Five Towns Jewish Home 01.16.25

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Dear Readers,

The scenes of destruction from the fires in L.A. are apocalyptic, the destruction so severe and devastating. Hundreds of homes reduced to ash, charred fragments the only remnants of what used to be palatial abodes.

I read a few testimonies of people whose homes were destroyed. These people had only minutes to run for their lives, snatching just a few possessions to tide them over. Most of them didn’t think that they would never see their houses ever again. They spoke about grabbing a few items of clothing, medications, their family dog – racing to the car to evade the fast-moving flames.

One person spoke about how, after he reached safety, he lamented not taking his grandmother’s menorah with him. Upon his return to what used to be his house, there was one item that wasn’t consumed by the fire: the brass menorah that survived with his grandmother the inferno of the Holocaust.

I tried to put myself into these people’s shoes and attempted to make a mental list of what I would take if I had, G-d forbid, mere moments to pack my life into a suitcase. What do you bring with you? Your most precious possessions. Your family, first and foremost.

And those items you need every day: medications, clothing, diapers, formula, water, food, chargers. Important documents. Tefillin. But what else makes the list? Your leichter, your favorite Tehillim? Family photos? Jewelry? Paintings? Coats? Shoes?

It’s hard to distill your life into just what fits into a car, but it’s a sobering thought when you reflect on this concept.

And then, of course, when this idea morphs into the metaphorical, what do you pack into your spiritual suitcase after 120 years, when your soul soars heavenward? Packing then is not hurried; it’s not rushed; it’s not last minute. It’s a lifetime enterprise in which your suitcase expands and swells, hopefully, as you live through the years. And there are all sorts of items that you bring with you – varied mitzvos and chassadim that you worked on and perfected throughout the years. Those spiritual suitcases are the only things that come with you, possessions that attach to your soul and lift you into the Eternal World.

It’s a heartening, uplifting message that reminds us to imbue our lives in ways that are always reaching Heavenward.

Wishing you a wonderful week, Shoshana

Yitzy Halpern, PUBLISHER publisher@fivetownsjewishhome.com

Yosef Feinerman, MANAGING EDITOR ads@fivetownsjewishhome.com

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Dear Editor,

Someone sent me messages on my phone that transactions are taking place from my Citibank account, and then I got a phone call. I asked this person to prove that they are not fraudsters and that they really work for my bank, and they said that I wrote a specific check to a charitable organization. So I believed them, but further in the conversation, I realized it’s fraud after all. So I said: give me your Citibank number and your name and I will call you back, at which point they hung up.

I have no idea how they found out about the check that I wrote but I want to warn everyone to be careful. The thief often screams: catch the thief. If you get a call from someone who tells you that they are trying to save you from fraud, chances are they are fraudsters themselves.

M.R.

Dear Editor,

I am writing to express my strong disagreement to the article by Marc Thiessen about “The 10 Best Things Biden Did in 2024.” Throughout his presidency, Biden has done nothing good for America and in fact caused great destruction to this once prospering country prior to his term in the White House. While this article does highlight the worst of his presidency, it in no way touches the biggest failures during his tenure in D.C.

The article starts off by saying how “the arms package ensured that Donald Trump will not inherit a military disaster in Ukraine.” Donald Trump is not only inheriting a military disaster in Ukraine, he is inheriting a military disaster in Israel. Moreover, Joe Biden is responsible for

both wars in Ukraine and Israel. While America is in turmoil, he gave billions of American taxpayer dollars to Ukraine (not just $32 billion). Is giving money to Ukraine, which is then being laundered back to Hunter and Joe Biden, really a positive aspect of his presidency?!?! Also, sending weapons to a country whose leader is just another Hollywood actor is no way helping America, and on the contrary, it just further increased America’s chance of entering a World War.

Even though this article distinguishes his leadership failures, it should’ve emphasized his responsibility for the war on Israel. With his failed leadership policies, he is responsible for giving billions of American taxpayer dollars to fund Iranian proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis who terrorize Israel and call for the destruction of America and Israel. This article should have stated how he allowed terror sympathizers to riot on America’s elite college campuses and endangered thousands of Jewish and American students.

There were absolutely no positive aspects of his presidency, and I don’t think that Marc Thiessen should have written that there were because it can persuade readers and future generations to believe that he had any accomplishments.

In conclusion, while Joe Biden will be known as the worst president in history, the future is bright, and with G-d’s help, Donald Trump will build our nation and the globe to Make America Great Again!

Sincerely, Y.W.

Continued on page 14

Dear Editor,

I want to publicize something that will be helpful to our neighborhood. We live in a Christian country. As such, Sundays are a day off for most people. American culture differs from Yeshiva culture in that respect, since many Yeshivas are in session on Sunday. When many of our neighbors are enjoying their day off by sleeping later, they do not appreciate incessant honking at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, alerting your next kid in carpool pickup that you have arrived. Please stop this practice immediately! It is inconsiderate, a chillul Hashem, and contributes to feelings of animosity some members of our neighborhood feel towards us. If the child you are picking up is not coming out, text the parent or why not try this novel approach: get out of the car and ring the doorbell.

Avi Goldberg

Dear Editor,

Prior to the elections, I wrote a few letters to the editor that explained that a true devoted Jew prioritizes support for Israel over that of U.S. Since then, I have received assorted verbal lashings and abuse from various Jews accusing me of being non-patriotic, doctrinaire and other assorted adjectives. I used to think that the commonality was that these comments came from liberals. But I’m learning that it comes mostly from non-religious Jews who don’t value the Torah as a vital part of Judaism and Israel as a fundamental essential to Jewish existence, regardless of whether they follow Jewish ritual or Jewish thinking.

I decided to divert the discussion with one individual who emailed me several times. I presented him six straightforward questions related to Israel security and how U.S. has been dealing with it. My request was that the person answer these honestly and directly without ranting and comparing things to Trump or anyone else unless these items answer the question. I challenge you to ask yourself these questions and pass them to your friends whether they are Jewish or gentile: Is your only standard of anyone’s unequivocal and undivided support for Israel based on a verbal statement that “Israel has a right to defend itself”?

Do you think that past and current presidents asking for Israel to exercise restraint any time there was a terrorist attack was smart advice? I’m OK if you are split on this if you explain which past situations they should have restrained and which not.

If you were Prime Minister of Israel

now, how would you deal with Hamas and get the hostages released?

Should U.S. be involved in influencing Israeli elections at any time or in any way or only when it’s Bibi?

Do you think that since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Israel has been occupying or oppressing Gazans?

A follow-up to the above question: Do you think that the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was an attempt for a two-state solution? If not, what else should Israel have done, then?

I sent this list to the person about a week ago. So far, he has ignored me. I’m not surprised, because I noticed a general trend that many of my attackers are more interested in blasting my views than engaging in a useful debate. If you get a different reaction from your friends, please express that in this newspaper.

Daniel Feldman

Dear Editor,

Nations are formed and sustained through shared values, cultures, and a vision for the future. Citizens remain connected with each other because of the shared value of living on the land called home, a place where people raise and nurture a family, the only really meaningful thing in this world. The dream of law-abiding citizens is when people can work day-in and day-out and come back at the end of the day to a home and a happy family, unburdened by bureaucratic tyrants. Such a societal dream, however, can only be maintained if its people are willing to unite behind the values that their community was founded upon; if they abandon it, their identity is bound to change. When outsiders start invading and dictating what people should value, the entire society is inevitably threatened. Disunity and chaos ensue while the society’s very existence remains on the brink of dissolution. A society can get through such challenges if the people are strong and resilient, but those that fail to stay strong, cease to exist. In societies that do survive, the vanquished outsiders are taught to never threaten the society’s ideals again with a constant threat that more intense consequences could ensue. Without this response, bad influences will continue to make communities vulnerable, because without accountability for bad people, chaos and doom take over.

Despite the American people being barely two months after a historic election that has redefined the political landscape for a generation, vital events about the past four years are being dismissed. Four years ago, the media and the establishment tarred Donald Trump

and his movement with allegations about January 6th, COVID-19, and the 2020 election. Their allegations were false and exaggerated but were stated out of a sense of hate to disqualify Trump and his movement from legitimacy. Months of endless propaganda on news stations and social media weren’t enough, however, as censorship became the next weapon they would activate. Their first step was banning Donald Trump from talking to his 90 million supporters on Twitter, then they created rules against conservatives with a risk of being suspended from the site. MAGA was on retreat, but the other side was only beginning their wave of persecution.

Next, they got district attorneys to investigate Trump and his political allies for “crime.” Coincidentally, criminal indictments started pouring into the headlines. First, they locked up former Trump White House advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, then they indicted dozens of associates of Trump for promoting the MAGA movement. Then they used January 6 as an excuse to lock up hundreds of innocent people who had a connection with that day, while labeling MAGA supporters as “domestic terrorists.” The prosecutors claimed they released these indictments because “no one is above the law,” while willfully ignoring the crimes of murderers, robbers, and druggies looting the streets of cities and communities. Criminal justice meant to them that crime was legal but supporting Trump wasn’t. The story of these political witch hunts don’t end there, however, because they finally launched the movement to take down the man himself.

It was April of 2023 when phones around the world buzzed with the notification, “Former President Donald Trump indicted by a NYC Grand Jury.” “It is over for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement,” the other side declared with gleeful hatred. “The man responsible for January 6 has had justice finally been brought to him,”, they lectured for months on end. Coincidentally, three more criminal indictments were handed down to Trump months apart from each other. Of course, to the rational person, these indictments had nothing to do with justice; it was banana-republic business. But the other side needed reasonable people to be convinced otherwise, so they dragged Trump down to Atlanta, took his mugshot like a murderer once would have gotten, and labeled him a “convicted felon.” Simultaneously, other upstanding prosecutors fined Trump hundreds of millions of dollars for made-up laws all in the name of defeating Orange Hitler! The

legal cases weren’t working, however, as Donald Trump surged in the polls. Consequently, the other side had no choice but for the sake of democracy, to resort to the only remaining solution: assassination.

We all remember where we were on July 13, 2024. We heard that Trump got shot by an assassin and heroically responded with a fist, defiantly in the air, shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

The famous picture of a blood-stained, fist-pumping Trump will go down in history as heroic, but the other side wanted it to go down in infamy for different reasons than you and I. A month later, we got another notification on our phones, “2nd Assassination Attempt at Donald Trump Fails.” They tried to do it again, but thank G-d, they failed miserably because two months later, the man they tried to kill was elected the 47th President of the United States of America.

The election of Donald Trump in 2024 is not only a remarkable political comeback; it is the American people’s response to the unprecedented persecution that occurred over the past few years. There are no excuses for what the other side did to the American people, and no Republican should accept the calls for unity we hear from “our friends, on the other side of the aisle”; these people are not our friends, they are our enemies. A few years ago, such rhetoric would have rightfully been considered extreme, because in politics, there were no enemies, there were only opponents. “Our enemies are those that want to destroy the United States like China or Russia,” rational people once said, but tragically, not anymore. The other side persecuted not only Trump but hundreds of his supporters for madeup infractions, putting an overhanging threat to the millions of other MAGA “domestic terrorists.”

The correct reaction to the results of an election is for both sides to come together, but not when one side tries to destroy the other outside the political arena. Saying to “rise above it” is naive to what the other side has done to the American people. President-elect Trump and his administration must resist the natural impulse of unifying with people who cannot be trusted because as in a fistfight. One shouldn’t tolerate getting punched repeatedly while refusing to fight back unless they want to get beaten again. The consequences of uprooting the lives of millions of Americans must be made clear!

Sincerely,

Donny Simcha Guttman

The World’s Best Passport

According to a list compiled by Henley & Partners, a migration consultancy, Singapore boasts the most superior passport in the world, as per the 2025 Henley Passport Index.

Citizens from Singapore can travel to 195 out of 227 world locations without needing a visa. Right behind Singapore was Japan in second place, whose cit-

izens could travel to 193 global destinations without a visa. In third place was Finland and South Korea, with access to 192 locations.

In the organization’s 2024 ranking, Singapore tied with Japan, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France for the top spot. This year, most countries in the top twenty are in Europe.

The index considers “visa-free” access to be where visas aren’t needed to travel to a particular country or travelers are instead offered other entrance documents that are easier to obtain, including visas on arrival, visitor’s permits, or electronic travel authorities.

The United States, falling from the number two spot in 2015, was in the ninth spot this year, offering visa-free access to 186 destinations. Right behind the U.S. was the United Arab Emirates, with 185, up from 72 a decade ago.

In this year’s ranking, the United Kingdom and Canada also dropped to lower positions. China, offering visa-free access to 58 destinations, which is nearly double last year, jumped to the 60th spot in 2025.

Lowest on the list is once again Afghanistan, with a passport that allows citizens to travel visa-free to just 26 locations, including Cambodia, Maldives,

Djibouti, Sri Lanka, and Haiti. Also low on the list are Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nepal, Libya, and Bangladesh. Above them is North Korea, which offers 41 visa-free destinations.

Lebanon Elects President

Joseph Aoun, a military commander backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, was elected last week as president of Lebanon by the country’s parliament.

With 60-year-old Aoun becoming president, a position specifically for Maronite Christians, he fills a post that has been empty since October 2022, when former president Michel Aoun left office at the conclusion of his term. Until now, Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament hasn’t been successful in electing a new presi-

dent, as no candidate was able to secure the 86 votes required for victory. It took two rounds of voting for the new president to win enough votes. In the second round of voting, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, a Shi’ite ally of the terror group, supported Joseph Aoun, leaving him with 99 votes.

Mohammed Raad, a lawmaker from Hezbollah, claimed his party’s decision to drag on the vote “sent a message that we [Hezbollah] are the guardians of national consensus.”

In his first speech as president, Aoun addressed the chamber, declaring that his inauguration marks “a new phase in the history of Lebanon.” He promised to rebuild south Lebanon, stop Israel from launching attacks on his country, and prevent any parties other than the Lebanese army from carrying arms.

Aoun became the likely victor on Wednesday after Suleiman Frangieh, a candidate backed by Hezbollah, dropped out of the race and endorsed Aoun. Before the election, diplomats from the U.S., France, and Saudi Arabia met with Lebanese officials in an effort to convince them to vote for Aoun. According to reports, American, French, and Saudi officials told Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker and Hezbollah ally, that foreign

aid to Lebanon was contingent on Aoun winning the presidency.

“There is a very clear message from the international community that they are ready to support Lebanon, but that it needs a president, a government,” said Michel Mouawad, a Christian member of parliament who is against Hezbollah. “We did get a message from Saudi of support.”

Lisa Johnson, an ambassador for the U.S., said Aoun’s victory made her “very happy.” The king and crown prince of Saudi Arabia congratulated the new Lebanese president. Gideon Saar, the foreign minister of Israel, commended Aoun on his win and expressed his hopes that the Jewish state’s relationship with Lebanon would improve now that Beirut has a new president.

Melhem Riachi, another Christian lawmaker, declared that Aoun’s election would bring about the end of Iran’s influence in Lebanon, ushering in “an era of Lebanon’s harmony with the international community.”

“This election must now be followed by the appointment of a strong government” able to carry “out the reforms necessary for Lebanon’s economic recovery, stability, security and sovereignty,” said Christophe Lemoine, a foreign ministry spokesman for France.

Since the new president’s predecessor left, Lebanon hasn’t had a president or a functional cabinet. Now, Aoun will need to consult with members of parliament to nominate a Sunni Muslim as prime minister, who will be tasked with forming a new cabinet.

Venezuelan Opposition Leader

Arrested

Last Thursday, hundreds of Venezuelans protested against President Nicolás Maduro, who was sworn in the following day for his third term in office despite internationally verified proof that he lost his reelection bid to Edmundo González.

Leading the demonstrations was María Corina Machado, a 57-year-old opposition leader. According to her aides, after she left the protests, her security convoy was “violently intercepted” by

government officials, who proceeded to kidnap Machado. News of her abduction led to a global outcry from countries all around the world, calling for authorities to free her.

An hour later, a 20-second video of Machado surfaced on the internet, with the opposition leader saying in the video that, after leaving her “wonderful” rally, she was followed and had dropped her purse. After the footage was recorded, authorities reportedly released her. Machado’s aides claim officials forced her to deliver the message in the video.

Later that day, Machado posted that she was “in a safe place and with more determination than ever” to lead the battle against Maduro. Although she said she would offer more details about the incident later, she claimed that authorities shot an individual “when the repressive forces of the regime arrested me.”

The government and Maduro’s allies have said that Machado fabricated the kidnapping story for political gain.

Since 2013, over 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country. Machado, whom the judiciary banned from running for president, is one of the few remaining opposition leaders who has refused to go into exile.

At the protest, she encouraged her supporters to take to the streets. That day, protesters, many elderly, blocked a main avenue, wearing the colors of the Venezuelan flag and calling for Maduro’s ouster. In response to the demonstration, “colectivos,” or pro-government armed forces, appeared at the scene to intimidate protesters, according to Amherst College’s Latin American expert Javier Corrales.

On July 28, 2024, Venezuela held an election that the Carter Center, the United Nations, and other international election monitoring groups, citing tally sheets from electronic voting machines, declared to be illegitimate. The United States has recognized González, who reportedly won against Maduro in a 2-1 landslide, as the winner of the election, but Maduro was sworn in last week.

Armed and masked individuals have also kidnapped other opponents of Maduro, including González’s son-in-law, whom they detained while he was taking his kids to school.

On Truth Social, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump commented on the incident with Machado, declaring, “These freedom fighters should not be harmed, and MUST stay SAFE and ALIVE!”

Sudan’s Army Making Strides

Over the weekend, Sudan’s army said that it had entered the city of Wad Madani, the capital of El Gezira state, which has been held by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rebels for over a year. The army said that it was pushing out its rivals and is hoping to recapture the city.

Recapture of the state as a whole could mark a turning point in the war that began in April 2023 over disputes on the integration of the two forces, which has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises with the displacement of more than 12 million people and half the population facing hunger.

“The leadership of the Armed Forces congratulates our people on the entry of our forces into Wad Madani this morning. They are now working to clean up the remaining rebel pockets inside the city,” an army statement said.

The state, located in the center of the country and south of the capital Khartoum, has seen some of the RSF’s bloodiest attacks on civilians, as well as the burning of fields, looting of hospitals and markets, and flooding of irrigation ditches.

Madani, in the past, was an agricultural trade hub. Now, due to the conflict, the city is at risk of famine.

The army had stepped up its campaign to retake El Gezira in recent months, after retaking Sennar state in the south, including by increasing airstrikes that have often hit civilians.

The RSF’s top commander in the state defected to the army in October, and his troops took part in Saturday’s operations, though the RSF responded at the time with a series of attacks.

The army also on Saturday continued its operations on the city of Bahri, part of the greater capital, where it has also made advances in recent months.

The RSF controls most of the west of the country, where it is fighting the army for al-Fashir, its last stronghold in the Darfur region. The two forces are also actively fighting over White Nile state in the south of the country.

Sudan was ruled by dictator Omar al-

Bashir for over 30 years, a reign which was rife with torture, persecution of minorities and ethnic genocide in Darfur.

During his tenure, hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Bashir was overthrown in 2019. Now, the country is embroiled in a civil war between two rival factions, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Iran Tries to Sell its Oil

In late 2018, Iran shipped around 25 million barrels of oil to China, fearing U.S. sanctions from then-President Donald Trump.

Now, Iran has reportedly transported three million barrels from a storage area in China, as Tehran desperately tries to find the money to support Hamas and Hezbollah, its Gazan and Lebanese proxies reeling from their ongoing wars with Israel. Iran is also grappling with high inflation, slow growth, and less regional influence now that Syria’s Assad regime is no more, thus restricting Tehran’s ability to transport weapons and money to Hezbollah via Syria.

According to reports, China approved the shipment after discussing the matter with Iran in late November and December. This is the first time Beijing has permitted Iran to sell the oil it stores in China.

According to people with knowledge of the matter, Iran stored its oil in two Chinese ports: Dalian, which is east of Beijing, and Zhoushan, which is south of Shanghai. Recently, Madestar and CH Billion, two ships, went to the Dalian port. Early this month, Madestar left the port with 2 million barrels, while the CH Billion, which is expected to bring back 700,000 barrels, is still stationed at the port as of last week.

Madestar reportedly sailed near South Korea, and the oil was moved to another vessel.

By selling all of its barrels of oil held in China, Iran could make $2 billion, half of which would have to be paid to China to cover storage fees.

Iran has reportedly designated earnings for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard

Corps, which provides funding and weapons to Tehran’s proxies.

According to Kpler, a commodities research firm, in 2022, China, a major purchaser of Iranian oil, stopped buying from Iran to avoid sanctions from the United States. However, Iran still indirectly sells oil to China by using other countries as a middleman. According to the nonprofit organization United Against Nuclear Iran, Tehran exported 587 million barrels of oil last year. Of Iran’s total exports, 91% is imported to China, according to the group.

On December 3, 35 entities and vessels involved in illegally exporting Iranian petroleum were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department. More entities and vessels, including a Chinese-owned company, were sanctioned by the department on December 19 “to stem the flow of revenue that the Iranian regime uses to support terrorism abroad, as well as to oppress its own people.”

Trams Collide in France

On Saturday afternoon, dozens of people were injured when two trams col-

lided in Strasbourg in eastern France in a tunnel leading to the station near the city’s central train station.

One hundred other people who were not injured were assessed for shock or stress, according to René Cellier, director of the Bas-Rhin Fire and Rescue Service.

“Around 50 people are in a state of relative emergency, with injuries such as scalp wounds, clavicle fractures and knee sprains. But there are no critical injuries. It could have been much worse,” Cellier said.

One report said that one of the trams was reversing at the time of the accident.

Mayor Jeanne Barseghian, who visited the site, described the incident as a “brutal collision” and expressed her gratitude to emergency responders.

Strasbourg, the first major French city to reinstate tram services in 1994, had not experienced a significant tram accident until now, according to French media.

Austrian Kidnapped in Niger

Eva Gretzmacher, an Austrian woman, has been kidnapped by gunmen in Niger’s Agadez city. It is the first time that a European citizen is known to have been kidnapped in the conflict-hit West African nation since a military junta took power in 2023.

Gretzmacher is an aid worker who has lived in Agadez – hundreds of miles away from the capital city of Niamey – for more than 20 years.

“(She) is well known for her social commitment (and) created a skills center in 2010 that initiated various projects, notably in the fields of education, women’s empowerment, ecology, culture and art,” the local Air Info Agadez reported.

Gretzmacher also supported education programs through her development work and provided assistance to local non-government organizations in various sectors.

So far, no group has claimed responsibility for her abduction.

Niger has for many years battled a jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, a security crisis that analysts say has worsened since the military toppled the country’s government in July 2023.

Niger was seen as one of the last democratic countries in Africa’s Sahel region that Western nations could partner with to beat back the jihadi insurgency in the vast expanse below the Sahara Desert. The country has severed decades-long military ties with the West and has turned to Russia as a new security partner.

Niger is a predominantly Muslim country and is one of the poorest countries in the world. Over 80% of its land lies in the Sahara Desert.

Syrian Jew Dies

Last week, Hadiya Sittah, 92, died in Damascus, Syria, leaving just eight Jewish people left living in Syria. Sittah did not have any children. The

Chief Rabbinate for Syrian Jewry announced her death.

All the Jews living in Syria are elderly. In a special statement, the Chief Rabbinate expressed condolences to Sittah’s sister, Rosa Sittah, a resident of Damascus, and the rest of the family. “May G-d comfort you, and may you know no more sorrow,” the statement read.

The rabbinate also issued a call to Syrian Jews in Israel and around the world to honor her memory. “We ask all those of Syrian origin to learn and pray for the elevation of the soul of Hadiya, daughter of Fahima, of blessed memory.”

At the beginning of the 20th century, Syria’s Jewish community numbered approximately 100,000 people. During the prosperous periods of Jewish life in Syria, Jewish communities in cities like Aleppo and Damascus thrived as centers of learning, trade, and culture, contributing significantly to local economies and intellectual life. However, following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the community faced increasing restrictions and tensions, leading to mass emigration to Israel, the United States and other countries.

Now, only eight elderly Jews remain in Syria, with predictions suggesting the country will have no Jewish population within a few years.

Brazil Bans Cellphones in Schools

On Monday, a bill that bans students from using cellphones in schools was signed into law in Brazil, the latest example of lawmakers limiting young people’s use of personal technology in the classroom, amid growing concern about its effect on education and well-being.

Brazil’s Education Ministry said in a statement that the law “aims to safeguard the mental, physical and psychological health of children and adolescents.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called it an example of “working together for the safety and better learning of our children and young people.”

Students in public and private elementary and secondary schools are now banned from using portable electronic devices throughout the school day, the ministry said, though it allows for their educational use and some other exceptions.

Several other countries have enacted similar bans, including the Netherlands, Italy for students up to the third year of middle school, and France for those under 15.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recommended in 2023 that smartphones only be allowed during class time for learning activities. “Even just having a mobile phone nearby with notifications coming through is enough to result in students losing their attention from the task at hand,” it said in a statement.

“The presence of a phone, we know all too well from our daily lives, can be a big distraction,” Manos Antoninis, the organization’s Global Education Monitoring

Report director, said Rules in the United States regulating phones in schools vary by state and district, and differ as to whether phone use is banned altogether or only during class time.

In 2023, Florida became the first state to enact a law ordering all public schools to ban cellphone use during class. South Carolina schools must ban personal cellphone use during school hours to receive certain funding. California is requiring every school district, charter school and county office of education to develop a policy limiting cellphone use during school hours by July 2026.

S. African Miners Trapped

It is not quite clear how long at least 500 miners have been trapped underground in a South African gold mine. It is certain, though, that they have been down there since November, although some people say that they have been stuck since July.

More than 100 of them are believed to have died in the abandoned gold mine from starvation and dehydration.

In November, authorities launched an operation to force the men out of the mine for illegally mining at the closed Buffelsfontein Gold Mine. They cut off their food and water supplies from the surface for a period of time. Police say the miners can come out but are refusing for fear of being arrested.

The men are trapped at least 1.5 miles below the surface in one of the country’s deepest mines. Advocates say they aren’t able to get out, with 500 of the men alive and still trapped underground in dismal conditions.

The mine is located near the town of Stilfontein, about 93 miles southwest of Johannesburg.

Illegal mining is common in parts of gold-rich South Africa where companies close down mines that are no longer profitable, leaving informal miners to illegally enter them to try and find leftover deposits. Large groups often go underground for months to maximize their profits, taking food, water, generators and other equipment with them, but also relying on others on the surface to send down more supplies.

Police tried to force the miners out last year by cutting off their supplies and dismantling ropes they used to climb down into the mine and a pulley system used for supplies. A Cabinet minister said the aim was to “smoke them out” and said that the government would not send help because they were “criminals.”

But rights groups are critical of government tactics. Some of them won a court case in December forcing police and provincial authorities to allow food, water and medicine to be sent down to the miners again. But they say the supplies are not enough for all those who are trapped.

The miners that emerged over the past two months were arrested by police.

The police operation at Stilfontein last year was part of a countrywide crackdown on mining gangs known as “zama zamas,” or hustlers in the Zulu language, that have long been a problem in South Africa. The government estimates that there are about 6,000 abandoned mines and that close to $1 billion is lost annually in revenue due to illicit mining.

Now, a community-led rescue effort that began on Friday is bringing survivors and bodies out of the Buffelsfontein

mine. On Monday, authorities started the official rescue and recovery effort using a cage lowered into the mine.

More than 20 bodies have been recovered and more than 30 survivors have been brought out, police said. But it could take weeks to rescue survivors and bring all the bodies out as the cage can fit less than 10 people. Authorities have also said no official rescue personnel will go down into the mine because it is extremely dangerous.

So Much Pain

Five young men lost their lives this week in an explosion in northern Gaza, raising the death toll of soldiers in the fighting over the past 15 months to a heart-wrenching number of 407.

The five heroes were named as Cpt. Yair Yakov Shushan, 23, from Ma’alot-Tarshiha; Staff Sgt. Yahav Hadar, 20, from Kfar Tavor; Staff Sgt. Guy Karmiel, 20, from Gedera; Staff Sgt. Yoav Feffer, 19, from Herzliya; and Staff Sgt. Aviel Wiseman, 20, from Poria.

They were all serving with the Nahal Brigade’s Reconnaissance Unit.

The team was inside a building preparing to use explosives for engineering activity when the explosives detonated. The building the troops were in collapsed, killing the five soldiers.

Much of the heaviest fighting over the past several months has been in northern Gaza, where the IDF launched a fresh offensive in October to keep Hamas terrorists from regrouping.

Herzliya Mayor Yariv Fisher said that Yoan Feffer was a “principled, modest young man who was full of dreams. A role model, a model of leadership, courage and friendship.”

Last summer, Yair Yakov Shushan received a certificate of excellence from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi at his officers’ training course graduation.

Aviel Yosef Wiseman was the son of Meira and Mordechai Wiseman.

Yahav Hadar “loved the community

30 [of Kfar Tavor, where he was raised] and the wide, open spaces, where he often rode his mountain bike,” the head of the local council, Oded Halperin, said.

Guy Karmiel was the son of Merav and Oren, brother of Adi and Hila, and grandson of Udi, Riva and Fruma. He was active in the Young Maccabi youth movement and a graduate of Darca Ramon high school.

In the past week, 15 soldiers were killed in Beit Hanoun, 11 of them from the Nahal Brigade.

Four soldiers from the Brigade were killed on Saturday by an explosive device during combat operations.

They were identified as Sgt. Maj. (res.) Alexander Fedorenko, 37, of Bat Yam; Staff Sgt. Danila Diakov, 21, of Ma’aleh Adumim; Sgt. Yahav Maayan, 19, of Modi’in and Sgt. Eliav Astuker, 19, of Ashdod.

Fedorenko was a heavy-equipment driver in the 14th Armored Brigade’s 79th Battalion; Diakov, Maayan and Astiker served in the 931st Battalion.

According to a preliminary investigation, the four were killed when a remote-controlled explosive device was detonated near one of the vehicles in the convoy of open jeeps they were riding in. A combat soldier and a reservist officer were severely wounded in the incident.

Palestinians Honor Jimmy Carter

On Monday, Palestinians planted a grove of 250 olive trees in Judea and Samaria to honor the memory of late U.S.

President Jimmy Carter.

Carter, who died last week at the age of 100, has a legacy that is “rooted” among Palestinians and across the globe, said Abbas Melhem, executive manager of the Palestinian Farmers Union. He was one of the few world leaders who “stood firmly supporting the struggle of the Palestinians for independence and for freedom,” according to Melhem.

The 10-dunam (2.5-acre) grove in the city of Tulkarem, titled “Freedom Farm,” will be fenced in to protect it from wildlife or “extremist Jewish settlers,” who the Palestinians accuse of attacking Palestin-

ian olive trees in the past.

The advocacy group for farmers in the area launched the project in collaboration with U.S.-based nonprofit Treedom for Palestine, which plants trees to empower Palestinian farmers.

Carter brokered the Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978, marking the first peace treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. In his later years, he was a staunch advocate for the Palestinians, cozying up to leaders like Yasser Arafat and Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas. He also compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to apartheid, an allegation Israel soundly rejects, noting that Arab citizens in the Jewish state enjoy equal rights.

“I think planting olive trees that live at least 100 years old like him is a very suitable way to honor his life and his legacy,” said George Zeidan, the Carter Center’s Director in Israel and Palestine.

2 Arab-Israeli Hostage Deaths Confirmed

The Israeli army last week recovered the bodies of two hostages from a tunnel in Rafah. The two abductees were identified as father and son Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne, two Arab-Israelis kidnapped alive on October 7 and held in Gaza ever since.

