Five Towns Jewish Home 01.23.25

Yeshiva Darchei Torah Dinner

Rav Elya Brudny Inspires

Dear Readers,

It is possible to feel a cacophony of conflicting emotions simultaneously pulling at your psyche.

You can feel sad and elated. You can feel anxious and hopeful. You can feel happiness and sorrow. These are all feelings that seem to be incompatible with each other, and yet, as humans, we are able to experience these differing emotions at one time.

Most people went through a series of emotions this weekend as they watched the homecoming of three of our sisters. There was fear for the girls as they were surrounded by scores of Hamas terrorists holding guns, shouting “Allahu akbar,” as the women got into the car headed to Israel. There was happiness for them – true elation – as they reached Israeli soil. There was exhilaration as they finally hugged their mothers after 471 days in captivity – embraces that seemed to encompass all the terror that those mothers felt 24 hours a day for more than 15 months. But there was also sadness for those still in captivity, sorrow for those who will never be coming home alive, grief for those who heroically gave up their lives for their nation, and anger at those thousands of murderers and terrorists who will now be free under this new deal.

In life, we have to make choices. And sometimes, these choices are so hard, so

complicated, so complex that it’s impossible to know what truly is the right choice to make. We deliberate and we question, but there is no right and no wrong – both choices seem right and both choices seem wrong.

And so, we’re left with a bittersweet taste in our mouths. The joy we have in seeing our sisters come home is so overwhelming. But the horror and anger we have in what we have gone through these past few months, only to see the terror never seeming to end, is also all-encompassing.

When the choices are so unclear, the only path forward is to try to make peace with the final decision.

The next few weeks are going to be emotionally overwhelming. But we need to focus on the joy we have in bringing home so many of our brothers and sisters. We need to focus on their healing. We need to focus on the healing of our nation. We need to focus on comforting those who will never be able to hug their loved ones.

We need to look forward to a time when all of Klal Yisroel will be able to smile again, to see the clarity in their decisions, to become truly one.

May it come soon.

Wishing you a wonderful week, Shoshana

Yitzy Halpern, PUBLISHER publisher@fivetownsjewishhome.com

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Dear Editor,

A writer wrote last week regarding a call regarding a stolen check. Please be aware, checks have been stolen from mailboxes in Flatbush, whited out except for the signature, and later written out for large amounts and deposited in the bank. It happened to us and was caught on the day of deposit (four months after being written). We notified the bank, but since it had been paid, it was a process to get the money back, even though a bank manager at the receiving bank called us to say that he suspected theft, as the person depositing it only had a few dollars in her account and suddenly deposited thousands of dollars.

In another case we heard of, the check was written out for more money than was in the account. In both cases, the checks had been made to tzedakahs.

My advice is to immediately stop payment on the suspected check and put an alert on your account.

Envelopes with checks should be mailed in the post office.

Oil Gel Pens are supposed to be resistant to whiting out.

Please spread the word! E.R.

Dear Editor,

When I was in my mid-20s, I was seeking a rav for guidance. Even back then, before COVID, people were careless and didn’t have time. The ones I reached out to just didn’t click.

All of a sudden, the Jewish world at large came to a halt upon hearing of a rabbi from West Hempstead who got hit by a motor vehicle at night, requiring sur-

gery, a lengthy hospital and rehab stay, and, during the beginning stages, needing to communicate via a typing machine. That, unfortunately, happened to Rabbi Kelemer, zt”l.

Being that everyone was davening for his recovery at the time and was talking about how great he was, I promised myself to meet him upon his return and make him my posek.

To this day, I’m very happy with my decision.

Rabbi Kelemer was literally extremely approachable and accessible, often answering my shailos via email during the wee hours – despite living in Woodmere. Several people from West Hempstead told me that a 2 a.m. appointment time was considered normal for him.

Despite having recently returned –and still recovering from – a lengthy illness, I witnessed Rabbi Kelemer walk into shul for a bris, supporting his walking and balance with the seat backs. He sounded exhausted, as he said the brachos with a raspy voice, yet, his dedication to klal Yisrael was unwavering.

When a bunch of liberal Jewish groups decided to protest a certain cause – and yeshivos and other prominent rabbonim were certainly not joining them – it was Rabbi Kelemer who joined the crowd. He walked the entire span of the Brooklyn Bridge with a walker, in the freezing cold.

He was a true anav as well: I frequently saw Rabbi Kelemer in the waiting room of the LIRR in Penn Station. He refused to take my suggestions for nearby, more comfortable hotel lobbies, making the waiting room his office for the Continued on page 12

day for hours and hours on end. He was concerned that klal Yisrael would not be able to reach him for shailos if he moved around with poor cell phone reception. Even more inspiring was that, unlike most other rabbonim, he acted confused when referred to third person narrative and preferred to be spoken to just like any other normal individual.

I share one memory of his guidance which continues to stand out in particular:

When I was struggling to find employment, I got a job interview in the middle of sefirah. Left and right, family and friends bothered me to shave off my beard to increase my hiring chances, but I was reluctant.

I reached out to Rabbi Kelemer. He emphasized (and keep in mind that this was in 2018 – how much more so now!) that the working world has become laxed with appearances, including management with strange colored hair and men with earrings and ponytails, for example. Thus, he explained, the beard should not be an issue.

Ends up, from the split second I entered the door, I knew there was no way possible that I would land that job.

As his yahrtzeit approaches, I reflect upon humble memories of having such an accessible posek and incredible gadol, who was sadly taken from us prematurely. Just as he was b”H available when he was alive, he is also available now – he is buried in Wellwood Cemetery, and I daven by his kever from time to time. He was indeed the rabbi’s teacher – and for all Yidden, as well.

Yehi zichro baruch.

Chaim Feldman

Dear Editor,

I saw that a few of your readers have been writing in about carpool and the need for using derech eretz when carpooling.

The derech eretz is needed on behalf of the parents (don’t cut in front of the carpool line when others have been waiting patiently) and from kids (acknowledge the driver, say “thank you). Carpools can be difficult. The kids are often sitting in tight spaces for a significant amount of time with other children who they are not necessarily friends with. It’s a challenge for many of them – being driven early in the morning or after a long day at school. It behooves us all to make sure to inculcate our kids with the proper decorum during carpool and for the parents to remember their derech eretz/manners when dealing with other parents who are in their carpool or doing carpool as well.

Sincerely,

Rena Gross

Dear Editor,

Although I voted for Trump and am happy that he is now the president of the United States, it turns me off when I hear people speak about Trump as the solution to all problems. He is NOT. He is a person who may share some of the same values as you. But he does not run the world. He is human. He has qualities and merits, and he also has deficiencies and faults. We can only trust in One being, and that is Hashem.

People should keep that in mind.

Sincerely, Aryeh W.

Fuel Tanker Explodes in Nigeria

At least 86 people died from a gasoline tanker explosion in Nigeria, which occurred in the early hours on Saturday. People had been attempting to transfer gasoline from a crashed oil tanker into another truck using a generator. But things when horribly wrong when the fuel transfer sparked an explosion, leading to the deaths of those involved in the transfer of the gas and those observing the event.

Hussaini Isah of the National Emergency Management Agency noted that an additional 55 people were injured and are receiving treatment at three different hospitals in the Suleja area.

“There were people that were burnt to ashes. How can we get that figure?” the official said, indicating that the death toll might be higher than 86. “We won’t know the exact figure without forensics.”

A crowd had gathered at the scene, which resulted in the huge number of fatalities.

Gasoline prices in Africa’s most populous country have soared after the administration of President Bola Tinubu removed subsidies on the product more than a year ago in an attempt to channel the resources to more developmental purposes.

Scooping gasoline from a fallen tanker is common in Nigeria as some people see that as an opportunity to get free product that they could either use or resell for a profit.

More Prison for Imran Khan

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been in prison in Pakistan since

August 2023, as he faces dozens of cases against him, ranging from charges of graft and misuse of power to inciting violence against the state after being removed from office in a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022.

He has either been acquitted or his sentences suspended in most cases. Last week, though, a Pakistani court sentenced Khan to 14 years in a land corruption case. Previously, he had been convicted on another charge of inciting supporters to rampage through military facilities to protest against his arrest on May 9, 2023.

The verdict in last week’s case was delivered by an anti-graft court in a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Khan has been jailed since August 2023.

Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi was also found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. She was out on bail but was taken into custody after the judgment was pronounced.

“The accused Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi is hereby held guilty for commission of offense of corruption and corrupt practices,” read the detailed court order shared by Khan’s party, adding that his wife was also found guilty of “aiding, assisting and abetting” corrupt practices.

Omar Ayub, an aide of Khan, said the party will challenge the verdict in higher courts. A number of government ministers welcomed the verdict, calling it based on evidence.

The former premier, 72, had been indicted on charges that he and his wife were given land by a real estate developer during his premiership from 2018 to 2022 in exchange for illegal favors. Khan and Bibi had pleaded not guilty.

The case is linked to the Al-Qadir Trust, a non-government welfare body the couple set up when Khan was in office. Prosecutors say the trust was a front for Khan to illegally receive land from a real estate developer. In the judgement, the court ordered the land to be confiscated.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party says the land was not for personal gain and was for the spiritual and educational institution the former prime minister had formed.

The verdict is the biggest setback for

18

Khan and his party since a surprisingly good showing in the 2024 general election when PTI’s candidates – who were forced to run as independents – won the most seats, but fell short of the majority needed to form a government.

New Pres. in Mozambique

Decades ago, Mozambique’s liberation party, Frelimo, easily attracted adoring crowds. The promise of salvation from Portuguese colonizers, and a life with jobs and housing for all, was an easy sell in a southern African nation suffering under racist rule.

But when Daniel Chapo of Frelimo became president last week, he assumed leadership of a country more dissatisfied with his party than at any point during its

50 years of independence. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets after the October election, which voters, international observers, opposition leaders and rights groups have roundly criticized as fraudulent.

