John Kennedy (R- LA) on Fox News

Look, here’s my opinion; I’m not speaking for the campaign with this—I thought their hearts were too big when Joe came into office that they didn’t know how many people would cross the border and it got away from them.

– Harris supporter Mark Cuban on CNN explaining why over 11 million illegal immigrants have entered the U.S. since the start of the Biden-Harris administration

The first thing I noticed was how many Black and brown people were there—lots of Hispanics, more than a sprinkling of Black people and Asians. Of course there were plenty of white people, including elegant Eastern European women and their beefy husbands, young Orthodox Jewish men (where were the women?), and loud young men who burst out regularly with shouts of “USA! USA!” But the picture you may have of Trump rallies as all-white fiestas did not hold true.

- Katha Pollitt writing in the left wing publication The Nation about attending the Trump rally in MSG

Political Crossfire Ukraine’s Defense Minister Outlines Kyiv’s “Victory Plan”

By David Ignatius

As Ukraine anxiously awaits the approaching U.S. presidential election, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov explained in a wide-ranging interview how his country plans to “hold the line” and pressure Russia to negotiate a just peace settlement.

Ukraine probably has more at stake in this election than any foreign country, given former president Donald Trump’s open disdain for Ukraine’s cause and his claims that he would make a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as he was elected. Trump’s talk may be political rhetoric, but Ukraine knows that its window of U.S. support could close in several months.

Umerov offered a detailed explanation of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “victory plan,” which the Ukrainian leader announced in Europe last week. As I listened, it sounded to me like a strategy for forcing negotiations with Putin rather than a military plan for retaking all of

Russian-occupied territory. That would be a pragmatic step for Ukraine.

The key element of the victory plan, Umerov explained, is Ukraine’s request for a quick invitation to join NATO once the war ends. The Biden administration is weighing this option but worries it might give Russia an incentive to prolong fighting rather than stop it. A second item is defense, which Umerov defined as “hold the line and create favorable conditions to expel the enemy.” A third part is “deterrence,” which involves deep strikes on military targets in Russia to prevent it from attacking civilians and critical infrastructure in Ukraine.

Umerov is one of the most intriguing characters in Zelensky’s team. He is a Crimean Tatar who had a very successful business career and maintains close ties with fellow Muslims in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Those contacts have helped him operate as an intermediary with Russia, the Mid-

dle East and the United States, and they are one reason that Zelensky turned to him, first as head of Ukraine’s public investment fund and then, a year ago, as defense minister.

Umerov is a controversial figure in Ukraine, partly because he has backed drafting more young people for the war, and the Kyiv rumor mill is buzzing with talk that he may be removed. “Umerov is under some political pressure,” noted William Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a frequent visitor there. But he cautioned: “While personnel decisions are not for foreigners, Ukraine needs unity and stability in top military leadership now.”

Biden administration officials believe that Umerov has brought “rigor and sophistication” to defense planning in a sometimes-chaotic bureaucracy, one senior official told me. But the dominant figures in the kaleidoscopic feudal court of Kyiv remain Zelensky and his powerful

chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. When it comes to negotiating with Russians, Umerov has been one of Ukraine’s most effective representatives. He conducted back-channel negotiations in the first months of the war with Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, a close contact of Putin’s. Their talks in Istanbul collapsed in March 2022, amid reports that the two might have been poisoned. But the channel stayed open through the rest of that year and achieved some quiet breakthroughs.

Umerov told me that in the secret 2022 talks, there were several negotiating tracks through international partners. These efforts resulted in a “humanitarian corridor” that allowed 400,000 people to escape Russian-occupied territory, exchanges of prisoners of war, political prisoners and wounded soldiers, and a grain-export deal that allowed Ukraine to resume shipments through the Black Sea. The United States “was always aware” of

these contacts, he said, “because we were always consulting on every track.”

U.S. officials confirmed that the secret talks took place in 2022, when Russia was publicly threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons. When I asked Umerov whether any such back-channel talks were happening now, he answered that “the humanitarian track is still open.”

Umerov has tried to tackle two of Ukraine’s military weaknesses: corruption in procurement and a manpower shortage. These steps have made him some enemies.

One especially controversial move was a new mobilization law that lowers the draft age from 27 to 25 and registers Ukrainians for service. Ukrainian generals had urged this move to combat Russia’s manpower advantage. But Umerov told me that when he first urged the mobilization law, some members of parliament told him that it was politically “toxic.” “It’s better to drink the water from Chernobyl, rather than touch this topic,” he said he was warned.

But the mobilization plan is now law, and Umerov said that 5 million Ukrainians have registered. Rather than automatically forcing recruits to the front line, they have been offered choices of

how they want to serve, he explained. Corruption has been a continuing problem in military procurement.

Umerov told me that some Western partners had complained about dealing with a purchasing company called Special Techno Export, or STE, which was over -

danov, a charismatic general with a big popular following, “will remain in his position.”

To reform the procurement system, Umerov this month fired three of his deputies. He said in announcing the move: “I set out to complete the process

“It’s better to drink the water from Chernobyl, rather than touch this topic,” he said he was warned.

seen by the military intelligence service, known as the GUR, headed by Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov.

STE was “infamous for getting into money-laundering scandals,” according to an article this month. Umerov told me that he launched an audit of STE and eventually put it under the ministry’s direct control. Umerov said he had advised Budanov to focus “on intelligence rather than acquisition.” There are widespread rumors in Kyiv that Budanov, too, may soon be replaced. But Umerov said Bu-

of cleaning up the acquisition system in close collaboration with law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies.”