Hamza, 22, was a father of two. Youssef, 53, was married to two women and had 19 children. The Ziyadne family resides in Rahat, a Bedouin city in Israel, in the Ziyadne neighborhood, which was named after their family.

Hamza, his father Youssef, and two of his siblings—his 18-year-old brother Bilal and 17-year-old sister Aisha—were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 while working at Kibbutz Holit. After over fifty days in Gaza, Bilal and Aisha, along with 103 others, were released as part of a short-lived ceasefire agreement in November 2023.

After being freed from captivity, Bilal said Hamas knew he and his family were Arabs when the terrorists kidnapped them. While in Gaza, the four family members were held together.

Israeli officials have yet to confirm when Youssef and Hamza passed away, although the Walla news website reported that authorities suspect Hamas murdered them around a year ago.

“Four members of a family were kidnapped and only two of them returned alive. Youssef and Hamza, who survived a period of [torture] in captivity in Gaza, could have been saved by an agreement made earlier,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum stated in response to the news.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, “We hoped and worked for the safe return of the four members of the family from Hamas captivity… We returned the children Bilal and Aisha on November 23, and we wanted to return Youssef and Hamza in the same way.”

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdering more than 1,200 people, kidnapping 251 others, and maiming thousands more. Since then, Israel has rescued eight hostages, recovered the remains of 34 others, and freed 105 civilians through a weeklong November ceasefire. Now, Israel suspects that 94 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 34 of whom have perished while in captivity.

Tamar Edri, Hy”d

On November 25, 2024, Tamar Edri was wounded when a rocket from Hezbollah hit her home in Nahariya just a day before the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon went into effect. On Sunday, it was announced that Tamar, 75, died of her wounds.

Another elderly person and a soldier were also seriously injured in Hezbollah barrages that day, while dozens of others were lightly hurt.

Nahum Rosenberg, Tamar’s son-inlaw, said that she had remained unconscious and in intensive care since being injured.

“We knew that her injury was not simple, but we expected that she would recover, and we did not lose hope, but to our regret, it didn’t happen,” Rosenberg said.

“She had many friends and was known

and loved in the city,” he added. “The kind of person that it is fun to be around.”

Tamar was concerned that as an elderly person she would not be able to get to a shelter in time after a rocket warning siren.

“But in the end, it found them in the most protected place,” he said noting that Tamar and her husband Yossi had spent most of the duration of the war at home and in their home’s safe room. The latenight rocket attack apparently caught

them while they were in their bedroom. Yossi, who had left the room but did not make it to the couple’s safe room, was unhurt, though others in the building were injured.

Tamar leaves behind her husband, four daughters, and nine grandchildren. She was the 46th civilian victim of the war that commenced after the October 7 massacre.

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former Defense Minister. The Hague accuses Netanyahu and Gallant of committing war crimes in Gaza, a charge that Israel fervently denies.

If passed by the Senate and signed into law by soon-to-be President Donald Trump, the legislation would press for sanctions, including the potential revocation or blocking of U.S. visas and a ban on U.S. property transactions, on any officials or entities affiliated with the Hague who promote “any effort to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.”

The Hague does not have jurisdiction over the United States and Israel, since the two countries were not signatories to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the 124-member International Criminal Court.

All Republicans voted in favor of the bill, except for Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who said the House “should not get involved in disputes between other countries.” Additionally, 45 Democrats voted to sanction the ICC.

“America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally, Israel,” said Brian Mast, a Florida Republican and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, prior to the vote.

In June, the House passed a similar bill, which was shot down by the then-Democrat-controlled Senate. Although the Republicans now hold a slim majority in the Senate, they would need seven Democrats to side with them in order to pass the legislation.

U.S. House Votes to Sanction ICC

In a 243 to 140 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to penalize the International Criminal Court with sanctions. The “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act,” which will now be voted upon in the Senate, aims to condemn the court for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime

Remembering Carter

Mourners gathered on Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral for former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. Carter passed away on December 29. He was 100 years old.

Five living presidents attended the funeral: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

Also in attendance were Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, first lady, and presidential candidate; the wives of Bush, Trump, and Biden (Michelle Obama was absent due to a scheduling issue); Vice President Kamala Harris; former Vice Presidents Mike Pence and Al Gore; Vice President-elect JD Vance; Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada; and Hunter Biden, the president’s son, among others.

Obama and Trump sat next to each other at the funeral, speaking cordially.

“The man had character,” President Biden said in his eulogy, adding that Carter was “a man who never let the tides of politics divert him from his mission to serve and shape the world.”

Carter, like Biden, was a one-term Democrat president whose presidency was marked by international crises and economic issues. Notably, Carter dealt with the Iran hostage crisis and helped negotiate the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

“Jimmy Carter’s friendship taught me ... that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect,” Biden said. “It’s about asking ourselves ... What are the values that animate our spirit? Do we operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?”

Ted Mondale, the son of Carter’s vice president Walter Mondale, delivered a posthumous eulogy that his father wrote for Carter. Another posthumous eulogy was delivered by Steven Ford, the son of former President Gerald Ford. After Ford, who passed away in 2006, lost an election to Carter, the two became the best of friends, eventually pledging to speak at each other’s funerals.

“Jimmy and I respected each other as adversaries even before we cherished one another as dear friends,” Ford’s son said, reading his father’s eulogy. “Jimmy knew my political vulnerabilities and he successfully pointed them out. Now I didn’t like it, but little could I know that

the outcome of that 1976 election would bring about one of my deepest and most enduring friendships.”

Carter was laid to rest in Plains, Georgia, where he was born and lived for much of his life. Before becoming president, he served as governor. And before entering politics, he was a peanut farmer. In 1982, soon after he left office, Carter and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center, an organization meant to promote human rights around the world, including by monitoring international elections, negotiating peace agreements, and fighting disease. He was an ardent supporter of the Palestinians, cozying up to Palestinian leaders like Yasser Arafat and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In 2002, Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in advancing democracy and promoting peace.

During the funeral, his grandson, Jason Carter, spoke of his Paw-paw’s humility.

“Yes, they [Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter] spent four years in the governor’s mansion and four years in the White House, but the other 92 years, they spent at home in Plains, Georgia,” Jason Carter said. “I never perceived a difference between his public face and his private one. He was the same person no matter who he was with or where he was, and for me, that’s the definition of integrity. That honesty was matched by love.”

Biden Extends TPS Protections

On Friday, just days before leaving office, Biden extended temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the United States.

The relief – known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) – applies to people who would face extreme hardship if forced to return to homelands devastated by armed conflict or natural disasters.

Friday’s announcement applies to people from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela – shielding them from deportation for another 18 months, starting from the expiration of the current protection and allowing them to remain in the

U.S. with work permits.

In his first term in office, President Trump tried to end TPS for El Salvador, among other countries, but faced legal challenges.

Immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers have been urging the Biden White House to do more to protect immigrants in the United States who fear a Trump presidency as he is expected to crack down on illegal immigration.

Temporary protections for El Salvador, Ukraine, Venezuela and Sudan were set to expire in the spring.

The decision grants relief to roughly 232,000 Salvadorans; 1,900 Sudanese; 104,000 Ukrainians; and 600,000 Venezuelans, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Fatal, Fast-Moving Fire Hits L.A.

At least 24 people have lost their lives in the raging, wind-driven fires that have decimated the Los Angeles area landscape. Now, investigators are starting to turn their attention to the rocky bluffs high above Los Angeles with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean as the ignition

point of the Palisades Fire.

At least 5,000 homes were destroyed in the Palisades Fire.

Some say that the fires were started by visitors to a hiking trail near Skull Rock on New Year’s Day. The area is devoid of color now, the ground reduced to ash.

The fire tore through the steep hillsides on either side of the Temescal Ridge Trail, which runs north-south, roughly the same direction as the fierce winds that propelled the Palisades Fire soon after it ignited on Tuesday, January 7, just before 10:30 a.m.

The New Year’s fire was reported just after midnight and burned eight acres before fire crews got it fully contained. Some crew members stayed to monitor for flare-ups.

On the morning the January 7 fire ignited, a witness said he saw what resembled smoke or dust wafting in the area.

Some of the deadliest wildfires of the past century were blazes that firefighters believed they had extinguished, only to have the remnants flare up into an inferno.

When the latest fire began to spread on January 7, nearby residents watched in horror as it took hold in the parched grassland and then jumped down the hillside, stoked by rising winds. They called 911 and packed evacuation supplies in case they needed to flee. By then — around 10:30 a.m. — flames were towering over the landscape. Just half an hour later, the fire had already sped down much of the hillside toward houses below.

Fire crews rushed to the scene by ground and air, and one firefighter reported to dispatchers that the blaze had started “just below the old burn scar” — from the New Year’s blaze — and might reach nearby houses within minutes.

“It is pushing directly toward Palisades,” he said on the radio. “This thing is going to make a good run.”

For now, authorities say that 24 people have died in the fires, but there are dozens who are still missing. More than 92,000 Los Angeles County residents are under evacuation orders and some 89,000 are under evacuation warnings, according to authorities.

The Eaton and Palisades Fires are likely the second and fourth most destructive in California history. The total area burned by the Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires is about 60 square miles, an area larger than Paris.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Monday issued an executive order to speed up the rebuild efforts after the Los Angeles County wildfires.

“This unprecedented natural disaster warrants an unprecedented response that will expedite the rebuilding of homes, businesses and communities,” Mayor Bass said in a statement provided by her office.

A task force will be created to remove debris from impacted areas and mitigate for risk from storms. It will help residents rebuild homes as they were and will issue permits in all impacted areas. The City of Los Angeles will provide 1,400 units of housing to those who have lost their homes and will direct the Department of Building and Safety to expedite temporary certificates of occupancy for those units.

As of Monday, the Palisades Fire was 14% contained, although it had seen “very little” growth in the last 36 hours. The Eaton Fire was 33% contained; the Hurst Fire was at 95% containment.

Drink Coffee in the Morning

New research suggests that drinking coffee exclusively in the morning could lower the risk of premature death. According to the study, drinking coffee later in the day isn’t linked with prolonged life.

The study, released last week in the European Heart Journal, was headed by Dr. Lu Qi, HCA Regents Distinguished Chair and professor at Tulane University’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans.

“This is the first study testing coffee drinking timing patterns and health outcomes,” the lead author said. “We don’t typically give advice about timing in our dietary guidance, but perhaps we should be thinking about this in the future.”

As part of the research, the authors analyzed dietary and health data of 40,725 adults conducted by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2018. Much of the data includes the times they consumed coffee, both caffeinated and decaffeinated.

The study authors grouped coffee drinking times into three categories: morning (4 a.m. to 11:59 a.m.), afternoon (12 p.m. to 4:59 p.m.), and evening (5 p.m. to 3:59 a.m.). Two patterns emerged in the data: drinking coffee in the morning and drinking coffee all day.

According to the data, those who drink coffee in the morning were 16% less likely to die prematurely from any cause and 31% less likely to die specifically from cardiovascular disease. But those who drink coffee all day aren’t any less likely to pass away prematurely.

The authors also considered other factors, such as sleep, age, race, ethnicity, gender, family income, education, physical activity levels, diet, and preexisting health conditions. Even when taking those factors into account, the authors still found that drinking coffee in the morning was linked to lower odds of dying early.

Experts noted that the study was observational and wasn’t conducted in an experiment setting. Thus, the research

only shows an association between morning coffee drinking and a decreased chance of early death but not a causal relationship. Still, Vanessa King, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’s spokesperson, maintains that the research results are “meaningful, as the leading cause of death in America is cardiovascular diseases.”

“Highlights include using a machine learning-style method to categorize coffee drinking patterns, and validation of findings in (more than one) external data source which are distinct from the primary source, which greatly reduces the likelihood of an accidental/false positive finding,” said Dr. David Kao, the Jacqueline Marie Schauble Leaffer Endowed Chair in Women’s Heart Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz, who was not involved in the study, but called the research “fascinating.”

There are some issues with the study, however. For instance, there might be other factors that the study authors didn’t consider, and there might be inaccuracies in the data itself. Also, the data didn’t include genetic information.

The researchers “could not exclude the possibility that the morning-type coffee drinking pattern is a marker for an overall healthy lifestyle,” the authors stat-

ed. “For example, morning-type coffee drinkers may be more willing to exercise and eat non-ultra-processed foods.” In other words, it may not be that drinking coffee in the morning lowers the risk of premature death. Rather, it might be that those who drink coffee in the morning are more likely to engage in habits that lengthen their lives.

But if the study is accurate, a possible explanation for coffee consumption’s link to a lower risk of premature death could be “that consuming coffee in the afternoon or evening may disrupt circadian rhythms and levels of hormones such as melatonin,” according to Qi. Lower melatonin levels are associated with higher blood pressure levels and increased oxidative stress and cardiovascular disease risk. Additionally, coffee has antioxidants that eliminate free radicals that boost one’s risk of cardiovascular disease, thus reducing inflammation in the body.

“The anti-inflammatory effect of a pattern of coffee consumption concentrated in the morning may be more beneficial than that of a pattern … spread across morning, afternoon and evening,” the study said.

Chris Wray’s Resignation

Although he maintains that dangerous times lie ahead for the United States, FBI Director Christopher Wray decided to resign from his position because of President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to overhaul the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wray said in a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday.

His decision to resign was announced on social media last month. Wray, a 58-year-old attorney who graduated from Yale Law School and started working for the Justice Department in 1997, said during the interview that his decision to step down “was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make.” Out of his tenyear term, he served seven years. Wray will leave office in January.

“President-elect had made clear that he intended to make a change… My conclusion was that the thing that was best for the bureau was to do this in an orderly way, to not thrust the bureau deeper into the fray,” said Wray.

Trump, who will assume office on January 20, selected Wray to lead the FBI in 2017 during the president-elect’s first term. Wray was the successor of James Comey, whom Trump fired. After the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as part of a classified documents investigation against the then-former president, the friendship between Trump and Wray soured.

Their relationship further went downhill when Wray raised doubts over whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit Trump’s ear during his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, which was cut short after a gunman almost assassinated Trump.

Following his victory in November, Trump announced that he would nominate Kash Patel, an author and former member of the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, for this position. Patel is one of Trump’s more controversial picks.

“The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become

known as the United States Department of Injustice,” Trump wrote on social media in December, after Wray said he would retire.

During the interview, Wray noted that domestic terrorism and the Chinese government are major threats to the United States.

Amazon & Meta Ditch DEI

According to a company memo from December, Amazon announced it would be pausing its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, as the U.S.’s political landscape changes with the comeback of former and now-incoming President Donald Trump and new anti-DEI rulings by the Supreme Court.

DEI policies have been criticized as “woke,” overly political, and largely ineffective in creating true diversity in the workplace. In the company’s memo, Candi Castleberry, a senior human resources executive, said Amazon would be “winding down outdated programs and materials,” including particular initiatives that would be phased out by the end of last year.

“Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes — and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” wrote Castleberry, who was hired as the company’s vice president of global DEI in 2021 before her job title changed in 2023 to vice president of Inclusive eXperiences and Technology.

An Amazon memo noted that company executives, for the past few years, had been assessing DEI initiatives’ effectiveness.

“We worked to unify employee groups together under one umbrella and build programs that are open to all,” the memo reads.

Recently, Amazon “scrubbed” its website’s “Our Positions” section of “Equity for Black people” and webpages for people with alternative lifestyles.

Last month, Amazon pledged $1 million to the inaugural fund of President-elect Donald Trump, joining many corporate giants in donating to the incoming president.

Meta, the company behind Facebook,

42

Instagram, WhatsApp, and other products, just recently ended all of its DEI initiatives, amid what the company called a shifting “legal and policy landscape.”

“The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI,” Meta’s Vice President of Human Resources Janelle Gale said in a memo. “The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and others have been warming up to Trump since his victory in November. Zuckerberg recently ended Facebook’s fact-checking program, which he and Republicans said was too limiting of free speech.

Robby Starbuck, a filmmaker and anti-DEI activist, has crusaded against affirmative action, pressuring big companies to end their diversity programs. Over the past year, several companies have halted their DEI initiatives, including Walmart, Ford, John Deere, and Toyota. Starbuck has threatened to “expose woke companies.”

In response to Amazon’s move to end its DEI programs, Starbuck criticized the company for not listing “what those changes are going to be.”

Starbucks: If You Stay, You Must Pay

No longer can you hang out at your local Starbucks for the afternoon. The company announced this week that it was reversing its “open door” policy. A new code of conduct says that people who wish to linger in a Starbucks store or use its restroom must purchase something from the store.

The new rules – which will be posted in all company-owned North American stores – also bans discrimination or harassment, consumption of outside alcohol, smoking, vaping, drug use and panhandling.

Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said the new rules are designed to help prioritize paying customers. “We want everyone to feel welcome and comfortable in our stores,” Anderson said.

“By setting clear expectations for behavior and use of our spaces, we can create a better environment for everyone.”

The code of conduct warns that violators will be asked to leave, and says the store may call law enforcement, if necessary. Starbucks said employees would receive training on enforcing the new policy.

In 2018, two black men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia where they had been conducting a business meeting. That store had a policy of asking non-paying customers to leave, and the men hadn’t bought anything. But the arrest, which was caught on video, was a major embarrassment for the company.

At the time, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz said he didn’t want people to feel “less than” if they were refused access.

“We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision a hundred percent of the time and give people the key,” Schultz said.

Since then, though, employees and customers have struggled with unruly and even dangerous behavior in stores. In 2022, Starbucks closed 16 stores around the country — including six in Los Angeles and six in its hometown of Seattle — for repeated safety issues, including drug use and other disruptive behaviors that threatened staff.

NYC to Spend $650M on

Homelessness

New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he wants to tackle the issue of homelessness plaguing city streets. As such, he is throwing money at the problem.

The Democrat mayor announced that he will be spending an additional $650 million over the next five years to combat street homelessness and mental illness after a spate of terror by homeless people that looms over city residents on the subways and streets. The funding was unveiled in his annual State of the City speech.

“In the last few weeks, we have seen random acts of violence that have shaken many New Yorkers,” Adams said. “This

investment will allow us to expand support for New Yorkers who are living on our subways, wrestling with serious mental illness, and at risk of entering shelter.”

The number of people living on the streets and subways of New York City reached a nearly two-decade high last year.

Much of the money will be spent on an additional 900 so-called “safe haven” beds, an alternative to the city’s dormitory-style shelters, as well as 100 new beds for homeless children and teens, according to Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services.

The city will also expand its outreach on the subways and open a new psychiatric center for those with mental illness who have nowhere to stay when they’re discharged from hospitals.

“At this moment, we have to lean in to make sure the subways feel better, while providing destinations for people who are unsheltered and making sure we’re dealing with the folks who are causing the most anxiety, which is folks with severe mental illness,” Williams-Isom said.

Last month, a man was shoved onto the subway tracks in front of an incoming train. A woman sleeping on the train was burned to death by an illegal immigrant. A man slashed two people with a knife in the Grand Central subway station.

The announcement comes as Adams readies for an upcoming trial on federal corruption charges, swirling scandals within his police department, and many other contenders for the mayorship position in the next election.

Jack Smith Resigns

Jack Smith resigned on Friday, weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration for his second term. Smith had been the investigator behind Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election and for allegedly retaining classified documents after leaving the White House. The special counsel resigned after submitting his final report on the probes to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Both cases against the former president were dismissed.

Trump repeatedly vowed he would fire

44 Smith upon taking office and has said Smith should be “thrown out of the country.”

Smith, who Garland tapped in November 2022 to lead both probes, charged Trump in June 2023 with 37 counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.

Two month later, Smith indicted Trump on charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in an effort to subvert democracy and remain in power.

Trump denied all wrongdoing. He pleaded not guilty on all charges in both cases.

Free Dog Sitters – At Museums

Traveling to Rome with your favorite four-legged friend? You can still visit the celebrated museums in the city without fear that your furry friend will feel left out.

Bauadvisor is launching a new initiative where dog owners can leave their pets for free with qualified dog-sitters so they can tour museums without worrying about the visit being too “ruff” on their canine companions.

The offer is only available at four museums at Rome on Sunday, including at the National Etruscan Museum and the Castel Sant’Angelo.

More than 8 million dogs live in Rome, so there are a lot of dogs that sit waiting for their owners outside of special spots.

As part of the program, one of the company’s 400 dog-sitters meets the owner outside the museum and takes the dog for a walk in the green spaces nearby before reuniting them with their owners after they have finished wandering around the museum.

There is a paid-for version of the service at 290 museums in 53 cities across Italy.

The free version launched on Sunday. It will take place for one day every month over the next 15 months, each time in a different Italian city. Next month, it will be available at four museums in Venice, including the Guggenheim Collection, before travelling to Bologna in March where it will be outside two museums there.

In this way, Bauadvisor hopes to “support and enhance the historical and cultural heritage of Italy,” CEO Dino Gasperini explained.

Similar services have sprung up in other countries like in France, where company PatchGuard provides doggy day care in some of the country’s biggest cities, allowing dog owners to more easily explore attractions. Research shows that around one-third of pet owners in the U.S. changed their travel plans due to the difficulty of travelling with their furry friends.

Sounds ruff.

52 Records in 52 Weeks

2024 was a busy year for David Rush, as he was rushing around breaking Guinness World Records at breakneck speed.

But lest you think this is something new for the Idaho man, think again. This was the second year that he accomplished the feat.

Rush, who previously broke a Guinness World Record every week in 2021, said he replicated the achievement while also successfully pursuing his goal of holding the most concurrent Guinness World Records titles.

The Boise resident kicked off the year with the most ping pong balls caught in shaving foam on the head in 30 seconds.

He said the “most painful” record of the year was the fastest time to drink one liter of lime juice through a straw, 13 seconds – “And yes, I threw up,” he said.

Rush said the farthest distance of blowing a playing card, 33 feet and 4.78 inches, was the “most unexpected challenge.”

The “most satisfying record” was the most juggling tricks in one minute with three balls – 49.

Rush said the easiest record of the

year was the most balloons burst with boxing gloves in one minute. The number to beat was 72, and Rush smashed it with 327 balloons.

Hey David, what’s the rush?

Do Not Call 911

Yup, you heard us correctly. There are many reasons why you shouldn’t call 911 – and the police in Saskatchewan, Canada, have a handy list for you.

The department posted a video to Facebook featuring officers at its operations center giving a rundown of the top 10 most unusual non-emergency calls that came in through the 911 emergency number in 2024.

The No. 10 spot on the list had to do with a not-so-tech-savvy individual who “called 911 to advise that they didn’t recognize someone on their social media friend list.”

Another caller told operators their parents were forcing them to clean their room, and the No. 8 caller reported a fox was “wandering the neighborhood and scaring a local cat.” Hisss.

The No. 7 caller buzzed the police to report that bees were inside their house, the No. 6 caller asked for police help to unlock their cellphone, and the No. 5 caller told operators someone had thrown their ice cream on the ground. I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

The No. 4 call involved an individual who reported their cat was being “mean” (me-ow!) and asked for a police officer to “come and help with the situation.”

Caller No. 3 asked for help with a malfunctioning washing machine, and the No. 2 caller requested help with a math problem, “as they didn’t want to fail their test in the morning.” Math is always causing problems.

The No. 1 call on the list came from a resident who reported someone had apparently taken their tambourine during a party.

“Whether you’re frustrated with your washing machine, trying to unlock your phone or suspicious of a fox – calling 911 must be reserved for emergencies and crimes in progress,” the RCMP concluded.

Caught red-handed!

Youngest to the South Pole on Skis

Karen Kylleso may be young, but she is an accomplished woman.

The 21-year-old from Norway became the youngest person to reach the South Pole on skis, solo and without assistance, this week.

Kylleso accomplished the feat overnight between Monday and Tuesday, 114 years after fellow Norwegian and polar explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole.

She covered the 702 miles in just under 54 days.

“It’s a page written in polar history,” her mentor, Norwegian adventurer Lars Ebbesen, noted.

Kyllso dethroned Pierre Hedan of France, who, according to Guinness World Records, held the record for being the youngest person to reach the South Pole, solo and unassisted, at the age of 26. He set the record a year ago, on January 7, 2024.

Kylleso, who is just 5 feet tall and weighs 106 pounds, pulled a sled weighing 100 kilos, or twice her weight, in her bid to reach the pole.

She noted that she had to gain weight in order to accomplish the feat.

“Since I’m smaller than the average male doing this, I need extra weight and strength to pull the same load,” she said in November, adding that she built up her body weight by 10% before the expedition.

Kylleso arrived late on Monday night in temperatures of around -25 degrees Celsius (-13 degrees Fahrenheit).

She is already the youngest girl to cross Greenland on skis, completing the feat at the age of 15, in 2018.

“She had barely even arrived (in Greenland) before she asked me: ‘Do you think I can also go to the South Pole?’” recalled Ebbesen.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store hailed the young adventurer on Tuesday, saying she was “following in the trails of Norwegian polar heroes.”

Sounds brrrr-illiant.

Around the Community

Recent Guest Rabbanim Address Bochurim at Yeshiva Kol Torah

Rabbi Yossi Singer

Rabbi Tzvi Krigsman

Rabbi Mordechai Kaminetzky

Rabbi Nosson Greenberg

Rabbi Chaim Aryeh Zev Ginzburg

Rabbi Yaakov Bender

Assemblywomen Stacey Pheffer

Amato Visits BYAM

Last Thursday, Bais Yaakov Ateres Miriam was privileged to host Assemblywomen Stacey Pheffer Amato, a local representative who is known both for her community involvement as well as her support of the individuals within the community. Amato, and her liaison Pnina Rapfogel, spent the afternoon visiting the building, and interacting with both students and staff.

The day started off in the lunchroom, with a lunchtime serenade, where the girls belted out an impressive rendition of the national anthem. After the song was over, the girls were given the opportunity to interact with Ms. Amato. The girls also presented a thank you card to Ms. Amato on behalf of her communal work. Ms. Amato then talked about the importance of servicing one’s own community and encouraged the girls to get involved in communal work on any level, even within their very own school building!

This important conversation was followed by a question-and-answer session, with girls asking her questions such as

how did her career in politics begin. They wanted to learn more about the motivating force behind her work. Perhaps the most popular request was the one where a girl asked Ms. Amato if she can help in the quest to abolish homework! Unsurprisingly, Ms. Amato was not on board with that one!

After leaving the lunchroom, Ms. Amato took a tour of the building. The scope of the tour included the preschool, the elementary school, and even the high school. She began in the preschool, where she was greeted by a welcome sign designed by the kindergarten students, as well as a thank you card penned by the Pre-1A girls.

The day concluded with some targeted discussions with the BYAM administration, as well as the board members of the school.

All in all, the visit was an enjoyable and productive one. The school looks forward to welcoming Ms. Amato again in the future and thank her for always giving generously of her time and attention to the needs of the community.

Growing in Tefilah at HALB

The Middle School HALB boys who have consistently excelled in davening this semester enjoyed a special trip last week! The first stop was DRS where they heard words of inspiration from Rabbi Storch and enjoyed a fun program about tefilah with Rabbi Farber. Next, they went bowling at Woodmere Lanes and then went to lunch on Central Ave.

Health Week at Gan Chamesh

In connection with the Rambam’s yahrtzeit, Gan Chamesh began its health unit. The children dramatized doctor’s appointments, explored using medical and nursing props, and were visited by health professionals from within the parent body. They gained a deeper understanding of the magnificent bodies Hashem gave us and what we can do to keep them healthy.

Shulamith Chagigat HaChumash

Shulamith’s Chagigat HaChumash marked an exciting milestone for Kitah Bet!

Mrs. Ginsparg spoke about the beauty of learning Torah, and we are so excited for them to learn with their new Chumashim! A heartfelt thank you to Morah

Naomi Hollander and our music teacher Morah Rena Greenberg for their dedication and making such a memorable performance.

Mazal tov to all the school families on this special milestone!

Beis HaKnesses of North Woodmere Celebrates 20 Years

Last Shabbos, the Beis HaKnesses of North Woodmere (BKNW) celebrated its 20th anniversary with a grand weekend of events, highlighting two decades of extraordinary growth and community impact. What began as a small kehillah of ten families davening in Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz’s basement has blossomed into a vibrant shul, now at the heart of a community with nine shuls.

Rabbi Lebowitz, one of the most respected rabbonim both locally and globally, has been the cornerstone of BKNW’s journey. Under his leadership, the shul has become a beacon of Torah, tefillah, and achdus for North Woodmere and the greater Five Towns community.

The celebratory weekend began with uplifting tefillos led by renowned chazzan Yisroel Williger. A festive Oneg Shab -

bos brought members together to rejoice in the shul’s milestones, with rabbonim from other shuls offering heartfelt divrei Torah and tribute to Rabbi Lebowitz and BKNW. The Shabbos morning gala kiddush exemplified the warmth and camaraderie that define the kehillah.

The highlight of the weekend was a formal Melave Malka on Motzei Shabbos.

The evening began with soulful musical entertainment by Eli Levin, setting the tone for a night of joy and inspiration.

Shul member Rabbi Natan Farber infused humor and heart into the program with a comedy routine that left the audience in stitches as he gently roasted fellow members.

A touching surprise came with the appearance of Harav HaGaon Rav Yisroel Reisman, who delivered divrei bra-

Mercaz Academy Shines at

cha and expressed his warm support for Rabbi Lebowitz, with whom he has recently developed a close relationship.

In his poignant address, Rabbi Lebowitz reflected on the shul’s humble beginnings, expressed gratitude to those who have sustained it, and shared his vision for the future. He lauded the founders for their foresight, praised current members for their contributions, and inspired the next generation to uphold the shul’s mission as a beacon of Torah and tefillah.

The evening also included a retrospective video, with heartfelt reflections from members on the shul’s growth and its impact on their families. BKNW president Joey Kramer served as emcee, paying tribute to the shul’s founders and past presidents, whose vision and dedication

laid the foundation for its success.

The night concluded with a mesmerizing performance by acclaimed magician Shlomo Levinger, leaving attendees amazed and delighted.

Each family left the Melave Malka with meaningful keepsakes: a BKNW car magnet and a bottle of wine from a winery in northern Israel that suffered losses during the recent war. This gesture demonstrated the shul’s solidarity with Acheinu Bnei Yisroel and support for those affected by the conflict.

As BKNW embarks on its next chapter, the 20th-anniversary celebration served as a powerful reminder of its remarkable journey and the strength of a shared commitment to Torah, community, and chesed.

CIJE VEX Robotics Tournament

Mercaz Academy returned to compete in the CIJE VEX Robotics League last week with 24 fourth and fifth graders attending the tournament for elementary school students.

“I’m not sure if I’m more nervous or more excited,” said one fourth grader, “and I couldn’t sleep at all last night!”

The feeling was not uncommon among the younger students as they left Plainview for SAR, the school hosting the tournament. Even the fifth grade mem-

bers of the Robotics Team may have been a little jittery–although their memory of last year’s third-place finish served to bolster their confidence.

Any signs of nervousness disappeared upon their arrival at SAR as these competitors in the Elementary School category snapped into action, focused and ready to put their robots through their paces. The teams practiced at least once a week all semester on the school’s practice field, with this year’s theme of

“City Technology.” Since the beginning of the school year, Mercaz students had been building and operating robots to meet the challenges of a natural disaster in a city: raising downed trees and power lines, raising the roof of an emergency shelter to drop in supplies, delivering medication to the hospital, and clearing roads after a landslide. In match after match, they controlled their robots as they performed their assigned tasks, and were even ranked in first place after

Round One.

The hardworking and well-prepared Mercaz teams just missed the podium by a fraction of a point, finishing in an impressive fourth place in a field of 64 teams. Second grade teacher Mrs. Aileen Kirschenbaum, who accompanied the group as a grandparent chaperone, was impressed by their excellent performance. However, she was even prouder of the way they worked with the other teams.