At least 300 people have been killed in clashes with police during protests in the past several months.

Chapo and his party had likely hoped that the inauguration on Wednesday would help move the country toward reconciliation and stability. But early signs suggested a difficult path toward unity. The police quickly moved to disperse a few dozen peaceful protesters about two blocks from the inauguration in the capital, Maputo.

“We’re going to burn Mozambique,” said Angelina Chissano, one of the protesters in the capital on Wednesday.

Such demonstrations offer a glimpse of the new reality that Frelimo must contend with.

“Frelimo became used to seeing themselves as the chosen party,” said Gabriel Muthisse, a former top party official who remains an active member. “They believed that elections were only a formality for the people to confirm their leadership. Over the past five, 10 years, things are showing that that is false.”

After taking the oath of office, Chapo vowed to cut state spending by downsizing the government and reducing expensive perks that ministers receive. (The government is often criticized for spending lavishly on officials, while failing to meet many citizens’ basic needs.)

“I know many of us feel that leaders are distant, inaccessible and disconnected from the real concerns of the people,” Chapo said. “This will change.”

Chapo appeared to be taking a page out of his rival’s playbook. Venâncio Mondlane, the opposition leader, is seen by many to be the true champion of ordinary Mozambicans. The fiery populist claims to have won the election and has drawn a huge following.

When Mondlane returned to Mozambique last week after a self-imposed exile, police responded with deadly force against supporters who took to the streets. Mondlane has called for continued protests, though this week has not attracted the mass demonstrations that shut down the capital in previous months.

(© The New York Times)

Prison for Navalny’s Lawyers

Three lawyers who had represented deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were sentenced to jail on Friday after being convicted of aiding the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organization that Russian authorities consider “extremist.”

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested in October 2023, four months before Navalny died at age 47 at a remote correctional facility inside the Arctic. The three were jailed on charges that they were acting as go-betweens, relaying messages from Navalny to his colleagues.

Their arrest left Navalny without any legal representation and completely cut off from the outside world in the months before his death. Authorities said that Navalny died of natural causes at the Polar Wolf penal colony 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow.

Kobzev was sentenced to 5½ years in

a penal colony and Lipster to five years. Sergunin’s term was reduced to 3½ years in exchange for pleading guilty. All three were also banned from practicing law for three years.

Kosbev’s lawyer condemned the case, saying that the evidence used to convict the men was inadmissible because it was obtained by listening in on client-attorney meetings, which was illegal under Russian law.

“They’re not allowed to eavesdrop on meetings between a lawyer and a client in a penal colony in principle – there’s a direct legislative ban.”

Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, also condemned the lawyers’ imprisonment and called them “political prisoners.” The U.K.-based Amnesty International called the long sentences handed down to the three “shameful,” saying “their only crime” was standing up for justice and human rights and demanded they be set free.

Cuban Dissident Freed

Jose Daniel Ferrer was arrested in October 2019 and was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison. He served most of that time under house arrest. Last week, the Cuban dissident and human rights activist was released from jail, part of a broader plan negotiated with the Vatican to gradually free more than 500 prisoners from Cuban jails.

The Cuban government began liberating a small number of prisoners last Wednesday, following talks with the Catholic Church that prompted U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to announce it would significantly loosen sanctions on the crisis-racked nation.

Many, if not all, of the prisoners released last week were arrested in association with unprecedented anti-government protests that took place in July 2021, the largest protests since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Those arrests had been criticized by the United States and European countries as heavy-handed.

Ferrer is the highest-profile prisoner and dissident to be released thus far.

“I am at home, in fair health, but with the courage to continue fighting for the freedom of Cuba,” Ferrer declared.

Ferrer is the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), once the communist-run country’s largest and most active opposition group. At the time of his arrest four years ago, Cuba called Ferrer a U.S.-financed dissident but said he was not arrested for his political views. Critics said Cuba’s government had made up the accusations in order to arrest and silence Ferrer.

The long-time dissident was picked up again by police on July 11, 2021, as he tried to join a protest in Santiago de Cuba, the Caribbean island nation’s second largest city, violating the terms of his house arrest. He was charged with public disorder and returned to prison.

Ferrer was also one of 75 dissidents arrested in 2003 during a nationwide crackdown known as the Black Spring. He was released on parole in 2011.

More prisoners are set to be released in the coming weeks.

Sea Turtle Concerns in India

The east coast of India near the city of Chennai has seen an abnormal amount of sea turtle washing up onto the coastline. More than 400 of the endangered sea turtles have come ashore over the last two weeks, in an event not witnessed in over two decades.

Olive ridley turtles travel thousands of miles to land on India’s coast, a place perfect for nesting. In a typical year, there can be around 100 to 200 deaths. But this year, the numbers are overwhelming.

Shravan Krishnan, a volunteer with Chennai-based Students Sea Turtles Conservation Network, noted, “This year, we’ve already crossed 200 dead turtles in a little more than two weeks.”

He added that there are low numbers of turtles nesting on the shore. He and other conservationists walk along the city’s beaches at night to collect and transfer turtle nests so the eggs are not vandalized by beach-goers or eaten by dogs. “We have found only four nests so far, which is also really worrying,” he said.

Environmentalists have been seeing at least ten dead turtles every day for the past few days, sometimes much more. It’s the highest number officials have seen since 2014, when more than 900 olive ridley turtles were found dead along the southern Indian coast. Most of the deaths can be attributed to fishing nets on the sea floor.

Manish Meena, the city’s wildlife warden, said groups have been actively trying to create awareness among fishers to release turtles that might get caught in nets and have also asked the coastguard to monitor fishing activity.

A local government order was also implemented in 2016 to stop trawl boats from casting giant nets that sweep up everything on the ocean floor from getting within five nautical miles of the coastline during turtle nesting season. The law also mandates devices known as turtle excluder devices, that can help turtles escape nets.

Olive ridley turtles’ eggs need two months to hatch. Over 500,000 turtles nest every year in beaches further up India’s east coast in Odisha state — a mass nesting phenomenon that turtle conservationists call Arribada. But only one in about 1,000 turtle hatchlings survive to adulthood.

Deadly Hotel Fire in Turkey

This week, the Grand Kartal Otel hotel in Kartalkaya, Turkey, was fully booked with 234 guests, as many schools are on a winter break. But on Tuesday morning, flames began to engulf the 161-room ski resort hotel, where guests scrambled to safety.

Sadly, at least 66 people lost their lives in the blaze.

More than 51 were injured. One is in critical intensive care.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said, “I wish G-d’s mercy upon our citizens who lost their lives and a speedy recovery to our injured.”

Some people escaped by scaling down the walls using bedsheets hung from windows, but others were feared trapped inside.

One witness told reporters that the

22 fire alarm did not go off. It took an hour for firefighters to arrive.

“People on the upper floors were screaming. They hung down sheets … some tried to jump,” the witness recalled.

The exact cause is under investigation, but the fire is believed to have started in the hotel’s restaurant, according to Governor Abdulaziz Aydın. It then quickly spread through the 12-story wooden building.

The mountainous region, famed for its forests and lakes, is one of Turkey’s top destinations for winter holidays.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, “I would like to convey my wishes for a speedy recovery to all my brothers and sisters and to Bolu who were affected by this tragic incident.”

S. Africa Ends Mine Rescue

In an effort to force illegal miners to exit mines, South African authorities decided in August to stop food and water supplies from entering the mines, with police surrounding the areas.

However, the crackdown, which authorities said would stop “allowing crim-

inality to thrive,” didn’t go as the government had planned at a mine near the town of Stilfontein. Instead, 78 miners have tragically perished, and, since Monday, rescuers have saved 246 people—mostly illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Mozambique—some of whom were found emaciated or disoriented.

Those whom rescuers pulled out alive were arrested and charged with several crimes, including illegal immigration, trespassing, and illegal mining.

Rescue efforts, which were headed by volunteers instead of police, started last Monday and concluded last Thursday after rescuers found no more survivors or bodies, which police confirmed by sending a camera into the mine. Police used a cylindrical metal cage to pull the illegal miners out, but only volunteers went into the mines, likely because the miners would only trust volunteers.

South Africa’s mining minister said illegal mining costs the country more than $3 billion annually. Most illegal miners occupy abandoned commercial mines in order to extract whatever remains. Some violent criminal gangs have taken over mines.

The police siege was conducted to “smoke them out.” However, many individuals and groups, including the GIWASU labor union, have condemned the government for the harsh measures that led to deaths. The union called the actions “the dehumanization and criminalization of these poor, desperate miners.”

The police were further condemned after removing a pulley system that allowed miners to enter and exit the mine. Subsequently, authorities reinstated the system, before removing it and then restoring it again several times amidst legal action that went on for months. Authorities maintain that miners had a way out of the mine and that over 1,500 people exited the mines of their own accord before the blockade began.

Russia-Iran Partnership Treaty

Vladimir Putin and Masoud Pezeshkian, the presidents of Russia and Iran, respectively, met in Moscow on Friday to sign a 20-year agreement that strengthens the two countries’ relationship economically and militarily and in areas such as science, education, and culture.

The treaty was lauded by Putin as a “real breakthrough, creating conditions for the stable and sustainable development of Russia, Iran and the entire region.” Pezeshkian framed the agreement as “a new chapter of strategic relations” that would boost trade ties and “security cooperation” between the two countries.

Putin shared his hopes for Iran and Russia’s trade ties to improve by using Azerbaijan to transport Russian natural gas to Iran and by constructing transport corridors to Iranian ports in the Gulf.