Ukraine has bolstered its military leverage by using drones and electronic warfare to penetrate deep inside Russian territory. Umerov told me he has established a “Deep Strike Task Force” to coordinate the sometimes-fractious elements of the defense ministry. One adviser to Zelensky described Umerov’s effort as “a Rand Corp.-like center of cooperation.” This push for consolidation has brought

some criticism from people who argue that Umerov lacks military command experience. But he still seems to have Zelensky’s backing.

As the U.S. election approaches, the most urgent part of Zelensky’s victory plan may be the request for a quick invitation to join NATO. The Biden administration is weighing historical precedents that might allow NATO membership even if Russia still controls some Ukrainian territory. One example is West Germany’s NATO membership, even while East Germany was occupied by Russian troops. Another is Norway, which agreed when it joined NATO in 1949 that it wouldn’t allow foreign bases or troops on its territory or nuclear weapons in its ports.

Umerov said such details are issues for later. “We want the invitation first.”

For a Biden administration thinking about its legacy, locking down a strategy to protect Ukraine now and build a platform for future negotiations should be a priority. “Look, guys, we showed you that we’re capable of doing it,” Umerov told me. “But we need the assistance now.”

© 2024, Washington Post Writers Group

Political Crossfire

Harris’s Closing Argument is Dishonest, Desperate and Hypocritical

Kamala Harris clearly has settled on a closing argument: Donald Trump is a fascist who “calls Americans who disagree with him the ‘enemy from within’” and says that, as commander in chief, “he would use the military to go after them.” This is the desperate and dishonest strategy of a campaign that must believe it is losing.

As I have written many times in these pages, I don’t think Americans should be calling our political opponents enemies – whoever does it. North Korea is our enemy. Russia is our enemy. Fellow Americans who disagree with us are not.

But it’s also wrong to distort and mischaracterize what an opponent says. When Trump used the phrase “enemies from within” at a rally this month in Coachella, California, he was specifically referring to “shifty Adam Schiff” – a.k.a. former House intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-California), who is not a person who merely disagrees with Trump.

Schiff, in fact, spent years telling Americans he had seen secret intelligence indicating that Trump was a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which turned out to be a vicious smear. In a 2017 interview on “Meet the Press,” Schiff declared, “I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now” that Trump colluded with Russia. When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper in a 2018 interview whether Democrats have seen evidence of collusion, Schiff replied, “Yes, we have.” A few months later, he told ABC that Trump’s Russia collusion was a scandal of “a size and scope probably beyond Watergate.”

Trump later expanded the attack beyond Schiff, but it’s also true that Schiff was not the only Democrat pushing the lie that Trump was a Russian agent.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California), a

By Marc A. Thiessen

member of the Intelligence Committee, was asked by MSNBC host Chris Matthews: “Do you believe [Trump], right now, has been an agent of the Russians?” Swalwell replied: “Yes, I think there’s more evidence that he is.” An incredulous Matthews pressed him: “An agent like in the 1940s where you had people who were ‘reds,’ to use an old term, like that? In other words, working for a foreign power?” Swalwell replied: “He’s working on behalf of the Russians, yes.”

An “enemy from within,” in other words. That’s not all. Then-Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada) claimed the FBI had “explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government.” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, “There is no longer a question of whether this campaign sought to collude with a hostile foreign power to subvert America’s democracy.” Sen. Mark R. Warner (Virginia), then the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, declared that “enormous amounts of evidence” existed of collusion between

Trump and Russia.

They all accused Trump of being an enemy from within – quite literally –working on behalf of a foreign power. Then it blew up in their faces when special counsel Robert S. Mueller III issued his report finding the evidence “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”

In their miasma of outrage, Democrats seem to have forgotten that they have been demonizing Republicans as “enemies” for years. During his noxious 2022 speech in Atlanta, President Joe Biden accused Republicans who opposed his proposed federal takeover of our elections of standing with traitors such as Confederate president Jefferson Davis and explicitly called them “enemies” of America, thundering: “I will defend the right to vote, our democracy against all enemies – foreign and, yes, domestic.” Barack Obama famously declared, “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” (He later con-

ceded that he should have used the word “opponents” instead.)

Trump also did not say, as Harris claims, that he would use the American military to go after his political opponents. At her rallies, Harris plays a selectively edited clip of Trump saying in an interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo: “We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics, and I think they’re the – and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military.” She then tells voters: “So, you heard his words.… He’s talking about that he considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country.… He is saying that he would use the military to go after them.”

No, he’s not. The words “in terms of Election Day” are omitted from the clip she plays, to mask the fact that Trump was answering a question about possible Election Day unrest – which he said could be “easily handled” by National Guard. She takes his quote out of context to make it seem he is saying something different than he is.

That’s not just dishonest, it’s hypocritical. As I recall, it was Democrats who accused Trump of violating his oath of office for failing to deploy the National Guard to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Let’s be clear: I’d prefer Trump didn’t talk this way. In addition to being bad for the country, it’s bad politics: Such rhetoric is like fingernails on the chalk board to swing voters. But misrepresenting his words to suggest Trump would use the military to target ordinary Americans who oppose him is far more offensive.

Political Crossfire Is Afghanistan’s Most-Wanted Militant Now Its Best Hope for Change?

By Christina Goldbaum

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the better part of two decades, one name above all others inspired fear among ordinary Afghans: Sirajuddin Haqqani.

To many, Haqqani was a boogeyman, an angel of death with the power to determine who would live and who would die during the U.S.-led war. He deployed his ranks of Taliban suicide bombers, who rained carnage on American troops and Afghan civilians alike. A ghostlike kingpin of global jihad, with deep ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist networks, he topped the United States’ most-wanted list in Afghanistan, with a $10 million bounty on his head.