“The tournament was designed to encourage cooperation, with teams from different schools assigned to work together to complete projects,” she explained. “Our students stepped right into collaboration with complete strangers, introducing themselves, making suggestions, and offering help. As an observer, I felt so proud of our students!”

The Mercaz Academy fourth and fifth graders had a wonderful time at the competition and are already making adjustments to their robots in hopes of reaching the podium at the next tournament in May.

HAFTR Hosts Yigal Dilmoni

This past week, HAFTR Middle School students had the privilege of hearing from Yigal Dilmoni, CEO of American Friends of Judea and Samaria. In a short yet impactful visit, Mr. Dilmoni captivated the students with stories of his experiences serving as a reservist in Gaza and Lebanon. His tales offered a unique window into the life of a soldier on the frontlines, leaving students inspired by his unwavering commitment to Judaism and faith even in the face of challenges.

Mr. Dilmoni also highlighted the profound importance of Judea and Samaria as integral to the Jewish heritage. He

encouraged students to take pride in the land of Israel, emphasizing its historical and spiritual relevance to the Jewish people.

The talk resonated deeply with the students, who found his message both moving and engaging.

HAFTR is proud to provide opportunities for its students to connect with the broader Jewish story, fostering pride and appreciation for their identity and heritage. Moments like this exemplify the school’s mission to inspire the next generation with a deep love for Israel and Jewish values.

HAFTR’s Chagigat Siddur Celebration

This past Sunday, HAFTR proudly hosted its annual Chagigat Siddur celebration, a momentous and meaningful occasion as our first graders received their very first siddurim.

The event marked the beginning of their lifelong journey in tefillah, filled with joy, purpose, and a deeper connection to Jewish faith and tradition.

Parents, grandparents, and even

great-grandparents joined together to celebrate this unforgettable milestone. The ceremony highlighted the profound bond that tefillah creates within families and across generations, emphasizing the continuity of our shared mesorah. Each first grader received their siddur with pride and excitement, opening a new chapter in their spiritual and educational growth.

HAFTR Lower School Mashgiach Ruchani, Rabbi Asher Klein, delivered a heartfelt bracha, encouraging the students to embrace the beauty of prayer.

“Your siddur gives you the opportunity to offer the most pure and beloved tefillot to Hashem,” he shared.

The 1st grade morot, Morah Etia Cohen, Mrs. Rebecca Feuer, Mrs. Brittany Gannon, Mrs. Debra Haft, Mrs. Penina Klein, and Morah Yael Polak, with the support of music teacher Janet Goldman, worked tirelessly to prepare the students for this special day. Their dedica-

tion shone brightly as the children sang heartfelt songs about the power of tefillah, infusing the ceremony with warmth and meaning. The students recited the Shehechiyanu bracha, holding their new siddurim close, their faces radiant with gratitude and excitement.

After the ceremony, students participated in interactive activities to deepen their understanding of tefillah. They decorated personalized siddur covers, bookmarked the relevant and important ones to them, and engaged in hands-on workshops to explore the significance of prayer in their daily lives.

The celebration was a beautiful blend of family, community, and spirituality. The very next day, the first graders eagerly opened their siddurim in class, ready to embark on their journey of meaningful prayer. HAFTR’s Chagigat Siddur was not just an event—it was a celebration of faith, legacy, and the joy of connecting with Hashem through tefillah.

Siach Yitzchok Melava Malka

This past Motzei Shabbos, Siach Yitzchok held their annual Shalsheles Melava Malka.

For this year, there was a beautiful addition. The Grandparents, parents, and grandchildren finished Meseches Brachos under one roof together. The kol Torah coming out of the room was a true nachas for all that participated. Following the learning seder was divrei Torah and story about the Ribnitzer Rebbe, from the Menahel, Reb Dovid Sitnick, shlita.

Reb Moishe Katzenstein, who is a current parent and grandparent, made

Rabbi Katz’s

Shul

the siyum.

The night ended with a beautiful kumzitz.

in Far Rockaway

Hosted a Sheva Brachos for Rabbi Katz’s Granddaughter

Winter is “snow” much fun at Shulamith ECC

Photos by Ira Thomas

HAFTR Excels at Robotics Tournament

HAFTR Lower School students brought their A-game to the regional robotics tournament this past weekend, earning both 1st and 3rd place in an exhilarating competition. Competing against other talented teams, our students demonstrated ingenuity, problem-solving skills, and a deep understanding of STEM concepts, making their school proud.

The teams were guided by the exceptional leadership of Coach Shirley Lane, whose dedication and expertise inspired the students every step of the way.

Daniel, one of the participants, emphasized the importance of persistence, saying, “You can learn anything over time.” Teamwork was another key ingredient to success. “You can’t win without teamwork,” said Nittai, highlighting the collaborative effort that powered their impressive performance. The students

also embraced a spirit of curiosity and exploration. “Always try new things,” added Ben, encouraging others to take on challenges fearlessly.

This achievement is a testament to the incredible STEM education at HAFTR, the students’ commitment to excellence, and the guidance of Coach Lane. Mazel tov to our robotics teams for representing HAFTR with pride and innovation!

Spelling Champions at HALB

he Middle School Spelling Bee at HALB was intense, but three students came out on top! The first place winner was seventh grader Elana

Hersch. Second place went to Yoni Mittan, and third place went to Natan Aryeh. Congratulations!

Gesher Siddur Play

The annual First Grade Siddur Play at Gesher was a heartwarming celebration where children received their very first siddur, marking

Danielle

Renov’s

a significant milestone in their Jewish education. Surrounded by proud parents and grandparents, the students showcased the skills they had learned

Exciting

and

to daven, demonstrating their growing connection to tefillah and Hashem. This special event not only highlighted the children’s hard work and dedication

Innovative Idea:

Micro Peas – A Micro Cookbook...With Massive Taste

Why have more than 30,000 people pre-ordered Micro Peas: The Mini Cookbook Series, a cookbook they’d never seen based on a concept that was totally unfamiliar?

For one thing, it’s written and designed by Danielle Renov, the powerhouse behind the beloved @peaslovencarrots community that captivates over a hundred thousand fans who tune in daily for her engaging recipes, cooking tutorials, lifestyle advice, and family-focused content.

Her wildly popular bestselling cookbook, Peas, Love, and Carrots, has become a must-have in kitchens around the world. Kosher cooks everywhere know that if a recipe is Danielle’s idea, it will be creative, the presentation will be show-stopping, and the food will be superb.

For another, the idea of “micro cookbooks” – with their small size and laser

focus on one theme – is innovative and intriguing.

So what, exactly, is this innovation that has tens of thousands of cooks crackling with excitement? Let’s hear from Danielle herself.

“A year or two back, I needed a recipe for something and had to search through so many cookbooks and online recipes to find one that appealed to me. All I kept thinking was that I wished there was an entire book dedicated to just this one item. And thus, THE MICRO PEAS SERIES was born.”

Micro Peas is a little cookbook, with big ideas! Each volume zeroes in on one must-have ingredient or cooking concept and explores the many ways to make food that’s perfect for you, your family and guests. It’s incredibly quick and convenient: no more scrolling endlessly or digging frantically through stacks of cookbooks for that perfect recipe.

In the first of this mini cookbook series, Danielle dives into boneless chicken—both white and dark. From Greek Chicken Salad and Broiled Buffalo Chicken Wraps to Chimichurri-ish Grilled Pargiyot, these are recipes designed for real life, in a little book that packs BIG flavor into every page. And the small format isn’t the only attraction. With it’s “micro price” – under $14! – this cookbook is as affordable as it is delicious! Next time you buy or defrost a package of boneless chicken and wonder how to change it up into something magical, just grab your Micro Peas for the mouthwatering solution to “chicken again?!”

This mini cookbook is set to become a staple in kosher kitchens everywhere. And this is just the beginning! Future editions will focus on different ingredients and themes, giving us all something to look forward to.

What makes Danielle’s recipes so be-

but also brought together families to celebrate the momentous occasion with abundant gratitude and happiness.

loved? Maybe it’s because each and every one comes flavored with her passion, her sense of fun, and her cooking philosophy.

“Food is the vehicle through which I connect to people. I love nothing more than sitting around a delicious table chatting and connecting to those I am with. It is my love language.”

Assemblywoman Pheffer Amato Re-Appointed as Chairwoman of Committee on Governmental Employees

New York State Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato was re-appointed to serve as Chairwoman of the New York State Assembly Committee on Governmental Employees. The Committee is the leading legislative authority on all public employees in New York, including retirees. Over the last 2 years since becoming Chairwoman, Pheffer Amato has passed historic improvements and enacted beneficial policies for public employees and their pensions.

The Assemblywoman is a known advocate and champion of public employees and their unions, while being publicly praised for her commitment and strong support of public employees. Over the past two years as Chairwoman, she passed 48 bills into law which has included:

 Reforming Tier 6

 Securing a $10,000 pay increase for the longest-serving police officers in the NYPD

 Enacting disability coverage for

firefighters with thyroid cancer

 Codifying permanent heart disease insurance coverage and disability coverage for all uniformed members of law enforcement

 Expanding accidental death benefits (also known as the Widows COLA) by 3%

 Creating new policies and rights for provisional employees

 Ensuring permanent healthcare coverage for spouses and domestic partners of

FDNY

members

 Solidifying the 7% employee contribution by NYC to all City-based pensions

 Authorizing NYC school employees in the BERS retirement system to transfer into the TRS retirement system

For the upcoming 2025 legislative session she has been named to the Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions; the Committee on Education; the Committee on Racing and Wagering; and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Tefillin Awareness Project

Last week, the Tefillin Awareness Project came to the Yeshiva of Far Rockaway for the second time. The goal of the Tefillin Awareness Project is to enable the participants to fulfill the mitzvah of tefillin properly, by addressing the nearly 20 issues affecting the kashrus of the exterior conditions of their tefillin

and their placement.

150 bachurim and rebbeim of the Yeshiva enthusiastically participated. Six expert sofrim and batim machers were brought in for the event. Everyone showed much gratitude for the special opportunity.

DRS Takes Pride in Alumni Learning in Eretz Yisroel

DRS yeshiva takes immense pride in their alumni who dedicate a year after high school to learning in yeshivot in Eretz Yisroel. This transformative year serves as a cornerstone of their spiritual and personal growth, and DRS is committed to supporting their journey every step of the way.

Each year, Menahel Rabbi Yisroel Kaminetsky, Director of Israel Guidance, Rabbi Avi Weber, Associate Principal Rabbi Elly Storch, and Mashgiach Ruchani Rabbi Aryeh Cohen travel to Eretz Yisroel to visit nearly 20 yeshivot where the yeshiva’s alumni are learning. These visits are not merely symbolic; they are an extension of the strong Rebbe-Talmid relationship that defines the DRS experience.

The rabbeim meet with every single student individually, taking the time to listen, document their experiences, and

celebrate their growth. This personal touch ensures that DRS continues to provide insightful and tailored Israel guidance to current students, helping them make informed decisions about their post-high school learning paths.

The numbers speak for themselves: 96% of DRS alumni choose to spend a year – or more – learning in Eretz Yisroel. This remarkable statistic reflects the culture of Torah learning and spiritual ambition that is cultivated at DRS.

This past week, Rabbi Kaminetsky spearheaded a memorable reunion in Eretz Yisroel, bringing together alumni from across various yeshivot for an evening of connection and inspiration. The event served as a beautiful reminder of the lasting bond between DRS and its graduates, as well as the enduring relationships formed between rebbeim and talmidim.

Yeshiva Har Torah’s 36th Annual Scholarship Dinner

Yeshiva Har Torah’s 36th Annual Scholarship Dinner was a spectacular evening celebrating our shared values, dedication, and community spirit. Held at the beautiful Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation, the event drew 750 attendees who gathered to honor our school and its supporters. With a theme saluting the heroes of the IDF, the evening reflected our admiration for their bravery and the timeless values we strive to embody at YHT. In line with the theme of the evening, the stunning venue was enhanced by green and gold lighting, creating a warm and elegant atmosphere. Guests enjoyed a delicious meal while connecting with fellow members of the YHT family.

The program began with Rabbi Hal Levy, our principal, welcoming the attendees and leading the group in reciting Tehillim for the ongoing situation in Israel and our soldiers. A special and

moving Mi Sheberach prayer was beautifully sung by Craig Resmovits, a proud YHT parent and member of Six13, setting a heartfelt tone for the evening. Our president, Adam Zitter, delivered inspiring remarks on the importance of supporting our institution and the scholarship campaign. He highlighted the incredible talents within the YHT community—our dedicated teachers, administration, and families who work tirelessly to uphold our mission.

Rabbi Gary Menchel, Head of School, took the stage to present heartfelt tributes. He recognized the Alumni Class of ’05, expressed gratitude to Dr. Sharon Nachman for her invaluable medical guidance during the challenges of COVID, and thanked everyone who contributed to making the dinner a success. Rabbi Menchel also introduced this year’s honorees: Adva & Rob Ambalu – Guests of Honor, Danielle & Aryeh

Schlusselberg – Pillars of Jewish Education, Jennifer & Jerry Revich – Tomchei Torah Awardees, Daena Greene – Faculty Award for Distinguished Educational Leadership. Each honoree has made a profound impact on our school, inspiring our community with their dedication and commitment.

The lights dimmed as dynamic, entertaining, and meaningful video tributes were shown for each honoree, celebrating their dedication and inspiring everyone to become more involved in supporting YHT. Each honoree received citations

Interview with Rabbi Ya’akov Trump by Ariel Serber

Ariel Serber (AS) at the Israel Chesed Center: I’m with the Rabbi Ya’akov Trump. We are going to talk about his involvement here at the Chesed Center and with other community initiatives supporting Israel.

Rabbi Ya’akov Trump (RYT): Like everybody else, I was just pulled into all of this on October 7, and I’ve also been trying to try to figure out how to move forward, to move upwards throughout the course of this.

Unfortunately, with October 7, with all the atrocities and terrible things that came from it, it also gave us the opportunity to find October 8th Jews. And those are the folks who often realize that they really want to do something and they really want to get involved. And it’s being able to try to motivate those people to do the right thing. The Chesed Center has really proven an incredible resource in that respect. We take regular folks, people who might not necessarily be writing the checks, but people can just roll up their sleeves, get down into the mountain, and make a big difference. Bag by bag, item by item, chesed by chesed, connection by connection. And that to me has been the greatest service to Am Yisrael.

AS: And speaking from the diaspora, how can we hear be connected, stay connected?

RYT: There are different ways I can

phrase this, but I would argue that the success of the Jewish communities in diaspora will be dependent on their level of involvement in the Judaism that they are living. Judaism will only be successful in action, which means to say that people are actually doing, expressing, loving, and sharing what they have. Israel, at this point in time, is really providing an incredible kesher for so many people who otherwise perhaps would be apathetic and indifferent. This is allowing them to really make that connection and realize that their story didn’t start in the last generation and won’t end in the next generation. They’re part of something greater. Being part of that, I think, has been a tremendous chizuk to those people who are now reconnected to themselves to be their identity as through this process.

AS: How have you found all that to be impacting the people of Israel when you have conversations with either close family members or people you know?

RYT: Actually, I was just speaking recently to Rav Shlomo Kimchi, who’s the head of the Yeshivot Bnei Akiva, they have 24,000 students in the Bnei Akiva system in Israel. He was describing his own children, so he has, besides for having thousands of Talmidim who are in the army, they have, unfortunately, 48 widows of the bogrim from the yeshiva. He was describing when his son was going

to the army, he was saying, “I’m wearing a helmet from Canada, I’m wearing a flashlight from New York. I’m wearing boots from Miami.” And he said, “It’s not just that I feel the love, but I also feel like I’m representing all those communities as well.” Deep in Gaza, in the tunnels, in Lebanon, in the freezing cold trenches, you have people who are actually fighting not for Israel ideologically, but even practically, that are expressing this as well. And we know Jewry’s fight is never found just there. It’s found everywhere. It’s on campus, on the street. What’s happening there is going to dictate our temperature of the water right now.

AS: How have you found the Israel Chesed Center to be a part of that picture?

RYT: The amazing thing about the Israel Chesed Center is that it’s pulled from every community, the people who are motivated and energized about making a difference. It’s an amazing thing because if it were to be centralized from one community, it would be as good as the pool of that community. But this pool is larger because what it does is it pulls from everybody. There are so many talented people in this community who suddenly found each other. That’s the best part about it. Suddenly, you have people who have the creative ability. I was just looking at the walls. There’s a woman in our shul who’s an artist. So she has paintings

from local politicians, including Assemblyman David Weprin—a proud YHT grandparent—and Nassau County Legislator Mazi Pilip, a former IDF paratrooper and current YHT parent. In addition, the honorees were presented with beautiful pieces of artwork symbolizing their contributions and commitment to our community.

This memorable evening showcased the strength and spirit of Yeshiva Har Torah—a place where values, education, and community come together to “build the Jewish future, one child at a time.”

up there, selling them to the community. There’s another person just doing the runs to the airport. There’s another person who’s found a source to get thermal underwear. That’s just his thing, right? But his thermal underway are going to Israel right now. Everybody’s doing their piece, and it’s allowed very talented people to energize themselves through each other as helping Israel. That, to me, is an amazing achievement.

Rabbi Ya’akov Trump is the Rabbi of the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst, and together with Rabbi Zalman Wolowik, is Morah D’asrah of the Israel Chesed Center. Rabbi Trump was interviewed at the Israel Chesed Center on December 15, 2024 – the 443rd day since the Simchat Torah Massacre. To watch the complete interview please go to https:// tinyurl.com/icc-RabbiTrump.

Mesivta Athletics Crowns its Fall Season Champions

Mesivta Athletics brought its fall season to an end with incredible Championship Games in JV Hockey, Varsity Football and JV Basketball. Among the three leagues, over 300 yeshiva boys from the community participated weekly in healthy, competitive

sports, with countless friends and family in the stands rooting them on. In Hockey, the number three seeded Darchei Devils upset the top seeded MAY Eagles in a thrilling match-up ending in a 2-1 victory for Darchei. Congrats to Coach Charles Levine and his Darchei Devils. In Foot-

ball, the number three seeded Netzach Knights bested the top seeded MAY Eagles in a contested nailbiter, 18-12. Congrats to Coach Yoel Zagelbaum and his Netzach Knights. In Basketball, the number two seeded Darchei Devils edged out the number one seeded Far Rockaway

Tigers, 52-43. Congrats to Coach Gregg Schwartz and his Darchei Devils. The League would like to thank all the players, coaches, school officials and fans for another great fall season of Mesivta Athletics.

Lawrence Honors Leaders and Team Locally and Nationally

On Sunday, January 12, Mayor Nahmias was honored with the role of introducing Ambassador Mike Huckabee at the Israel Heritage Foundation Event. Deputy Mayor Tammy Roz and Trustees Aaron Felder and Shlomo Gottesman joined the mayor on stage to present a proclamation from the Village of Lawrence for Mike Huckabee.

“Whereas the honorable Mike Huckabee has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to public service to the people of Arkansas, the honorable Mike Huckabee led with integrity, and compassion, advocating for policies that strengthen the state and uplifted its citizens while always putting the needs of people first… Whereas the honorable Mike Huckabee has been duly appointed as Ambassador to the State of Israel by President Donald J. Trump, a position of great honor and responsibility, and significance which reflects both his deep understanding of foreign policy and his longstanding dedication to strengthening the bond between the United States and Israel and whereas the Honorable Mike Huckabee’s commitment to the safety, security, and prosperity, of the state of Israel is well documented as he is consistently champion of the rights and welfare of the Israeli people, recog-

nizing the vital importance of a strong U.S.-Israel partnership and advancing peace and stability in the Middle East and whereas through the Honorable Mike Huckabee’s appointment as ambassador to Israel, he will continue to serve as a tireless advocate for both the United States and Israel working to foster deeper connections and promoting shared values, mutual interest and collaboration on issues of world significance. Mayor Sam Nahmias on behalf of the Board of Trustees do proclaim and honor the honorable Mike Huckabee for his outstanding service, his exemplary leadership, as former governor of Arkansas and his dedication to the partnership between the United States and the State of Israel. “

On January 8 at the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club, the Village of Lawrence held its post-Holiday party, acknowledging the dedication, commitment, creativity, vision, and hard work, of the Village employees, staff, board members, appointees, and friends.

Mayor Samuel (Shlomo) Nahmias addressed the gathering, thanking each individual by name and announcing, “For the first six months in the Village of Lawrence, we are up $600,000 in revenue and we are running a balanced budget.” He referenced the Country Club’s fiscal

stability as well as the Lawrence beautification project and the newly relaunched website and social media platforms.

“It’s a we, not a me,” the Mayor noted, as he thanked Deputy Mayor Tammy Roz, Trustee Aaron Parnes, Trustee Aaron Felder, Trustee Steven Gottesman, Village Administrator Gerry Castro, Village Treasurer Lina Fusco, Village Attorney John Ryan, Esq., Secretary to the Board of Trustees Alison Cohen, as well as the team at the Country Club and Marina and many appointed officials.

In honor of Law Enforcement Appreciation Day January 9, the Mayor issued a public statement, “On behalf of our entire community, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of our police and Auxiliary officers in Nassau County and the amazing 4th Precinct for their unwavering dedication, sacrifice, and commitment to keeping us safe. Your service is valued, and we are proud to stand with you.”

In an effort to promote and support local businesses during Winter Break, the Village of Lawrence launched a Staycation Initiative, “to enjoy some R&R in the safest county in the U.S., while avoiding tolls and congestion pricing.” Family-friendly attractions include the Rock Hall Museum, the Lawrence Yacht

County Executive Bruce Blakeman, Lawrence Trustee Shlomo Gottesman, Mayor Sam Nahmias, the Honorable Mike Huckabee, Trustee Aaron Felder, and Deputy Mayor Tammy Roz at a Israel Heritage Foundation event

& Country Club golf simulator, Lollibop Cafe & Play Space, AcuZen Salt Cave, and Peninsula Public Library.

For more information visit VillageofLawrence.org, Sign up for e-mail alerts: villageoflawrence.us4.list-manage. com/subscribe/post?u=1312a21846d4b772e6def0c1b&id=efa50ee430, Follow on Facebook: Village of Lawrence - Government; Instagram: villageoflawrenceny; and X VillageofLawrenceNY

Women Empowering Women –From

the Midwives of Mitzrayim to Today

By Tova Point

In this week’s Parshas Shemos, we encounter the heroic figures of Shifra and Puah, the Jewish midwives who bravely defied Pharaoh’s evil decrees. Their fearless acts of mesirus nefesh not only safeguarded the future of Am Yisrael in Mitzrayim but also empowered the mothers of the babies whose lives they saved. Those women set a precedent of strength and courage, an example that EFRAT continues to embody to this day.

At one time, discussions about EFRAT focused primarily on the babies it saved; nearly 90,000 since its inception over 40 years ago. But EFRAT’s impact extends far beyond these numbers. With each child’s birth, there is a mother who is reborn, imbued with hope and the joy of motherhood. Additionally, a new family had been added to the Jewish nation, all thanks to the material and emotional support provided by EFRAT.

A Community of Women

Today, amidst the chaos of Israel’s multi-front war and the profound losses endured by our nation, EFRAT’s mission is more crucial than ever. Influential women across the North America and Europe have been rallying to support EFRAT, driven by a shared commitment to ensure that every woman who desires to bring life into this world can do so. Recently, charismatic Torah educator and wife of Rav Nisso Palti, Rebbetzin Yaffa Palti, traveled to Mexico to speak

on behalf of EFRAT. Rebbetzin Palti addressed packed audiences in both English and Spanish about the blessing that every new baby brings into the world. She said that when a donor gives a contribution to bring a new baby into the world, “they think they are giving life to that baby, but in fact, that baby is giving them life. They think that they are saving a baby’s life, but really, that baby is saving their life! When you help a mother save her baby, you are bringing brachah into her life, into your own life and to the entire world.”

At another event for EFRAT women, influencer Maya Namdar fired up the crowd with her heartfelt message that EFRAT is the organization that most concretely works toward bringing Mashiach as soon as possible. “Chazal tell us that Mashiach will not come until all the souls will enter a body,” she said. “EFRAT is the organization that can make that happen. Especially during these times, our yearning for Mashiach needs to be complemented by actual work – to make sure every single baby is given a chance at life.”

Sivan Rahav Meir, well-known Israeli journalist, author and speaker, often advocates for EFRAT’s lifesaving work at events throughout the tristate area. At one such event, she shared a recent conversation she had with Leah Melamed, a midwife from Soroka Hospital in Beersheva. “As a midwife, I derive strength from today’s mothers, who are continuing to raise large families, refusing to deterred by the crisis in Eretz Yisrael. As I

see it, they are displaying the same emunah and strength as the righteous women in Mitzrayim who insisted on growing their families despite the outwardly hopeless situation.”

Rorie Weisberg, creator of Full ‘n Free, is a passionate EFRAT supporter.

“As a Jewish mother and women’s health advocate, I feel a deep commitment to EFRAT’s mission. They offer crucial support to Jewish women during profoundly difficult times, providing the resources needed to both save lives and prevent agonizing decisions. EFRAT’s role in guiding our sisters through their darkest moments into the light underscores our duty as Jewish women to support this essential cause.’”

Championing Every Life

EFRAT’s legendary founder Dr. Eli Schussheim, z”l, was known to exclaim,

“You don’t end a life for lack of funds!” With these poignant words, he encapsulated the predicament of many women in Israel today. It’s not that they don’t want their babies; they simply can’t see a way forward. EFRAT holds their hand, providing vital emotional support, as well as substantial material assistance post-birth and afterwards.

Today, more than ever, as Jewish lives in Israel continue be threatened from all sides, how can we not do our utmost to stop further loss of life?

Through our action and support, we can ensure that every name, every face, every life, is cherished and celebrated, bringing the geulah shleimah ever closer.

For more information contact us at info@cribefrat.org and visit www. cribefrat.org.

Rabbi Steinberg’s fifth grade class at HALB was featured on Rabbi Stefansky’s popular Daf Yomi shiur. One of the participants was so impressed with the boys that he treated them all to a pizza party

At the Dirshu Amud HaYomi Siyum on Masechta Shabbos attended by Degel HaTorah Knesset members Rav Moshe Gafni and Rav Yaakov Asher, as well as Toda’ah educational director Rav Mordechai Bloy

YCQ First Grade Receives Siddurim

Mazal tov to YCQ’s first graders on receiving their first siddurim! All the students performed beautifully and wowed those in attendance on Sunday, January 5 and January 12. Parents, grandparents, and relatives were so impressed with the confidence, enthusiasm, and knowledge that the talmidim and talmidot displayed. Special thank you to Morah Sophia, Morah Vered, and Morah Tali Brody for their efforts. May the students’ tefillot

take on a whole new meaning as they daven with their new siddurim!

Chazak, Chazak at HANC ECC

The children in HANC Early Childhood Center in West Hempstead celebrated a meaningful conclusion to the reading of the first book of the Torah. After learning all the parshiot in their classrooms each week, the students gathered in the auditorium for a Chazak Party. Rabbi Ouriel Hazan, Head of West Hempstead campuses, gave the children a hands-on lesson about how the Torah is written. He demonstrated the proper way to handle a Torah, how we remove it from the Aron Kodesh and handle it with great care, and gave each child an opportunity to kiss the Torah as he walked around with the Torah. Rabbi Hazan then demonstrated how it is uncovered and rolled open once it is placed on the Amud. The children were then called up to the Torah in small groups to see the parchment, to look at how the Hebrew words are written, and to see the space where Sefer Bereishit ends and Sefer Shemot begins. He explained that since we cannot touch the parchment, a yad is used to point to the letters, giving them a chance to see what a yad looks like and how it is used during Torah readings. Each child had the opportunity to look at the text and find Hebrew letters that they have already learned within the Torah. Collectively, we all said and sang “Chazak

chazak v’nitchazek” to mark the conclusion of the reading of Sefer Bereshit. To ensure the sweetness of learning Torah, each child received a black and white cookie at the conclusion of the event. The ECC had a wonderful pajama party and sang together “Hamalach HaGoel.”

Dressed in their adorable pajamas, and in keeping with the theme of the day, the children brought in their favorite stuffed animals that they like to sleep with. It was clear from the looks on their faces that coming to school in pajamas was truly fun for all. Morah Trudy Rubinstein, ECC director, added that the children gleamed with excitement as they entered the building and showed off their pajamas to all of their friends.

Agudath Israel of West Lawrence Melava Malka

by Ira Thomas

Orthodox Union’s All Mishnah Jr. Draws A Record 2,100 Teen Participants from 32 U.S. Middle Schools

With myriad extra-curricular activities to choose from, one Torah learning program is overwhelmingly popular among middle schoolers across the U.S: The Orthodox Union’s All Mishnah Jr. (AMJ) is inspiring over 2,100 students in sixth through eighth grade to learn two Mishnayot daily during their free time.

“All Mishnah Jr. reflects the OU’s commitment to making Torah learning accessible, engaging, and meaningful for all ages,” says OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer. “By cultivating a love and excitement for Torah learning among young students, this program lays the foundation for a lifelong and consistent commitment to limud Torah.”

Launched in 2021, AMJ is an offshoot of the OU’s All Mishnah, a free app featuring shiurim, learning aids, a study tracker, and other resources that facilitate the study of Mishnah. Whereas All Mishnah centers on Mishnah Yomi — a seven year cycle involving the study of two Mishnayot daily, seven days a week — AMJ’s three-year learning cycle runs

for four months between Sukkot and Pesach, five days weekly, enabling students to catch up or review past material over the weekend, at their discretion.

Now in its fourth season, AMJ is active in 32 schools in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, Georgia, Florida, California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Colorado, and Illinois. Designed to make Torah-learning cool, fun, and accessible, AMJ encourages students to log their daily learning for a chance to win substantial raffle prizes like Visa and Amazon gift cards, AirPods, drones, and hoverboards. AMJ participants also receive fun swag, including slap bracelets with the AMJ logo and sweatshirts upon completing the first masechet, Megillah.

“Our objective is to make learning Mishnayot as fun, exciting, and attainable as possible,” says OU Torah Initiatives Programming Manager Rabbi Meir Avracen, who oversees AMJ. “We hope this program will foster an appreciation for the greatness of Torah in its own right, inspire participants to study Torah lishma, and turn it into a lifelong habit.”

About 45 staff members, including administrators, rebbes, and teachers, work alongside Rabbi Avracen to implement AMJ programming in their respective middle schools. After signing up via the allmishnahjr.org website, participants receive customized AMJ Artscroll Pocket Edition Mishnayot, generously sponsored by Ralph Rieder of Monsey, New York.

“AMJ launched with just eight schools, but since then, we’ve quadrupled in size,” says Rabbi Avracen. “Although 2,100 participants registered online this year, we always send 20 percent more Mishnayot to each school, because once other students see the energy and excitement around AMJ, they want to get on board as well.”

Participants have various options through which they can complete their learning — on their own, with their parents, rebbes or teachers, b’chavruta, or using the AMJ website which features videos and recorded shiurim of the day’s Mishnayot in both Ashkenaz and Sephardic havarot (pronunciations).

Following October 7, the AMJ team

added a layer to the program which makes students’ learning even more meaningful: in partnership with Chayal of the Day, an Israeli-based organization, each participant is paired with a chayal, and learns in their zechut.

“Each student receives their chayal’s bio and is encouraged to send their chayal a personal message,” says Rabbi Avracen. “Knowing that they are supporting Israel and our chayalim encourages them to learn even more.”