The treaty came just days before U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Trump has vowed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and to adopt a “maximum pres-

sure” policy against Iran. Russia and Iran likely signed the agreement to counter potential sanctions and tariffs from the Trump administration. Though the U.S. has sanctioned Russia, Tehran fears economic punishment from the West, as it’s already grappling with a worsening economic crisis and a multitude of recent military setbacks, such as the ones in Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon. Thus, Iran and Russia’s new agreement, which boosts trade between the two nations, is intended to help the two countries survive and respond to U.S. attacks on their economies.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, has rejected speculation that the treaty was intentionally scheduled with Trump’s inauguration in mind, asserting that the meeting’s date had been set a long time ago.

Last year, Russia signed a treaty with North Korea. In that situation, Moscow and Pyongyang agreed to assist each other militarily, while Russia and Iran have made no such agreement.

Tehran is particularly interested in purchasing Russian weapons, including long-range air defense systems and fighter jets, to defend against and attack Israel.

“They come from another side of the world to make chaos in the region,” Pezeshkian said to Putin, condemning the United States for its involvement in global conflicts. “These ties will defuse their plot, definitely.”

Regarding the prospect of peace in Ukraine, Pezeshkian declared that “war is not a solution,” and said that the U.S. and European countries should “avoid imposing excessive demands” and recognize the “security concerns” of other countries.

This is Pezeshkian’s third visit to Russia since he became president in July. In 1991, after the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia and Iran became trade allies. Notably, Moscow has become a crucial weapons and technologies supplier for Tehran, since other countries have sanctioned Tehran. In 2013, Iran opened its first nuclear plant, which was Russian built. Russia is currently constructing two other nuclear reactors in Iran. In 2015, Russia and six other nuclear powers agreed to the Iran deal with Tehran, which lifted sanctions against Iran if it agreed to stop developing nuclear weapons. After the U.S. exited the deal, Russia sided with Iran politically.

Throughout Syria’s civil war, both Russia and Iran supported ex-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose government fell to rebels in December.

S. Korean President Arrested

Last Wednesday, South Korea, for the first time in its history, arrested a sitting president. Authorities arrested President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached on December 14, on suspicion of insurrection following his surprising declaration of martial law on December 3, which ended shortly thereafter.

Since Yoon has refused to speak to authorities, investigators on Friday requested an extension on the deadline for holding the president. The following day, a judge approved the request, allowing authorities to hold Yoon for another twenty days, given concerns “that the suspect may destroy evidence.”

In response to the court’s decision to extend Yoon’s detention, hundreds of his supporters attacked a court building early Sunday. According to footage, some of which was live-streamed on YouTube, rioters entered the building after breaking windows, blasted fire extinguishers at police guards, destroyed office equipment, fittings, and furniture, and reportedly injured nine police officers, all while chanting Yoon’s name. It took a few hours for police to gain control of the situation. Authorities promptly arrested 46 demonstrators and said they hoped to arrest others involved in the riot.

“The government expresses strong regret over the illegal violence…which is unimaginable in a democratic society,” said acting President Choi Sang-mok, urging police to increase security around gatherings.

Yoon’s legal team also called the incident “unfortunate,” while maintaining the president’s innocence.

According to an emergency responder, around 40 individuals sustained minor wounds.

Currently, Yoon is being detained at the Seoul Detention Centre in a solitary cell. The Democratic Party, which is behind the president’s detention, branded the court’s warrant a “cornerstone” for restoring stability and slammed “riots” by the “far-right.” The People Power Party (PPP), Yoon’s party, called the extension a “great pity.”

Yoon’s attorneys allege his arrest was unlawful, as the issued warrant was from the wrong jurisdiction, and it wasn’t within the prosecutors’ right to launch this investigation.

South Korean presidents are not immune to insurrection charges, which Yoon may face. Those guilty of insurrection could face the death penalty, though South Korea hasn’t executed anyone in almost three decades.

A separate investigation is being carried out by the Constitutional Court, which is considering whether to finalize Yoon’s impeachment by ousting him or to return him to power.

Immediately following Yoon’s declaration of martial law, public approval for the PPP fell. Since then, however, support has gone back up. As of Friday, 39% support PPP, while just 36% support the Democratic Party.

More Pain

when

vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Tamun, in Judea and Samaria. Four other soldiers from the Ephraim Regional Brigade’s 8211th Reserve Battalion were wounded in the attack late Sunday night.

Eviatar, 31, was the driver of the vehicle. The battalion commander, who was sitting next to him, was seriously wounded.

In the past year, two soldiers and a police officer have been killed by roadside bombs in Judea and Samaria. Terrorists in the area frequently plant improvised explosive devices under roads to attack Israeli forces carrying out arrest raids. The IDF endeavors to destroy these devices by ripping up roads with armored bulldozers before entering with lighter-armed vehicles.

Violence in Judea and Samaria has increased tremendously since the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023. Since then, 46 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in Palestinian

Sgt. First Class (res.) Eviatar Ben Yehuda was killed

his

terror attacks in Israel and in Judea and Samaria, including some carried out by Israeli citizens.

Another seven members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in Judea and Samaria. Much of the violence has been concentrated near Nablus, Jenin and other Palestinian cities in the northern area.

At least 6,000 wanted Palestinians have been arrested in Judea and Samaria since the October 7th massacre; more than 2,350 of them were affiliated with Hamas. At least 850 Palestinians in Judea and Samaria have been killed in that same time period, most of them terrorists.

Trump Removes Biden Sanctions on “Settlers”

On Monday, on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order rolling back sanctions implemented by President Biden targeting Israeli “settlers” in Judea and Samaria.

Trump signed the executive order just hours after being sworn into office at a rally in front of thousands of supporters.

Biden had issued the sanctions by executive order on February 1, 2023. He had said that violence in the “West Bank” was destabilizing.

Biden’s sanctions targeted 17 individuals and 16 entities in eight separate actions over the past year. The most recent sanction by Biden sanctioned the Amana development arm of the settler movement. The leaders of Amana were invited to Trump’s inauguration on Monday, highlighting the huge contrast between the Trump and Biden administrations in their stance toward Israel.

Earlier in January, two of the Israelis sanctioned by Biden sued the Biden administration for targeting them, arguing that they were ineligible because they are also U.S. citizens. The executive order had only covered foreign nationals. Last week, two U.S. officials admitted that the administration didn’t properly vet the two plaintiffs and wouldn’t have designated them had it known that they were dual nationals.

IDF Chief to Resign

Citing his failure to prevent and predict the October 7, 2023 massacre, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi announced on Tuesday that he will be resigning from his position on March 6.

Halevi sent his resignation intentions in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz. He will have served two years and two months for a position that generally has a three-year term.

Despite the failure of preventing the massacre, Halevi noted his and the IDF’s recent successes, including against Hezbollah in Lebanon, against the Assad regime in Syria, against Iran, and in forcing Hamas into a hostage exchange deal that started this week.

In addition, Halevi said that the IDF, during his tenure, managed to hold down terror in Judea and Samaria to low enough levels, which allowed the military to focus most of its efforts on the two major fronts with Hamas and Hezbollah.

The IDF chief recognized that the country’s war aims are still open, including eliminating Hamas’s political control of Gaza and returning the remaining hostages to their families. Over the next six weeks, Halevi said he will make sure to issue the IDF’s report on the October 7 failures and help to manage the current ceasefire and potential transition to a permanent ceasefire.

Since Katz took over the defense ministry from Yoav Gallant in November he has been pushing for Halevi to retire. Many see Halevi as the one to blame for the October 7 attacks. Others believe that he stayed in his position too long after the massacre.

Katz Frees “Settlers”

On Friday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said he would release Israeli “settlers” who are under administrative detention orders.

He made the decision in response to the hostage-ceasefire deal Israel and Hamas agreed to last Thursday, which is

expected to see the release of up to 1,900 Palestinians, including at least 700 terrorists, in exchange for 33 of the hostages the terror group took on October 7.

“In light of the expected release of terrorists from Judea and Samaria as part of the hostage release deal, I have decided to release the settlers held in administrative detention,” said Katz, adding that his decision was made to “convey a clear message of strengthening and encouraging the settlements, which are at the forefront of the struggle against Palestinian terrorism and face growing security challenges.”

“It is better for the families of Jewish settlers to be happy than the families of released terrorists,” added Katz.

Katz’s move follows his decision in November to end new administrative detention orders for Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria. Administrative detention orders, which allow authorities to detain suspects without charges, would thus only be used against Palestinians suspected of terrorism.

“In a reality where the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is subject to serious Palestinian terror threats and unjustified international sanctions are taken against the settlers, it is not appropriate for the State of Israel to take such a severe measure against the people of the settlements,” Katz stated in November.

As of Katz’s November announcement, seven Israelis were detained under administrative detention orders issued by Yoav Gallant, Israel’s ex-defense minister, who also ordered the administrative detention for nine others during his tenure.

The Shin Bet said the defense minister didn’t inform the agency of the move before making the announcement, nor did Katz seek advice from the Shin Bet. Last June, Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, said ending administrative detention orders for Israelis “will result in an immediate, severe, and serious harm to the security of the state” in situations where authorities have reason to believe that an Israeli may attack Palestinians.

Katz’s announcement also coincides with the Israeli government’s latest initiatives to fight terrorism in Judea and

Samaria, a measure meant to persuade Betzalel Smotrich, the finance minister, against exiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in a demonstration against the new ceasefire agreement.

Bringing Them Home

Three female hostages were returned home to their families in Israel after 471 days of being held captive by the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip. Their release came as a result of a ceasefire-hostage deal reached last Thursday.

Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31, were released on Sunday to the Red Cross, which transported the three young women to top Israeli officials in Gaza around half an hour later. Romi was kidnapped at the Supernova music festival. Hamas abducted Emily and Doron, a veterinary nurse, from their homes in Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

The three hostages are believed to be in good physical health. After the Red Cross brought them to Israeli officials in Gaza, the three were brought to an IDF complex, where they would receive initial treatment, meet with military representatives, doctors, psychologists, and mental health officers, and, at long last, be reunited with their mothers.