But since the Americans’ frantic withdrawal in 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power, Haqqani has portrayed himself as something else altogether: A pragmatic statesman. A reliable diplomat. And a voice of relative moderation in a government steeped in religious extremism.

Haqqani’s makeover is part of a larger conflict that has roiled the Taliban over the past three years, even as the group works to present a united front. At the center is the Taliban’s emir and head of state, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, a hard-line cleric whose evisceration of women’s rights has isolated Afghanistan on the global stage.

As Akhundzada has seized near total control over major policy, Haqqani has emerged as his most persistent challenger. Haqqani has privately lobbied for girls to be allowed to return to school beyond the sixth grade and for women to resume work in government offices, according to several Taliban and foreign officials. And as Akhundzada has denounced Western ideals and dismissed Western demands, Haqqani has offered himself as a bridge.

He has gone on diplomatic tours and conducted back-channel conversations to espouse his more palatable vision and promote shared interests, like keeping terrorist groups on Afghan soil at bay. He has built relationships with some former enemies in Europe, as well as with Islamic countries,

Russia and China, foreign officials said.

“Twenty years of fighting jihad led us to victory,” Haqqani told me this year in an interview in Kabul, his second ever with a Western journalist. “Now we have opened a new chapter of positive engagement with the world, and we have closed the chapter of violence and war.”

Many Western diplomats have been shocked by Haqqani’s transformation — and wonder if it can be believed. Haqqani is an enigma, at once a power-hungry political operator and a blood-soaked sworn jihadi; even the exact date and place of his birth are unclear. Promising the restoration of women’s rights may be less about personal reform and more a calculation to bring Western countries to his side as he challenges Akhundzada.

Haqqani and his family have a long — and once secret — history of just that kind of outreach: At several points during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the Haqqanis sought rapprochement with the United States, a New York Times investigation revealed. But American officials mostly rebuffed the Haqqanis, viewing them as irredeemable and untrustworthy in light of the mass death they had wrought during the war.

Some diplomats now say that the

Haqqanis’ bids for dialogue were missed opportunities, ones that illuminate how the American war on terrorism created the very enemies it sought to destroy — and help explain why the United States’ war in Afghanistan carried on for 20 years.

To continue to reject engagement with Haqqani may be to replay those missteps, some American officials and experts say. Faced with few alternatives, some see Haqqani as a potential force for change that could one day redefine life under Taliban rule and the country’s relations with the world.

The Insurgent

Around 10 one night this year, I sat down with Haqqani in a two-story mansion just outside Kabul’s old fortified Green Zone. A stout man in his 40s with a coarse black beard, he has the grizzled look of an insurgent-turned-statesman.

Over three hours, Haqqani spoke about once unknown details of his upbringing, his ruthless calculations against American troops, and previously secret interactions between his family and American officials. He also stressed his ambition for Afghanistan: finally ridding it of violence and war.

It’s a tantalizing — if hard to imagine — vision for a country that has been plagued

by nearly half a dozen coups, a civil war and invasions by two superpowers within the past century.

It also came from a surprising messenger: a man responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

Born around the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Haqqani grew up in Miran Shah, a beige-earth, mud-brick enclave of Afghan refugees just over the border in Pakistan. His father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a prominent commander of the mujahedeen — the Afghan insurgents fighting a holy war against Soviet forces — who forged relationships with powerful sponsors across South Asia and the Persian Gulf.

During the war against the Soviets, Jalaluddin Haqqani cultivated patrons among the Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies. He fostered close ties with the CIA, which sent him hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and weapons. He also grew close to Osama bin Laden, who would go on to establish al-Qaida with the Haqqanis’ support.

All the while, Haqqani was grooming his son Sirajuddin to take over the sprawling jihadi network he was creating, sustained by a hugely lucrative criminal empire of drugs, kidnapping and extortion that spanned the Arab world. Even when Sirajuddin was a child, neighbors and relatives called him “khalifa,” a title in Islam that refers to a successor or leader.

The younger Haqqani said his earliest memories were of traveling to mujahedeen training camps in eastern Afghanistan to visit his father. The camps buzzed with the whistle of mortars from nearby fighting and stank of the sweat from mujahedeen fighters coming off the battlefield, Haqqani recalled.

When his father could not leave the battlefield, he and his brothers climbed atop nearby mountains and watched the fighting. “We said to ourselves that our father

142 and uncles are down there, busy in the battle,” he recalled.

Haqqani and his brothers spent the rest of their childhood studying in a local madrassa, then with private tutors their father hired to teach them about global politics as well as religious texts. That gave Haqqani exposure to the outside world that was rare for a future Taliban leader.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Haqqani, then in his early 20s, was sitting in the madrassa his family ran in Khost province, in the southeast. The news arrived through crackling static over an old mujahedeen radio: American missiles were raining down across Kabul.

A jolt of adrenaline shot through the room. “We were young and full of energy. We were physically and mentally prepared” to fight, he recalled.

While the Taliban regime fell quickly, by the summer of 2006 the movement had regrouped and roared back as an insurgency. By then, Haqqani was leading guerrilla operations in the east, before eventually being charged with overseeing Taliban military strategy nationwide as a deputy to the emir.

The fighters under his direct command grew into one of the most resilient and capable arms of the Taliban insurgency. Haqqani embraced suicide attacks in a way that few had before him, creating a high-ranking battalion that prospective bombers flocked to join, former militants told me.