Photos

Mercaz Academy’s Kitah Aleph Celebrates Chag Hasiddur

Kitah Aleph students at Mercaz Academy in Plainview received their first siddurim, marking their ability to read tefillot from the text on their own. Under the guidance of Morah Shani Kaufman, the first graders polished their ability to read in Hebrew and learned the history and components of Jewish prayer. To demonstrate their knowledge, they presented a sparkling performance of spoken word and song. The cast of characters included the Avot (Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov), rabbis, the Kohen Gadol, and even a double of Morah Shani herself, as portrayed by the students of Kitah Aleph.

Mercaz Academy Principal Rabbi Kalman Fogel addressed Kitah Aleph after the moving performance, pointing out

that in Parshat Vayechi, Yaakov blesses his grandchildren as he focuses on the future. “There can be no greater bracha for parents and grandparents,” he said, “than the knowledge that your children and grandchildren are so excited to receive this treasure, their new siddur.”

After the performance, parents and friends admired a gallery of Kitah Aleph’s illustrations and writing on the comparison of prayer to a ladder and the three components of prayer—shevach (praise), bakasha (requests), and hoda’ah (gratitude)—while enjoying delicious cake and snacks provided by the PTA. The appreciative audience, as well as all members of the Mercaz family, wish a mazal tov to Morah Shani and Kitah Aleph on this milestone in their Torah journey!

Fifth Graders at YOSS Celebrate Literacy Week

Literacy week in Mrs. Gross’ fifth grade class at YOSS was full of reading, writing, and exciting activities! Using descriptive details, visualization, and creativity, the students illustrated their favorite scenes from the book that they are reading, Night of the Spadefoot Toads. Afterward, the students presented their pictures to the other fifth grade classes; seeing other groups’ interpretations of what the students were all reading was so interesting. Another way the students got to channel their creativity was when they had the opportunity to learn from author and illustrator Brian Yanish! His creative comics and guidance enabled them to create their characters

and storylines about them. The students brought the characters to life by creating their hobbies, homes, favorite foods, and what makes them unique.

Another highlight of Literacy Week was when Mrs. Gross’ fifth grade class collaborated with Mrs. Gross’ second grade class and read with them. The fifth and second graders enjoyed getting to know each other and taking turns reading from the books of their choice. They especially enjoyed the delicious treat at the end! A special thank you to the PTA for organizing The Book Fair. It was the most anticipated part of their week, with so many different options to choose from, and it did not disappoint!

Screen Free to be Me at HALB

At the start of the school year, HALB rolled out an incentive program to encourage screenfree time at home after school on a consistent basis. The majority of students have been participating, and the feedback has been excellent, including improved quality family time, overall mental health and creativity. This month, the price for Screen Free to be Me participants was delicious Mushaga Shakes! Thank you to the HALB PTA for sponsoring this month’s prize.

County Executive Bruce Blakeman meeting with Governor Mike Huckabee, nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Israel

Around the Community

JSL Week 1 Recap

The JSL, brought to you by FM Home Loans, kicked off with an electrifying week, showcasing incredible talent from every player. With clutch plays and standout performances, the excitement never let up. Here are the top highlights from this action-packed week!

K/P Hockey

Smash House defeated Growtha with a commanding 13-0 win. Gavriel Feinsod was unstoppable, scoring an incredible 10 goals to lead his team to victory. NY Chaplains Group, led by Yehuda Cohen, earned a strong 5-0 win over Yeled LI with strong offensive play. In a tightly contested matchup, Posh Home + Bath edged out SR Whee 5-4. Harry Wilheim stood out with two goals, earning him MVP honors. 5 Towns Landscaping outlasted 5 Towns Central 2-1 in a close battle. The game-winner came from Shragi Shlanger, who was named MVP for his clutch performance.

K/P Soccer

Doma cruised to a 6-0 victory over Hewlett Auto Body, with Dovi Steigman stealing the show by scoring five goals. Future Care Consultants earned a solid 6-1 win over Maidenbaum, showcasing sharp offensive plays throughout the match.

1st Grade Hockey

John’s Auto outlasted Simcha Day Camp 10-9 in sudden death overtime in an unforgettable game. After Simcha Day Camp erased an 8-2 deficit to tie it at 9-9, Ari Blobstein scored the game-winning goal in overtime to secure the victory. Eden Gardens got an 8-5 win over Town Appliance, with Gavriel Dorfman delivering three incredible goals. Anju topped Seasons Express 14-7 behind a standout all-around performance from Zach Pearlman, who earned MVP for his contributions.

2nd/3rd

Grade Hockey

In an intense back-and-forth game, Maidenbaum edged out SR Whee 11-10. Smash House fought to a 4-4 tie with Better Image Contracting, with Elisha Somerstein named MVP and goalie Yaakov Polansky shining in net

with key saves. PIP Printing earned a 7-3 victory over Newman Dentistry, Jonathan Skaist was named game MVP for his incredible play behind the net. Sushi Tokyo defeated Built By Nate 10-8, led by an outstanding six-goal performance from MVP Akiva Greenspan. Tied 4-4 heading into a shootout, Ecom Beyond secured a dramatic victory over Town Appliance, winning 5-4.

4th/5th

Grade Hockey

Target Exterminating edged Marciano 4-3 in a back-and-forth game. Aryeh Levine scored the game-winner with three minutes remaining, while game MVP Ari Marmorstein made clutch saves in net. Seasons secured a 6-3 victory over Wieder in 4th/5th Grade Hockey, with MVP Shmuli Sitzer leading the way by scoring two goals in the win. Town Appliance earned a strong 8-4 win over Smash House, highlighted by Shalom Zlotnick scoring a memorable goal from the defensive end. Gerber Bedding defeated Russo’s Pharmacy 6-4, with MVP Carter Zeitlin delivering an outstanding performance between the pipes. Tied 4-4 heading into a shootout, Ecom Beyond clinched a dramatic victory over Town Appliance, winning 5-4.

6th – 8th Grade Hockey

Kosher Skinny Shot controlled their matchup with Extreme Vent Cleaning, winning 12-5 behind an MVP performance from goalie Yosef Treuhaft, who made key stops throughout the game. Bluebird came back from a 2-1 deficit to defeat Tikva Fire 4-2. MVP Akiva Wielgus was incredible in the third period, making save after save to secure the win. Wieder Orthodontics beat Sdei Chemed 5-1, with MVP goalie Tzvi Greenspan holding off a strong offensive push from Sdei Chemed. Growtha edged 925 Sterling 9-6 in an exciting game. JSL star Gavriel Abittan scored five goals for Sterling, but Gavriel Levine answered with five of his own for Growtha, as well as three assists to secure the win. Simcha Hersh also made a highlight-reel defensive save, knocking away a shot at the goal line that had already passed the goalie. 1st/2nd Grade Basketball

Eden Gardens and Tikva Fire ended in a 2-2 tie, with MVP Chananya Kashi making five steals in a strong defensive performance. Newman Dentistry defeated Premier Assists 4-2, with MVP Mordy Schwab scoring all the points for his team. Tiffany Dry Cleaners and Smash House battled to a 4-4 tie. MVP Dani Grabie hit the game-tying shot for Tiffany.

3rd/4th Grade Basketball

John’s Auto took a 24-16 win over Posh Home + Bath, led by MVP Yehuda Avogdar, who scored 16 points. Better Image Contracting earned a decisive 23-8 victory over Wieder Orthodontics, with MVP Shua Basch leading the scoring. Marciano Pediatric Dentistry defeated Russo’s Pharmacy 27-15, with MVP Dovid Bauman delivering a standout performance in this season’s opener.

5th-7th Grade Basketball

Emporio edged Camp Sdei Chemed 33-30 in a close game, with MVP Moshe Berokin leading in both points and assists. Binyamin Weissman Photography earned a 24-19 win over Sperling Productions, with MVP Ela-

zar Roberts making key plays to secure the victory.

Game MVPs: Gavriel Feinsod, Yehuda Cohen, Harry Wilheim, Shragi Shlanger, Dovi Steigman, Ari Blobstein, Zach Pearlman, Dov Stein, Yaakov Polansky, Jonathan Skaist, Akiva Greenspan, Aryeh Levine, Ari Marmorstein, Shmuli Sitzer, Carter Zeitlin, Yosef Treuhaft, Akiva Wielgus, Tzvi Greenspan, Chananya Kashi, Mordy Schwab, Dani Grabie, Shua Basch, Dovid Bauman, Moshe Berokin, Elazar Roberts.

Another exciting week of JSL action with great games, incredible performances, and thrilling finishes!

Ani Tefillah Continues to Spark a Revolution in Tefillah Education

Ani Tefillah is creating a profound revolution by transforming the way prayer is taught. Its approach is clear and accessible, emphasizing an emotional connection to the words. By integrating teaching methods that are innovative and accessible, Ani Tefillah has developed a system that raises the level of prayer, making it deeply meaningful and spiritually enduring.

Using a three-pronged approach called Stop – Think – Feel, Ani Tefillah focuses on the essential skills for fostering heartfelt and lasting prayer. This method transcends the conventional focus on reading accuracy, pronunciation, and singing loudly to win competitions. Instead, it focuses on emotional engagement and understanding, enabling stu-

dents to connect with their prayers in a way that feels personal and relevant.

Ani Tefillah’s innovative system has already proven to be a successful way to teach prayer. Mr. Richard Altabe, Lower Schol Principal at HALB, shared, “This morning, we were shorthanded, and a class had no davening teacher. I walked into the room and found the class alone at 8:30 davening beautifully with real kavana! An assistant teacher needed only to get them started, and they were fully capable and willing to daven on their own out loud saying every word! They have been transformed completely! Thank you for Ani Tefillah!”

Ani Tefillah instills a lifelong connection to Hashem, transforming tefillah from a routine task into an inspiring

and meaningful practice. To further this mission, Ani Tefillah actively collaborates with schools and educators, continuously introducing new materials designed to encourage and inspire students. Their resources aim to make prayer an eagerly anticipated work of the heart, rather than a chore.

This mid-winter break, Ani Tefillah is thrilled to invite all to join an exciting contest, designed to motivate students to pray even when they are not in school. By fostering a habit of daily prayer, the contest helps students understand the profound impact of starting each day with a conversation with G-d.

With Ani Tefillah’s guidance, students are learning to see Tefillah as a lifelong tool for connection, reflection, and in-

Academic Teams Underway at Yeshiva Har Torah

At Yeshiva Har Torah, there’s something for everyone – from building robots to mastering Chumash and Rashi to debating big ideas in American politics. By offering a wide range of opportunities, Yeshiva Har Torah helps each student discover their passions and develop their unique strengths.

The Yeshiva Har Torah robotics team recently competed in the CIJE Robotics Competition. The students showcased their creativity and problem-solving skills as they designed, built, and programmed robots to tackle specific challenges. Competing against Jewish day schools from across the country, the team’s efforts demonstrated how STEM can be both innovative and collaborative. The expe-

rience also showed how STEM projects can strengthen problem-solving skills while reflecting the school’s dedication to blending modern learning with Jewish values.

At their first debate meet of the season, the Yeshiva Har Torah debate team took on the complex topic of gun rights in the United States. Students presented well-researched arguments with confidence and skill, sparking meaningful discussions on this critical issue. As they prepare for their next meet, which will focus on immigration, the team continues to sharpen their research, critical thinking, and public speaking abilities. Debate at Yeshiva Har Torah encourages intellectual curiosity and teaches the importance

of respectful and productive discourse.

The boys and girls Torah Bowl teams have also been enjoying this season’s competitions, enthusiastically studying Sefer Bamidbar with Rashi. Through Torah Bowl, students not only deepen their knowledge but also develop teamwork and quick thinking as they prepare for and compete in matches. Participating in Torah Bowl provides students with an exciting and engaging way to make Torah learning both dynamic and meaningful. It also fosters a sense of camaraderie and accomplishment, strengthening the players’ connections to their teammates.

Yeshiva Har Torah takes pride in offering students the chance to explore a wide range of interests and develop their

spiration. Ani Tefillah’s groundbreaking work ensures that Tefillah remains a tool that is a vital and cherished part of their lives. Participating in the Mid Winter Tefillah contest will help bring this goal to fruition.

To download the free Ani Tefillah chart for the Mid-Winter Tefillah contest, visit www.anitefillah.org.

talents. By blending creativity, strong communication skills, and a love for Torah, Yeshiva Har Torah helps students thrive in different areas, all while rooted in Jewish values. We’re excited to see what’s next for our robotics, debate, and Torah Bowl teams. Kol hakavod to all the students and their dedicated coaches for their hard work and accomplishments!

Assemblywoman Reminds Community of Alternative Transit Options

New York State Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato has spent months coordinating with the MTA to secure alternative transportation routes as the A train is set to be temporarily shut down beginning January 17. For the next 17 weeks, the A train will not run past the Howard Beach Station, impacting Broad Channel and the Rockaway Peninsula. The MTA is conducting major upgrades to help protect the line from future storms and ensure reliable service for over 9,000 daily riders. In lieu of the A train service, Pheffer Amato worked with the MTA to provide several alternative transportation options saying “I was not going to allow anyone to be completely cut off and have no access to

public transportation. I appreciate that the MTA worked with our community to provide acceptable alternatives, and more options to follow as we go through this process,” said Assemblywoman Pheffer Amato.

Starting January 17, due in part to the work of Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, the following alternatives will be available while the A train is shut down:

 For service to/from affected stations there will be a free transfer/shuttle buses which will run on three routes:

 Nonstop between Howard Beach and Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue

 Between Howard Beach and Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue, making all stops: Broad Channel, Beach 90 Street,

Beach 67 Street, Beach 60 Street, Beach 44 Street, Beach 36 Street, and Beach 25 Street

 Between Howard Beach and Rockaway Park-Beach 116 Street, stopping at Broad Channel, Beach 98 Street, and Beach 105 Street

 Free shuttle bus service along 2 routes:

 The Q97 bus which will run between Howard Beach and Far Rockaway

 The Q109 bus which will run from Howard Beach to Beach 67th Street via Broad Channel and Beach 90th Street

 Tickets from the Far Rockaway LIRR station to Manhattan’s Grand Central/Penn Station or Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal will cost $2.75, less than the

current subway fare

 Effective January 20, there will be a free subway shuttle service across the Rockaway Peninsula in both directions from Beach 116th Street Station to Mott Avenue free of charge during the duration of the construction

The Assemblywoman was also part of the conversation to expand express bus service between the community and Manhattan along the QM15, QM16 and QM17. This will include 36 additional bus trips during the weekday and 20 additional trips on Saturdays. In addition, the QM15 express buses will make additional stops in both directions throughout Howard Beach and into Arverne, following the same route as the QM17.

Stanley Cup – The 5 Towns Hockey League Championship Games

The 5 Towns Hockey League sponsored by FM Home Loans has long been a source of pride for local fans and aspiring athletes alike, and this year’s championship games did not disappoint. From start to finish, the playoff tournament delivered exhilarating action, showcasing the impressive talent and dedication of the players, as well as the unwavering support of the fans. Leading to the championship, anticipation grew as teams battled through the regular season and playoffs. Players demonstrated remarkable skill, teamwork, and sportsmanship, with each game more thrilling than the last. Fans flocked to the court, bringing signs, chants, and an undeniable energy that filled the air. The atmosphere was electric, indicating this year’s championship would be one for the books. The championship games featured standout performances that kept spectators on the edge of their seats. Players who had been under the radar throughout the season emerged as heroes, scoring pivotal goals and making game-saving plays when it mattered most. Fans witnessed breathtaking saves by goaltenders that turned the tide for their respective teams, exemplifying the hard work and training that is synonymous with the league.

One of the most notable highlights was the intense rivalry between two local teams, igniting a competitive spirit that elevated the level of play. Each team brought its best effort, resulting in closely contested matches that showcased not just individual skills, but the importance

Did you know?

of teamwork and strategy.

2nd/3rd Grade Championship:

Team 35 vs. Team 36

In the youngest division, Team 35, coached by Coach Frankel, a legend at DRS, entered the championship as the #1 seed and the favorite to win. With Ariel Fleksher in goal and a solid supporting cast, they faced a formidable opponent in Team 36, coached by Leon Mayer, a stalwart of the HAFTR Hockey program. Team 36 featured Zack Phillips in net. It was a great game, but at the end, Ariel Fleksher proved to be too much and secured the championship and game MVP. The game proved to be everything fans had hoped for. Both teams displayed excellent skills and determination, making for an exciting match that kept spectators on the edge of their seats. In a hard-fought battle, it was a true testament to the spirit of youth sports.

4th/5th Grade Championship:

Team 57 vs. Team 55

In the 4th and 5th grade championship, Team 57, seeded #3 and coached by the dynamic Oceanside duo, Coach Kessock and Coach Haar, took on Team 55, the #5 seed led by the legendary Ira Schechter of LNS Enterprises fame . Team 57 boasted impressive talent, with Tanchum Polansky protecting the net, while Team 55 displayed a well-rounded squad with solid performances from all players. This championship game summed up the hard work and dedication the players exhibited throughout the season. Both teams fought valiantly, showcasing their skills and teamwork, resulting

The sun does not set from May 25 to July 25 in Greenland.

in a memorable game that fans will talk about for years to come. Team 55 took a 5 to 2 lead but team 57 came roaring back on the shoulders of MVP Eytan Misher winning the game 7-5.

6th/7th/8th Grade Championship:

Team 81 vs. Team 83

The marquee matchup of the championship series featured the 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade teams. Team 81, the #1 seed coached by the talented Coach Casden, an MTA all-star in his playing days, went head-to-head against Team 83, coached by the esteemed Coach Berg, who mirrored the coaching style of the legendary Rabbi Schiller: “No excuses, play hard, and win.” Team 81 showcased a solid roster with Jack Spector in goal, while Team 83 was led by standout player Gavriel Abittan. The energy in this game was palpable, as both teams left everything on the ice. Skill, strategy, and determination shone brightly in this closely contested game, highlighting the extensive talent present in the 5 Towns Hockey League. At the end of the game, it was Coach Casden pulling the right strings and MVP

Jack Spector shutting down the other team for a decisive 4-1 win. The championship games of the 5 Towns Hockey League were not only a celebration of sportsmanship and athleticism but also a showcase of community spirit. Each game brought together players, coaches, and fans in a thrilling display of talent and teamwork.

Registration will close next week for the spring season of the 5 Towns Hockey league . Stay tuned for more updates at www.5townssports.com.

The HALB production of Once Upon a Mattress was a huge success

Morah Dina Scheinkopf’s kindergarten boys having fun in their snow sensory bin at Yeshiva Darchei Torah

TJH Centerfold

12 Things Joe Biden Will Do Before He Leaves

1.

Declare every Tuesday National Twofor-Tuesday Ice Cream Day.

2.

Pardon his son Hunter for all future crimes.

3.

Tell America about the time that someone spelled cat with a K and Dr. Jill Biden put on her blue siren and paid an emergency visit to the kid’s house to tell her that it is spelled with a C— because she is a doctor of…literacy!

4.

Call Kamala Harris and say, “Good luck to you as you become the 47th President…. Oops, that’s right, you lost!”

5.

Office

7.

Whisper-scream at the White House staff because they lost his aviator shades… “C’mon, folks, you lost my you know the things person applesauce!”

8.

Wake up from his nap early: There’s an inauguration to attend, so he’s gotta cut the midday nap short.

9. Apologize for all the racist things he has said over his 50-year career in politics, including being close friends with the late segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond. (Keep waiting for that apology.)

10.

Order up one more serving of his favorite applesauce from the White House kitchen.

Give an honest speech about his accomplishments. The speech stars NOW! … It’s OVER! (Lasted a full zero minutes and zero seconds.)

6.

Call the Justice Department and command them to indict Trump one last time. After all, it’s hard to get over your addictions.

Irony x 2

11.

Give one last speech about how Trump is an insurrectionist because a few of his supporters took an unscheduled tour of the Capitol. (OK, it was a little more than that…they trespassed! Wah! Wah! Wah!)

12.

Sniff the Oval Office drapes one last time.

President Obama on Jimmy Kimmel in October 2016 reading and commenting on Trump’s tweets:

“Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States — @RealDonaldtrump, Well, @RealDonaldTrump, at least I will go down as a president!”

Trump Trivia

1. Who took over as host of “Celebrity Apprentice” after Donald Trump left?

a. Mark Cuban

b. Arnold Schwarzenegger

c. Bill Maher

d. Tom Hanks

2. In the 2024 election, Donald Trump became the first Republican to do what in two decades?

a. Win the State of Ohio

b. Win the popular vote

c. Spend less then $1 billion on the race

d. Win Florida

3. What happened to Trump at age 13?

a. His father sent him to a military academy because he was misbehaving in school

b. He was hit by a car and almost did not survive

c. He made $100,000 on a business selling used textbooks in his high school

d. He met Pres. Eisenhower and

told him that “one day, I will be president.”

4. How does Trump like his steak?

a. Rare

b. Medium rare

c. Medium

d. Well done

5. How many golf courses does Trump own?

a. 4

b. 9

c. 18

d. 47

6. Trump is the first president in the past 100 years to not have what?

a. A religious affiliation

b. A pet

c. A family member other than his wife living in the White House with him full-time

c. 6

d. 8

8. How much is annual membership to Trump’s Mar-aLago, which has a golf course and Trump’s primary residence?

a. $50,000

b. $175,000

c. $250,000

d. $1 million

d. A pair of reading glasses

7. How many children does Trump have?

a. 3

b. 5

Riddle me This

Wisdom key:

6-8 correct: Huge, huge, totally huge!

3-5 correct: Not bad, but no invite to Mar-a-Lago for you.

0-2 correct: Stay tuned for the Kamala Harris trivia…actually, that’s not happening.

Shortly after Trump’s second inauguration, Jack takes a tour through a museum’s American Presidents exhibit. The person leading the tour tells him, “We have a picture of each presidency. Currently, Donald Trump is the 45th person to hold the office.” But Jack quickly realizes that there are 47 pictures on the wall. Why are there two too many photos?

Answer: Presidents Grover

Torah Thought

Parshas Shemos

By Rabbi Berel Wein

The Jewish people are about to experience centuries of exile and eventual slavery in Egypt. They are certainly in danger of being destroyed both physically and spiritually. The rabbis taught us that by not forgetting their original names, by not completely becoming Egyptian in deed

as well, the hope of the Jewish people to be redeemed and freed never died out. The names of their ancestors reminded them of their past and of the commitment of G-d to redeem them from their bondage and afflictions.

This experience of Egyptian exile imbedded within the Jewish world the

importance of remembering our original names, for it was the existence and use of those names that prevented their extinction as a special and eternal people. Thus, in the introduction to the book of Shemos, the book of bondage and redemption, is the list of names of the sons of Yaakov, an eternal reminder of who the Jewish people really are.

Over the centuries, the Jewish people have continually struggled to retain their identity and sense of continuity through their names. In the Ashke -

in general society. However, over the last few decades, the use of exclusively Jewish or Hebrew names has become in vogue once again, so apparently there is a great deal involved in a name. Even in the non-Jewish world, the use of biblical names remains quite popular and widespread. People hunger for a connection to their past and such traditional, biblical family names seem to provide a sense of immortality and continuity that flashy, “cool” names cannot provide.

The names of their ancestors reminded them of their past and of the commitment of G-d to redeem them from their bondage and afflictions.

nazic world, it became customary to name children after deceased ancestors. This became a deeply emotional bond in families, ultimately leading to children being given multiple names to commemorate more than one ancestor. In the Sephardic tradition, names are given to honor living grandparents and relatives. But there is also the sense of continuity and purpose stressed in the granting of those names.

In more modern times, Jews were given secular names as well to be used

Names can therefore be an anchor to one’s own self-worth and purpose in life. The Torah’s insistence on recording the names of the sons of Yaakov – the eventual tribes of Israel – highlights this important fact of life and family to us. Perhaps this is what Midrash meant when it taught us that one of the causes of the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage was “that they [the Jewish people] did not change their names [from Hebrew ones to Egyptian ones.]” Shabbat shalom.

From the Fire

Parshas Shemos Being a Man, Doing for Others

By Rav Moshe Weinberger

Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf

The Torah (Shemos 2:11) tells us what it means to be great. It tells us, “And it was in those days that Moshe grew up and went out to his brothers, and he saw their suffering.” The Ramban on this pasuk explains what it means that Moshe grew up:

“And Moshe grew up [lit., ‘became great’],” meaning that he grew up and became a man. At the beginning, it says (ibid., at 10), “And the child grew up,” meaning that he grew up to the point that she did not need to wean him [i.e., he weaned himself] … And afterward, he grew up and became a man of intelligence. And the reason the pasuk says he “went out to his brothers” is because they told him that he was a Jew and he wanted to see them because they were his brothers. And when he gazed upon their suffering and toil, he could not tolerate it and therefore he killed the Egyptian…”

The Torah is teaching us what it means to be a man, a person of intelligence and responsibility. When someone transitions from being a child to being an adult, what

does that mean? When Moshe heard that he was a Jew, what was the first thing he did? He went out to his brothers to see their suffering. That is what defines a Jew.

Rav Yitzchak Volozhiner, in his introduction to Nefesh Hachaim, quotes his father Rav Chaim Volozhiner, zt”l, as teaching that “this is the entirety of man. He was not created for his own sake. Rather, [he was created] to benefit others.” That is what it means to be a great person, to truly be a Jew. That is the essence of maturity. A child is wrapped up in his own world, living only for himself, for his own enjoyment and benefit. The most important aspect of maturity is “to benefit others.”

When the Torah begins listing the generations from Adam to Noach, it begins (Bereishis 5:1), “This is the book of the generations of Man.” The Alshich points out that the word “book” in this pasuk seems superfluous. Every other time the Torah lists out someone’s descendants, it usually says, “These are the generations of…,” without the word

“book.” In addition, if the word “book” refers to the Torah, is the pasuk saying that the whole Torah is there to recount the generations of Man? Is the Torah just a genealogy book? Rather, the Alshich answers that the pasuk must be teaching us that a person’s main offspring, the “generations of Man,” is the Torah that he learns and teaches and the mitzvos that he does.

The Alshich explains: “The primary offspring of tzaddikim are the good deeds and the Torah he learns, as the Zohar says, that [the brother of] a Torah scholar who dies technically should not have to have a levirate marriage with [the Torah scholar’s] wife because the Torah thoughts he has learned are his descendants, like Ben Azai who [never married but] ‘gave birth’ and multiplied light. Man’s ‘book’ is the Torah [he has learned]. That is the [true, inner] offspring of Man.”

The Bnei Yissaschar (Derech Pikudecha, M”A 1:26) expresses this beautifully when he writes about the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply as follows: “It is possible to fulfill this mitzvah to

be fruitful and multiply at all times and at every stage in life by ‘giving birth’ to new concepts in Torah as the mekubalim wrote about… This is a person’s primary fulfillment of the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply, but Hashem commanded us to also fulfill it on a physical level as well. In this way, [Torah] concepts will increase exceedingly because every person who is born will have an intellect to grasp new concepts…”

One might have thought that when a person is too old or too young to have children, or if he is unable to have children, that he cannot fulfill the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply. But the Bnei Yissaschar teaches us that this is not true. A person’s main offspring is the Torah he has learned, the novel Torah thoughts he has brought into the world, and the mitzvos that he has done. In addition, the Ben Ish Chai, zt”l, explains that the connection between the first mitzvah in the Torah (to be fruitful and multiply) and last mitzvah in the Torah (the mitzvah to write a sefer Torah) is that through the

first mitzvah in the Torah, we bring more Jews into the world who will fulfill the last mitzvah, the mitzvah to learn Torah. Every person is therefore like a Sefer Torah. That is why the pasuk calls the Torah, “the book of the generations of Man.” His descendants themselves are the “book,” the Sefer Torah. This is because a person’s mitzvos and Torah are his main progeny in this world.

The sefer Taam V’daas (Bereishis) relates the following story from which we can see how tzaddikim in recent times viewed their mitzvos as their true “book” they wished to bequeath to the world: It once happened that Rav Chaim Ozer, zt”l, visited Rav Elya Chaim Meisels, zt”l, in Lodz. As a gift, Rav Chaim Ozer gave a copy of his sefer, Achiezer, to Rav Meisels, who was very happy to receive it and immediately began perusing it to enjoy Rav Ozer’s novel Torah insights. Rav Ozer then asked Rav Meisels, “When will we merit that his honor will also author a book?” Rav Elya Chaim answered him, “I already have a book.” Rav Chaim Ozer asked if he could see it, so Rav Elya Chaim brought him to a closet and brought out a large accounting book full of receipts, documents, and records of others’ debts he had paid on behalf of Torah scholars,

orphans, and widows.

Rav Elya Chaim told Rav Chaim Ozer, “For the time being, this is my book. It is called ‘The Book of the generations of Man.’ For now, I do not have time to write a book as his honor has.” He did not answer Rav Elya, but it is related that sometime later, just before Rav Chaim Ozer’s passage into the next world, he told the great Rav Yosef Mishkovski, zt”l, “Now I

book he is expected to write, and the defining greatness of a person is the good that he has done. It is what comes from “doing for others” and going out to see his brother’s suffering in order to do something about it. The main point of each mitzvah that a person does, every word of davening he says, and every word of Torah he learns is not just to think about how he himself benefits from it. Rather,

A person’s mitzvos and Torah are his main progeny in this world.

understand what Rav Meisels was saying.

The primary book one writes in life which he brings with him into the eternal world is the good things that he has done.” Although Rav Chaim Ozer certainly valued his Torah beyond measure and helped poor people as well, he understood the depth of mitzvos and chesed as man’s progeny in the world on a much deeper level through Rav Elya Meisels’s example.

A person’s primary progeny, the main

he should do it in order to “benefit others,” either directly or indirectly through the merit of his Torah and mitzvos.

The Gemara (Yuma 86a) teaches this beautifully:

It was taught [in a Braisa]: “And you shall love Hashem your G-d,” [meaning that] the name of Heaven should become beloved through you; that you should read, review, and study under Torah sages and your discussions and dealings with

every person should be refined. What will people say about him? “Fortunate is the father who taught him Torah! Fortunate is the rav who taught him Torah! Woe is to people who have not studied Torah! Soand-so who has studied Torah, see how beautiful his ways are, how proper are his actions!” Regarding such a person the pasuk (Yeshaya 49:3) says, “And He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel in whom I am glorified!’”

When a Jew is a mensch, when everyone can see that he is not just living for himself but is living for others, his entire life sanctifies G-d’s name. His Torah and mitzvos and what he has done for others becomes more important that any sefer he could write. That is Moshe Rebbeinu’s book, called “And Moshe grew up and went out to his brothers.” With Hashem’s help, may we merit to truly “grow up,” to become great people by thinking about what we can benefit others and by living for the Torah and mitzvos we can bring into the world.

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.

Delving into the Daf

Marrying Meirav and Michal

By Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

Is it permissible for an adopted boy to be called to the Torah using his adoptive father’s name? The answer may depend on whether Dovid HaMelech married two sisters. To even suggest this idea sounds outrageous. Yaakov Avinu married sisters before the Torah was given. How could it be that post-Matan Torah Dovid HaMelech would marry two sisters? Even if one tried to marry two sisters, the second marriage would have no halachic effect.

Indeed, Rebbe Yosi’s students asked their rebbe this exact question: “How could Dovid HaMelech marry two sisters?”

Some background is needed to understand the issues involved.

Rebbe Yehoshua Ben Korcha differs from Rebbe Yosi in some details in the following story. The following is one version. (See Sanhedrin 19b).