Images were later released by the IDF of the mothers and daughters hugging one another at the complex. After reuniting with her mother, photos show Emily, a British-Israeli citizen, and her mother smiling on a video call with family members. In one shot, Emily held up a bandaged hand, revealing that she lost two of her fingers on October 7 after her hand was shot.

Hamas gave the three hostages what the terror group called “gift bags” and “certificates” prior to their release, as shown in a propaganda video. Reportedly, images of the hostages while in captivity were inside the bags.

After spending some time at the complex, officials flew the three by military chopper to Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Ramat Gan, which was chosen due to its quietness and privacy, where the three

women were reunited with the rest of their families and received new clothes, toiletries, beauty care, and specially prepared meals. Special medical staff examined them, while support personnel looked after the three.

Hundreds gathered near the hospital to wish the released hostages well. When the ambulances arrived at the hospital, the girls sang the song, “Am Yisrael Chai,” while a crowd of people cheered.

According to Dr. Yael Frankel-Nir, the

director of Tel Hashomer Hospital, the freed hostages were physically healthy enough “to focus on the important thing, which is reuniting with their families, and to postpone delving into medical issues for a few hours.”

When news of their release was reported, around 2,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and watched as pictures of the freed hostages were shared on a screen. After officials confirmed the release, the people applaud-

news, including protests calling for the government to secure the release of the hostages held in Gaza.

“We saw your struggle,” the former hostages were quoted as saying. “We heard our families fighting for us.”

One of them said, “I didn’t think I would come back. I thought I’d die in Gaza.”

As per the hostage deal’s first phase, which should run for 42 days, Israel is expected to release almost 2,000 Palestinians, including many terrorists and murderers, in exchange for 33 hostages who were abducted by Hamas during the terror group’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel. Most of the 33 named abductees are supposed to be alive and are either women, children, men older than age 50, or men who are sick or wounded.

On October 7, Hamas invaded southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 others. In November 2023, a short-lived hostage deal saw the release of 105 of those abductees, while the IDF has since rescued eight hostages and recovered the bodies of 40. Currently, 91 hostages are in captivity, at least 34 of whom have perished, according to the IDF.

On Saturday, four more female hostages are expected to be brought home.

Oron Shaul, HY”D, Recovered From Gaza

ed, with some releasing yellow balloons curled into a yellow ribbon’s shape in solidarity with the hostages.

According to Channel 12, the women were not held alone in their time of captivity. They said they were moved to various places throughout Gaza, including the designated “humanitarian zone” in the south of the Strip. Most of their time was spent underground.

They said that from time to time, they were exposed to television and radio

During the 2014 Gaza war, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on July 20 in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, during which seven soldiers from the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion died, including Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, whose body Hamas captured and has kept since.

Finally, after ten and a half years, Shaul’s body is finally home in Israel thanks to a covert operation conducted in northern Gaza late last week and early this week by the IDF, the Shin Bet, and multiple special forces units.

The news, which came Sunday morning just before the ceasefire began, was announced by the Israel Defense Forces. Authorities brought Shaul’s remains to

the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Israel for identification, after which his family was informed.

“I embrace the dear Shaul family, and congratulate the Shin Bet and IDF forces for their resourcefulness and courage,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adding that pictures of Shaul and Lt. Hadar Goldin, another deceased soldier whose body has been held in Gaza since 2014, “have been on display in my office for many years as a daily reminder of my responsibility to bring them home.” Terrorists murdered Gordin later in that same war.

The premier added that the Jewish state has now “completed the mission to bring back Oron, and we will not rest or be silent until we bring home Hadar Goldin. We’ll continue to work to bring all of the hostages home — both the living and the fallen.”

Israel Katz, the minister of defense, issued a similar statement, adding that he embraces the Shaul family and “salute[s] the soldiers and commanders of the security forces who worked for years with dedication to return Oron for burial in Israel.”

Katz shared that it was “a difficult moment, but also [a moment of] coming full circle for the Shaul family, who never stopped working to bring their son home.”

Ben Gvir Resigns

On Sunday morning, Otzma Yehudit, the party of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, resigned from the government in protest of the ongoing hostage-ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.

Ben Gvir, Amichai Eliyahu, the heritage minister, and Yitzhak Wasserlauf,

the minister of the Negev, Galilee, and national resilience, stepped down from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, leaving the premier with little time to select replacements.

Otzma Yehudit’s exit decreases Netanyahu’s coalition majority in the Knesset from 68 out of 120 to either 62 or 63, depending on the solutions of complicated deals between Otzma Yehudit and Betzalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, which ran jointly in 2022 and later split.

It is believed that Netanyahu will replace Ben Gvir with someone from the prime minister’s Likud party, thus giving the now-former national security minister a chance to return to the position if he changes his mind. However, Netanyahu doesn’t have many options, as some prospective successors, including Energy Minister Eli Cohen, Transportation Minister Miri Regev, and Social Equality Minister May Golan, are involved in police investigations.

One source claimed that while “nothing is ever final until announced,” Netanyahu is eyeing Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a former Shin Bet director and veteran of the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, to succeed Ben Gvir. Israel Hayom daily, however, reports that if Ditcher declines the offer, which he very well may, then Netanyahu could potentially select Cohen, even amid an investigation into allegations that the energy minister improperly issued diplomatic

passports to Netanyahu’s son Yair and a number of top Likud members.

According to reports, David Amsalem, the minister of regional cooperation, “is angling” to become the next minister of the Negev, Galilee, and National Resilience. Eliyahu’s post as heritage minister could potentially be merged with another ministry.

In late 2023, the Finance Ministry found the ministries of Wasserlauf and Eliyahu to be superfluous and thus recommended shutting them and several other ministries down.

Eliyahu’s decision to step down will force Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot to resign as well. If Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich chooses to reoccupy his Knesset seat, he would force the resignation of Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kroizer, which would in turn lead to an empty spot on the Judicial Selection Committee.

Otzma Yehudit member Limor Son Har-Melech, the former chairwoman of the Special Committee for Oversight of the Israeli Citizens’ Fund in the Knesset, said her party might rejoin the coalition “when the right will truly be the right.”

el sellers got harsher sentences than wholesale dealers, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Many of those affected were Black offenders. In 2010, Congress reduced the ratio to 18:1.

“This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities, and providing deserving individuals the opportunity to return to their families and communities after spending far too much time behind bars,” Biden said on Friday.

Biden had previously pardoned his son, Hunter, on December 1, despite consistent denials that he would do so. Hunter had been convicted of gun- and tax-related offenses after a jury trial in one case and a guilty plea in another.

On December 12, Biden granted 39 pardons to people convicted of nonviolent crimes and commuted 1,499 sentences. On December 23, Biden commuted the sentences of most federal death row inmates to life in prison – 37 of the 40 prisoners

“With this action, I have now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any president in U.S. history,” Biden exulted on Friday.

Biden Pardons More Family Members

Biden Commutes More Sentences

Joe Biden became super busy the last few days on the job. The outgoing president said on Friday that he was commuting 2,500 criminal sentences for nonviolent drug offenses that he described as “disproportionately long” compared to modern-day sentences.

The commutations went to people who received lengthy sentences based on “discredited” and “outdated” sentencing practices, including distinctions between crack and powder cocaine. As a senator, Biden helped craft a 1986 bill that gave someone who sold 5 grams of crack cocaine the same punishment as a 500-gram-powder-cocaine seller.

The 100:1 disparity meant street-lev-

Just hours before Donald J. Trump became president of the United States, President Joe Biden pardoned his brother, James Biden, and other family members for unspecified crimes, hoping to protect his family from potential investigation.

In addition to James, Biden also pardoned James’ wife Sara Jones Biden, sister Valerie Biden Owens and her husband John Owens, and another brother, Francis Biden − because of concerns about “baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families,” he said in a statement released minutes before the end of his term.

“Even when individuals have done nothing wrong and will ultimately be

exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage their reputations and finances,” Biden said.

House Republicans investigated James Biden as part of an impeachment inquiry against the president. They urged the Justice Department to charge James Biden criminally for making allegedly false statements to lawmakers. The Justice Department hasn’t charged James Biden.

The impeachment inquiry’s allegations against James Biden alleged that he benefitted financially in foreign business deals from trading on his brother’s name. The report also called his repayment of undocumented loans to the president “alarming.”

The allegation about making a false statement focused on James Biden telling lawmakers that the president never met with a business associate, Tony Bobulinski, while the president’s brother and son were pursuing a deal with a Chinese company, CEFC China Energy. Bobulinski produced text messages and Hunter Biden testified that Joe Biden attended the meeting on May 3, 2017, at the Beverly Hills Hilton. Hunter and James Biden were meeting with Bobulinski over coffee in the hotel lobby bar, according to

Hunter Biden, and Joe Biden was in Los Angeles to speak at the annual Milken Institute’s conference.

“My dad went and shook hands with Tony,” Hunter Biden testified, and the two talked about a relative of Bobulinski’s who had cancer.

James Biden denied going into the hotel or meeting with Joe Biden and Bobulinski.

“Absolutely not,” James Biden testified.

“I remember that my brother had a speaking engagement at the hotel,” James Biden testified. “I never went into the hotel with my brother.”

House Republicans also tracked how millions of dollars flowed to Joe Biden’s relatives from foreign business deals. A $200,000 payment from James Biden to his brother was concerning to lawmakers.

James Biden testified he had two interest-free loans from his brother, one for $40,000 and one for $200,000, to pay outstanding bills in years between his brother serving as vice president and president.

The lack of documentation about the loans “is alarming,” the impeachment report said.

James Biden got the $40,000 loan in July 2017 and repaid it in September

2017, he testified. He got the $200,000 loan in January 2018 and repaid it in March with a check marked “loan repayment,” he testified.

The larger payment occurred the same day James Biden received $200,000 from Americore Health LLC, a health care company he worked with in 2017 and 2018 before it went bankrupt, according to investigators.