Haqqani fighters carried out the war’s deadliest suicide attacks, including one in 2017 that killed more than 150 people, mostly civilians, with a single truck bomb. In 2011, they launched a 19-hour-long assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The last known American soldier to be held hostage in Afghanistan, Bowe Bergdahl, was in the Haqqanis’ hands for years after his capture in 2009.

The headline-grabbing attacks prompted the United States to designate the Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organization in 2012 — the only arm of the Taliban to be classified that way.

American forces hunted Haqqani, to no avail — a point in which he takes great pride. He told of changing locations sometimes 10 times a night and never using the same cars or bodyguards twice to outsmart American forces.

“I ask you to ask our enemies how they could not kill me or arrest me with all the equipment they had,” he said, sitting in a beige leather armchair under fluorescent lights.

He described the happiness he felt af-

ter learning that American officials had put him on their blacklist. It was proof, he said, that his battlefield efforts had been “very effective” against the United States.

The Politician

When speaking about the war, Haqqani appeared at ease, a glint of nostalgia in his eyes. But when the interview turned to the Taliban’s internal politics and foreign policy, he was more calculated — after each question, he would pause, flip through a stack of talking points and then respond.

That caution betrays the Taliban’s delicate power dynamics and Haqqani’s uneasy place within them. While the movement has prioritized unity out of fear that any splintering could send the country back into war, a struggle has unfolded out of

personal appeals to the emir to ease the most restrictive policies. Then, to signal their protest, he and some of his allies refused to attend meetings in Kandahar, Akhundzada’s conservative southern stronghold, according to experts and foreign officials with knowledge of the efforts.

In a speech last year, Haqqani said the Taliban’s leadership was “monopolizing power” and “hurting the reputation” of the government — comments that many observers viewed as veiled criticism of the emir. Haqqani’s aides denied that characterization, saying that he was expressing a general desire for his government to establish a good relationship with its citizens.

The public objections seemed to violate the Taliban’s central code: total loyalty to the supreme leader.

Many Western diplomats have been shocked by Haqqani’s transformation — and wonder if it can be believed.

public view, pitting more pragmatic figures like Haqqani against the ultraconservative emir, Akhundzada.

Within months of the Taliban’s takeover three years ago, Akhundzada laid down an iron fist, establishing himself as the lone decision-maker on all significant policies and government appointments.

In the spring of 2022, he reneged on a public promise made by other Taliban officials to allow girls to attend high school. He has gone on to cement the world’s harshest strictures on women and girls, measures that a majority of influential Taliban leaders disagree with, according to experts and officials.

Haqqani and other pragmatists made

rift in the government, saying the Taliban leadership had secured a major achievement by creating an “independent government with a single law and a single leader.”

But diplomats and analysts say he remains among the few still challenging the dominance of Akhundzada, who less than a decade ago came to public prominence as a deputy, along with Haqqani, to the movement’s emir at the time.

Now, with most of his allies inside the Taliban cowed into silence, Haqqani has increasingly turned outside the country to help tip the power contest in his favor.

The Diplomat

Haqqani has sold his efforts to establish ties with other countries — currently, no other nation officially recognizes the Taliban government — as part of his vision for its leaders to be players on the international stage.

He has built strong working relationships with U.N. officials and European countries, foreign officials told me. He has signaled a green light for Chinese investment and developed close ties to russia.

In pitching himself as a reliable, practical partner, he has tried to shake the almost mythological lore around him as a terrorist mastermind and sworn enemy of the United States — a reputation forged over 20 years of war.

But he is walking a fine line, trying to cultivate ties with the world — including the West — while not offering fodder to conservative Taliban clerics who view relationships with Western countries as a betrayal of Islamic values and, potentially, Afghan sovereignty.

And Akhundzada responded with the full weight of his authority.

He reassigned the battalions of fighters loyal to the dissenting Taliban officials to his base in Kandahar and established his own private protection force. He replaced pragmatists in key government positions with his allies. He also, some analysts say, deliberately tried to undercut Haqqani’s overtures to the West by further restricting women’s rights.

The clampdown largely worked. “Many of those who tried to resist the emir now seem to be thinking that it’s not doable,” said Antonio Giustozzi, a leading scholar of the Taliban.

In the interview, Haqqani denied any

The United States has largely rebuffed efforts by Taliban officials to establish any formal ties with their administration, drawing a red line over women’s rights. But the United States still holds enormous sway. It is the largest donor of foreign aid to the country, its sanctions help dictate the flow of badly needed cash and humanitarian assistance, and it effectively controls billions in frozen assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank.

While his influence over restrictions on women is limited, Haqqani has tried in back-channel conversations with Western diplomats to leverage an issue where he does have influence: global terrorism.

The Haqqanis have pledged to contain the threat not just from the Islamic State group, which has been carrying out attacks across Afghanistan, but also from al-Qaida, with which the Haqqani network still maintains close ties, officials with knowledge of the discussions told me.

Some Western diplomats have ques -

Haqqani says he wants more education for women

tioned whether terrorism emanating from Afghanistan is truly a global threat, potentially reducing the incentive to deal with Haqqani.

For others, distrust still hangs in the air, especially after the Haqqanis were found to be sheltering the head of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, in a Kabul safe house when he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2022. Pakistani officials have also accused the Haqqanis of providing safe haven to the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group and ideological ally of the Afghan Taliban that has roared back in Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban regained power.

“They are tactically very astute,” the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, told me, referring to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their relationship with militants is both about ideology and a strategy to “secure greater leverage over neighboring countries.”

In my conversation with Haqqani, he insisted that no terrorist groups were present in Afghanistan, saying that “the Islamic Emirate controls every corner of the country.” A more nuanced reading of the security environment under the Taliban might be that, while terrorist groups have a presence in Afghanistan, the fact that they have not attacked targets in the West over the past three years is a sign of Haqqani’s intent to engage internationally.