Faced with Golias’s relentless reign of terror against the Jews, King Shaul sought a champion who could vanquish the Philistine giant. To incentivize potential heroes, he declared that whoever defeated Golias would be showered with immense riches and honored to marry his daughter. Dovid HaMelech took up the task and slew Golias. Dovid chose to forgo the wealth and told Shaul he could keep the money. Instead, the riches would be used in place of a ring to marry his daughter Meirav. Meirav was of the age that her father could still accept money for kiddushin on her behalf. After initially agreeing, Shaul had a change of heart and decided to marry Meirav off to Adriel HaMecholasi instead. Dovid argued that Meirav’s marriage to someone else was a nullity, as Meirav was already married to him. Shaul responded, “You did not effectuate kiddushin properly. You cannot marry someone with a loan.” To do kiddushin properly, a man must tender something of value and cannot merely forgive a loan that the woman owes him. Shaul reasoned that he owed Dovid HaMelech riches, which is virtually a loan. Dovid

forgave that loan. However, loan forgiveness cannot affect a kiddushin. Rebbe Yehoshua opines that King Shaul was correct in this dispute. Indeed, the practical halacha does follow this reasoning.

Shaul then told Dovid he could marry his other daughter, Michal, if he killed one hundred of their enemy. Dovid HaMelech killed two hundred and brought physical proof. Dovid told Shaul, “Your daughter is married to me by dint of me forgoing the riches you owe me together with this physical proof I am delivering now.” (Although Dovid forgave the riches before, that was deemed a mistake and a nullity since it did not end in his marriage to Meirav.) Shaul initially accepted the declaration. Later, he reneged.

Dovid said that it was too late to change his mind. “I am already married to your daughter.”

Shaul said, “You are not. You married my daughter Michal with two items: loan forgiveness and the physical proof. Since the loan forgiveness is inadequate, the other item is likewise ineffective when coupled with it.”

Rebbe Yehoshua Ben Korcha opines that this time Shaul was incorrect. Dovid HaMelech was indeed married to Michal.

The practical halacha follows Dovid

HaMelech in this dispute. Kiddushin is effective if someone marries a woman with loan forgiveness in addition to an item of value. Still, Shaul did not give Michal to Dovid and married her to Palti Ben Layish instead.

Rebbe Yosi’s opinion is that the first marriage between Meirav and Dovid was effective. He proves this from a verse (II Shmuel 21:8) that states that Michal had five sons. We know she did not. Michal died childless. Those sons were actually sons of Meirav. The Navi identifies them as Michal’s children to compare Meirav to Michal. Just as everyone agrees that Dovid HaMelech’s marriage to Michal was effective, so too was his marriage to Meirav.

This begs the question of how Dovid HaMelech could be halachically married to two sisters. Even if Dovid HaMelech gave a get to Meirav (which some suggest he did), he would still not be allowed to marry Michal. One may not marry the sister of his divorcee. Rebbe Yose answers that by the time Dovid HaMelech married Michal, Meirav had sadly passed away. One is permitted to marry his wife’s sister if his wife passes away.

The Gemara questions Rebbe Yehoshua Ben Korcha. Why does the Navi

identify the mother of those five children as Michal? He cannot accept Rebbe Yose’s answer because he holds that Meirav was never halachically married to Dovid, so her marriage cannot be compared to Michal’s.

Rebbe Yehoshua Ben Korcha provides an alternative explanation. He suggests that the Navi’s identification of Michal as the mother of these children conveys a profound lesson. Meirav had passed away, leaving behind five orphans. Michal took on the responsibility of raising these children. The Navi, by referring to them as Michal’s children, teaches us that one who raises an orphan in their home is regarded by the Torah as having given birth to them.

The Rema (CM 42:15) rules that it is permissible for a legal document to identify a stepson as a biological son without it being considered an error. The Vilna Gaon traces the source of this halacha back to the Gemara’s teaching. The Torah equates raising a child to giving birth to them, thereby establishing a legal basis for considering a stepson as a biological son in certain contexts.

Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, (Igros Moshe Vol. 8, pg. 322) draws upon the Rema and the Vilna Gaon’s interpretation to address the question of how an adoptive son should be called up to the Torah. He argues that an adoptive son may be called up using the name of his adoptive father. This is again based on the principle that raising a son is equivalent to giving birth to him.

However, Rav Shlomo Zalman, zt”l, reportedly disagreed. One should seek guidance for practical halacha.

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.

Headlines Halacha

Who or What Will Determine Halacha When Moshiach Comes?

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

We all hope and daven for Moshiach’s imminent arrival. One way to bring it about faster is to keep his arrival foremost in our mind and deal ahead of time with some of the practical issues. The Gemara clearly holds that when this happens, Eliyahu HaNavi will arrive and resolve all halachic questions and dilemmas that have not been resolved. For example, the Gemara in Bava Metziah 20a.

In fact, many have said that when the Gemara concludes with a Taiko, it stands for Tishbi (Eliyahu) yetaretz kushiyosainu vehavayosainu – Elijah will come and answer our questions and inquiries.

But there is a question. There is a concept called, “Lo ba’shamayim hi , Torah is not in the domain of Heaven!” Rather, it is up to the Torah leaders of the generation to determine the final disposition of halachic disputes. This question is referenced in Rashi Shabbos 108a “umai eem.” Also, the Rambam in Hilchos Yesodei Torah (9:4) writes that any Navi that attempts to undo something in the Torah is not to be believed and his punishment is most severe. Although one can draw a distinction between innovation versus resolution, we see that “lo ba’shamayim hi ” is a serious concept.

How can all this be resolved?

What follows are five of six possible answers that the Gedolei HaAchronim proposed; the sixth answer can be derived from Rishonim. There are a number of other possible answers as well.

1. The Yefei Toar (Rabbi Shmuel Yafeh Ashkenazi, 1525-1595) on Bereishis Rabbah 60:4 writes that there is a distinction between nevuah – prophecy – and Ruach HaKodesh. When the Gemara informs us that Eliyahu will resolve outstanding questions it is through his power of Ruach HaKodesh and not prophecy.

2. Rav Elchonon Wasserman, zt”l

Hy”d, (1874-1941) in his Kovetz Shiurim on Bava Basra (640) initially entertains the idea that perhaps Eliyahu has the ne’emanus, the believability, of one witness, an eid echad . This is the view of the Chasdei Dovid (Rabbi David Pardo, 1719-1792, Italian Talmudist and author of commentary on the Tosefta), a commentary on the Tosefta (Ohalos 4:13). For various reasons, however, Rav Elchonon dismisses this approach. He concludes that the incorrect litigant will ultimately admit the truth because

he will be too embarrassed to continue the lie in front of Elyahu HaNavi.

3. The Chasam Sofer (Rabbi Moshe Sofer, 1762-1839) in Likkutim Vol. VI, Siman 98 explains that the revelation of Eliyahu HaNavi will occur in two phases

The Gemara clearly holds that when this happens, Eliyahu HaNavi will arrive and resolve all halachic questions and dilemmas that have not been resolved.

issue rulings, or if he does, they are not authoritative because of the principle of “lo ba’shamayim hi.”

4. The Mishna LaMelech (Rabbi Yehudah Rosanes, 1657-1727, chief rabbi of Constantinople) in Hilchos Ishus 9:6 differentiates between questions of fact versus questions of halachic reasoning. He writes that when it is merely revealing underlying facts, there is no problem in relying upon him.

5. The Maharatz Chiyus (Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Chajes, 1805-1855) in Brachos 3a suggests that he would be believed to say over what he had seen or heard, and it has a logical basis to it. It is possible that these are two different responses rather than one combination – notwithstanding the implication of his syntax.

– one wherein his neshama is restored to his physical body and the second where they remain separate. In the former, he can act as a posek no different than any other Gadol B’Yisroel. He can resolve halachos and indeed, he is obligated in mitzvos. In the latter form, he may not

6. There may be a qualification for lo ba’shamayim hi, which may be different than the Rambam’s understanding. The Baalei Tosfos in Yevamos 14a pose the question as to how we followed the original Bas Kol that stated that the halacha is like Bais Hillel and not Bais Shammai and did not follow it regarding the concept of tannur achenai which resulted in Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hyrkenus being placed in Cherem. The Baalei Tosfos give two answers. The first answer is that the Bas Kol in the case of Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hyrkenus was only done to maintain Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hyrkenus’ personal dignity, but in truth, we would listen to a Bas Kol! The second answer is that Bais Shammai was intellectually sharper than Beis Hillel, so even though the majority view was with Bais Shammai, we relied on the Bas Kol to follow Bais Hillel – even though they were less than that of Beis Shammai from a pure brain-power point of view.

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

Iwas never emotionally connected to my birthday, or for that matter anyone else’s. Last year, I told our grandkids and Bob that all of their birthdays belonged to me. The only one okay with that was Bob; he is also not emotionally connected to his day, either.

As we grow older, we learn to appreciate milestones like birthdays.

When we first began visiting Israel on a regular basis, we noticed that young and old alike celebrate any and every birthday, and I never really put much thought as to why. I conjectured that the acceleration of a child’s responsibilities caused by growing up in a country whose population has to sleep with one eye open forces you to treasure good times.

When you live daily under the ominous cloud of a life that may be cut short, you make the most of every moment.

There are some adult milestone birthdays – 12,13, 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, etc. – that call for special gifts and parties. When I hit 35, Bob had our ketubah handscribed and illustrated by a famous Lubavitch artist, Michoel Muchnik; he went to great lengths to have it rendered.

Much to his dismay, I was not thrilled or impressed. “You can’t wear it on a chain,” I said. Still, the ketubah made the aliyah cut and hangs proudly in our new home.

In January, we celebrate our daughter Meredith’s 50th birthday with a barbecue on an Israeli army base; that’s what she wanted to do to commemorate her milestone birthday.

There is a lot to unpack here. We have a silver calendar upon which we engrave family birthdays and anniversaries; I keep it with my Shabbos candlesticks. For the month of January, the list leaks out of its designated box and reaches the top of the calendar.

Celebrating birthdays in January:

School of Thought

January

Yom huledet sameiach , happy birthday!

By Barbara Deutsch

both daughters, two granddaughters, a daughter-in-law, 2 great-granddaughters (one born this week on her sister’s birthday), and me. Including anniversaries, January is when we eat out a lot.

Our close family friend, Irv, took a little longer to find his bashert, Tara.

our baby, I made it clear (in those days, a minimum hospital stay for a birth was 3 to 4 days) that I had an important wedding two days later on Sunday, and I planned to attend!

Accompanied by the disapproving faces and piercing stares of both grandmothers, who had agreed under duress

All things that we cherish more than something we can ever wear on a chain.

We became friends as teenagers and traveled together on life’s journey. We looked forward to celebrating their big day together. The slight hitch in the planning was that the wedding and Meredith’s due date coincided.

The wedding was planned for Sunday; Friday, erev Shabbat, I went into labor. When the doctor came to deliver

to babysit our toddler and newborn, we left for the wedding.

Irv and Tara are celebrating 50 years this January.

The night of the birthday barbecue was freezing; for two previous days, the frigid cold was coupled with freezing rain. I wore two hoods, a scarf, a winter coat, and a commemorative sweatshirt

over my three layers of clothing.

The mostly women soldiers wore their uniforms and a handful, sweatshirts. There was one lone soldier from Manhattan who graduated SAR. We immediately bonded.

There are incredible volunteers from all over the world who come to Israel to help in any way they can. There are a few like our guy, Bernard Sand, who make barbecue dinners for soldiers. This is a huge operation. The sponsors pay and assist with cooking and setup/cleanup. Sand’s volunteer crew bring a truck filled with everything from grills, coal, paper goods, salads, side dishes, snacks and drinks to meat – pounds of it.

Israelis love chicken liver.

The crisply cold night air was filled with happy laughter, music, dance and singing “yom huledet” and “happy birthday.” Every single chayal whispered and shouted, “Toda rabba, thank you!” to us for being there for them.

This Birthday BBQ was a celebration of hakarat hatov, for the gifts of life, solid Jewish values, brotherhood and potential. All things that we cherish more than something we can ever wear on a chain.

Happy birthday, Meredith; happy anniversary, Irv and Tara; welcome to the family new baby Shoshana (Shani) Chaya; and thank you, thank you, thank you to the brave chayalim who keep Israel safe.

Thinking of the hostages and the chayalim and our friends and families struggling in Los Angeles.

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.

The Wandering Jew Colorado Part II: Durango, Salida & Denver

By Hershel Lieber

Wednesday, July 11, 2010, at 8 a.m., we left Montrose and drove to Durango with a short stop at Box Canon Falls. The route that we

took was called The Million Dollar Highway. It is called by that name because of its “million dollar” views. The highway passes natural attractions like the Red Mountain Pass and quaint towns like Ouray. It is also known as the most dangerous highway in the USA and has an unfortunate historyq of many deaths due to the lack of guardrails. This I learned only now, while writing this article!

We checked into a Durango hotel and rushed to take a prearranged tour of Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde has more than 4,000 archeological sites – including cliff dwellings, pueblos and masonry towers built by the Puebloan people between 500 and 1,300 years ago. The tour was fascinating, and we learned so much. Just seeing the site was an amazing thrill and a lesson on man’s ingenuity and talent. On the way home, we experienced a complete rainbow which can only be fully appreciated in a flat desert setting. In the evening, we walked

around the historic district of Durango which has many late 1800’s commercial buildings dominated by shops, restaurants and bars. We went into Hotel Strater and sat down for a beer. A young man dressed in cowboy clothing was crooning a Western style song while strumming on his guitar.

Thursday, we drove along the picturesque U.S. Highway 160 passing the Continental Divide as we headed to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. The fourhour drive was well worth it. The Great Sand Dunes is a spectacle like no other, with awe-inspiring views. The dazzling white dunes had a consistency of soft granulated sugar. We climbed some of the dunes and took many photos of the site which from afar looked like hills of snow. It was definitely worth traveling off the beaten path to see the tallest sand dunes in North America. We stayed overnight in a small town called Salida which was full of life and activities. The

next morning, we continued our journey towards Denver where we would stay for Shabbos. We made one more major stop at the Royal River Gorge Bridge which spans 1,000 feet over the Arkansas River. The gorge is ten miles long, and the bridge is the highest suspension bridge in the United States. We paid an admission fee to cross over it by foot which was well worth it. From there, we headed straight to Denver. It was erev Shabbos, and we still had a lot to accomplish. Well before we left on our trip, we had contacted the Schreibers, the proprietors of the East Side Deli, concerning food arrangements. They graciously offered that we should join them for the Shabbos seudos whenever we would be staying in Denver. We unhesitatingly took them up on their offer for two reasons. Firstly, it would make life much easier for us. Secondly, being in the company of other people would enhance our Shabbos seudos. We arrived in Denver at 4 p.m. and

Relaxing at the Great Sand Dunes

A partial view of a rainbow we saw on the way back from Mesa Verde

Great Sand Dunes

Million Dollar Highway

checked into our hotel. We dressed for Shabbos, picked up some flowers and ran over to the Schreibers. I made myself useful by setting the table while Pesi helped stir-fry the vegetables. Davening was at the shul, which was founded by the beloved Rabbi Shlomo Twerski, z”l. The seuda was something out of the ordinary with delicious food, zemiros, divrei Torah, and of course great conversations that spanned nearly four hours until midnight.

We were not the only guests there. Staying at the Schreibers was a rebbetzin, the wife of a recognized posek, whose daughter had given birth during a vacation trip with her husband to Colorado. The birth happened a lot earlier than expected, and she was rushed by helicopter from the Rocky Mountain National Park to a hospital in Vail. The baby boy weighed only three pounds and was eventually transported to a Denver hospital. The hospital would not release the child at that stage to be flown to New York. The rebbetzin came to be with her daughter and son-in-law for a number

of weeks, and they were all housed by the Schreibers. The child’s mother spent time with her son at the hospital, but for Shabbos she and her husband were at the Schreibers. They eventually flew back to New York a few months later, and we were invited and attended the little boy’s bris at the rav’s shul.

pallel from my shul in Boro Park. Pesi also knew his sister who came to participate in the simcha, as she was a neighbor from around the corner. The kallah’s parents, who were not observant, were also there. The Shabbos table consisted of a very eclectic group of Yidden who joined together in shared conversations

It was definitely worth traveling off the beaten path to see the tallest sand dunes in North America.

Shabbos morning after davening, we experienced another interesting event. The Schreibers were hosting a Sheva Brochos seudah for a kallah whose origin was from Iraqi Jews who had lived in India. The kallah had worked for many years at their East Side Deli. The chosson happened to be a brother of a mis -

and singing zemiros. I was, without prior notice, asked to speak and obliged our hosts with a dvar Torah reflecting the simcha of the sheva brochos.

Shabbos ended with havdalah and a photo session. We rushed back to our hotel to pack and headed to the airport for our red-eye flight via Atlanta (where I

davened Shachris) to JFK. We arrived at 9:30 a.m. and took a taxi straight home. Our extraordinary memories of Colorado will always remain with us with feelings of special fondness. The magnificent mountains of every shape and color that we observed and the interesting people we met will endure with us for many years to come.

Hershel Lieber has been involved in kiruv activities for over 30 years. As a founding member of the Vaad L’Hatzolas Nidchei Yisroel he has traveled with his wife, Pesi, to the Soviet Union during the harsh years of the Communist regimes to advance Yiddishkeit. He has spearheaded a yeshiva in the city of Kishinev that had 12 successful years with many students making Torah their way of life. In Poland, he lectured in the summers at the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation camp for nearly 30 years. He still travels to Warsaw every year – since 1979 – to be the chazzan for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur for the Jews there. Together with Pesi, he organized and led trips to Europe on behalf of Gateways and Aish Hatorah for college students finding their paths to Jewish identity. His passion for travel has taken them to many interesting places and afforded them unique experiences. Their open home gave them opportunities to meet and develop relationships with a variety of people. Hershel’s column will appear in The Jewish Home on a bi-weekly basis.

At the Arkansas River with a Union Pacific Railroad train in background

Arkansas River near Salida Wildflowers along Highway 160

Trump’s Picks

By TJH S Taff

As January 20 comes ever closer, President Donald Trump is set to fulfill many of the pledges he made on the campaign trail. As such, he has selected key people to help him follow through with his vision for America. Below is a list of many – but not all (hey, we would have run out of room!) – of Trump’s picks for key positions in his government. Senate hearings are scheduled to approve some of those who have been nominated for these roles. Fasten your seatbelts, America, these hearings can be fun!

Marco Rubio

Secretary of State

2016 saw Trump and Rubio fight it out on the national stage as they both battled to earn the Republican nomination for president. This time around, the Republican senator from Florida, campaigned for Trump and was even under consideration for his vice presidential pick.

Rubio has served on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees and has become a powerful advocate for American interests and against America’s enemies, including totalitarian regimes in China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba. He has also been a powerful and unrelenting advocate for Israel’s right to exist. In his role as co-chairman of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, he has decried the forced labor and unfair trade practices of the Chinese Communist Party.

In a speech on foreign policy, Rubio once said, “Like Washington, Reagan viewed the construction of a strong military not as a preparation for aggression but as an action to prevent aggression. In his words, ‘A truly successful army is one that, because of its strength and ability and dedication, will not be called upon to fight, for no one will dare to provoke it.’”

Rubio will be the first Latino to hold the position. He once said, “My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a hotel maid, and a stock clerk at Kmart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.”

This role requires Senate confirmation.

Pam Bondi Attorney General

Bondi was Trump’s second choice for attorney general of the U.S., as his first pick, Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration after allegations came to light. But Bondi is not new to the Trump circle. The former Florida attorney general has been a longtime Trump ally. She endorsed Trump in March 2016, on the eve of the Republican primary in Florida, over Florida Senator Marco Rubio. She gained national attention over the past few years as a defender of Trump and spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Bondi’s name was floated as a possible candidate for the attorney general position during Trump’s first term.

Bondi was Florida’s first female attorney general. As Florida’s top prosecutor, Bondi stressed human trafficking issues and urged tightening state laws against traffickers. She held the job from 2011 to 2019. She also worked as a lobbyist for both U.S. and foreign clients. During Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020, Bondi stepped away from lobbying to help the Trump legal team. She has been a vocal critic of the criminal cases against Trump as well as of Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Trump in two federal cases. In one radio appearance, she blasted Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as “horrible” people she said were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.”

This role requires Senate confirmation.

Pete Hegseth Secretary of Defense

“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” Trump said when announcing his pick for Secretary of Defense. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — our military will be great again, and America will never back down.”

Hegseth served as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, serving overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantanamo Bay and twice being awarded the Bronze Star. He has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Hegseth gained national fame over the past ten years, as he worked as a host and commentator on Fox News and is the author of four books.

The Secretary of Defense is responsible for overseeing the Department of Defense, an organization with more than 2.6 million employees and a burgeoning budget of over $840 billion.

The Cabinet-level post requires Senate confirmation.

Tom Homan “Border Czar”

Tom Homan was Trump’s director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration. He is not shy about his stance on immigration, vocally promoting a “zero tolerance” program that separated parents from children at the border. In October, when asked by “60 Minutes” if there was a way for families not to be separated, Homan answered affirmatively, “Of course there is.

Families can be deported together.”

Homan is set to be in charge of the southern and northern U.S. borders, as well as “all Maritime and Aviation Security,” according to Trump.

“There is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” the president-elect added.

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in July, Homan told undocumented immigrants to “wait till 2025,” adding, “If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”

“Trump comes back in January,” Homan said. “I’ll be on his heels coming back. And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

Addressing cartels at the Republican National Convention, Homan said that Trump would designate Mexican cartels a “terrorist organization” for their role in getting fentanyl over the border, warning, “He’s gonna wipe you off the face of the Earth.”

Homan is a former police officer and Border Patrol agent. He was executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Obama. During that administration, ICE carried out a record number of deportations.

This role does not require Senate confirmation.

Mike Huckabee U.S. Ambassador to Israel

Huckabee was governor of Arkansas for ten years. He came into the national spotlight in 2012 and 2016 when he unsuccessfully tried to earn the Republican nomination for president. Throughout the years, Huckabee has been a staunch ally and supporter of Israel, including now, during Operation Iron Swords.

“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement. “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”

Huckabee first visited Israel forty years ago. He has said that he doesn’t believe that a two-state solution is practical. The pastor has called Judea and Samaria the “Promised Land.” In 2008, Huckabee was quoted as saying that “there is no such a thing as a Palestinian.”

“Basically, there really is no such thing as — I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset — there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” he said during a campaign stop. “There’s not.”

He has also been quoted as saying that a Pal-

estinian state can be formed from Arab countries.

“My point is, if that’s the issue, if it’s real estate, if you look at a map, and say here is how much Israel has and here is how much the Arab states hold, there is plenty of land,” he said in 2015.

This position requires Senate confirmation.

William McGinley White House Counsel

In the most recent presidential campaign, McGinley served as outside counsel to the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” efforts. Prior to joining the Trump White House last time around, McGinley worked as counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. During Trump’s first term, McGinley served as White House Cabinet secretary for two and a half years before going into private practice.

In a statement, Trump called McGinley “a smart and tenacious lawyer who will help me advance our America First agenda while fighting for election integrity and against the weaponization of law enforcement.”

Friends describe McGinley as a devout Catholic with a reputation for truth-telling.

This role does not require Senate confirmation.

Mehmet Oz Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator

Most famous for his eponymous talk show, “The Dr. Oz Show” and for appearing regularly on the Oprah Winfrey show, Trump announced that Mehmet Oz will become the administrator for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He will be working closely with Robert F. Kennedy, who is Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary.

Oz narrowly lost his 2022 Senate bid to John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, a campaign in which Trump endorsed Oz.

This position requires Senate confirmation.

Trump’s Cabinet

A president’s Cabinet consists of the vice president (in this case, JD Vance), plus fifteen other people who fill key positions in the administration. These are the fifteen people, along with their departments, who Trump has nominated for his Cabinet. They are listed in order of succession to the presidency, which is determined by when the department was created.

Secretary of State: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida

Treasury Secretary: Scott Bessent

Defense Secretary: Pete Hegseth

Attorney General: Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi

Interior Secretary: North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum

Agriculture Secretary: Brooke Rollins

Commerce Secretary: Howard Lutnick

Labor Secretary: Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon

Health and Human Services Secretary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Housing and Urban

Development Secretary: Former Texas state Rep. Scott Turner

Transportation Secretary: Former Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin

Energy Secretary: Chris Wright

Education Secretary: Former Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon

Veterans Affairs Secretary: Former Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia

Homeland Security Secretary: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem

Howard Lutnick Commerce Secretary

Lutnick, an American billionaire businessman, was born in Jericho, NY, to a Jewish family. He is the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Group.

Lutnick lost 658 employees, including his brother, in the 9/11 attacks, personally surviving the tragedy on the ground. Since then, Lutnick has been an involved contributor to the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund. As commerce secretary, Lutnick will play a role in implementing Trump’s plans for steeper tariffs.

“He will lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative,” Trump said in a statement announcing the pick.

Lutnick lost both his mother and then his father at a young age, forcing him and his two siblings to support themselves.

This role requires Senate approval.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Health and Human Services Secretary

Kennedy ran for the Democratic nomination and then as an independent candidate in this year’s election before dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. Trump subsequently promised Kennedy a key position in the White House.

As HHS secretary, Kennedy would oversee 13 public health-related agencies, and has expressed plans to upend many of them, telling an audience at a conference in November he would halt infectious disease studies at the National Institutes of Health if given a role in the Trump administration. “I’m going to say to NIH scientists, G-d bless you all…thank you for your public service.”

Kennedy has controversial views when it comes to health. He has been vocal about his disdain for vaccinations, particularly the Covid-19 vaccine. He has advocated for removing fluoride from public water, an idea Trump said he was open to.

If confirmed, Kennedy will take the reins of a $1.7 trillion agency that oversees vaccines and other medicines, scientific research, public health infrastructure, pandemic preparedness, food and tobacco products. HHS also manages government-funded health care for millions of Americans – including seniors, disabled people and lower-income patients who rely on

Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act’s markets. The heads of the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services all report to the HHS secretary.

This role requires Senate confirmation.

Scott Bessent

Treasury Secretary

Although he has supported Democrats in the past, money manager Scott Bessent is a fan of President Trump. He is an advocate of cutting spending while extending the tax cuts approved by Congress in Trump’s first term.

The billionaire from South Caroline had donated to various Democratic causes in the early 2000s. He also worked for George Soros, including during his famous 1992 bet against the pound, which generated huge profits on “Black Wednesday,” when the pound was de-linked from European currencies.

Bessent has called for spending cuts and shifts in existing taxes to offset the costs that the tax extension would add to the federal deficit.

“That’s going to be a negotiation with the Republican Congress,” Bessent said on November 6. “I’ve already been in conversations with a lot of the Republicans who will chair those committees. The Republican Congress, there’s a big appetite for pay-fors. It will be a negotiation.”

He has also said, “I do think this debt and deficit is going to be the big issue of the day. I think Americans are worried about it.” He argues that consumer prices can be brought down “by starting with a deficit reduction program.”

Trump has repeatedly spoken about proposing tariffs on goods emanating from certain countries. Bessent told Bloomberg in August that he views tariffs as a “one time price adjustment” and “not inflationary,” and tariffs imposed during a second Trump administration would be directed primarily at China. “I think that tariffs in a way can be regarded as an economic sanction without a sanction. If you don’t like Chinese economic policy, flooding the market with over production, you could put a sanction on them, or a tariff. It’s also an answer to currency manipulation.”

He wrote in an op-ed that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives. Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to U.S. exports, securing cooperation on ending illegal immigration and interdicting fentanyl trafficking, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role.”

This position requires Senate approval.

Kash Patel FBI Director

With the early resignation of director of the FBI Christopher Wray, who had been appointed by President Trump in 2017, Trump’s pick to lead the organization, Kash Patel, is ready to take on the deep state. In fact, Patel laid out his vision in his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.” In the book, Patel lays out his case against what he refers to as “the deep state” — an amorphous term he says includes elected leaders, journalists, Big Tech tycoons and “members of the unelected bureaucracy” — and called for “a comprehensive housecleaning” of the Justice Department, which he claims has protected high-ranking members of the Democratic Party while unjustly targeting Republicans and their allies.

Trump has praised the book as a “blueprint to take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government,” according to promotional endorsements.

Patel has been vocal about his disdain for the FBI, repeatedly calling for the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., to be dismantled and turned into a “museum of the deep state.”

Patel grew up in New York and was raised Hindu by his immigrant parents. He worked as a public defender in Florida and then as a federal prosecutor in the National Security Division of the DOJ, according to his book. He called that a “dream job” for any young lawyer.

In 2019, Patel went to work for Trump on the National Security Council before becoming chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller at the end of Trump’s first term.

Patel founded Fight With Kash — now the Kash Foundation — which is “dedicated to providing financial assistance to active duty service members and veterans, legal defense funds, and education programs,” according to the organization.

This position requires Senate approval.

Janette Nesheiwat Surgeon General

“Dr. Nesheiwat is a fierce advocate and strong communicator for preventive medicine and public health,” Trump said in nominating Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for the position of surgeon general. “She is

committed to ensuring that Americans have access to affordable, quality healthcare, and believes in empowering individuals to take charge of their health to live longer, healthier lives.”

Nesheiwat is a Fox News medical contributor and serves as a medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey.

Nesheiwat specialized in emergency and family medicine. She has supported vaccines that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for HHS secretary, has cast doubts about. Still, she has criticized the CDC’s guidance on Covid vaccines and was critical of government mandates during the pandemic.

She regularly contributes to Fox News and other outlets, has written a book about “miracles in medicine” and promotes dietary supplements she formulates.

This position requires Senate approval.

Adam Boehler Envoy for Hostage Affairs

“He has negotiated with some of the toughest people in the World, including the Taliban,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post announcing Adam Boehler as his pick for special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. “Adam will work tirelessly to bring our Great American Citizens HOME.”

Boehler is the chief executive officer of Nashville-based healthcare investment firm Rubicon Founders. He was a negotiator on the Abraham Accords team in 2020, working alongside Jared Kushner.

Boehler responded to Trump’s announcement, “There is nothing more important than bringing Americans home. Under @realDonaldTrump’s leadership, there will finally be action and consequences. We will BRING THEM HOME.”

Trump made the announcement following the revelation that American citizen Omer Neutra, a hostage in Gaza who was believed to be alive, had, in fact, been killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

The same day Neutra’s death was announced by Israeli authorities, Trump warned that “there will be ALL [HECK] TO PAY in the Middle East” if the hostages held by Hamas are not released prior to his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

The current envoy is Roger Carstens, who had been appointed by Trump in 2020 and was kept on during the Biden administration.

During the first Trump administration, Boehler also served as the chief executive officer of the new-

ly created U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which sought to bring several U.S. international funding agencies together under one roof. During the Covid pandemic, the new agency was also tasked with coordinating some of the medical supply chain, parts of which were working under an emergency Defense Production Act mandate from the White House.

This position requires Senate approval.

Stephen Miller Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy

Miller, 39, was born in Santa Monica, California, to a Jewish family. Although his parents were both Democrats, Miller made a sharp turn to the right after reading a book by Wayne LaPierre, longtime head of the NRA.

Miller was a senior policy advisor for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and joined the administration during Trump’s first term, serving as senior advisor. He wrote Trump’s first inaugural address with Steve Bannon.

Miller has been vocal about his anti-immigration stance. At a rally in Madison Square Garden just a few weeks ago, Miller declared, “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

Miller is married to Katie Waldman, who is also Jewish; they have three children together. They first met in 2018, when Waldman worked at the Department of Homeland Security and worked with Miller on communications on immigration issues. Waldman later served as press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence.

This role does not require Senate confirmation.

Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy Department of Government Efficiency

Musk and Ramaswamy were famous faces along the campaign trail with Trump. Musk, co-founder and CEO of Tesla Motors and Space X and the owner of the social media platform X, threw his support

behind Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign, famously stumping for the former president while wearing his black MAGA hat. Ramaswamy founded the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences and ran for president in 2024 before endorsing Trump.