James Biden testified he worked with Americore – between the times his brother served as vice president and president – to identify struggling rural hospitals that could begin treating veterans more quickly than the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He was paid a total of $600,000 by Americore, which later went bankrupt. Carol Fox, a bankruptcy trustee for Americore, testified she couldn’t document what James Biden did to earn the money so she sued him to recover it and he settled by repaying $350,000.

“What those services were, yeah, I don’t . . . I can’t say specifically,” Fox testified.

Fauci, Milley Pardoned by Biden

In addition to pardoning members of his family, Joe Biden, with just hours to go before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president on Monday, pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol

“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”

The president generally offers pardons at the end of his term, although usually those are reserved for those who were convicted of crimes.

“I continue to believe that the grant of pardons to a committee that undertook such important work to uphold the

law was unnecessary, and because of the precedent it establishes, unwise,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who worked on the committee. “But I certainly understand why President Biden believed he needed to take this step.”

The “full and unconditional” pardons for Fauci and Milley cover the period extending back to Jan. 1, 2014.

Trump said after his inauguration that Biden had pardoned people who were “very, very guilty of very bad crimes.” He called them “political thugs.”

“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden said, adding that “even when individuals have done nothing wrong — and in fact have done the right thing — and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”

Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for nearly 40 years, including during Trump’s term in office, most famously instituting mask mandates and other draconian policies related to the pandemic.

“Despite the accomplishments that my colleagues and I achieved over my long career of public service, I have been the subject of politically-motivated threats of investigation and prosecution,” Fauci said in a statement. “There is absolutely no basis for these threats. Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime.”

Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called Trump a fascist and has detailed Trump’s conduct around the January 6 events. He said he was grateful to Biden for a pardon.

“I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the L-rd grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights,” Milley said in a statement. “I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety.”

The January 6 committee was led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and then-Rep. Liz Cheney. They spent 18 months investigating the events. The committee’s final report found that Trump criminally engaged in a “multipart conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

Cheney and Thompson said in a statement on behalf of the committee that they were grateful for the decision, saying they were being pardoned “not for breaking the law but for upholding it.”

U.S. Sues Southwest Airlines

The federal government sued Southwest Airlines last Wednesday, accusing the airline of harming passengers who flew on two routes that were plagued by consistent delays in 2022.

In a lawsuit, the Transportation Department said it was seeking more than $2.1 million in civil penalties over the flights between airports in Chicago and Oakland, California, as well as Baltimore and Cleveland, that were chronically delayed over five months that year.

“Airlines have a legal obligation to ensure that their flight schedules provide travelers with realistic departure and arrival times,” the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, said in a statement.

Carriers are barred from operating unrealistic flight schedules, which the Transportation Department considers an unfair, deceptive and anticompetitive practice. A “chronically delayed” flight is defined as one that operates at least 10 times a month and is late by at least 30 minutes more than half the time.

In a statement, Southwest said it was “disappointed” that the department chose to sue over the flights that took place more than two years ago. The air-

line said it had operated 20 million flights since the Transportation Department enacted its policy against chronically delayed flights more than a decade ago, with no other violations.

Last year, Southwest canceled fewer than 1% of its flights, but more than 22% arrived at least 15 minutes later than scheduled, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider. Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines all had fewer such delays.

In the lawsuit, the government said that a Southwest flight from Chicago to Oakland arrived late 19 out of 25 trips in April 2022, with delays averaging more than an hour. The consistent delays continued through August of that year. On another flight, between Baltimore and Cleveland, average delay times reached as high as 96 minutes per month during the same period. In a statement, the department said that Southwest, rather than poor weather or air traffic control, was responsible for more than 90% of the delays.

The government said Southwest had violated federal rules 58 times in August 2022 after four months of consistent delays. (© The New York Times)

Marco Rubio Confirmed as Sec. of State

Senate unanimously confirmed Marcio Rubio as Secretary of State, handing Trump the first member of his Cabinet on Inauguration Day.

“Marco Rubio is a very intelligent man with a remarkable understanding of American foreign policy,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the senior-most Republican, said as the chamber opened.

The Republican senator from Florida was among the least controversial of Trump’s nominees and the vote was decisive, 99-0.

It is often tradition for the Senate to convene immediately after the ceremonial pomp of the inauguration to begin putting the new president’s team in place, particularly the national security officials.

With Trump’s return to the White House, and his Republican Party controlling majorities in Congress, his outsider Cabinet choices are more clearly falling into place, despite initial skepticism and opposition from both sides of the aisle.

Rubio, who was surrounded by colleagues in the Senate chamber, said after the vote that he feels “good, but there’s a lot of work ahead.”

“It’s an important job in an important time, and I’m honored by it,” Rubio said.

More Cabinet members are expected to be going through confirmation hearings this week.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously advanced Rubio’s nomination late Monday. The Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee, respectively, voted to move the nominations of Hegseth and Ratcliffe. The Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee advanced nominees Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary and Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, but with opposition.

As secretary of state, Rubio would be the nation’s top diplomat and the first Latino to hold the position. He was born in Miami to immigrants from Cuba and has long been involved in foreign affairs, particularly in South America. He has been vocal about China’s influence around the world and has been a staunch ally of Israel.

During his confirmation hearing last week that focused heavily on Israel, Rubio said he supported revoking visas of anyone in the country who supports the Hamas terror group and backed an expansion of the Trump-era Abraham Accords.

“Without speaking out of turn, I’m confident in saying that President Trump’s administration will continue to be perhaps the most pro-Israel adminis-

tration in American history,” Rubio said. Rubio will be taking over for Antony Blinken, who served under the Biden administration.

Huntington’s Disease Revelations

New research sheds light on the cause of Huntington’s disease, a rare genetic condition that causes brain cells to decay in individuals generally ages 30 to 50, leading to involuntary movement, personality changes, impaired judgment, and other symptoms that worsen over the span of 10 to 25 years.

“The conundrum in our field has been: Why do you have a genetic disorder that manifests later in life if the gene is present at conception?” said Dr. Mark Mehler, the director of the Institute for Brain Disorders and Neural Regeneration at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, explaining that scientists have long pondered how someone could be born with a mutation but not see any symptoms until decades later. Mehler, who wasn’t involved in the study, said the “landmark” research “addresses a lot of the issues that have plagued the field for a long time.”

Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, and Harvard Medical School studied half a million cells from brain tissue donated by 53 individuals with Huntington’s disease and 50 without the illness. They found that the mutation that causes the disease is initially harmless but, over time, becomes poisonous.

In patients with Huntington’s disease, a part of their DNA has the CAG three-letter sequence repeated 40 or more times, while those without the illness have the sequence repeated 15 to 35 times. According to the findings, the sequence continues to duplicate for those with 40 or more “repeats” until the sequence becomes hundreds of CAGs long. Certain types of neurons die once CAGs reach around 150 repeats. The scientists found that for the first 20 or so years of a person’s life, the CAG sequence increases in number slowly. With age, the growth becomes increasingly faster.

On Monday, the first day of President Trump’s second term in office, the U.S.

“The longer the repeats, the earlier in life the onset will happen,” noted Sabina Berretta, a neuroscience researcher and one of the study’s senior authors.

Scientists hope discovering more about the disease will help researchers create an effective cure for Huntington’s. Around 41,000 Americans have the disease, which can be managed with medication.

FDA Bans Red No. 3

The Food and Drug Administration approved Red No. 3 dye for use in foods in 1907. Last Wednesday, the FDA announced that it will be banning the artificial dye—which gives a bright red cherry color to 9,200 food items, such as candies, cereals, and milkshakes—because of

the dye’s links to cancer in animals.

Food companies will have until January 15, 2027 to remove the dye from their foods, while companies who use the dye for ingested drugs, including dietary supplements, will have until 2028.

“The FDA cannot authorize a food additive or color additive if it has been found to cause cancer in human or animals,” stated Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy director for human foods. “Evidence shows cancer in laboratory male rats exposed to high levels of FD&C Red No. 3.”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a food and health watchdog, and other advocacy groups and lawmakers have called on the FDA to ban Red No. 3. CSPI’s president, Dr. Peter Lurie, said, “At long last, the FDA is ending the regulatory paradox of Red 3 being illegal for use in lipstick but perfectly legal to feed to children in the form of candy,” referencing the FDA’s 1990 ban on the dye’s use in cosmetics, based on concerns that the coloring is carcinogenic.

In the 1980s, a study showed that male rats developed tumors after being exposed to high doses of Red No. 3.

The FDA’s move came days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump nominated as health and human services

secretary, said he would work to ban artificial colorings in food items if he’s confirmed by the Senate.

Some links have been found between the consumption of artificial dyes and hyperactivity in children, although the FDA rejected such findings in 2011.

In 2023, California became the first state to ban Red No. 3. Jesse Gabriel, a Democratic assemblyman who introduced the California School Food Safety Act and the state’s ban against the dye, said he was happy with the FDA’s move.

“To me, this is a clear indication that our strategy of putting pressure on Washington and putting pressure on the FDA to look at these issues more closely, to step up to the plate and take their regulatory responsibilities seriously, is working,” said Gabriel, who pointed out the bipartisan nature of the war against artificial dyes.

TikTok Talk

Following the Supreme Court ruling to uphold a ban on TikTok, the social media app briefly shut down in the United States on Saturday night, with Apple and Google deleting TikTok’s parent company ByteDance’s apps off their app stores in compliance with the law.

However, just over 12 hours later, TikTok’s app was restored in the U.S. after then-President-elect Donald Trump vowed to delay the ban on TikTok upon his return to the Oval Office.