The question is what he might get in return.

“It’s a dangerous idea, working with the Haqqanis,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former coordinator of the United Nations’ monitoring group on the Islamic State group, al-Qaida and the Taliban. “you don’t know what side the Haqqanis will be standing on the day you deal with them — your side or their own or the side of international terrorists.”

The Negotiator

For the United States, the distrust of Haqqani is etched in blood. But the Haqqanis’ reputation among American officials as radical ideologues and avowed enemies may be one of the many misconceptions that helped keep the United States in Afghanistan for two decades.

“The U.S. was never central to their ideology, like it was to Osama bin Laden’s,” said Barnett rubin, a former U.N. and U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan. “We thought that because they are fighting the U.S. they are anti-American, but in their view they are fighting invaders because they are anti-invader.”

Even during the war, the Haqqanis showed an openness to engagement with the United States that was broader than

previously publicly known. For years, the family was involved in secret discussions with American officials seeking a détente, according to former officials and others with knowledge of the interactions.

Those efforts began in the early days of the American invasion. r attled by the American bombing campaign, the elder Haqqani dispatched a convoy of dozens of relatives and allies to Kabul to show support for the U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai as president at his inauguration, according to former American and Afghan officials. An American airstrike hit the vehicles before they could reach the city, according to former Western officials.

Soon after, Haqqani’s father sent his brother Ibrahim Omari to Kabul in another attempt to engage with the Americans. U.S. forces arrested him, according to Taliban and former Western officials.

“The Americans didn’t listen to us, and they forced their decision of war on us,” Sirajuddin Haqqani told me. “We wanted talks, negotiations and reconciliation — but everything went the other way.”

In 2004, the Haqqanis approached Karzai again in an attempt to reconcile, only to have the request effectively ignored.

“There was a chance to stop the Haqqanis from becoming terrorists, but that’s when we ignored them,” said Umer Daudzai, who served as Karzai’s chief of staff at the time.

At the height of the war in 2010, the Haqqanis were still secretly seeking rapprochement. They exchanged letters unofficially with American officials proposing ways of easing hostilities and asked through other back channels to meet with the Americans, according to two people with knowledge of the interactions.

A year later, Haqqani’s uncle, Omari, met with American officials at a Raffles hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates,

accompanied by the head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, a patron of the Haqqanis that had helped broker the discussions, those people said.

Then, around 2015, the Haqqanis sat down with American officials alone for the first time in decades and discussed finding a path to ending the war, according to three people with knowledge of the encounter.

Sitting in a private lounge of an upscale European hotel, Omari told American officials that he had been sent by his family to deliver a message, those people said. Both the Haqqanis and the United States wanted peace in Afghanistan, he said. The Americans had toppled the Taliban government, killed bin Laden and established a democratic Afghan republic. So why, he asked, was the United States still fighting?

In response, Laurel Miller, the State Department’s acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, admitted that as conflicts drag on, their original rationale often becomes lost and they become self-perpetuating.

“The United States has lost the ability to answer the question for itself,” Miller said to Omari, referring to the reason the United States remained at war, according to two people in the meeting. “r ight now, we are in the middle of a process to try and figure it out.”

Looking back now, some former officials told me that the United States, thirsty for revenge after the deadliest attack ever on American soil, seemed to create the very enemies it sought to destroy.

In our conversation, Haqqani was coy about his family’s previous engagement with the West, a history that could complicate his relationship with other groups within the Taliban.

But even if it is the card he is most reluctant to advertise publicly, it may be the

best one he has to play with foreign governments skeptical of his outreach now. That once-secret history lends a measure of credence to Haqqani’s recent overtures, some former officials say. Instead of a shocking transformation by Haqqani, his outreach, they suggest, may be a continuation of what his family has long sought: strategic partnership.

The Future

This summer, a photograph of Haqqani was splashed across social media: He was standing outside the Qasr Al Shati palace in Abu Dhabi, a slight smile on his face and his hand grasping that of the United Arab Emirates’ ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The encounter was Haqqani’s first official meeting with a head of state — and seen by some as a signal that his lonely campaign to build an independent support base was alive and well.

He has spent months this year meeting with elders across northern and western Afghanistan, developing ties away from his stronghold in the east, according to several people who attended. His team has released videos of him that have helped maintain his celebrity following among young Taliban fighters. And he has continued to reach out to Western officials.

While not as outspoken as he once was, Haqqani appears to be “trying to build a political coalition for the long term,” rubin, the former diplomat, said.

Even sitting down for an interview struck me as part of that political effort. In our conversation, he made his first public statement on women’s education in more than a year, saying that the current situation “does not mean that girls are forever denied from going to schools and receiving an education.”

Such statements seem to reflect his belief that even an authoritarian government needs public support to last. “Unity is important for Afghanistan currently,” Haqqani told me, “so we can have a peaceful country.”

His efforts have begun to pay off. In June, the United Nations temporarily removed Haqqani from its travel blacklist. In addition to going to Abu Dhabi, he traveled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to perform the hajj pilgrimage.

For now, though, the United States is keeping its distance. To insert itself in Afghan politics would be a gamble, one tainted by 20 years of war that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars — only to end with the Taliban’s return.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, father of Sirajuddin Haqqani

Forgotten Her es Jewish Veteran Congressmen

By Avi Heiligman

Election season is here and that means the media and the public dig into the past of candidates at all levels. A military background is usually good for a candidate unless your name is Tim Walz who is being accused of stolen valor and leaving his troops before being deployed. Aside from those veterans seeking to serve in Congress who are under suspicion for lying about their military record, many candidates and those who have served in Congress in the past have impressive records. War heroes are a big draw in political candidates as seen with the election of Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower for president. Several have earned the Medal of Honor, while others have served in specialized units like the Navy SEALs. Additionally, several Jewish members of Congress have served in the military, including some household names that the public may not realize possess a military background.