“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement when picking these two winners for his team.

Trump had proposed the creation of a government efficiency commission as part of a slate of new economic plans that he unveiled in early September. At the time, he said Musk had agreed to lead it if he were to secure a return to the White House.

Trump’s statement quoted Musk as saying that “this will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”

Ramaswamy separately responded on X with a slogan he often used during his presidential campaign to call for the elimination of federal agencies, writing: “SHUT IT DOWN.”

Musk posted on X an image of himself at a podium labeled Department of Government Efficiency and D.O.G.E., the name of Musk’s favorite meme and cryptocurrency. “I am willing to serve,” he wrote.

At a rally in Madison Square Garden a few weeks ago, Musk told the crowd, “Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that. We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”

The position does not require Senate approval.

Kristi Noem Homeland Security Secretary

The governor of South Dakota since 2019, Noem previously served as a member of the House from 2011 to 2019 and as a state representative in her home state from 2007 to 2011. She will be tasked with overseeing an enormous agency that includes U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Secret Service.

During her time as governor, Noem described the border crisis an “invasion.” She backed better physical barriers at the border. Under her leadership, South Dakota was the first state to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021 to assist Texas; she deployed troops to the border a total of eight times.

She co-sponsored several bills against immigration. Kate’s Law was introduced in response to the 2015 killing of Kate Steinle by an illegal alien who had already been deported five times. Sarah’s Law was introduced following the 2016 drunk driving killing of Sarah Root by an illegal alien who had been driving drunk.

“She will work closely with ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan to secure the border and will guarantee that our American homeland is secure from our adversaries,” Trump said after naming Noem for the position. “I have known Kristi for years and have worked with her on a wide variety of projects. She will be a great part of our mission to make America safe again.”

Noem responded to the nomination, saying, “With Donald Trump, we will secure the border and restore safety to American communities so that families will again have the opportunity to pursue the American dream.”

This position requires Senate approval.

John Ratcliffe CIA Director

Ratcliffe, a former House member from Texas, served in the Trump administration as director of national intelligence for the final months of Trump’s first term.

Ratcliffe was elected to Congress in 2014, but his visibility rose in 2019 as an ardent defender of Trump during the House’s first impeachment proceedings against him. He was a member of Trump’s impeachment advisory team and strenuously questioned witnesses during the impeachment hearings.

“This is the thinnest, fastest and weakest impeachment our country has ever seen,” Ratcliffe said after the Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump over a phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ratcliffe has repeatedly sounded the alarm about China, calling the country the top threat to U.S. interests and the rest of the free world.

“The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically,” Ratcliffe wrote in a December 2020 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The Cabinet-level post requires Senate confirmation.

Dan Scavino Deputy Chief of Staff

Once Trump’s golf caddy, Scavino is a long-time ally to the president-elect and served as a communications adviser during Trump’s first term. The House voted to hold Scavino in contempt of Congress after refusing to cooperate with a probe following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but the Justice Department declined to indict him.

This role does not require Senate confirmation.

Elise Stefanik U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, serves as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference and is one of Trump’s fiercest supporters on Capitol Hill.

“I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement.

The New York congresswoman, the fourth-ranking House Republican, has been a strong ally of the president-elect and a major fundraiser for the GOP.

Stefanik has frequently criticized the United Nations, particularly over its criticism of Israel, and said the Biden administration should consider a “complete reassessment” of U.S. funding for the UN if the Palestinian Authority continues to pursue a push to revoke Israel’s UN membership.

Stefanik made headlines last year with her strong questioning of heads of universities during a House hearing who refused to call out antisemitism on their campuses.

The Cabinet-level post requires Senate confirmation.

Mike Waltz National Security Adviser

Waltz is a three-term Florida Republican congressman and Trump loyalist who served as a Green Beret in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, earning four Bronze Stars during his tenure. Waltz previously worked in the Pentagon as a policy adviser during the George W. Bush administration.

Like many congressional Republicans, Waltz has criticized U.S. aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia. A member of the Armed Services, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees, he has chastised NATO allies for not meeting their military spending commitments and has taken a hard line on China and Iran.

This role does not require Senate confirmation.

Susie Wiles Chief of Staff

Wiles, who served as the de facto manager of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, was credited with guiding his successful bid. (In his election night speech, Trump referred to Wiles as “the ice maiden.”)

Trump called her “tough, smart, innovative… universally admired and respected,” when speaking about her assistance in the 2024 and 2016 election wins.

Trump went through a record four chiefs of staff during his first administration. Wiles will be the first woman – Republican or Democrat – to ever to serve as chief of staff.

“For myself and countless others, having Susie Wiles as a mentor and a friend is a gift,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser. “The nation will see that with President Trump in the White House with Susie as the chief of staff the next four years will be America’s best.”

Wiles is the daughter of the renowned late NFL kicker and sportscaster Pat Summerall.

This Cabinet-level position does not require Senate confirmation.

Steven Witkoff Special Envoy to the Middle East

Witkoff is a Trump donor and a real estate investor with “no known expertise in diplomacy or the Middle East,” the Times of Israel reported. In a statement posted to X, Trump called Witkoff “a Highly Respected Leader in Business and Philanthropy,” and said he would be “an unrelenting Voice for PEACE.”

Witkoff has praised Trump’s dealings with Israel, saying in July that his “leadership was good for Israel and the entire region.”

He added, “With President Trump, the Middle East experienced historic levels of peace and stability. Strength prevents wars. Iran’s money was cut off which prevented their funding of global terror.”

Trump had been playing golf with Witkoff and other friends during the second assassination attempt on the presidential candidate in September.

Witkoff was born in the Bronx and was raised on Long Island. After his son Andrew died of an overdose, Witkoff gave Andrew’s guitar to “fellow music lover Donald Trump.”

“President Trump didn’t say something nice to me and put it in a closet somewhere,” Witkoff said. “He put it right out front at his Trump International West Palm Beach property where he and I both see it whenever we walk in and play.

“I know this man very well,” Witkoff said. “President Trump is as kind and compassionate a man as I’ve ever met in my lifetime.”

This role does not require Senate confirmation.

Lee Zeldin EPA Administrator

Zeldin, a former New York congressman, is a longtime Trump backer.

“We will restore U.S. energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the U.S. the global leader of AI,” Zeldin said in a post on X after Trump announced his appointment overseeing the EPA. “We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

Zeldin had lost the New York governor’s race in 2022 to Kathy Hochul.

One of Zeldin’s first tasks will likely be starting the process to overturn several of the Biden EPA’s biggest rules on climate, including tailpipe regula-

tions for vehicles and rules aimed at slashing pollution from power plants and oil and gas producers.

Zeldin said Trump cares about ensuring access to clean air and water but wants to use the EPA to pursue “energy dominance.”

“One of the biggest issues for so many Americans was the economy, and the president was talking about unleashing economic prosperity through the EPA. We have the ability to pursue energy dominance, to be able to make the United States the artificial intelligence capital of the world, to bring back American jobs to the auto industry, and so much more. President Trump cares about conserving the environment, as you just mentioned in that statement from him. His desire to ensure access to clean air, clean water, it was a top priority,” Zeldin said.

Asked about day one priorities from the agency, Zeldin said, “So, day one and the first 100 days, we have the opportunity to roll back regulations that are forcing businesses to be able to struggle, they’re forced to cut costs, internally, they are moving overseas all together.”

“There are regulations that the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction,” he said.

This Cabinet-level post requires Senate confirmation.

Tulsi Gabbard National Intelligence Director

The former Democratic congresswoman will be sitting in a position which oversees the nation’s spy agencies and acts as the president’s top intelligence adviser.

Gabbard has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades and deployed to Iraq and Kuwait. She received a Combat Medical Badge in 2005 for “participation in combat operations under enemy hostile fire in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom III,” the Hawaii National Guard said.

Gabbard had been the first Hindu and the first American Samoan elected to Congress. She was raised in Hawaii. During her four House terms, she became known for speaking out against her party’s leadership. Her father, Mike Gabbard, was a state senator who was first elected as a Republican but who switched parties to become a Democrat.

Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022 and endorsed Trump early in the race.

The Cabinet-level post requires Senate confirmation.

Linda McMahon Secretary of Department of Education

McMahon is not new to the Trump team. The major Republican donor and former pro-wrestling executive served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during the first Trump term. She was appointed in 2017 and resigned in 2019 to become the chair of America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.

“Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World. We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” Trump said in a statement this week in announcing his pick.

She is the board chair of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank that was formed in 2021 by McMahon, Larry Kudlow and other advisers from the first Trump administration.

AFPI has raised millions of dollars since it was founded and has been described as a “WhiteHouse-in-waiting,” planning potential policy proposals for Trump’s second term.

The Department of Education delivers federal funding to nearly every public K-12 school in the country and manages the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio.

McMahon is also the former CEO of the WWE, which she co-founded with her husband, Vince McMahon. As head of the WWE, Linda McMahon oversaw its transformation from a small wrestling entertainment company into a publicly traded media empire. She stepped down as CEO in 2009.

McMahon twice ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in Connecticut, losing in 2010 and 2012. She self-funded those campaigns, spending $50.1 million in 2010 and $48.7 million in 2012. Trump donated $5,000 to her campaign in 2012.

McMahon donated more than $7 million to two pro-Trump super PACs during Trump’s first campaign for president.

This position requires Senate approval.

Nation

R’ Yosef Zvi Rimon

We’re Living in Miraculous Times

By Eliyahu RosEnBERg

One hundred years ago, it would’ve taken Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon a few hours to convince you that Hashem exists. Today, he says, all he’d need is two minutes.

For proof, Rabbi Rimon declares, look no further than the miraculous state of Israel.

“Never in history has a nation been thrown out of its country, and after thousands of years, returned. All the historians said that it couldn’t happen. Yet, we knew it would happen because the Torah tells us that we would return,” Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon explains. “And to see, after two thousand years, after almost everyone tried to kill us, that we have the state of Israel, an army, and that the state of Israel is successful in

In His Words…

so many things—we see that Hashem is with us. Of course, there’s more Torah than almost ever in history today in Eretz Yisrael. But it’s not just Torah; Israel is one of the top ten in high-tech, in medicine, and in space travel.

“A few months ago, they published a report that Israel is the fifth happiest country in the world, even with everything happening today with the war,” he continues. “I cannot understand how a Yid would not be a believer today. But to understand what’s going on with the state of Israel, with the IDF—it’s a part of emunah. As a religious person, it just gives me more chizuk .”

According to Rabbi Rimon, frumkeit and Zionism aren’t contradictory values. Rather, on the contrary, they work hand

in marriage, if one of the sides is winning, both of them are losing.

My goal is not to educate people to think the same… We agree on 80% of things, and the 20% difference is okay. We can think differently and still love each other and understand that we are one family.

how do i know when i learned Torah well? if, at the end of my learning, i have the motivation to do chessed, then i know i’m on the right path.

in hand. Today, it’s never been clearer that Hashem is on Israel’s side. The nissim that we’ve seen over the past year and since the state’s founding are, according to Rabbi Rimon, tantamount to miracles performed in the times of Tanach.

Take, for instance, the two times Iran fired rockets at Israel. Experts claimed it would be miraculous for Israel to intercept 85% of the missiles. Yet, as Rabbi Rimon notes, Israel stopped 99% of the rockets both times, a military feat that science cannot explain. And now, Iran, a once-frightening regional power, is weaker than ever.

The Jewish state’s success in its war against Hezbollah is also unprecedented. Israel detonating terrorist pagers and walkie-talkies, a risky operation unrivaled in precision and ingenuity, was nothing short of a miracle. Wiping out most of Hezbollah and killing Hamas’s top leaders—also supernatural. What other word can you use to describe how one tiny country fights several wars simultaneously and somehow humiliates all its enemies? The miracles just keep coming.

“And now we see what happened with Syria. Syria is one of the most dangerous enemies of Am Yisroel. Who could have dreamed that the IDF, in two days, could destroy the entire Syrian army, the air force, all of its missiles— without even one injured soldier?” Rabbi Rimon shares. “As I said, these are miracles like the ones from Tanach. And when I look at what happens today with the IDF and with the war now—it’s not that I have the Torah and I have the

army. Rather, someone who believes in Torah sees what’s going on in the army and says, ‘Wow, Hashem is with us.’”

Indeed, Israel has enemies attacking it from all sides. Terrorist governments and groups, including those in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Judea and Samaria, threaten the Jewish state. Countries all around the world condemn Israel for righteously defending itself and try to attack it legally and diplomatically. Even the Jewish state’s so-called friends try to tie its hands, holding Israel back from doing what’s necessary for its survival. Though the odds have always been stacked against it, Israel not only survives but thrives. And undeniably, its supernatural success can only be attributed to Hashem.

Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon, a world-renowned posek and author, was born in London but grew up in the heart of Tel Aviv. Though he was always deeply attached to Torah, he planned to become a doctor—even as a bachur learning in Yeshivat Har Etzion, also known as Gush.

One day, his rebbi, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, called young Rabbi Rimon into his office for a discussion about the boy’s future.

“He said, ‘I know that you want to be a doctor.’ And he spoke for a quarter of an hour about how medicine is important. He said, ‘To be a doctor is a profession of chessed,’” recalls Rabbi Rimon. “And I said to myself, ‘Wow, it’s so nice to see that my rebbi is giving me chizuk and

encouragement to be a doctor!’ But after a quarter of an hour, he said, ‘Aval—but— in your case, you should stay in Torah. This is your mission in life.’”

That conversation changed the course of Rabbi Rimon’s life. He took his rebbi’s advice. And two years later, Rabbi Rimon became a rebbi at Gush, where he taught Gemara for years. Later, he became the community rabbi of Alon Shvut South and the Rosh Yeshiva of Machon Lev in Yerushalayim. And in 2021, Rabbi Rimon also became the chief rabbi of the community of Gush Etzion.

Rabbi Rimon’s love of chessed initially drove him towards the medical profession. Today, that same passion serves as the foundation of everything he does as a rabbi and community leader.

“How do I know when I learned Torah well? If, at the end of my learning, I have the motivation to do chessed, then I know I’m on the right path,” declares Rabbi Rimon.

Rabbi Rimon spends his days immersed in Torah study. But at the end of the day, when he closes his seforim, he leaves with more than just abstract wisdom. Torah inspires him to take action—to do something practical to help the world. His mission of improving the lives of others is what motivated him to write over twenty seforim. He specifically crafts his books to be easy to understand, enjoyable to read, and also deeply meaningful so that they can inspire as many people as possible. G-d willing, Rabbi Rimon hopes to write another twenty books over the next decade, for he sees words as a means of changing worlds.

His passion for making a difference also manifests itself in very significant ways.

Around twenty years ago, when Israel disengaged from Gaza, the Israeli government booted thousands of Jews in the Gazan commu -

nities of Gush Katif from their homes.

At the time, Rabbi Rimon decided to help those displaced. He rallied support from Israelis in his community and around the country to help restore normalcy to these people’s lives.

“We started helping them with lots of things, including activities for youth, laundry, and other things. And after a few days, I discovered that, worst of all, 85% of these people found themselves with no jobs. And I saw how terribly it affected their whole life,” recounts Rabbi Rimon. “I recruited volunteers, and we opened an organization called JobKatif, to help the people from Gush Katif find jobs. Although it was very complicated, we succeeded in finding jobs for 3,500 people, to open 280 small businesses, and to bring the Gush Katif communities to the average level of unemployment in Medinat Yisrael.”

The organization, which received a presidential award from Shimon Peres in 2008, later rebranded to LaOfek, expanding its efforts to help others, including Ethiopian-Israelis, IDF soldiers, and at-risk youth, to find jobs.

Most notably, Rabbi Rimon is involved in the urgent effort to bring home the hostages in Gaza, advising members of the government on the issue from a halachic standpoint. In his words, “We have to think day and night, all the time, about the hostages. We mustn’t forget them for a minute.”

As Rabbi Rimon explains, there are generally two halachic stances on hostage deals, whereby we release terrorists in exchange for our people. One opinion is against the idea of freeing terrorists under any circumstances because, even though we’re saving the lives of current hostages, we’d be endangering other people’s lives by releasing dangerous people. The other opinion is that we need to be concerned with pikuach nefesh now, as opposed to potential pikuach nefesh later—meaning, because the hostages are in danger now, we need

to do whatever we can to free them immediately without much concern for future consequences.

“I think that all those teshuvos are not connected at all to our situation. Why? Because now we are at war. The Torah tells you to go to war even though the Torah knows that in every war, people will be killed,” Rabbi Rimon explains. “Victory is the most important thing now. Victory is something that helps Am Yisrael to be strong and safe. Victory for Am Yisrael is also Kiddush Hashem… But a deal doesn’t have to be a part of losing; it could be a part of winning. If you do a deal and you’re losing a war, it’s a problem. If you do a deal by winning, and at the end of the war, you’re just changing hostages here and there—this is something that I think can be done… Now, we are winning in all parameters: against Hezbollah, Hamas, and in Syria. It’s not the end, but we are winning. And because we are winning, I think that now it’s the right time for us to consider a responsible deal.”

* * *

Since the October 7 massacre, the Jewish people have seen miracle after miracle. But perhaps more importantly, we saw unity.

As Rabbi Rimon puts it, “80% of Jews agree on 80% of things.” Rabbi Rimon believes, however, that, since the war broke out, even more Jews agree with each other. Today, an ever-increasing number of Jews are proud of their heritage and identity, and countless Yidden are doing teshuva.

Rabbi Rimon stands at the forefront of the most important mission of all: bringing Jews together. Through Sulamot, a multifaceted organization Rabbi Rimon founded, he is currently working on a unity project he calls “Torah N’Ohr.” As part of the project, his organization facilitates weekly gatherings for frum and non-Orthodox teenagers,

with food, shiurim, and social activities meant to foster understanding and unity between Jews of all levels of observance.

“My goal is not to educate people to think the same,” declares Rabbi Rimon. “I’m trying to educate teenagers and adults to be okay with thinking differently. We agree on 80% of things, and the 20% difference is okay. We can think differently and still love each other and understand that we are one family.

“I think what you should do in marriage, you should also do here. Every married couple has arguments. It’s okay. How do we know if an argument is good or bad? It depends on the goal when they argue. Usually, someone’s goal in an argument is to win. In marriage, if one of the sides is winning, both of them are losing,” Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon maintains. “We have to try to switch from winning to building. What’s the difference between winning and building? First, when you are trying to win, usually you don’t listen at all to the other side. The whole time, you think about what you’re going to answer, how you’re going to beat them. When you are trying to build, you are listening; you are even trying to take off your glasses, to wear the other person’s glasses, and to try to think, ‘Why does he think differently than me?’ The second thing is when someone is trying to win, they’re trying to destroy, to almost kill the other side. When we are trying to build, we want both sides to be happy.”

It becomes easy to push aside our differences and love every Jew when we realize that every Yid is created in the image of G-d. If we love Hashem, how could we not love His children?

Yes, there are bad people in the world, and it would be delusional to deny that. But, if there’s one thing—from everything that’s happened since October 7—that we can take note of, besides the miracles, it’s that, at the end of the day, as Jews, we’re really all the same.

Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

Hi! Hope you are doing well! I want to start off with saying how much I appreciate your column, so thank you for that!

I’m dating this great guy and we get along well and I really think he’s an amazing person and I would love to spend my life with him. There’s just a little something blocking this from happening. He has a great job and works a lot, which I’m fine with, but sometimes when I text him, he waits hours to respond because he’s so busy with work. He says that when he gets married, he’s going to work less, but he really likes what he does and I don’t think it bothers him working so much. I really respect that about him, but I don’t know what to do because every time I text him, I’m waiting hours for a response. I want him to be there for me and our future kids, and I’m wondering if this will be an issue even if he cuts down on some work.

Thank you so much!

Miri*

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. If you have a question you would like the Navidaters to answer, please reach out to this email as well.

Looking forward!

Michelle, the “Shadchan”

The Rebbetzin

Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, M.S.

You need to talk about this further. This is going to be a subject for not only discussion and negotiation now and in the future, but a challenge to your communication as a couple. Exploring different ways to navigate this issue with flexibility and creativity will give you an opportunity to really share and work things out. Your respect for his commitment to his work and his enjoyment of his profession shows a lot of maturity and caring. Hopefully, he will articulate his understanding of the needs of a spouse for support and teammanship. You are going to want to talk about love languages, responsibilities you each feel comfortable and good about, scheduled times, and investment of time and energy into saving, finances, and family needs. Scheduling, boundaries, and date nights will be part of a discussion as well as outsourcing some responsibilities. You will want to talk about what you see among other couples of different ages as well as other people in his profession. This is not a one-time discussion but a process of opening up to one another with understanding.

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

Y

ou describe the guy you’re dating as amazing marriage potential, however, the one thing that holds you back is his

lag in response time to your texts. Let’s dive deeper into this. He is certainly not ghosting you or ignoring your texts while he is at work. He is simply working hard and focusing on his current responsibility and task. Based on your question, I can understand you are not used to this. You do not mention your own profession, but it seems it probably is a much more flexible working environment. If you are a secretary at a shoe boutique, for example, you may have hours per day of downtime to scroll. You are using this time to text this guy and wonder why he is not responsive. Meanwhile, he may be a doctor, lawyer, or fill-in-high-yield-fast-paced-professionhere trying to get through his day. He has a set amount of hours and clients in his day, and he is trying to get through it with as little distraction as possible so he can get home at a normal hour.

We live in a generation where everything is so immediate, but some things are not meant to be that way. A hardworking man is supposed to focus on work and put his phone down, and a good wife should be able to understand this. You are dating him and seeing this as a problem but that could not be further from the truth.

A shift in your perspective is crucial over here. You must be able to recognize his work ethic as a respectable, positive quality and his lack of texting as a side effect of this. If you are not able to come to this realization or get used to this reality, you may need to marry a guy who may not have as good of a work ethic and/or has a less demanding job.

Find things to fill your time during the day so you can get used to the routine of not texting with him during work hours.

This is not something I would recommend you talk to him about or see if he can change; the change needs to come from you. See if you can handle that. For your sake, I certainly hope you can!

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey Galler

Ihate to criticize an intelligent young lady who likes our column, but… ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Don’t you want a guy who has an important job, takes his work seriously, has a strong work ethic, and will be able to make a good living for his wife and children?

You didn’t write what he does for a living, but if he were a neurosurgeon, would you expect him to stop in the middle of a procedure and immediately answer your text message?

Sometimes, even someone who is madly in love with you just can’t be interrupted, to, for example, instantly answer your text messages.

Okay, maybe that’s an extreme way of expressing what I’m trying to tell you. But please understand that people in demanding jobs (whether male or female) may not be able to pause on demand in order to answer a social text message.

Your boyfriend is focused on building a successful career, and that will benefit both of you. Please try to understand the issue from his point of view. Imagine if your boyfriend were to write to us: “I’m dating a wonderful girl, and I think I love her and want to marry her. I have a great but demanding job that requires my full concentration, but she often texts me during work hours, and if I don’t respond right away, she seems upset. Is this a red flag? Will she be an overly demanding wife, who doesn’t understand the reality of my career? I just don’t know what to do…”

So, the message to all singles (whether male or female) is to be understanding. Sometimes, even someone who is madly in love with you just can’t be inter-

rupted, to, for example, instantly answer your text messages.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m stereotyping, but here are some additional hints:

Smart wives understand that sometimes it’s a good idea to give a guy some space and not interrupt him, when, for example, he’s trying to decipher obscure instructions and put together an “easy-to-assemble” bookshelf. Or when he’s watching the ninth inning of a baseball game. Or during the fourth quarter of a football playoff game.

And smart husbands understand that sometimes, women need our undivided, full attention when they need to discuss something. At length. Immediately.

As couples grow together and their relationships mature, they learn to understand each other’s needs and navigate through these relatively trivial issues.

Reader’s Response

Isaiah Cox

“The Curmudgeon”

Back in the Dark Ages (before texting), working men did not hear from their wives while at work. That arrangement functioned pretty well for humanity for a few thousand years. There are countless jobs that really cannot accept interruptions for long stretches: e.g., operating heavy equipment, pilots, truck drivers, surgeons – even rebbes cannot interrupt a shiur to answer a text.

Now? People think they want more communication. But there is a cost. There is always a cost. As Thomas Sowell puts it, There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. And the trade-off in this case is simple enough: availability reduces earnings.

Most women would be thrilled to marry a man who works hard and successfully, providing for his family.

Pulling It All Together

The Navidaters

Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists

Hi there, Thank you so much for your kind words about our column; it means the world to me! I appreciate you reaching out and sharing your thoughts.

It sounds like you’ve found someone truly special, and I can sense how much you value and respect him. It’s clear that you admire his work ethic and the passion he has for what he does. Those are wonderful qualities, and it’s lovely to see how supportive you are of his ambitions.

If you really need a man who always responds promptly, even when at work, then are you prepared to give up the benefits of such a man? Distracted men are lower-earners, because we are

Smart wives understand that sometimes it’s a good idea to give a guy some space and not interrupt him.

less productive when we are distracted. Are you prepared to have reduced income for your living and education and other expenses, in return for responsiveness during the workday?

No woman maintains respect for a man she cannot look up to. But being the man who earns the respect of his wife takes a lot of hard work and focus!

I would say that as long as he focuses on you when you are together, then you should count yourself very blessed, indeed.

At the same time, it seems like there’s a part of you that’s unsure whether his work habits might create challenges in the long run, especially when it comes to being present in the relation - ship or as a future partner and parent. That’s such a valid concern, and it’s great that you’re reflecting on this now, as it’s important to understand what will help you feel loved, supported, and secure in a relationship.

it about knowing he’ll emotionally and physically show up when it matters most? Then, consider how he’s already showing up for you in ways that feel meaningful. Are there times when his actions demonstrate his commitment, even if his timing with texts isn’t ideal?

es he might be open to making. It could also clarify whether his promises to work less in the future feel realistic or if they’re something he might struggle to follow through on.

I encourage you to explore this with curiosity rather than judgment, both about him and yourself. For example, ask yourself: What do I truly need in a partner to feel connected and prioritized? Is it about faster responses to texts, or is

It’s also worth gently sharing your feelings with him, not as a criticism but as an invitation for a deeper connection. You might say something like, “I love how dedicated you are to your work, and I also want to feel connected with you even when life is busy. Sometimes, when I wait hours for a response, I feel a little disconnected, and I wonder how we might find a balance that works for both of us.”

This could give you insight into how he views your concerns and what chang-

Ultimately, relationships thrive when both partners feel heard and understood, and it sounds like you’re in a great position to build that kind of foundation with him. Trust yourself to recognize whether his actions align with your needs—not just in words but in how he shows up over time.

Wishing you all the best as you navigate this! You’ve got such a good head on your shoulders, and I have no doubt you’ll find clarity in the process.

Warmly, Jennifer

School of Thought

By Etti Siegel

We have notions of certain topics being taboo, but bathrooms are a real part of your child’s school day! Each letter was responded to privately when they came in, but two letters mean others may be dealing with these issues as well, so I am sharing them.

Q:Dear Etti,

We have a weird issue, so I am glad this forum is anonymous. My second grader is going to the bathroom very often at home, and it is happening in school also. At first, I thought it might be a medical condition, so I made an appointment with the pediatrician, but I just found out that another child in her class had an accident, and my daughter is so scared of having an accident! The teacher wants my input, and quite frankly, I am not sure about the whole situation! I deal with anxiety, and I understand that my child is anxious.

Any advice?

- Anxious Mom of Anxious Kid

A:Dear Anxious,

Thank you for writing in. I think the visit with the pediatrician is a good idea, so make sure to keep it.

I think having a frank conversation in a neutral tone with your daughter that explains that accidents are uncomfortable and embarrassing but not something she should worry about would be a good start. Giving her information that our bladders are trainable will go far to relieve anxiety.

She needs to know that the more often we go to the bathroom, the more often our body will learn that we need to go to the bathroom. According to WebMD and other sites, waiting 5 minutes when you think you need

to go is the way to retrain our bodies. She needs to be reassured that waiting longer is not going to result in an accident.

The pediatrician will probably explain to her that most children can wait up to two hours to use the bathroom!

Once she has the information, try to ignore it. Making it a topic of conversation will just cause more anxiety. If you notice that she continues to use the bathroom frequently, you can distract her with a question or ask her to do something first.

Understanding that your child has anxiety about the matter and that anxiety is hereditary helps you understand her and support her. As you know, anxiety is very manageable and treatable. If your daughter’s anxiety continues to escalate, or your anxiety makes it difficult for you to help her, ask your pediatrician to advise with next steps.

Hatzlacha,

Etti

Q:Dear Etti,

Can you help with this question? The teacher told me that my first grade daughter has an odor. I noticed it when she comes home from school, too. But we are a very clean family, she bathes every night, and I don’t know what to do. This can’t be good for her socially.

- Smells Bad

A:Dear Mom,

While first graders overall might not notice the issue, some might, and others might start to be aware of it as the year goes

on, so dealing with the issue now is a good idea.

As I am sure you have done, the first step is to make an appointment with your daughter’s pediatrician. You need to rule out a medical issue.

In my many years as a classroom teacher, I learned that there are two main reasons children wet themselves in school.

One is an underdeveloped bladder. It was explained to me that it is like the bladder doesn’t totally stop and the occasional drip causes odor. The pediatrician can help you deal with that. Meanwhile, your child might need another quick bath in the morning (even though I know mornings are hectic, but as you stated, you want to help your child avoid social issues).

The other is an avoidance of using the bathrooms in school. Holding her bladder all day is going to cause leakage and might cause more serious problems down the road (like UTIs and other medical issues). The question is why. Why is she avoiding the bathroom? In my experience, children avoid the bathroom for a few reasons:

• All the stalls are full, and they are worried about missing class/play time/recess/fun activity.

• All the stalls are full, and they are worried about getting in trouble coming late to class.

• The stalls are open on the sides or the floor, and other children are peeking or seem to be looking.

• Something happened once that makes your child scared to go.

• Other children are telling stories about the bathrooms, so your child is scared to go.

Figure out how you can have a neutral, fact-finding conversation. Once you know what the issue is, you can work on helping her with the issue. The teacher can also help, so please clue her in!

Hatzlacha,

Etti

Health & F tness

Dear Therapist

By Michal Goldman, LCSW

Dear Therapist,

I recently got engaged to a woman who is everything I could’ve ever wanted! We’re currently in a long-distance relationship, and we have a long engagement because of our work schedules. While we were dating, I was able to visit her much more often than she could visit me because my job was more flexible than hers. However, my work will become more demanding over the next few months, so we won’t be able to see each other in person much, which means we’ll only be connecting virtually.

The issue is, I often feel awkward and not like myself on phone and video calls, and it’s starting to affect our connection. My fiancée’s mentioned that she feels the strain too, and I hate that my discomfort is making things harder. Once we’re married, she’ll move here and things will settle down, but I want to make sure we’re building a strong foundation now.

How can I get past my awkwardness and maintain a close bond with her during this time?

The Therapist Responds

First of all, mazal tov! Engagement can be a really exciting time and brings with it a whole slew of challenges (and challenging feelings) as well. Add long distance to the equation, and it’s safe to say that the intensity of the feelings probably increases.

A helpful skill in all relationships, especially during stressful times, is expressing yourself openly, clearly, and effectively. It’s common to feel less comfortable sharing more difficult feelings at this stage in your relationship. On the flipside, as both of you improve this skill, your connection will feel that much stronger.