“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service,” the TikTok Policy’s account on X posted Sunday. “We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over seven million small businesses to thrive. It’s a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”

TikTok, which has become the world’s most downloaded social and entertainment app since its launch in 2018, can avoid a ban in the U.S. if ByteDance, a Chinese company, sells the app. Sever-

al parties have placed bids or expressed interest in purchasing TikTok, including Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and Trump’s newly appointed advisor for the Department of Government Efficiency; MrBeast, a famous YouTuber; and Project Liberty, which was founded by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt.

President Donald Trump said he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.” Trump on Friday said he discussed a number of issues, including TikTok, with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“It’s not the platform that members of Congress are concerned about. It’s the Chinese Communist party,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said, suggesting that China uses TikTok to collect information about U.S. citizens. “The Chinese Communist Party is not our friend, and we have to make sure this changes hands.”

Following its brief shutdown, TikTok users flocked to alternatives, including Chinese social media app Rednote, Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Fanbase, and Twitch.

TikTok has been banned or restricted in other countries besides the U.S., including China, where users can only use a separate app specifically for Chinese users; India; the European Union, which bans the app on government staff devices; Canada, which bans TikTok on government-issued phones; Britain, which bans the app on government or civil servant devices; Australia, which bans the app on federal government devices; Taiwan; Pakistan; and New Zealand.

In 2023, the U.S. banned TikTok from government-issued devices. In 2024, Congress passed the TikTok sellor-ban bill, which was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden.

January 6 Pardon

On Monday, more than 1,500 people charged with crimes connected to the January 6, 2021 events at the U.S. Capitol were pardoned by President Donald Trump, hours after he was inaugurated into office for his second term.

Trump also ordered the attorney general to seek the dismissal of roughly 450 cases that are pending before judges stemming from the largest investigation in Justice Department history

Calling them “patriots” and “hostages,” Trump said they were unfairly treated by the Justice Department. The President said the pardons will end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years” and begin “a process of national reconciliation.”

“We are deeply thankful for President Trump for his actions today,” said James Lee Bright, an attorney who represented Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was serving an 18-year prison sentence after being convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.

Democrats slammed the pardon. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it “an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution.”

“Donald Trump is ushering in a Golden Age for people that break the law and attempt to overthrow the government,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer declared.

Fourteen defendants, including several convicted of seditious conspiracy, had their sentences commuted, while the rest of those found guilty of Jan. 6 crimes were granted “full, complete and unconditional” pardons.

The pardons come weeks after the Justice Department abandoned its two federal criminal cases against Trump, citing its policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

More than 1,200 people across the U.S. had been convicted of January 6-related crimes over the last four years, including roughly 200 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement. Hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants who didn’t engage in any of the violence and destruction were charged with misdemeanor trespassing offenses, and many of those served little to no time behind bars.

Hours before President Joe Biden left office, he issued preemptive pardons for members of the House committee that investigated the January 6 events.

first day in office.

Among the executive orders that Trump signed was the pardoning of around 1,500 people criminally charged in the January 6 events at the U.S. Capitol; six people’s sentences were commuted.

He also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord and from the World Health Organization. He declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border; designated drug cartels and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations; and reversed several immigrations orders from the Biden administration. Trump ordered the attorney general, secretary of state and secretary of homeland security to “take all appropriate action to prioritize” prosecution of illegal aliens who commit crimes and ordered the attorney general to pursue the death penalty for killing of a law enforcement officer or any capital crime committed by an illegal immigrant.

Trump also rescinded a Biden-era policy that allowed federal agencies to take certain initiatives to boost voter registration.

In an effort to increase government efficiency, he ordered federal employees back to work in office five days a week and declared a federal hiring freeze, including exceptions for posts related to national security and public safety and the military. He also established the Department of Government Efficiency, famously headed by Elon Musk.

As of February 1, Trump will be imposing 25% tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada.

He reversed Biden’s order requiring 50% of new cars sold in 2030 be EVs He declared two biological genders, male and female, and ended diversity, equity and inclusion programs within federal agencies. He also said he will be formally renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and will rename Alaska’s Mt. Denali to “Mt. McKinley.”

A Boar-ing Best Friend

Rillette is Elodie Cappe’s perfect pet. In fact, the wild boar has been living with Cappe for more than a year. But French authorities weren’t too happy that a huge, 220-pound pig was living with her and demanded that Rillette either be killed or moved to another, more fitting residence.

Animal activists worldwide decried the decree. Several petitions were enacted on the web calling for Rillette to remain as is. Last week, the court ruled that non-domesticated animals can only be held by private individuals if they are from a recognized breeding center.

“Nowhere,” the court said, did the law state that “they need to be born and bred in captivity.”

Cappe, a horse breeder, found Rillette in 2023 when he was a piglet near a complex of stables she runs.

Cappe’s lawyer says that Rillette is the perfect pet, having met all the requirements, including being vaccinated.

Sounds like he’s the whole hog.

Sad Sunfish

staff members said, ‘Maybe it’s lonely because it misses the visitors?’ We thought 99% chance ‘No way!’ But we attached the uniforms of the staff members (to the tank)” with a little bit of hope, the aquarium said.

The aquarium stuck cardboard cutouts of people onto the tank, to convince the fish that it was receiving visitors. “Then…the next day, it was in good health again!”

Staff have been waving at the sunfish, too, in an effort to cheer it up. Staffers say that maybe the fish is curious about who was visiting and swam up to the front of the tank. After the visitors left because of the renovations, employees saw that the fish stopped eating its jellyfish meals and began to rub its body against the tank, leading staff to suspect that it had developed digestive issues or was infected by parasites.

Now, it’s happily swimming, as its fake visitors give it the wave.

And that’s the o-fish-ial story.

Pineapple on a Pizza

Like pineapple on your cheesy slice? In the UK, it may cost you.

It costs around $15 for a pie of pizza at Lupa Pizza in Norwich. But if you’re ordering pineapple on top of your dinner, you’ll be charged $122 for the topping.

The pizza is available on the restaurant’s menu, alongside the caption: “Yeah, for £100 you can have it. Order the champagne, too. Go on, you Monster!”

Turns out that the owners of the shop don’t love pineapple as a pizza topping.

“I absolutely loathe pineapple on a pizza,” co-owner Francis Woolf explained.

Flurry of Executive Orders

signed a slew of executive orders on his

A Japanese aquarium noticed that its sunfish wasn’t doing well. But how do you make a fish happy?

Well, the fish began to show signs of sadness when the Kaikyokan Aquarium closed for renovations in December. One staff member had a great idea.

“We couldn’t figure out the cause and took various measures, but one of the

The debate between pineapple-toppers and pineapple-loathers is intense any way you slice it.

Th shop is encouraging people to state their views loud and clear.

“We are looking forward to an influx of pro- and anti-pineapple campaigners voting with their feet and wallets! Little scuffle in the street. All televised,” the shop wrote on Facebook.

That’s all we “knead.”

On Monday, Donald Trump’s pen was busy as the new commander-in-chief

Around the Community

Bais Tefila of Inwood was honored to host R’ Mordechai Finkelman, mashgiach of Ohr Hachaim, as a scholar-in-residence

students in Yeshiva Ketana of Queens enjoyed the snow with their rebbe, Rabbi Jungreis

The talmidos of TAG’s Early Childhood Division learned all about the makkos in this week’s parsha and played an innovative game with them

Yeshiva Darchei Torah Dinner Celebrates Chinuch for Life

Yehuda Eisig making the hadran on behalf of hundreds of fellow Darchei bachurim who made siyumim

Photos by Moshe Gershbaum and Yoel Hecht

Surprise presentation by two bachurim to Robert the Bus Driver

Mr. Elie Schwab, dinner chairman, receiving a surprise award, flanked by L-R: Rav Moshe Bender, Rav Shlomo Avigdor Altusky, Rav Yaakov Bender and Mr. Ronald Lowinger

Mr. David Rosenfeld, Kesser Shem Tov awardee

Mr. Eli Schron, Parents of the Year awardee

Rav Avrohom Bender, Harbotzas Torah Awardee

Mr. Menachem Marx, campaign chairman, receiving a surprise award

Hershy Weinberger regaling the crowd with niggunim

Shragi Adler making a siyum on behalf of hundreds of fellow Darchei bachurim who made siyumim

A partial view of the dais as Rav Shlomo Avigdor Altusky, Rosh Yeshiva, addresses the assemblage

Rav Mordechai Stern led Tehillim for Acheinu Kol Beis Yisrael

Mr. Bentzion Heitner, guest of honor

Mr. Yosef Lifshitz, alumnus of the year awardee

Friendship Circle Fun

Chanukah may have ended a few weeks ago, but the Friendship Circle’s unforgettable Chanukah-themed bowling event and trip still feel fresh in our minds.

Shulamith High School and the Friendship Circle partnered together to host a very special bowling event in honor of Chanukah. The turnout was incredible, with every lane filled to capacity. Many of our participants brought their siblings along for the fun.

The event, beyond the bowling, was filled with many beautiful moments.

World-renowned chazzan Shalom Jacobs delighted participants by singing Chanukah songs and spreading joy throughout the outing. Everyone sang along with the chazzan, whose beautiful voice was accompanied by guitar. At the alley, we lit a bowling pin menorah, and participants enjoyed Chanukah doughnuts and crafts.

A few days later, the Friendship

Ezra Academy’s West Hempstead Shabbaton: A Weekend of Unity and Inspiration

Ezra Academy recently held a transformative Shabbaton in West Hempstead, welcoming over 50 students into the warm embrace of the local community. This incredible weekend, hosted by generous families, was a testament to the power of unity, spirituality, and the enduring bonds that Shabbat fosters.

The Shabbaton was a heartwarming experience from start to finish, as students were graciously housed by members of the community and invited to share their Shabbat meals with their hosts. The atmosphere was one of genuine hospitality and connection, with the entire neighborhood coming together to create an unforgettable experience for the Ezra students.