The name Pulitzer is synonymous with prizes awarded for achievements in journalism. Joseph Pulitzer had quite the background before becoming a famous publisher. His resume includes being a Civil War veteran and serving for a short time in the House of Representatives. He was born in Hungary to a Jewish family and failed three times to join armies in Europe. The Austrian Army, French Foreign Legion and the British Army all

rejected him, but in 1864, Pulitzer was recruited in Germany to fight for the Union Army.

Pulitzer was seventeen when he arrived in Boston and soon joined the Lincoln’s Cavalry and was part of Company L, 1 st New York Cavalry Regiment. The regiment was an element of General Sheridan’s Troopers, and Pulitzer fought with them until the end of the war at Appomattox Court House. Only after the war did he learned English as his regiment was made up of German immigrants. After being mustered out of the army in June 1865, Pulitzer tried his hand in several vocations before becoming a writer. In 1884, he was elected to Congress as the representative from the New York 9th district and resigned in 1886.

Both Lester D. Volk and Martin C. Ansorge served during World War I before becoming congressmen from New York in the House of Representivers. Volk was an officer with the Medical Corps and was with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) on the Western Front. Ansorge was a private in the Motor Transport Corps, but the war ended before he was sent overseas.

Hundreds of thousands of Jewish Americans served in the military during World War II including New York Mayor Ed Koch. Born in the Bronx in 1924, Koch was drafted into the army in 1943. A year later, he landed in Cherbourg,

France, with the 104th Infantry Division and earned a few medals for his service. After the Germans surrendered in May 1945, Koch, who spoke Yiddish, was sent to Bavaria so that he could identify Nazis who were still in public office and replace them with non-Nazis. He was honorably discharged from the army in 1946. Koch soon became a lawyer and served in the House of Representatives from 19691977. He served as the mayor of New York from 1978 through 1989.

Benjamin Gilman was another Jewish representative with an impressive war record. The New York congressman served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a staff sergeant with the 19th Bomb Group, 20th Air Force. Stationed on the Mariana Islands, he flew 35 missions over Japan and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Clusters.

Representative Sam Steiger was not an army commander but gained a reputation when he was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart for actions during the Korean War. He was born in New York and joined the army after finishing college in 1950. In June 1953, Steiger was a tank platoon commander with the 140th Tank Battalion, 40th Division stationed in Korea. On Hill 812, one of the American tanks became disabled and its crew was in the line of enemy fire. Disregarding the danger, Steiger left his own tank and under heavy fire made his

way to the disabled tank to make the necessary repairs. Twelve hours later, another tank needed rescue as its crew was sitting ducks for enemy fire. Steiger pulled up this time in a dozer tank and transferred the stranded crew to his tank. Both crews were saved by Steiger from imminent capture or harm with the quick and courageous action by the future Arizona representative.

Steiger entered politics because of a bet he had with his friends. While working as a ranch hand, he and his friends noticed that their county had never elected a Republican representative. Steiger opined that perhaps the right Republican had never ran for the seat. And so, Steiger friends challenged him to run for office; he ran and was elected to the state senate in 1960.

While the actions of Congress are well covered by the press, the backgrounds of its members are not always as well known. Many of those that served in the military had distinguished careers in uniform and some were decorated for bravery while serving their country under fire.

Avi Heiligman is a weekly contributor to The Jewish Home. He welcomes your comments and suggestions for future columns and can be reached at aviheiligman@gmail.com.

Joseph Pulitzer

Benjamin Gilman

Ed Koch in 1944 in France with the US Army

Classifieds

SERVICES SERVICES SERVICES

MAJOR APPLIANCE REPAIR

Servicing Washers , Dryers , Refrigerators , Dishwasher, stoves

All work guaranteed. Call 718 3762288

VACUUM SALES AND REPAIR

All areas call Max Flam 718-444-4904

THE LEATHER SHOPPE

The spot for all your custom leather Judaica. Tallis/tefillin bags, lulav and esrog bags, havdallah sets, challah covers, shtenders, pesach sets, matzah/afikomen bags.  WhatsApp: (732) 523-0007 or email: theleathershoppe732@gmail.com for a full catalog. We ship.

MY MOTTO IS DON’T WAIT TO buy real estate

Buy real estate and wait

Your realtor for life 516-784-0856 Alexandra at Realty Connect USA

PEACEFUL PRESENCE STUDIO

Men’s private yoga, Licensed Massage & Holistic Health Guidance 436 Central Ave, Cedarhurst Info. & free video training www.peacefulpresence.com 516-371-3715

READING SPECIALIST

Trained in Orton Gillingham and many  multisensory reading programs. Specializes in dyslexia and auditory processing disorder and other reading difficulties.