If you’ve shared your discomfort already, kudos to you! However, the communication skill that I am advising is a bit more nuanced. If you haven’t already, start by identifying what is going on for you underneath the surface. Oftentimes, feeling awkward and uncomfortable covers up underlying fears – fear of not get-

ting this long distance thing “right” or fear of not being fully accepted. It can also mask feelings of sadness or frustration due to the circumstances you are both facing during such a pivotal time in your relationship. Maybe there are other feelings as well.

Once you start to have a better grasp on what is going on for you emotionally, the next step is to share that with your fiancée. These feelings and needs are very tender, and it’s normal to be hesitant to share some of them. I’d recommend starting slowly, sharing a little at a time, and gauging her response.

This is an opportunity for you to establish strong communication patterns from the get-go. Just like you, your fiancée likely has her own emotional reactions to the challenges you are both facing. Even though it can be so hard to see our partner having a negative reaction to something we do, I want you to enter the conversation with curiosity, and not defensiveness, about her perspective. Relationships are a dynamic dance, and the more you can understand each other’s perspectives, the more clearly you can see the dynamics at play between both of you. Having that clarity and understanding of each other can help your nervous systems feel more attuned, and in turn, make problem-solving much easier and more effective.

When your fiancée shares her feelings, try to make it your single-minded focus to understand her experience.

I like to think of this approach like a mirror. When you look in a mirror, you just see whatever you put in front of it, and nothing more or less. Often, when we respond to others, we process their words through our own perspective – considering if they feel true, the emotions we feel, and so on – before responding. This is useful in many situations, because it helps us evaluate and discern. However, with your partner, especially in moments of heightened tension, it can be really helpful to respond as a mirror would. Instead of filtering her words through your own feelings and then responding with explanations, trying to end the conversation, or escalation, keep your focus on simply reflecting her perspective (and extra credit if you can also express to her how you can see that her feelings make sense!).

While it might seem paradoxical, fully listening and mirroring your fiancée’s feelings helps her feel understood and comforted. This builds greater connection, allowing you both to feel more compassion, deepen understanding, and ultimately work together more effectively to solve problems as a team.

This type of conversation will probably be easier to have in person, especially

because of your discomfort over phone or video. However, if travel isn’t an option now, try to figure out what mode of communication feels most comfortable to you and have the conversation there. It is also helpful to set clear intentions around what is being discussed and share feelings of connection throughout the conversation (such as “I miss being closer” or “I want to understand each other better”).

John Gottman, a leading relationship researcher, emphasizes the benefits of creating rituals of connection. Rituals are consistent ways that you both consciously choose to strengthening your relationship. These can include ways that you greet each other on the phone, plan for the future, or how you express overwhelm during tough conversations. The benefit of establishing rituals in your situation is twofold – firstly, having a set ritual oftentimes reduces feelings of awkwardness, and more importantly, it can help you nurture the sense of togetherness.

The engagement period is the beginning of laying the groundwork for your marriage and creating a joint identity (in addition to your own individual identities). The challenge that you are facing navigating this long distance phase with the discomfort it brings is also an invitation to strengthen the foundation for the rest of your lives. The vulnerability, trust, and responsiveness that you are working to build now, along with the rituals you create, will prepare you both for a strong marriage and is the best gift you can give your future selves!

Michal Goldman is a licensed clinical social worker in Queens specializing in helping individuals and couples navigate relationship challenges. She can be reached through her website at www.michalgoldmanlcsw.org, via email at michalgoldmanlcsw@gmail.com, or by phone at 917-590-0258. If you have questions that you would like answered here, you can submit them to the email provided. This content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a replacement for therapy.

Welcome to Yeshiva Week. This is a big week for families and a time to create positive lifelong memories. Along with the fun, everyone will be taking pictures to remember and further enjoy the memories.

This past week, I saw an article about the importance of maintaining privacy when posting vacation pictures. The author brought some interesting examples from Chumash supporting the value of privacy and the benefits of family tzinius. I thought this was an interesting topic that is relevant all year long but even more during this time. With families traveling, touring and photographing, it’s inevitable that pictures will be posted on social media or otherwise disseminated. When and what to post is an important topic, as is knowing when to refrain from sharing.

The Benefits

We are living in a world that makes physical distance almost irrelevant. Video chats may not be the same as in-person hugs, but it’s still an incredible way for families to bond. Grandparents can

Parenting Pearls Sharing Our Precious Moments

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

remain close to grandchildren, adult siblings can be in touch with each other, and long-time friends can remain connected. It is easier today to speak with my sister in Israel than a cross-country call decades ago.

Sharing pictures and videos is a big part of this connection. We may not be able to invite every long distance relative for each event, but we can certainly share the photos and give them nachas. Chanukah candle lighting, funny childhood moments, and first day of school pictures can be quickly and easily shared with those we love, keeping the bond ever closer.

Seeing a child enjoying a gift from their grandparent, I suggested the parent take a picture and send it to the grandparents as a show of hakaras hatov. Loved ones can see firsthand the joy their gifts brought.

As parents, it’s wonderful knowing we can capture these priceless moments and enjoy them for years to come. Some of the most adorable antics can be treasured for years after they’ve occurred. Our children, too, enjoy seeing pictures and videos of their younger selves.

The Hesitations

Kids compare themselves to others based on what they see around them. The child who goes skiing may have a great time but may still feel jealous seeing their peers on an airplane. There is always something “bigger and better” – or greener grass – and comparing themselves to others can leave even a well-vacationed child feeling deprived.

Many children will not be traveling. This may be for any number of reasons, including parental work schedules, medical reasons or financial struggles. Money issues, in particular, are very common, and many families in our community are not able to cover their basic monthly bills. It’s truly painful for these parents to not be able to give their child the vacations their peers have.

Social media offers a very skewed view of reality. Looking at posted pictures you’d think everyone has perfect shalom bayis, always well-behaved children, fancy vacations and expensive anniversary gifts. We only see what others want us to see, and this gives a very biased portrayal. This, too, can create jealousy or feelings of in-

adequacy in oneself, spouse or children. We need to maintain this awareness as we see the small glimpse others publicly give us into their lives.

In general, we live in a world that is overexposed. Kids share everything from what they ate for breakfast to selfie pictures of them throughout the day making silly faces. Many of today’s youth can’t imagine not sharing something with others. We risk losing some of our innate sense of privacy and internal tzinius, chas v’shalom. Posting every vacation (or other) moment encourages this unhealthy message.

Public is Public

What is put on the internet stays on the internet and can be brought up even years later. Many public people have been brought down by statements or posts made long before they were well known. It’s important to think carefully before posting pictures. Additionally, whatever is shared with one person can easily be forwarded to the next.

Parents should avoid sharing any pictures that may cause their child embarrassment now or in the future. Your tod-

dler may look adorable potty training but won’t appreciate their friends seeing that ten years later. Many things that we find cute or sweet are mortifying for a child to have forwarded. It may be singing a song, wearing their mother’s tichel or even just being normal. Some kids are particularly sensitive, and we need to be considerate of their feelings.

Ensure your child is dressed tzinius and in a manner they are comfortable with. A child may feel perfectly appropriate wearing a particular outfit or pajamas at home but may not want everyone to see them this way. Perhaps they’re OK with their friends seeing them in this attire but not their teacher or principal (if it’s posted publicly).

Be mindful who you share pictures with and specify if they are not for forwarding. For example, families often go swimming together and may share those pictures with very close relatives. Parents may be happy to share these photos with grandparents but not want them sent further. Once the picture is publicized, you have little control over who sees it. Make sure you trust the picture’s recipients to respect your family’s privacy and preferences.

The Middle Road

To send or not to send, that is the question. Truthfully, the answer lies in the middle, and each family needs to set the guidelines they will use for disseminating photos. As with most areas of parenting, we need to act with thought and foresight. We are in a healthier place

close friend may appreciate more photos, being more like family than an outsider.

We need to consider an individual recipient’s personality. Some people are very prone to jealousy or reacting critically. If you think your photo in the Florida sun will make someone jealous, then don’t share it. The same applies with that

As with most areas of parenting, we need to act with thought and foresight.

when we have a set policy that is in accordance with our family’s standards.

I will provide a few general guidelines, but each family should decide their own policy, consulting relevant authorities for guidance, when necessary.

The closer we are to someone, the more we may want to share. For example, grandparents may be thrilled to see the kids on every single amusement park attraction, but fewer pictures may be appropriate for a cousin or friend. A very

critical relative or friend. Other people are truly b’simcha seeing others happy, and these wonderful people will be more likely to enjoy your photos.

We should be sensitive to individual family situations. For example, a couple going through divorce or an older single may not appreciate tons of couple pictures. A family that is suddenly unemployed and needs gift cards to make yom tov may not appreciate photos of expensive restaurant meals.

Public sharing is riskier than private, and posting on social media requires more thought than private or close family chats. What you post to your status or a website page can be seen by almost anyone, but your close loved ones in private chats are (hopefully) going to keep your treasured moments to themselves. Additionally, parents need to take safety concerns into account before publicly posting pictures of children.

Disappearing posts or pictures are an option for photos that are somewhat sensitive but you still want to share. This permits sharing with less risk of further dissemination, and can be appropriate in certain situations.

Enjoy Yeshiva Week and whatever adventures your family will be sharing. Have fun, take pictures you will treasure for years to come, and try to be emotionally present remembering that what your child really wants is you.

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.

Vacations are a time for relaxation and adventure; however, one can find them challenging in maintaining healthy weight goals. Airport snacks, fast food options, and tempting foods can easily get in the way. For those mindful of their health, it’s important to keep a balanced perspective. Vacation is meant to be enjoyable, and therefore losing weight is not the goal. The focus is maintenance, to eat healthy while enjoying yourself. Feeling good will enhance your overall vacation experience.

Whether you’re on a ski trip, in the sun, or exploring new places on a road trip, staying on track with your health goals is possible with a bit of planning.

Ski Trips

Ski trips can be exhausting, and one can easily get hungry. Many turn to high-calorie meals to refuel after a day on the slopes. However, it is possible to enjoy filling meals without overindulging.

The best way to start your day is with a protein-rich and fiber-full breakfast. Consider options like eggs with vegetables and whole grain toast, or oatmeal topped with berries, a nut butter and seeds. This will keep you full longer and provide sustained energy. In addition, it is important to pack healthy snacks to avoid the high-calorie, high-sugar options at the ski lodge. Great options include nuts, fruit, or no-sugar-added granola or protein bars. These snacks are portable, nutritious, and will help you maintain your energy levels throughout the day. Shopping in advance for fresh fruits and vegetables are excellent options as well. They are filling, nutritious, and convenient.

For lunch, consider packing sandwiches made with high-fiber, low-carb bread or wraps filled with lean proteins like tuna, turkey, or chicken. Protein-packed, high fiber, no-sugar-added bars are also easy to grab and go, provid-

Health & F tness

From Sand to Snow Staying Slim While You Go

By Aliza Beer MS, RD, CDN

ing a nutritious midday meal that won’t weigh you down.

When you arrive home for dinner, opt for lean protein such as grilled chicken or fish and pair it with vegetables. A hot soup is another excellent choice, which can be filling and warming. Be mindful of portion sizes, especially with starchy sides like potatoes or pasta.

By incorporating these strategies into your ski trip, you can enjoy your vacation without compromising your health. With a bit of preparation and mindful choices, you can fuel your body properly, stay energized, and make the most of your time on the slopes.

Airbnb Stay

Many travelers choose to stay in accommodations with kitchen facilities, like an Airbnb, allowing for greater control over meal preparation. Bringing along small kitchen appliances, such as a Betty Crocker pizza maker, frying pan, or a George Foreman grill, can make it easier to prepare healthy meals. This broadens

your meals to include cooking eggs, fish, and a variety of other nutritious dishes. In addition, one can shop/Instacart fresh fruits and vegetables or frozen vegetables given the availability of a fridge and freezer. Such accommodations allow you to prepare your meals, which ensures you have control over the ingredients and can stick to your healthy eating goals.

Warm Weather Vacation

Warm weather vacations often include lounging by the pool, beach barbecues, and dining out. These activities can make it very difficult to stick to your usual diet. However, with a few mindful choices, you can maintain a healthy balance while still enjoying your getaway.

Firstly, it is important to drink plenty of water, especially if you’re spending time in the sun. Aim to drink at least 64 ounces (2 liters) of water daily to keep your body functioning optimally and help curb hunger. Avoid sugary beverages like fruit juices and sodas, which can add unnecessary calories. Instead, focus

on water and unsweetened drinks to stay refreshed.

For poolside snacking, consider freeze-dried apple chips or fresh fruits and vegetables. These are easy to pack, healthy, and keep you satisfied between meals. If you’re staying in an Airbnb or an apartment, freezing grapes is another refreshing snack option that’s perfect for hot days.

It is beneficial to incorporate physical activities into your vacation itinerary to stay active and make the most of your time. Walking, biking, swimming, and other outdoor activities are great ways to enjoy the scenery while burning calories. In addition, many destinations offer parks, tennis courts, and other sports-covered locations that can be enjoyed in the warm weather. These options are especially significant for those who have a daily workout routine and want to maintain their fitness schedule while on vacation.

When on vacation, one may constantly encounter tempting food options that can be hard to resist. Instead of indulging at every meal, give yourself one treat a day. This can give you room to enjoy a dessert, alcoholic beverage, or other tempting treats that easily emerge on vacations. This approach helps you enjoy the moment without overdoing it. Maintain your portions and give yourself the space to enjoy. For example, if you choose a tropical cocktail as that day’s treat, balance it with a lighter meal. If you choose to have a dessert that day, share it with someone instead of having it all to yourself.

Eating Out

Eating out is a big part of vacation, but it doesn’t have to derail your healthy eating goals. When reviewing the menu, look for dishes that are grilled, baked, or steamed. Avoid creamy sauces and fried items. Another great idea is to stay away

from the breadbasket to avoid unnecessary carbs and calories.

Even if the menu seems challenging, remember that most dishes can be modified to be healthier. Don’t hesitate to ask for dressing on the side, a substitution of salad for fries, or a smaller portion size. Many restaurants are happy to accommodate requests to meet your dietary needs. Opt for smaller portions or share a dish to keep calorie intake in check. If you’re craving dessert, remember your given once-a-day treat. Consider sharing it or choosing a lighter option so you don’t feel deprived. Similarly, balance your protein choices by opting for chicken or fish instead of red meat like burgers or steak every night. This can help reduce calorie intake and provide more variety. Pay attention to your hunger cues and stop eating when you’re full. Savor your meal slowly and enjoy the dining experience.

Road Trips

Road trips can involve long hours sitting in the car and frequent stops at fast food joints or convenience stores. One also easily turns to snacking to fill the long hours and boredom.

A cooler is a useful item that can al-

low you to bring your refrigerated items. Bring along healthy snacks like yogurt, cheese sticks, fresh fruit, and whole-grain crackers. This reduces the temptation to buy unhealthy snacks on the road. It is also beneficial to plan your meals in advance. Research restaurants along your route that offer healthy options. When you do stop to eat, choose meals with plenty of vegetables and avoid fried foods. Sitting in the car for so long can be hard and it is important to stay active. Take breaks to stretch and walk around at rest stops. This keeps your metabolism active and helps prevent stiffness from sitting too long.

General Tips for Staying on Track

Set Realistic Goals: Aim to maintain your weight rather than lose weight during your vacation. This makes it easier to enjoy your trip without feeling deprived.

Stay Active: Incorporate physical activity into your vacation. Whether it’s skiing, swimming, or hiking, find ways to keep moving.

Indulge Wisely: It’s okay to indulge, however, balance it with healthier choices throughout the day. Enjoy a treat, but

don’t let it derail your entire meal or day. Ideas for healthy, portable snacks

• Celery or sliced apples spread with peanut butter (rub lemon juice on apples to prevent browning)

• Fresh fruit (bananas, grapes, strawberries and oranges are easy to carry along)

• Sliced veggies (baby carrots, cauliflower florets, bell peppers and snap peas are easy to eat)

• Single-serving containers of almond butter, hummus or guacamole for dipping

• Dried fruit, like raisins, cranberries, apples, apricots

• Nuts and seeds (almonds, walnuts, etc.) preferably in pre-portioned 100-calorie pouches

• Protein bars, shakes or packets of protein powder you can mix into water or milk

• Hard-boiled eggs

• Plain, low-fat yogurt with granola or fruit

• Individually wrapped low-fat string cheese

• Individual portions of sugar-free applesauce

• Single-serving envelopes of tuna packed in water

• Low-sodium turkey jerky or smoked salmon

• Popcorn (air-popped or a low-fat, low sodium variety containing as few ingredients as possible) in 100 calorie bags

Maintaining healthy weight goals while on vacation is all about balance and thoughtful planning. Whether you’re skiing, relaxing on a beach, or hitting the road, you can enjoy your trip without sacrificing your health. Focus on staying active, making smart food choices, and indulging in moderation. Packing healthy snacks and planning meals in advance can help you avoid common obstacles. Remember, the goal is not perfection but maintaining a healthy balance that allows you to feel your best and fully enjoy your vacation. By incorporating these strategies, you can return from your trip refreshed and on track with your health goals.

Aliza Beer is a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in nutrition. She has a private practice in Cedarhurst, NY. Patients’ success has been featured on the Dr. Oz show. Aliza can be reached at alizabeer@gmail.com, and you can follow her on Instagram at @alizabeer

In The K tchen

Ori’s Meatballs and Peas

By Naomi Nachman

I had the honor of spending some time with Einav Danino, who lost her son Ori after he was taken hostage on October 7 from the Nova Festival and held for 11 months in horrific conditions in the Gaza tunnels. Ori was murdered right before the IDF could rescue him along with five other precious young souls.

I had asked Einav what her son’s favorite food was, and she told me peas and meatballs. I asked her if she would make them with me so we could all make Ori’s favorite dish and think of him and spread his light on the world.

On October 7, Ori had made it to safety with some friends, but he ran back to the festival to continue to help others escape until he was kidnapped.

Ingredients

Meatballs

◦ 2 pounds ground beef

◦ 1 onion, finely grated

◦ 1 potato, finely graded

◦ 1 egg

◦ ½ cup breadcrumbs

◦ 1 teaspoon salt

◦ 1½ to 2 teaspoons cumin, to taste

◦ Black pepper

Sauce

◦ 1 onion, diced

◦ 2 stalks celery, small dice

Naomi’s blog. Naomi

◦ 1 bag frozen peas

◦ Salt and pepper, to taste

◦ 2 cups water or broth

◦ Canola oil

Preparation

Mix all meatball ingredients together and set aside. Prepare the sauce: In a large sauté pan on medium-high heat, add 2 teaspoons canola oil. When the oil is hot, sauté the onion until it becomes golden brown.

Add celery and peas to the pan and season with salt and black pepper and sauté until the celery is soft, approximately five minutes.

Add approximately 2 cups of water or broth.

Shape the meat mixture into balls and place them around the peas. Lower pan to a simmer. Cook covered on low heat for 40 minutes.

reached through her website, www.theaussiegourmet.com or at (516) 295-9669.

Naomi with Ori Danino's mother and his favorite dish, meatballs and peas

Five AI Skills Every Professional Needs to Learn Better Business

By Shlomo Argamon

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping industries and redefining careers. From healthcare and finance to marketing and retail, AI creates opportunities for those who understand it, while making those who don’t obsolete. To stand out and advance your career, mastering AI-related skills is essential. Here are five critical skills that will help your career and make you indispensable.

1. Writing Effective AI Prompts

How well an AI tool works depends on the quality of the instructions you give it. The clearer and more explicit you can make your prompt, the more useful your result. For instance, instead of asking, “Tell me about AI,” try, “List three benefits of AI for healthcare management, as a concise numbered list.” To do this well, however, you need to know what your AI tool can do, how it interprets requests, how to specify exactly what you want, and how to improve your

instructions based on seeing what the AI actually does with them.

In fact, there are many specific techniques, like “chain-of-thought” and “role-playing,” that can improve AI prompts in the right circumstances— knowing these techniques and when to use them will make you a prompting master. To learn how to do this, you can enroll in university AI courses or in a bootcamp—once you’ve started, online platforms like AICrowd offer hands-on exercises to practice creating prompts for real-world tasks. Developing your skill at prompting will enable you to use AI to assist you in a variety of tasks in professional settings.

2. Using AI to Analyze Data Trends

AI excels at finding hidden patterns and trends in data, which helps companies predict where their markets are going, optimize their processes, and improve their business outcomes. To

use AI for analyzing data you need to understand how to work with data, how different kinds of analysis models work, how to properly interpret the AI’s outputs, and how to visualize and explain the patterns and trends it finds. Various technical tools like Python, R, PowerBI, and Tableau offer powerful capabilities, while no-code platforms make some of them accessible to non-technical users. College courses in AI and data science can teach you these skills, while participating in competitions on platforms like Kaggle provides practical experience and community collaboration. Whether you are creating reports, optimizing supply chains, or exploring new business opportunities, knowing how to use AI for data analysis will help you thrive in any field.

3. Evaluating AI Tools for Reliability

AI runs on data, so it is only as good as the data, and the assumptions, be -

hind it. The biases that are inevitable in any dataset are amplified by AI, so a critical part of using AI is evaluating its results for reliability and bias. If this is not done, you are liable to get problematic unexpected results. For example, an AI hiring tool trained on data describing who a company hired in the past would tend to favor candidates who fit past hiring patterns, potentially discriminating against good candidates from underrepresented groups. Evaluating AI tools for reliability and mitigating bias involves understanding how AI models are trained and recognizing the signs of bias, as well as how to use quantitative metrics for assessing performance. And when you find a problem, critical thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration may be needed to understand the larger context to properly mitigate the risks. These skills can be developed through courses in AI, machine learn-

ing, and data science, as well as teambased courses and activities involving collaborating with many different kinds of people. Workshops and platforms like Kaggle provide hands-on practice to ensure AI tools results fit with your organization’s values and ethical standards.

4. Using AI to Improve Decision-Making

One of the biggest impacts of AI is helping people make better decisions. It does this by providing better and more up-to-date understandings of complicated situations, thanks to its ability to analyze large amounts of data. This enables businesses to better understand what they are dealing with and to predict important changes. For example, retailers can use AI to forecast customer demand and suppliers’ prices, while healthcare providers can improve patient outcomes through quicker and more accurate diagnosis. AI can also help by brainstorming creative new potential approaches to a problem.

To use AI effectively for decision support, you must make sure you have high quality data and the right kind of AI system, know how to interpret the AI’s outputs properly, and be able to communicate your findings clearly to

non-experts. Understanding how AI’s predictive models and natural language processing works will help you turn its analyses into practical results. User-friendly tools like Tableau and Power BI are excellent starting points for non-technical users.

of it, you need to use the right tools for the right tasks, so that the overall process improves productivity without overwhelming people. This means figuring out all the different steps that your team takes to solve problems and identifying which parts of that process can be auto -

Developing your skill at prompting will enable you to use AI to assist you in a variety of tasks in professional settings.

Organizations that use AI thoughtfully can get ahead of the competition, and mastering the skills to do so can make you indispensable. Start small, practice with relevant data, and build your confidence in using AI to support decision-making.

5. Designing AI Workflows

Since it is an interactive technology, AI also changes how people work with each other, influencing how they set goals and collaborate. To make the most

mated with AI. Then you need to choose the right tools and make sure the AI is set up to fit well with how people work.

For example, a well-designed AI-enhanced customer service system could handle routine inquiries, escalating just the harder questions to human staff, who would then have more time and energy to engage in meaningful interactions. This will not only boost employee morale but also improves customer satisfaction.

Not doing this well, on the other hand, can cause significant problems. For instance, if a customer service AI focuses on how fast problems are resolved, it may rush customer interactions, leading to dissatisfied customers and disengaged staff.

Courses in systems development and human-computer interaction, along with hands-on projects, can help you design workflows that streamline operations and foster trust.

Master These Skills to Stay Ahead

In our increasingly AI-driven world, mastering these skills will ensure you’re not just keeping up with technology but actively shaping how it is used. Whatever your job and whatever your industry, these skills will make you more valuable on the job market.

Touro University is now offering both a certificate and masters in Artificial Intelligence. To learn more, contact (646) 777 9360 or frivera7@touro.edu.

Dr. Shlomo Argamon is associate provost for AI at Touro University.

Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

It gives me a sense of peace.

- Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown who was seen on the sideline during the TV broadcast reading a book called “INNER EXCELLENCE: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life” by Jim Murphy, when asked about it by the press after the game

I physically feel like I can do anything and everything, but I have to make sure my mentals are good. – ibid.

I think the American people are safer and the country is better off than we were four years ago.

- Outgoing National Security advisor Jake Sullivan on CNN’s “State of the Union”

I think I would’ve beaten Trump, could’ve beaten Trump. And I think that Kamala could’ve beaten Trump, would’ve beaten Trump.

- Pres. Biden in a recent conversation with reporters, leaving many scratching their heads

The president now says that he could have beaten Trump and Kamala could have beaten Trump. He added, “If you don’t believe me, ask my good friend Jimmy Carter.”

– Greg Gutfeld, Fox

A travesty that Biden is giving Soros the Medal of Freedom

- Elon Musk on X, commenting on Pres. Biden giving George Soros a Medal of Freedom

George Soros’s hatred of humanity includes Israel btw - ibid.

Even Ray Charles could see what’s going on!

- Mayor Eric Adams (D-NY) after he was charged with additional crimes

I wanted my kids to, when I walked in the room, or their dad walked in the room, or you would walk in the room, that they stand up out of respect.

- Maria Shriver on the TODAY podcast revealing that when her kids were growing up they always had to stand up for her when she walked into a room

Hopefully everyone is cool with me skipping the inauguration so I can go to the national title game.

- Vice President Elect J.D. Vance on social media after his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes won the college playoffs and will play in the Championship game on January 20

All told, the U.S. has provided $102 billion in assistance to Ukraine, our allies and partners $158 billion. This may be the best example of burden-sharing that I’ve seen in the 32 years that I’ve been doing this.

- Outgoing Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the NATO foreign ministers meeting

If you need help, emergency information, resources and shelter is available. All of this can be found at URL.

– L.A. Mayor Karen Bass at a press conference

She’s got a spine of steel, and she’s been a black woman in America for a really long time. None of this is new.

- A Hollywood actress telling TMZ that the only reason embattled L.A. Mayor Karen Bass—who drastically cut the L.A. Fire Department’s budget—is being criticized is because she is black

People had many, many questions. How could Barack Obama, the man who faced vicious, racist conspiracies for years because of Trump, act so buddy-buddy with him? Does he not remember birtherism? Does he not remember how for years Trump lied about how he was secretly born in Africa? Does he not remember how Trump suggested that he was secretly a Muslim who was sympathetic to terrorist groups and terrorist causes?

– Left wing journalist Don Lemon, after Obama and Trump were seen in a friendly chat at Jimmy Carter’s funeral

Perhaps more critically, does he not remember how his entire political party has been calling the man a fascist, an autocrat, a threat to democracy for months if not years? People could not believe what they were seeing. Had the Democratic Party lied to them? Had Kamala Harris and Joe Biden lied to them?

- Ibid.

I wish Joe Biden all the best, but the fact is, he has left us a dumpster fire.

- Vice President-elect J.D. Vance on Fox News

During the Biden administration, when [the Biden administration was] trying to roll out the vaccine program, while they were trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard to take down things that were, honestly, were true. They basically pushed us and said, you know, that “anything saying that says vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down.” And I was just like, “We’re not going to do that, we’re clearly not going to do that, I mean that is kind of inarguably true.”

- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—who is singing a much different tune now than four years ago— talking to Joe Rogan

I mean basically these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse.

- ibid.

I don’t think that the [government] pushing for social media companies to censor stuff was legal.

- ibid.

It’s one thing to say we want to be kind of like welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and I think it’s another to basically say that “masculinity is bad,” and I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the – the kind of – the spectrum.

- ibid., explaining why Facebook is doing away with its DEI program

It’s critically important that, to the extent you can find anything that gives you an ability to be patient in this extremely dangerous and unprecedented crisis, that you do.

- Vice President

I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.

- Pete Hegseth at his confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense

NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA. THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!

- Trump on Truth Social

LA residents are demanding that Governor Gavin Newsom explain how they can survive with empty reservoirs. The governor recommended that they try a dry shampoo or perhaps a leave-in conditioner.

– Greg Gutfeld

The homeless L.A. man wielding a blowtorch is an illegal alien from Mexico. Democrat leaders were quick to defend him as an undocumented welder.

– ibid.

So, I’m the governor of California and wanna know the answer. I’ve got that question, I can’t tell you, by how many people, “What happened?” – on my own team, “What happened?”… I’ll be candid with you, I wasn’t getting straight answers.

- California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), on liberal podcast, “Pod Save America,” spinning the wildfire blame away from himself

Trump has been bought for $1 billion by Big Oil. Just a payoff to kill the IRA and the Green New Deal. We know what will happen. More fires, more climate disasters, more death. The LA fires are preview of coming atrocities.

- Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) blaming the LA wildfires on Trump, even though he is not in office yet

Corporations got us into this mess, but even they can’t escape the devastating reality of climate change.

- Squad member Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) in a tweet, accompanied by a photo of a McDonalds on fire in L.A.

Tell me again, how a hamburger is responsible for the water being cut off by the DEI hires in California?

- One of many responses

They have arrested four climate changes so far.

- ibid.

The good news is that I became a great-grandpa.

- Pres. Biden at his initial press briefing about the L.A. fires

Fire away! No pun intended

- Pres. Biden being really funny during a press briefing about the devastating L.A. fires

If Newsom was a Republican, you guys would have him nailed to the wall for what they’re doing over there.

- Florida Governor Ron Desantis (R) talking to the press

No one is my gatekeeper.

- Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) responding to criticism for going to meet with President-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago

I grabbed my purse, my keys, my phone and charger, my dog and two kids and walked out the door with the clothes on my back.

- California resident Leslie Marshall writing on Fox News about her experience

I told my kids, “Don’t look back.”

- ibid.

People impacted by these fires are gonna receive one-time payment of $770.

- Announcement by Pres. Biden

Something that people may find helpful for stopping fires is packing wet sand/dirt (aka mud) on vulnerable surfaces if you can. This is far more effective than just wetting a surface with water, which evaporates quickly.

- Elon Musk, on X

What are you, some kind of an expert on heat shields or something?

- Colin Wright, in response

Yup, I literally work on heat shields every week.

- Musk, in response

Political Crossfire

The Biden Presidency: Four Illusions, Four Deceptions

By Bret Stephens

Americans tend to have a soft spot for our former presidents. Even the bad ones.

By the time Richard Nixon died in 1994, his presidency was as likely to be lauded for the opening to China or the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency as it was to be damned for Watergate. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, furiously condemned at the time as a dirty political bargain, was later celebrated as an example of selfless statesmanship. Jimmy Carter’s reputational resurrection — not just for the way he conducted his post-presidency, but also for his acts in office — would have astounded the country that sent him packing in 1980 amid stagflation and a hostage crisis.

Will Joe Biden enjoy a similar place in our national memory? It’s possible, and his administration had its achievements: NATO enlargement, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, defending Ukraine and Israel, strengthening alliances in the Pacific.

But Biden’s presidency will also be remembered for four big illusions — and four big deceptions. They will not serve his legacy well.

The illusions: first, that the 2021 surge in migration was seasonal (“happens every single solitary year,” as Biden said that March); second, that the Taliban would not swiftly seize Afghanistan (“the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” as he said that July); third, that inflation was transitory (“Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen are expected to be temporary,” also that July).

The fourth, and the biggest: that he was the best Democratic candidate to defeat Donald Trump: “I beat him once, and I will beat him again,” he often insisted, even after the debate debacle.

That last illusion was pure hubris. But there was an arrogance to the first

three, since he was loudly alerted (including by, well, me) on each point that he was making a fundamental mistake.