A special thank you is due to Rabbi Uri Lesser and Rebbetzin Sarah Lesser, as well as the entire BTU shul, for their meticulous planning and dedication to ensuring the weekend’s success. Their efforts allowed students to immerse themselves fully in the beauty and sanctity of Shabbat.

The Shabbaton began with heartfelt singing and meaningful interactions, setting the tone for a weekend filled with inspiration. Friday night

featured a memorable oneg at Rabbi Diamond’s house, where divrei Torah sparked meaningful discussions and students connected deeply with one another. The room was filled with laughter, song, and a palpable sense of unity as students celebrated the joy of Shabbat together.

As the Shabbaton continued, the spirit of togetherness only grew stronger. Each moment spent with their host families, each meal shared, and each conversation reinforced the values that Ezra Academy

Circle held an exciting Chanukah trip to Ferox Athletics, where participants enjoyed ninja courses and trampolines, among other fun attractions. It was a day filled with fun, capped off with the giving of Chanukah presents to every child on the trip. A very special moment was when Shoshana Simon, one of our wonderful participants, offered everyone a heartfelt bracha in honor of her Hebrew birthday.

Both experiences were truly unforgettable, from the joy of singing along with the chazzan at the bowling event to the thrill of tackling ninja courses and trampolines on the Chanukah trip. These moments brought smiles, connection, and lasting memories for everyone.

holds dear: community, spirituality, and the pursuit of meaningful connections. The weekend concluded with a lively night of billiards, followed by an emotionally charged kumzits.

Students sang arm in arm, their voices blending into a chorus of inspiration and gratitude. This closing moment embodied the essence of the Shabbaton—bringing students closer to one another, to their community, and to their faith.

Ezra Academy extends its deepest gratitude to every host family and the West Hempstead community

as a whole for their generosity and warmth. Their contributions made this Shabbaton not only possible but also profoundly impactful. The students returned home inspired, uplifted, and reminded of the power of shared experiences.

This Shabbaton encapsulated the values of Ezra Academy, leaving an indelible mark on all who participated. It was a weekend that will be remembered as a shining example of unity, inspiration, and the beauty of Shabbat.

The Power of Shema

TBy Rabbi Meyer Yedid

he love of kedushah takes us to the highest places in life.

I want to share a story with you. There was a little boy in Boro Park. If you looked at this boy, you would think: This kid has little self-esteem and little kedushah. When this story took place, the boy was sitting on a corner. On that same corner was a man with a little setup; he was selling helium balloons. The boy was watching him. Every few minutes, this man would fill up a balloon with helium, and just let the balloon go, let it float up into the sky. That’s how he advertised his balloons.

The boy sat there transfixed. He saw the man make red balloons, green balloons, yellow balloons, and blue balloons, and every once in a while, he saw the man let one rise up.

After a few hours, the boy turned to the man and said, “Sir, can I ask you a question? I see you have such beautiful balloons — red, green, yellow, and blue. And I see how high they go up. But what happens if you have an old balloon that has no color at all? Can that balloon also go up?”

You know, people ask questions based on who they are and what they are going through. They ask questions based on their own experiences. This man heard the question and understood what the child was really asking.

He told the young boy, “Listen, young man: It’s not the red or the green or the yellow or the blue that makes the balloon fly. If you fill up a balloon with helium, it’s gonna go all the way up no matter what color it is!”

And that is a story for all of us. What we look like on the outside doesn’t make us fly, no matter how big or how beautiful or how expensive our balloons are. It’s nice to look good and it’s nice to act with kavod. But that doesn’t make us fly. What makes us fly is the helium inside of our balloons. That’s the kedushah that we have been discussing here.

The Maggid MiDubno expresses this idea with a beautiful parable: A man opened up a retail store and displayed his merchandise in the window of the store. On opening day, one of his friends came into the store to check it out. The friend looked around and realized that the storeowner had put his entire stock

in the window. Every item the storeowner had to sell was in that window. There was nothing in the rest of the store.

The friend was very surprised. He turned to the storeowner and he said, “I don’t understand: You put all your merchandise in the window? You’re supposed to put a few samples in the window and leave the rest of the stock in the back. Why did you put all your stock in the window?”

The storeowner told him, “You’re right. When a person has a lot of merchandise, they put only a few samples in the window. But if you have a small amount of merchandise, then you put it all in. That’s all I have.”

That’s what the Dubno Maggid says. A person who’s full of merchandise only has to put a few things in the window, not too much. But if you don’t have a lot inside, you have to put it all out there.

And that’s the story of our lives, too.

There is a very powerful lesson in life here: In order to fly, we need helium. Our helium is kedushah. And if we love that feeling of kedushah, we know what to call it: ahavat Hashem. Kedushah means that your neshamah feels the presence of G-d within you. When we know that and want that, we are fulfilling not only our mission in life — to fly high — but also the mitzvah of ahavat Hashem.

May Hashem give us the siyata d’Shmaya to open up this channel of ahavat Hashem in our lives, and to be mit’aneg, to take true pleasure in Hashem.

Reprinted from The Power of Shema by Rabbi Meyer Yedid with permission from the copyright holder, ArtScroll Mesorah Publications.

Around the Community

JSL Week 2 Recap

The JSL, brought to you by FM Home Loans, delivered another thrilling week packed with unforgettable moments, incredible comebacks, and standout performances. From buzzer-beaters to overtime victories, every division had games to remember. Here are the highlights from this action-packed week!

K/P Hockey

Smash House rolled past NY Chaplain Group with a dominant performance led by Gavriel Feinsod, who scored seven goals to take over the game. Yeled LI earned an 11-2 victory over Growtha, with MVP Eliyahu Samuels netting four goals to lead the charge. Posh Home + Bath and 5 Towns Central played to a dramatic 7-7 tie, with Posh clawing back from a 7-5 deficit in the final two minutes. MVP Harry Wilheim scored the game-tying goal with just 58 seconds left in a thrilling finish. SR Whee earned a 3-1 win over 5 Towns Landscaping.

K/P Soccer

Hewlett Auto Body surged past Future Care Consultants 14-5, with MVP Asher Brill putting on an incredible display by scoring a triple hat

trick. Doma topped Maidenbaum 4-2 in a tight game, as MVP Yehuda Wach stood out with stellar goaltending and scoring one of the key goals for his team.

Hockey

1st Grade

Town Appliance edged John’s Auto 7-6 in a nail-biter, with MVP Meir Kopelowitz scoring the game-winning goal with just 16 seconds left to cap a thrilling finish. Eden Gardens came back from a 4-0 deficit in the first period to beat Seasons Express 7-5. Shauli Bauman led the comeback effort with a standout performance.

2nd/3rd Grade

Maidenbaum earned a 4-2 win over Smash House, with Gav Prince dominating on the breakaways. Sushi Tokyo took control in a 15-1 victory over Newman Dental, with MVP Eli Ruchelsman leading the offensive surge. Built by Nate narrowly defeated Ecom Beyond 6-5, with MVP Mordechai Kirschner scoring twice and stepping in as goalie in the third period to lock up the win with some nice clutch saves. Better Image Contracting and PIP Printing battled to a 3-3 tie. MVP Binyamin

Bamberger scored the tying goal on a brilliant play from the defensive end. SR Whee defeated Town Appliance 9-3, with game MVP Dovid Gerson delivering a standout performance as goalie, making key saves throughout.

4th/5th Grade

Gerber Bedding earned a 6-2 win over Smash House, with Gavriel Chafetz scoring on a beautiful crossover goal. Town Appliance beat Marciano 4-1, with MVP Yisroel Plawes playing hard until the end and scoring the final goal to secure the win. Russo’s Pharmacy outlasted Wieder in a dramatic shootout, winning 2-1. Seasons rolled past Target Exterminating 10-4, with Avi Krigsman leading the way with two goals and an assist.

6th/8th Grade

Bluebird beat Sdei Chemed 4-2, with Yitzchok Polansky knocking in a game high 2 goals. Eliyahu Zachter and Levi Jeger each added a goal to send Bluebird to 2-0. Growtha defeated Extreme 14-3, with goalie Tani Benderly standing tall in goal and making some incredible saves. Wieder Orthodontics edged out 925 Sterling 7-6 in an overtime thriller. With three minutes left, 925 Sterling tied the game at 6 on a half-court shot from Gavriel Abittan. Abittan later appeared to score the game-winner as time expired, but it was ruled too late. In overtime, Yisroel Moshe Fireworker scored with three seconds remaining to secure the dramatic victory for Wieder. Tikva Fire secured a 12-6 victory over Kosher Skinny Shot, with MVP Tzvi Maltz leading the way with an incredible 9 goal triple hat-trick.

Basketball

1st/2nd Grade

Premier Assist defeated Eden Gardens 4-0, with MVP Coby Adler showing excellent dribbling and passing to set the pace for his team. Tikva Fire beat Smash House 8-2, with MVP Yehoshua

Malek holding steady under pressure and scoring the go-ahead free throw to take a lead his team never gave up. Tiffany Dry Cleaners won 20-4 against Newman Dentistry. Yosef Rishty had a great steal and a nice breakaway to give Newman Dentistry an early lead, but JSL rising star Daniel Grabie had a breakout game with 16 points to lead Tiffany to victory.

3rd/4th Grade

Better Image Contracting won 18-7 against John’s Auto, with MVP Shua Basch mixing crafty passes with sharp drives to lead his team. Wieder Orthodontics earned a 24-13 win over Russo’s Pharmacy, with MVP Yaakov Berokhim leading the scoring. Marciano Dentistry beat Posh Home + Bath 34-6, with MVP Dovid Bauman dominating the paint for his team.

5th/7th Grade

Sperling Productions held off Emporio for a 33-27 win, with MVP Akiva Abramson leading the charge. Sdei Chemed earned a 36-26 victory over Binyamin Weissman Photography, with MVP Yosef Pultman sinking several deep jump shots to lift his team.