Rhess.education@gmail.com

Call or Text (516) 220-2059

GERBER MOVING

FULL SERVICE MOVING

Packing Moving Supplies

Local Long Distance. Licensed Insured

1000’S Of Happy Customers

Call Shalom 347-276-7422

HANDYMAN AVAILABLE

For big or small jobs, Sheetrock, carpentry, painting, electrical, plumbing, install & repair appliances

Call Ephraim at 347-593-4691

MANAGEMENT STAFF WILL ASSIST you with: * Obtaining Medicaid and Pooled Income Trust

* In-home Assessments, Individual and Family Counseling

* Securing reliable home care assistance

* Case and Care Management services

Dr. S. Sasson, DSW, LCSW (718) 544- 0870 or (646) 284-6242

HAIR COURSE:

Learn how to wash & style hair & wigs. Hair and wig cutting, wedding styling Private lessons or in a group Call Chaya 718-715-9009

ZEVIZZ WOODTURNING JUDAICA  Challah knifes, batei mezuzah, besamim holder, kiddish cups, havdalah candle holders, yad for sefer torah, pens, stenders, bowls and more  952-356-2228

ECO-FRIENDLY CONTRACTOR

Big or small jobs. from conception to completion windows, doors, plumbing, electrical, Kitchen Cabinet countertop. petitions,  Bathrooms, tiling. additions , painting, any construction work.  call MICHEL 9175383763 Shomer Shabbos

HOUSES FOR SALE

CEDARHURST

Don’t miss this opportunity!

4 Bedroom 21/2 Bathroom House  Perfectly located in Cedar Bay Park, walking distance to all. Oversized property for expansion, A Must See. LOCATION, LOCATION. For More Info call (516) 881-7727 Leave Message

HOUSES FOR SALE

WOODMERE

Beautiful, brick, colonial boasting 5 bdr 3.5 Bth in pristine condition. Excellent location, near all! Move right in! RCUSA 516-512-9626

WOODMERE

Introducing a stunning 14-side hall colonial home in the Hewlett Woodmere School District. Formal living room, formal dining room, den with a skylight. Eat in Kitchen, two sinks, a double oven, a warming draw and a microwave. First floor bedroom, a full bathroom and laundry room. Two-car garage. Upper level has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms. Finished basement with playroom, storage and utilities. Well-groomed exterior with porch adjoining the master bedroom. Hardwood floors and back patio. Central air conditioning, inground sprinkler system, alarm system. Close proximity to schools, shopping centers, restaurants, and transportation options. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

Classifieds

HOUSES FOR SALE

CAN’T AFFORD YOUR PROPERTY TAXES? MORTGAGE?

Must sell for any reason? Call for FREE Consultation. Call now 212-470-3856 Cash buyers available!

WOODMERE

Spacious home within school district 14 with exquisite upgrades and central air conditioning, splendid kitchen with dual sinks, five bedrooms. Main level encompasses a spacious great room, office space, complementing the formal living and dining areas. Unfinished basement, detached garage. Expansive lot, measuring 80 x 100. Conveniently located near shopping, railroad, restaurants and places of worship. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

COMMERCIAL REAL ESATATE HELP WANTED

HEART OF CEDARHURST

Entrance off Gourmet Glatt lot, second floor, shared bath, ideal for therapist/ office work, includes utilities, $600. Call 516-371-3715

APARTMENT FOR RENT HELP WANTED

FAR ROCKAWAY APARTMENT

First floor, 2 bed rooms

Newly remodeled

Private entrance

Excellent location

Call 516-582-5740

HOUSES FOR RENT

BIG FULLY RENOVATED,

Woodmere, spacious 4bedroom 2 full bath split level.2 car garage +driveway. Backyard on water SD#14. W&D. Tons of storage space. 347-517-3552

LOCAL SCHOOL looking to hire a capable administrative assistant to assist the administrator in his daily tasks. Candidates must be detail-oriented, organized, and have the ability to multi-task.  Job responsibilities include data entry, database management, reporting, vendor relations. Proficiency in Microsoft Office required. Enjoyable working environment, personal, sick, vacation days offered, Yom Tovim and certain legal holidays off. Salary commensurate with experience. Please email resume to admin@shoryoshuv.org

DON’T GET STUCK WITH A TWO STORY HOUSE YA KNOW, IT’S ONE STORY BEFORE YOU BUY IT BUT A SECOND STORY AFTER YOU OWN IT!

Call Dov Herman For An Accurate Unbiased Home Inspection

Infrared - Termite Inspection

Full Report All Included NYC 718-INSPECT Long Island 516-INSPECT www.nyinspect.com

DELIVERY PERSON NEEDED to deliver this Newspaper every Thursday  morning to locations in Brooklyn. Must have Mini van or SUVand availability to work Consistently every week. Good pay Please email gabe@ fivetownsjewishhome.com or call (917) 299-8082

SEEKING ELA TEACHER

Teaching position for Gr. 6. Mon.-Thurs., afternoon hours. Far Rockaway/5T area. Great salary, warm, supportive environment. Training in our curriculum is provided. Teachersearch11@gmail.com

BNOS MALKA IS SEEKING Assistant teachers, AM or PM. Also seeking Resource Room teacher. M-Th 8:00-12:30, F 8:00-11:00. Special Education degree preferred. Must teach both Hebrew and English subjects. Send resume to rungar@bnosmalka.org

Classifieds

classifieds@fivetownsjewishhome.com • text 443-929-4003

WANTED HELP WANTED

GREAT OPPORTUNITY!

Looking for a Payroll Processor for a Healthcare Management office in the Five Towns. No experience required. Reach out to Jobs@FCC-Corp.com

REGENTS EXPERT

Tutoring regents in Algebra and Geometry A Darchei Torah instructor. Guaranteed results

Text 347-491-8045

WhatsApp 347-767-1755

5 TOWNS BOYS YESHIVA

Seeking Elem Gen Ed Teachers Excellent working environment and pay. Only lic/exp need apply. Email resume to yeshivalooking@gmail.com

SEEKING ASSISTANT teachers for elementary General Studies classes for ‘24-’25 school year. Candidates should have skills to take over for teachers if needed. M-Th, PM hours, strong support. Far Rockaway area. Send resume to teachersearch11@gmail.com

HELP AUTISTIC CHILDREN

Develop Lifelong Skills Seeking Behavior Technicians for Ivdu Girls’ school, 9am-4pm. Supervision and training provided. High School diploma required.