The White House spent months in 2021 refusing to use the term “crisis” for the border — it was, instead, a “challenge.”

Pentagon leaders warned the president that the Afghan government would soon collapse if the United States withdrew.

Biden shrugged. Larry Summers was

of the summer of 2024. It was left to Dean Phillips, the former Minnesota representative, to play the part of the boy who says the emperor has no clothes. Someone ought to nominate him for a Profile in Courage Award.

Behind the misjudgments were the deceptions.

Biden ran in 2020 on the implicit but clear pledge that he intended to serve a

“I beat him once, and I will beat him again,” he often insisted, even after the debate debacle.

convicted of crimes.

Of these deceptions, the first was the most forgivable and the most foolish: It’s precisely because power is so alluring that the voluntary abdication would have been so admirable. His grudging decision in July not to run came too late to qualify as statesmanship.

The other deceptions: less forgivable. The centrist voters who put Biden in the White House saw him as a safe and consoling pair of hands. Instead, he sought to govern as the second coming of Lyndon Johnson, with spending proposals amounting to $7.5 trillion — nearly twice what we spent to win World War II, adjusted for inflation. And he took to denouncing “MAGA Republicans” as a threat to “the very foundations of our Republic.”

Those MAGA Republicans responded the next year by rallying again to Donald Trump, who now owes his second term to Biden’s only term.

outspoken about the inflationary risks of Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Biden ignored that, too.

Those misjudgments doomed the Biden presidency, which never had a positive approval rating after the Afghan withdrawal. Maybe senior Democrats like Nancy Pelosi could have helped their party’s chances had they had the talk with Joe and Jill Biden about his reelection prospects in the spring of 2022 instead

single term. (“If Biden is elected, he’s going to be 82 years old in four years,” one campaign adviser told Politico in 2019, “and he won’t be running for reelection.”) He promised to be a bipartisan and moderate figure in the White House: “Unity” was the theme of his inaugural address. He, along with his entire administration, insisted he was mentally and physically fit to serve a second term. And he promised not to pardon his son Hunter if he were

Worst of all were the last two deceptions. Last month, The Wall Street Journal published a comprehensive and devastating report on the president’s failing health. The paper reported that a former aide recalled a national security official saying, “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow” — in the spring of 2021. Perhaps the president didn’t notice his own decline, so the deception might not have been his. But his entire senior staff must have noticed, and, as the Journal reported, they took advantage of it to enhance their own power. It’s a national scandal that deserves a congressional inquiry.

And Hunter? A father’s love is admirable. A president’s lie is not. In one of his last major political acts in office, Joe Biden forgot who he was. But it seems as if that already happened years ago. History won’t be kind.

A Choice Between Common Sense and Romanticizing Ukraine

The latest front in the war between Russia and Ukraine is being fought with a classic painting.

As The New York Times reports, a photo in which present-day Ukrainian soldiers assume the poses of the Cossacks in Ilya Repin’s 1891 painting “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey” has become an icon of patriotism. According to the Times, the painting is “familiar to most Ukrainians, with reproductions adorning many family homes” and often in “a place of honor” next to Christian Orthodox religious icons. They see the feared mounted “freebooters”—the meaning of the word in both Ukrainian and Russian—as reflecting not just part of the history of their country but the essence of Ukrainian nationalism. And they deeply resent the fact that Russians see the Cossack spirit as part of their patrimony, too, which Ukrainians claim is a form of cultural appropriation

The question of which side in this bloody conflict truly owns the heritage of the Cossacks may not be one that anyone outside of either Ukraine or Russia may care about. But the way the Ukrainian cause has been romanticized by many in the West, including a significant portion of the Jewish community, does matter. That’s especially true when you consider that this group’s history—and in particular, that of the Zaporozhian Cossacks— was largely characterized by bloodthirsty antisemitism and involvement in some of the worst massacres of Jews from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

A Relevant Discussion

This is just one aspect of the discussion about Ukraine. Corporate liberal media outlets are quick to probe for and allege antisemitism when it can be linked, however dubiously, to political figures they oppose, like President-elect

By Jonathan S. Tobin

Donald Trump. But their lack of interest in the long record of Ukrainian antisemitism that stretches from the Middle Ages through the Holocaust to its echoes in our own time is nothing short of remarkable. Indeed, one can only wonder why those who wrote or edited the feature about the importance of the painting never bothered to do even the most cursory form of research into the association of the Zaporozhian Cossacks with the word “pogrom.”

Whether or not Ukrainian nationalism is indistinguishable from American ideas of liberty or no different from Israel’s efforts to defend itself against terrorism is increasingly relevant to the discussion about the conflict. It’s a major element in the debate about Trump’s interest in ending this costly stalemate once he takes office on Jan. 20.

Any discussion about the Russia-Ukraine war must start with an acknowledgement that the blame for its start is solely the responsibility of Russia and its authoritarian leader, President Vladimir Putin. The Russian invasion of

Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, was as illegal as it was brutal. That effort to extinguish Ukrainian independence was deplorable, and Kyiv’s resolute and successful resistance, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rightly earned the world’s admiration.

But once Ukraine had repelled Russia’s initial invasion, the priority for world leaders should have been to seek to end the war. Instead, the Biden administration, abetted by some in the Republican establishment, embraced the war as—in the words of former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell—“the most important thing” happening in the world. Both Democrats and some Republicans have dismissed any criticism of their stand on Ukraine as Russian propaganda and smeared the growing number of dissenters on the issue as, at best, dupes of Putin, or at worst, his agents.

U.S. Involvement in Ukraine

The United States has given at least $175 billion in aid to the Ukrainians since the war began with more on the way.

That’s a total that dwarfs the amount of assistance Israel has received—both since Oct. 7, 2023, when it was infiltrated and attacked by Hamas terrorists, and even the supposedly controversial annual military aid package it received before then. It should also be noted that unlike most of the money sent to Kyiv, almost all American aid to Jerusalem is spent in the United States on armaments. Nor should it be forgotten that, unlike the situation with Israel, there is no existing system of accounting for exactly where and how American taxpayer money is being spent in Ukraine.

The conflict quickly degenerated into a horrific stalemate, replete with World War I-style trench warfare. At that point, Ukraine’s goal was not a return to the status quo of February 2022. It became a drive, nominally backed by the United States and its European allies, to take back territories Putin seized in 2014 at a time when neither the Obama administration nor the American people cared much about it.

Whether Ukraine ought to control the Donbas region or the Crimea (neither of which is historically Ukrainian) is of great interest to both Kyiv and Moscow. Forcible conquests of land across internationally recognized borders ought not to be sanctioned. Still, the notion that this particular issue is a matter of American national security is risible.

Many on the left have embraced the war because they identified Ukraine with the first attempt by Democrats to impeach Trump in 2020. Some on the right did so out of what can only be described as nostalgia for the simpler bipolar world of the Cold War in which the forces of the now defunct Soviet-run Warsaw Pact were poised to overrun Western Europe until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This sort of alarmism about Putin’s Russia

as the reincarnation of the Soviet Union or as part of a new Axis of evil was ludicrous. Putin may dream of recreating the empires of the tsars and their Soviet successors. But if the Russian army couldn’t conquer Ukraine, how can it possibly even consider war with NATO countries, let alone constitute a potent threat to them?

A War That Should End

Trump’s desire to end the war is laudable since it has resulted in terrible suffering to the Ukrainians and great loss of life on both sides. It is derided, however, by those who assert that victory over Russia is more important, even though no one is able to define what exactly a victory over a nuclear power would look like or why the inevitable chaos of a theoretical post-Putin Russia after a total Ukrainian victory would be in the West’s interest.

The terms of a peace deal have been obvious from the start. International guarantees of Ukrainian independence will be renewed, and Putin will have to accept that he will never be allowed to install a puppet regime there. But Kyiv will have to content itself with that and pledges of aid for post-war reconstruction. Zelenskyy’s fantasy of a return of Crimea and the Donbas. So will NATO membership for Ukraine, which would ensure that the conflict would continue to simmer and create the potential for an unimaginable war with the West, possibly involving nuclear weapons.

The alternative is an endless unwinnable war that is bleeding both nations, especially Ukraine, dry. The idea that the United States should be doing anything but seeking to end this conflict that distracts the West from its primary geostrategic threat, which comes from Communist China and not a weak authoritarian Russia, would be a terrible blunder.

The Biden administration failed to see this and continued to double down on funding a pointless struggle while often decrying the need to work for peace. A major factor was the romanticization of the Ukrainian cause that became an unchallengeable orthodoxy in the West.

A central feature in this was the questionable claim that Zelenskyy was a 21st-century version of Winston Churchill. While his leadership of the Ukrainian war effort in its early stages was exemplary, the notion that he is the equivalent of a figure who saved Western civilization—let alone the contemporary avatar of the fight for democracy— doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Zelenskyy has his virtues, but he is the leader of a nation that is every bit as corrupt and dominated by shady oligarchs who dominate politics and the economy as every other post-Soviet republic. He has suspended democratic rights of dissent and elections, closed churches and is presiding over a security state apparatus that rivals that of Putin.

Denying Ukrainian Antisemitism

Among other factors, his Jewish origins have allowed him to present himself as a clean break from Ukraine’s dark past. And that is where the discussion

chill, however, the Western media gave him a pass for it.

If the antisemitism that was integral to Ukrainian nationalist movements in the past were disavowed by contemporary Ukrainians and their state, their history would not be an issue. Yet while Zelenskyy’s election in 2019 is represented as a repudiation of the country’s past, Ukraine continues to laud those who participated in the slaughter of Jews, such as the Zaporozhian Cossacks, as heroes.

The Ukrainian state honors the memory of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, the 17th military leader of Ukrainian Cossacks who led an uprising against the Polish/Lith-

Can a nation that considers the Cossacks as its role model credibly appeal to Americans to treat their national cause as akin to that of George Washington?

of the ongoing Ukrainian veneration for its vile history of antisemitism comes in.

Jew-hatred plays a despicable role in Russian history and culture, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries; denial of this was endemic during the Soviet era and has continued under Putin’s authoritarian regime. But antisemitism has been inextricably tied to the cause of Ukrainian independence for centuries, and denial of that has been central to the effort to boost Kyiv’s cause.

Zelenskyy has been at the heart of that effort.

It was fully on display in his 2022 address to Israel’s Knesset when he had the chutzpah to scold the Jewish state for not enthusiastically joining the war against Russia. He not only claimed that Putin’s war was no different from the German Nazi quest for the conquest of Europe and the annihilation of the Jews but falsely asserted that Ukrainians stood in solidarity with the Jews then and that this obligates Israel to aid Kyiv now. The truth is that the Ukrainians were among the most ardent collaborators with the Nazi regime and took an active part in the rounding up and the mass murder of Jews, including the infamous Babi Yar massacre outside Kyiv in September 1941

The speech could only be described as Holocaust denial. Since he had already been anointed as the new Chur -

mately treat the Ukrainians with the same contempt and brutality as other non-Germans. But like many Ukrainians, Bandera was eager to ally himself with anyone who opposed the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin, which had murdered millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor terror famine. Approximately 250,000 Ukrainians joined collaborationist forces that fought with the Nazis or served as guards in the death camps where Jews were exterminated.

A Dishonest Appeal

Ukrainians can honor anyone they like. So can the Russians, many of whom (including Putin) venerate the memory of Stalin, who murdered millions and was a vicious antisemite.

uanian kingdom that then ruled much of the country. Khmelnitsky is best known to Jews for the massacres of Ukrainian and Polish Jews, which he organized and led, and which are immortalized in modern literature by books like Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Slave. This was the worst disaster to befall European Jewry from the Crusades to the Holocaust; historians estimate that more than 100,000 Jews were slaughtered by Khmelnitsky’s Cossack followers while thousands of others were enslaved or held for ransom.

Even so, the Ukrainian Republic named its highest military honor after Khmelnitsky in 1995, and its current Jewish president, who is protected by a unit that is named after the Cossack murderer, has awarded it to his soldiers. Khmelnitsky also appears on Ukrainian currency.

The Ukrainians also embrace the memory of one of the leaders of the republic that was declared in Ukraine in 1919 after the collapse of the tsarist empire. During the course of the war that it lost to the Russian Bolshevik regime that absorbed Ukraine, Symon Petlura , the head of Ukrainian forces, led pogroms that were responsible for the deaths of as many as 70,000 Jews.

Another Ukrainian hero is Stepan Bandera , a nationalist who led forces that collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust. The Nazis would ulti -

But can a nation that considers the Cossacks as its role model credibly appeal to Americans to treat their national cause as akin to that of George Washington? Can a country that won’t come clean about its antisemitic past lecture Jews about their obligation to come to their aid? The same can be said about misleading arguments that Ukraine’s efforts to regain the Donbas and Crimea are comparable to the post-Oct. 7 war the Jewish state is currently waging to stave off the efforts of Iran and its terrorist proxies to enact a second Holocaust.

None of this means that Americans should hand Ukraine over to Putin, as some of Trump’s critics claim he will do. Washington should work to achieve a stable settlement that will not deprive Ukrainians of their right to self-determination.

The problem is not the argument in favor of efforts to ensure that an independent state is not destroyed.

Rather, it is the dishonest way that supporters of Ukraine and Zelenskky have not only covered up or ignored the wide gap between Kyiv’s version of democracy and that of the West, but also their stubborn clinging to their antisemitic history and its symbols. A willingness to tell the truth about this shouldn’t be treated as Russian “disinformation.” Trump’s embrace of a common-sense realist policy toward Ukraine and Russia is not a betrayal of American values. A nation that still believes that Cossacks who treated the murder of Jews as their favorite pastime are heroes is in no position to pretend that they deserve the unquestioned support of the West or of the Jewish people.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate).

Political Crossfire Massacre Upon Massacre: Haiti’s Bleak Spiral Into a Failed State

By David C. Adams and Frances Robles

Afresh injection of about 150 foreign officers arrived in Haiti this past weekend to bolster an international security force charged with taking on the powerful and well-armed gangs that have inflicted so much misery on the country for months.

But if the past is any guide, this latest infusion is unlikely to make much of a difference.

Back-to-back massacres that killed more than 350 people, followed by a X-mas Eve assault on Haiti’s largest public hospital, have underscored the Haitian government’s increasing lack of control over the nation’s deepening crisis.

A news conference to announce the reopening of a public hospital that had been closed for nine months because of gang violence came under another gang attack, killing two reporters and a police officer.

More than two dozen journalists caught in the ambush were trapped for two hours triaging seven wounded colleagues before they were rescued. They ripped their own clothing to fashion tourniquets and used feminine items to stanch the bleeding because, witnesses said, the few doctors at the hospital ran for their lives. Reporters escaped by climbing a rear wall.

“There was blood all over the floor and on our clothes,” said Jephte Bazil, a reporter with an online news outlet Machann Zen Haïti, adding that the hospital had nothing “available to treat the victims.”

The hospital shooting followed two massacres in separate parts of the country that killed more than 350 people and have shined a harsh spotlight on the failures and shortcomings of local authorities and an international security force deployed to protect innocent civilians.

One of the massacres unfolded last month in an impoverished, sprawling, gang-controlled Port-au-Prince neighborhood where a lack of any police presence

meant that for three days older people were dismembered and thrown to the sea without authorities finding out. At least 207 people were killed between Dec. 6 and Dec. 11, according to the United Nations.

At about the same time, another three-day killing spree took place 70 miles north in Petite Rivière. Community leaders say 150 people were killed as gang members and vigilante groups attacked one another.

The violence is part of a relentless string of bloodshed that has befallen Haiti in the past two months, exposing the fragility of its interim government, raising concerns about the viability of a U.S.-brokered security mission and leaving a planned transition to elections and more stable leadership on the verge of collapse.

With President-elect Donald Trump about to assume the reins of an international deployment that has been criticized as ineffective and underfunded, the future of Haiti has never seemed so bleak.

Justice Minister Patrick Pelissier said he believed the 150 soldiers, mostly from

Guatemala, should help turn the tide. He stressed that some gang-controlled areas had been retaken and that the government is tending to displaced people.

“The state has not collapsed,” Pelissier said. “The state is there. The state is working.”

But many experts believe Haiti is a failing state, with various factions of the interim government embroiled in political bickering with no apparent strategy for tackling the worsening violence and providing a path to elections, which were supposed to be held this year.

“Political disputes translate into violence,” said Diego Da Rin, a Haiti analyst with the International Crisis Group. “The gangs are very aware of when is the right moment to shift from defensive mode to offensive mode. They flex their muscles when they need to.”

The gang attacks have also drawn attention to the weakness of the U.S.backed Multinational Security Support mission, a detachment of several hundred mostly Kenyan police officers that began arriving in Haiti in June.

The mission was supposed to have up to 2,500 officers, but with little international financing, the force numbers far less and lacks the staffing to tackle the many gang-entrenched areas.

Several experts said the X-mas Eve killings gave a sense that the government was inept. The event announcing the hospital’s reopening was held in a gang stronghold, with virtually no security. Even as people came under attack, police took at least an hour to respond, though their headquarters are nearby.

The country’s heath minister, Dr. Duckenson Lorthe Blema, who was sick and running late, believes he was the intended target.

“I am not crazy — I wanted to do well, and it went badly,” Blema, who was fired in the aftermath of the attack, said in an interview. “It turned into a fiasco. The scapegoat is me.”

Blema insisted that he had asked for police deployments at the event and did not know why there was so little protection. He defended the hospital’s dearth of supplies, saying he had intended to open the facility “gradually” as an outpatient clinic, which would not have been for treating gunshot wounds.

The justice minister acknowledged that there was no coordination between the Ministry of Health and police, nor was a proper security assessment done in advance.

“Neighborhoods are controlled by gangs, and the police are working to recover them,” he said, noting that while the crisis is severe in the capital and the rural Artibonite Valley, much of the country was operating normally.

Haiti’s descent into chaos was largely triggered by the assassination in July 2021 of its last elected president, Jovenel Moïse. Gangs earning income from illegal checkpoints, extortion and kidnappings used the political vacuum to expand their territories.

With no elected national leaders, the country is ruled by a transitional council made up of rival political parties, with an interim presidency rotating among its members.

The latest surge in violence began Nov. 11, when the council replaced the prime minister, and gangs took advantage of the political upheaval to fire on U.S. commercial aircraft and escalate their brutality. Haiti’s main airport has been closed since.

More than 5,300 people were killed in Haiti last year and the total number of people forced to flee their homes now exceeds 700,000, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Gang checkpoints and ambushes have disrupted food supplies, and the nonprofit group Mercy Corps estimates that nearly 5 million people — half the country’s population — are facing severe food insecurity.

The new prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, in his only news conference since taking office nearly two months ago, announced pay increases for police officers and said he was committed to restoring the rule of law.

The prime minister and members of

the presidential council declined to comment for this article.

In a New Year’s Day speech, the president of the council, Leslie Voltaire, insisted that elections would still take place this year, but likened the current situation to war. A police spokesperson said he had no comment.

The commander of the Kenyan-led mission, Godfrey Otunge, who also did

not respond to requests for comment, has complained that the mission’s successes have not been sufficiently touted.

In a recent message posted online, he said “the future of Haiti is bright.”

The U.S. State Department, which has committed $600 million for the Kenya mission, defended its record, noting that a recent operation with police led to the death of a high-profile gang member.

Two police stations recently reopened, and the Kenyan mission now has a permanent presence near the main port, which has long been controlled by gangs, the State Department said.

The U.S. government sent several shipments of materials in December, the agency said.

But absent significantly greater outside help, experts say Haiti’s worsening trajectory is unlikely to be reversed.

“The Haitian government is really not clear on what they are doing,” said Sophie Rutenbar, a visiting scholar at New York University, who helped run United Nations operations in Haiti until 2023. “Unfortunately, right now, they are faced with not good choices and worse choices.”

Some of the injured journalists blamed gangs — and the government — for a debacle that cost precious lives.

“If the state had taken its responsibilities, none of this would have happened,” said Velondie Miracle, who was shot seven times in the leg, temple and mouth. “The state is a legal force and should not give bandits access to places where the state cannot respond.”

© The New York Times

Jewish History

Historians Trampling History (in Gaza)

by Rafael Medoff

Since there isn’t any evidence to prove Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, what’s the next best thing? Invent a new kind of “cide” and see how many scholars are gullible enough, or malevolent enough, to go along with it.

That, it seems, is the strategy of former PLO official Karma Nabulsi, who recently invented the term “scholasticide” to describe damage Israel has caused to college campuses in Gaza. From 1977 to 1990, Nabulsi was an official representative of a terrorist organization that murdered or maimed countless Israelis (and many Americans) and sought Israel’s destruction. Now she teaches at the University of Oxford.

Nabulsi’s strategy is working. By a vote of 428 to 88, members of the American Historical Association last week adopted a resolution accusing Israel of committing “scholasticide” through an “intentional effort” to damage universities and other schools and thereby “obliterate Gaza’s educational system.”

There is not a stitch of evidence demonstrating any such intent by the Israelis. Lack of evidence ordinarily would stop an historian dead in his or her tracks. But in this case, the facts, sources, and standards upon which historians ordinarily rely were thrown out the window. By a large majority, those who are supposed to be the gatekeepers of the historical record have embraced a libel.

The damage to college campuses in Gaza is not the result of an Israeli plot. It’s the result of Hamas using those campuses as operational centers for terrorism and storehouses for weapons.

In November 2023, Israeli soldiers found weapons and other terrorist equipment in Gaza’s Al-Quds University. The following month, Israeli forces discovered

explosives and rockets in Al-Azhar University, in northern Gaza, as well as a half mile-long tunnel under the university’s yard. The site resembled “a military base,” a sergeant told The New York Times; only “if you look closely, you can see it’s a university.” In January, troops searching the campus of Islamic University, in Khan Younis, discovered hundreds of mortars, explosive devices, grenades, AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition, Hamas flags, and safes stuffed with cash in the classrooms.

In February, Israeli troops found a tunnel underneath Israa University, in Zahra City. In June, they discovered quantities of weapons on the campus of the University College of Applied Sciences, in central Gaza; the army said Hamas used the college “as a command and control center.” Soon after that, terrorists in a building at Islamic University launched anti-tank missiles at Israeli forces.

None of that information is mentioned in the AHA resolution. In fact, Hamas itself is never mentioned. That’s like describing World War II without mentioning Nazi Germany.

The hypocrisy of the accusers is egregious. While these historians denounce Israel, they have said nothing when Israeli universities have been victimized by genocidal terrorists.

Sapir Academic College, the largest public college in Israel, is just a few miles from the Gaza border. The only thing saving it from mass bloodshed during the Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, was that the campus was closed and nearly empty because of the Simchat Torah holiday. Nonetheless, terrorists cut through its fences and shot at the guard booths and buildings.

Dozens of Sapir faculty members, students and staff who reside near the

campus were murdered, wounded, or kidnapped. Some are still being held hostage in Gaza. Yet the AHA has not protested.

More than 1,000 Sapir students and nearly 300 staff members and their families became refugees. The AHA has said nothing about them.

That was not the first Palestinian Arab violence against Israeli universities. In 2002, terrorists bombed the Hebrew University campus, in Jerusalem, killing nine—five of them Americans—and wounding more than 100. A previous bombing at Hebrew University, in 1969, left thirty-six students injured. The AHA said nothing about either of those attacks.

History shows that victims of aggression have sometimes damaged university campuses in the course of defending themselves, as in World War II. The Allies’ bombing of Hamburg in July 1943 caused major damage to the University of Hamburg. Allied bombers destroyed the main building on the campus of Munich’s Ludwig Maximillian University in July 1944. Allied strikes on Bonn in October 1944 completely destroyed the main building at the University of Bonn. More than threefourths of the buildings of the Technical University of Aachen were leveled in that month’s bombings as well. The University of Greifswald was so badly damaged by the Allies that it had to be rebuilt on a different site. The University of Rostock’s medical clinic, dermatological clinic, and hygiene institute were completely destroyed in Allied bombings, and additional buildings were badly damaged.

The proceedings of the AHA’s annu-

al meetings during World War II do not mention any resolutions condemning President Franklin D. Roosevelt or Prime Minister Winston Churchill for damaging German universities. One wonders if the current generation of AHA members would have viewed those events differently. Would they have pointed an accusing finger at the Allies, just as they now unjustly heap blame on Israel? Would they have branded FDR and Churchill guilty of “scholasticide”?

Unless the AHA leadership intervenes, the “scholasticide” resolution will soon go to the association’s full membership for ratification. If adopted, the new official position of the AHA would contravene its own mission statement. Instead of “promoting historical work and historical thinking in public life,” the AHA would be on record as discarding historical thinking in favor of extremist political posturing. According to the AHA’s bylaws, however, its leaders could step in and veto the resolution. To preserve the association’s credibility and to remain true to its mission, they should do so.

Dr. Medoff, a member of the American Historical Association for more than four decades, is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His book, The Road to October 7: Hamas, the Holocaust, and the Eternal War Against the Jews, will be published on October 1, 2025, by The Jewish Publication Society/ University of Nebraska Press.

Forgotten Her es Daring POW Escapes

By Avi Heiligman

Captured servicemen and women who are taken during or right after a conflict and who are held in custody of a belligerent entity are called prisoners of wars (POW). Conditions for POWs rarely exude comfort and, depending on the situation, they are generally held in extreme environments. Often, they are given inadequate food, treated poorly, and sometimes are threatened with harsh punishments or death. Given their situation, many times, POWs have tried to escape but more often than not are recaptured. However, there have been some successful POW escapes throughout military history. Here are two escape stories of American POWs.

Born in Baltimore in 1759, Joshua Barney was just 16 when he was put in second-in-command of a sloop, the first USS Hornet. He served on other ships as well, but in December 1780, he was taken prisoner. For 53 days, he and dozens of other Americans endured hardships in the dungeon of a ship while sailing to England. Several Americans died on the trip, and Barney made up his mind to escape. The Americans were taken to Old Mill Prison in Plymouth, England, but Barney’s first escape attempt failed. He tried escaping through a disgusting sewer, but the path was blocked by a gate that refused to budge.

For his next attempt, Barney began planning well in advance. He feigned an ankle injury and used crutches to get around the prison. With the help of prison guard, he managed to get a British uniform and on the day of his escape put it on under his regular coat. Some -

one else answered roll call for him, and with the help of another prisoner, he soon went over one of the prison walls. Acting like a British officer, Barney deceived the sentry and soon made his way into town where he knew of a few sympathizers to the American cause. Soon, he was piloting a small boat with other American civilians who became sick and hoped to reach the coast of France. A privateer stopped them, but Barney bluffed his way through the questions, telling them that he was on a secret mission. However, that ruse did not work, and he was taken aboard the privateer. Still, Barney was not deterred and managed to escape once again. This time, he used a boat that was on the larger ship’s side and was soon back in Plymouth.

By this time, there was a bounty on his head for his recapture. Eventually, Barney made his way back across the Atlantic and safely reached Boston. He was given the command of another ship in 1782 and captured a British ship. Barney continued to serve in the navy until the end of the war and in 1796 served in the French Navy for six years. Then it was back to the U.S. Navy for more incredible exploits during the War of 1812.

Civil War prisoners were held in deplorable conditions, and in 1864, over 100 Union POWs made a break for freedom at the Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. Over a thousand Union soldiers were crowded into the prison and housed many of the men that were captured at the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863.

Colonel Thomas Ellwood Rose was com-

manding the 77 th Pennsylvania Regiment during the battle, but his unit became detached from the rest of the Union lines. The battle was a Confederate victory, and Rose and his regiment were captured. From the moment he entered Libby Prison, Rose began hatching an escape plan. Richmond’s Libby Prison took up an entire city street with the south end on the James River. The Confederates thought that this was most plausible escape route and whitewashed the walls to be able to identify any Union prisoners trying to escape. Rose knew that there had to be a sewer going from the prison to the river. A section of the prison was rarely entered by guards and prisoners due to rat infestation in an abandoned kitchen in the basement of the prison. This was what Rose was looking for, and with the help of Major A.G. Hamilton, a group of POWs was organized to start digging. Two feet of straw lay on the ground of the room, and it was used to conceal the dirt being removed from the tunnel. It was also because of the straw that rats infested the area, and the diggers had to contend with the squealing of hundreds of rats. Seventeen days after the digging began, they reached a vacant lot which led to a tobacco shed outside of the prison.

The escape was set for the night of February 9, 1864. One hundred nine Union POWs made their way through the tunnel and walked out the front gate of the warehouse. They weren’t challenged on their way out or on the streets of Richmond. The prison guards were on very low alert, and even after the prisoners that didn’t escape heard of the breakout,

the guards were still unaware of the news. It was only the next morning at roll call did the Confederates realize that something was wrong when over 100 men weren’t answering. Still, they suspected a trick and after several recounts thought that the night guards were bribed. When none of the guards had any extra money – a sure sign of being bribed – the Confederates went into panic mode. Horsemen and dispatches were sent out, but the escapees had a 17-hour head-start. Fifty-nine of the soldiers made it safely back to Union lines. Rose and 47 others were recaptured, and two drowned in the James River. Rose was later part of a prisoner exchange and was sent back to active duty. The prison guards were visibly shaken by the escape – one even called roll call in the middle of the night because he thought another attempt was in the process. Turns out, he spooked by his own shadow.

There have been many escape attempts from POW camps and prisons, but only a few escapees reached friendly lines. These stories have captured the minds and imagination of many civilians, but the reality is that successful escapes are few and far in between many failed attempts. They are fraught with danger. These stories are history not to be forgotten.

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.

Thomas Ellwood Rose

Joshua Barney Libby Prison

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Life C ach

Join the Vestige Club

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

I’m awesome.

I’m a vestige.

I write this article completely on my own.

Bad, good, or indifferent, the ideas are out of my head. The words are out of my thoughts. I am still creating my own product.

If you like it, great, it’s my creation. If you don’t, I wish I could blame it on ChatGPT. You know, the newest way to get and give information. I could say to this tool: give me an article that will make my readers laugh, identify, and

walk away with a little inspiration. And Chat GPT would probably accommodate.

Why don’t kids work that way? We say it, and they do it! Now, that would be an invention!

But, when it comes to these articles, I’m still roughing it!

I’m choosing to have the intimacy of me speaking directly to you. The authenticity of my ideas impacting your read.

You know how they say that things that come from the heart enter the heart? I guess I’m hoping some piece of me is shining through. Though, these

messages are far from deep or brilliant – they are just mine and somehow that feels like we are still keeping our real connection.

I know today we can say to our cell phones or computers: write me a warm note to a good friend or colleague, and it will sound so appropriate. Close to perfect…

But, I’m still hanging in there! I’m still making that effort to put the feelings

Am I an old romantic?!

I’m not anti-progress. It can be great. But not when it is so great it grates on our nerves.

Advances, such as great medicines and cures, safer means of travel, healthier environmental advances – sure that is all beyond awesome and wanted. And I admit even ChatGPT does a great and worthwhile job finding and consolidating information we benefit from. This

Try not to let technology replace the sparks that reflect the gift that is you.

and thoughts together myself. Maybe, believing there’s something more humble than perfect. Just genuine with our flaws intact.

Maybe, I can’t do as good a job as ChatGPT. The comp tition is getting pretty steep.

We may be approaching the place where the non-human is sounding more human than the human!

Does this concern anyone else but me?!

Does anyone else out there still want to feel the note they got from someone truly came from their kishkas?!

is an advance, certainly well worth embracing.

But, as with all things, as Maimonides says, the middle path seems to be the best choice.

Make choices. Don’t submit your essential self to this tool. Because we ourselves don’t just produce but we also transform through our efforts. And we are here to grow, so we shouldn’t stop our personal growth.

Try not to let technology replace the sparks that reflect the gift that is you. Join the vestige club. And try to keep communicating from your heart.