BOOKKEEPER

Excellent growth potential, Frum environment, Excellent salary & benefits. Email resume to: resumetfs1@gmail.com

MDS REGIONAL NURSE

5 Towns area Nursing Home management office seeking a Regional/Corporate level MDS Nurse to work in our office. Must be an RN. Regional experience preferred. 2-3 years MDS experience with good computer skills required. Position is Full Time but Part Time can be considered. Great Shomer Shabbos environment with some remote options as well. Email: officejob2019@gmail.com

HELP WANTED MISC.

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT

A multi-tasker needed for general office work. The ideal candidate is someone who is detail-oriented, responsible, and can take ownership. Looking for someone who is eager to learn, and expand his/her skill set while possessing the ability to work independently and as part of a team. Experience with Excel required. Five Towns location. In-office position only, not remote. Please send resume to 5tpart.timecareer@gmail.com

YESHIVAT KOL YAAKOV

In Great Neck, NY, is seeking general studies teachers for both the elementary and middle schools, for the upcoming academic year. Mon-Thur afternoons. Competitive salary, warm and supportive environment.  Send resume to m.kalati@kolyaakov.org

SPECIAL ED TEACHER

HASC seeks Special Ed Teachers for our Early Learning Program. Warm, supportive and enjoyable working environment. Great Pay and Benefits! Sign on Bonus! Referral Bonus! Please email resume to jobswd@hasc.net

NEFESH MATCHMAKING (Chesed) Free Shadchan service for the special needs community.  We help those with Medical, Physical, Emotional or Intellectual challenges find their spouse.  Strictly confidential.  Email for more info. Nefesh.matchmaking@gmail.com

SHMIRAS HALASHON

Text 516-303-3868 with a time slot of your choice to be careful on lashon hara. Be a part of the 1,000 people for klal yisroel!

Pass It Along

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

I’m done with passwords. Unfortunately, they are not done with me.

“They” claim – whoever “they” are – that if I don’t set up passwords to protect myself, the account will be accessible to others.

I can’t get into my own accounts.

I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t know which password I used for this account, or I changed it at some point, or just plain forgot it, but I’m always locked out of my own stuff.

And I’m not talking about gaining access to something that should be secure, such as a bank account. I’m just talking about trying to buy some socks from Target on my phone.

Somehow, when I log in to the app that I’ve used, easily, 20 times before, all

of a sudden, they want a password. And when I submit that I forgot it, they want a verification code. I put in the numbers that they send me, and they say it’s wrong. So I ask for a new one. They say that no verification has been sent back to them.

I resubmit it; they say too many attempts have been made to put in the password. So now they want me to I wait to put in a verification code.

I could have driven back and forth to the store to pick up the stuff before I get to place the order remotely!

Seriously, I’m writing this article, arranging my work schedule, and probably I could build a house, all while I wait to put in the new verification code.

Passwords – I’m just not sure who they are protecting?

TEACHING OPPORTUNITY:

Instructor of Science and Instructor of Math (positions can be combined), Maternity Leave Position, December 16 - February 13th 2024-2025

The first position is for two high school introductory chemistry classes (10th Grade) and one high school introductory biology class (9th Grade). The courses follow the New York State Regents curriculum.

The second position is for two periods of Algebra II math (11th Grade). The curriculum for the two classes is similar, with small changes to account for differing tracks. Appropriate candidates should know and feel comfortable with Algebra II material and be able to follow a curriculum that will be provided.

All classes are taught in the afternoons between the hours of 1:23 and 5:10 pm, four days a week, Monday-Thursday. Teachers are asked to be in the building by 12:45 for department meetings and preparation.

The ideal candidate will first and foremost be passionate about student growth as well as the teaching of Science and/or Math, and have a warm and engaging personality that can be used in developing meaningful relationships with each student. They will have mastery of educational pedagogy and the subject matter, but will also be strongly motivated by continued opportunities to grow and develop as an effective educator. We are looking for an experienced teacher leader who is comfortable working with both students and colleagues, and who is intentional about his/her educational approach.

Are you interested in joining our team? Please send a cover letter and resume to sschenker@yuhsb.org

School Profile: Yeshiva University High School for Boys is distinguished as one of the premier Modern Orthodox Jewish High Schools in North America. Founded in 1916, our school has provided the template for a full featured dual curriculum education since its inception. We have graduated thousands of young men who have gone on to serve as leaders in communities around the world. Our program includes a complete College Preparatory program in addition to an intensive Judaic studies curriculum that focuses on textual and analytic skills. 100% of our graduates attend university, and 95% of them attend a yeshiva program in Israel for the gap year between high school and college.

So, I’ll pass a word along to you: perhaps if you leave my stuff alone and I leave yours alone, maybe we won’t need all this password anxiety in our lives. Then maybe they’ll stop making us combine every number, symbol, letter, and of course, at least one capital in the mix in an attempt to drive us nuts for our own safety .

This is just one idea of how doing something for our own good doesn’t always feel so good.

Yet, it seems for now better safe than sorry.

Let’s enjoy access to whatever it is we still are able to get access to. And remember my favorite password:

1-Der ful, 2 B A live!

Rivki Rosenwald is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist working with both couples and individuals and is a certified relationship counselor. Rivki is a co-founder and creator of an effective Parent Management of Adolescent Years Program. She can be contacted at 917-7052004 or at rivkirosenwald@gmail.com.