Game of the Week

In a game for the ages, Anju seemed to secure the win with a goal to go up 6-5 with 18 seconds left. But Yaakov Kret refused to let it end, scoring a stunning half-court shot with just one second remaining to tie the game at 6 and send it to overtime. In OT, it was Kret again, delivering the game-winner to give Simcha Day Camp the dramatic 7-6 victory in one of the most thrilling finishes of the season.

Men’s Recap

The Men’s Season concluded with Team Growtha winning the championships 76-59 over Hewlett Auto Body. Growtha was led by Eitan Gettenberg and Aaron Azose, along with a strong performance inside by Jack Ross. The next men’s season starts in a month!

Mike Huckabee, Incoming U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Opines that Not Everyone Should be Drafted to the Army

By Yosef Sosnow

It was a groundbreaking, remarkable meeting. The Nasi of Dirshu, Rav Dovid Hofstedter, met with incoming U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee earlier this month. It was a wide-ranging conversation that confirmed Huckabee’s stature as an oheiv Yisrael who feels a deep connection with the land of Israel and the Jewish People. Moreover, during the course of the conversation, it became clear that Mr. Huckabee has an especially deep admiration for the religious community and those scholars who spend their days and nights studying the Torah, the foundational document that clearly delineates Eretz Yisrael as the land of the Jewish People.

After discussing Mr. Huckabee’s own harrowing visit to the Kever of Yosef Hatzaddik in Shechem one dark night at 2:00 a.m., Rav Dovid delicately brought up the topic of the compulsory draft in Israel for all young man. He asked the incoming Ambassador if he “sees the future of Israel as a country that will include scholars. Do you see wholesale drafting of all young people? Or should there be diversity?”

Rabbi Hofstedter related that he remembered that even when the United States had a compulsory draft back in the days of the Vietnam War, not everyone was drafted. There were exceptions for divinity students and the like.

Rav Hofstedter stressed that he was not posing his question to the Ambassador in his official capacity but rather on a personal level. “How do we go forward?” Rav Dovid asked. “Yes, Israel finds itself threatened existentially, surrounded by enemies, but this can also involve an existential threat to the heart and soul of the country. If everyone will be drafted, who will carry the spiritual legacy of the country. Should there be scholars that remain to maintain the values, the soul of the country?”

Did you know?

On a Personal Level, Not on a Policy Level

Mr. Huckabee was remarkably forthright in framing his answer, saying, “The diplomatic answer is that it would be completely inappropriate for me to try to advise and steer the policy of Israel. My job is to advise the United States regarding its policy on Israeli affairs, not to advise the Israelis about their own affairs.”

However, Mr. Huckabee didn’t stop there. He pivoted to express his own personal views. “On a practical and personal level, not on a policy level,” Huckabee said, “there are many ways that people can serve their country and not all of them are military. We see in our own country… that [there are those who for reasons of conscience] who do not serve in combat, but they serve in other capacities, where they are needed.”

Ambassador Huckabee suggested that perhaps in Israel they can also make similar calculations as they have done in America and realize that there are other ways to serve the country aside from the combat roles.

It was clear that Ambassador Huckabee was expressing that, in his personal view, there is a great role to be played by the scholars who preserve the soul of the country just as there is a critical role that the combat soldiers have in defending the physical body of the country and that the two roles are not contradictory but rather they complement one another.

The Ambassador concluded by highlighting that he knows this is a delicate issue and a contentious issue in Israel, but he pointed out that it is so important to realize that “without the biblical foundation, there really is no basis for the Jewish claim of the land of Israel.”

Without the Torah, “it is just another geo-political entity. What makes it so special,” Mr. Huckabee said with feeling, “is that it is the land that G-d has chosen and deeded to the Jewish people… There is a document for this, there is a blueprint

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.

for this, and it is the document that was given to Abraham. That should be the blueprint!”

At the meeting, Mr. Huckabee also spoke about the fact that he was a nonJew serving as the ambassador to Israel. He told Rav Hofstedter, “Some people say, ‘Oh my Heavens, we need a Jewish guy to be ambassador.’ But here’s what I have heard, Rabbi, from a number of people. They said that in a way this is going to be better [than having a Jew as ambassador]. If a Jewish person is ambassador, everyone says, ‘Oh, of course, he is pro-Israel, he is Jewish.’ A non-Jew creates a bigger impact when he is pro-Israel.”

Mr. Huckabee also mentioned that this was a job that was offered to him without his asking, and he accepted because he felt that he can make a real difference in the region.

Of Diversity, Antisemitism and a Blessing

Another fascinating aspect of the visit was the effort Rav Hofstedter made to ensure that Mr. Huckabee would be well acquainted with the charedi community and their spiritual sages and leaders. He offered to accompany and introduce the Ambassador after he is confirmed and has taken up his post in Israel to the senior Gedolei Yisrael.

Mr. Huckabee was very eager to take Rav Hofstedter up on his offer saying that he would welcome the unique opportunity to meet, interact with and hear the view of the senior sages of Israel. Rav Hofstedter also stressed how important it would be for the Ambassador to get to know the charedi population firsthand rather than from the caricatures in which they are painted in the media. “There are

thousands of American citizens who are charedim living and studying in Israel,” Rav Hofstedter shared. Mr. Huckabee, in turn, expressed his deep desire to get to know them firsthand.

During the meeting, an additional pivotal topic of conversation was the issue of antisemitism. Rav Hofstedter said, “We’re going through a very difficult time now. You just can’t believe that it’s such a short period after the Holocaust that the world has forgotten it all. We are under attack around the world, especially the Orthodox Jews who are visibly Jewish and are easy targets. The people of the world can have tolerance for everything and almost anybody, but not Orthodox Jews. It’s so sad. And we are under assault in America. The yeshiva system, the Torah school system in New York, is under assault. “Not everyone has an appreciation that this is the community that adheres to the Bible. The woke culture that is affecting so much of Western civilization affects Israel as well. They’re not immune from it by any means.”

Mr. Huckabee clearly showed his recognition regarding the differences between the various communities in Israel, saying, “There is a big difference between the lifestyle in Tel Aviv and the lifestyle in Jerusalem. I think it’s a fair assessment to say wokeism is alive and well in many parts of Tel Aviv and Herzliya.”

Aside from Mr. Huckabee’s deep understanding of the role that Torah learning plays in defense of Eretz Yisrael, his final parting words showed his feelings and understanding of Jewish tradition. When he took leave of Rav Hofstedter he said, [the blessing is] “Next Year in Jerusalem. I hope it is THIS year in Jerusalem!”

Rav Dovid Hofstedter meeting with incoming Ambassador Mike Huckabee

Rav Shlomo Avigdor Altusky in conversation with Rav Avrohom Wachsman at Yeshiva Darchei Torah, Far Rockaway

Rav Elya Brudny delivering a vaad to the kibbutz of Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway

First grade talmidim at Yeshiva Darchei Torah proudly display their oil pastel creations in art class

When and how was the term “nebach case” coined. By some yenta in a faraway neighborhood? A bored housewife in need of someone to put down while admiring her own life in the mirror? A happy not-nebach who’s just thrilled about not being placed in that category?

Who is it commonly used for? A person who is not married, a couple who doesn’t have children, an orphan, a widow, a baal teshuva, someone who is not well, someone who is off the derech, has no money, is divorced, or is learning disabled? If you don’t have any of these complications, you are safe. If you do and live in a community: watch out.

People tend to have this ideal life in mind for themselves, and if they don’t achieve it, they feel like failures. But really, if you look at it a different way, who have you failed and how is it your fault? G-d decides whether or not you get married, have children, or get divorced. There is not one person in the world that comes into this life hoping to be infertile, divorced or single. In the flow of life, we make our decisions based on what we know best at that time and place. We try our hardest to have a good

Winners of Fate

By Goldie Young

life full of love, joy, and purpose. But what if G-d gives us a life that we didn’t expect or pray for? Who are we to even decide that that life is a disappointment? Who said that we can’t be happy? And who said that we can’t be fulfilled with that specific life?!

Peer pressure is a double-edged sword in our community. While it holds everyone accountable to our lifestyle and ensures longevity of the Jewish nation, it leaves little room for imperfections. These often get swept under the rug, ignored, and, yes, pitied by others who think that or seem to have it all. There is a map that is supposed to measure our success. From birth to death, we must follow it, and lest something arises and we don’t see the black and white picture perfectly, we and the people around us deem it off the map. Not successful. Nebach.

But is it really nebach? Only if you believe it to be so.

Time has come to stop feeling left out, different, and misfitted. Everyone has different qualities about ourselves that deem us winners, special, and give us the opportunity to lift our head up and be proud. There is so much more to life

than fitting in and following a map made for the very few. The amount of people who don’t follow the perfect line is actually the majority of the population. Maybe some are better at hiding it than others, but we all have our stories.

We have to find joy and peace within ourselves instead of constantly looking around us. Stay in our own lane. Find our own measuring stick for success and disappointment. Discover what feeds us and keep doing it. Using energy to try and fit in is a waste of time and effort, because sometimes you will never be like them. Sometimes, G-d says no. So even though she will be forever known as the girl without a father, she will find joy in her memories, stay close to her family, and be forever grateful for her kids and husband. And even though he still hasn’t gotten married, he will appreciate his parnassah, his friendships, and his mom and dad always being there for him.

The examples can go on, and they are endless. It’s best to surround yourself with people who don’t put you down for your G-d given path in life. Self-talk is super important as well. After years of being told how and when, we have to

learn to reprogram ourselves to a new tune: your how and your when. For there is a good time for everything, and if not, there is always something else. Pride and nachas are very subjective: it depends on who is looking at the picture. Those who leave people out because they don’t fit their definition of perfect are cruel and soulless human beings, sticking to a system which does not work. They think that they are doing something good, or maybe they even know that they aren’t, but olam hafuch hazeh. They live in an upside-down world. They will be very surprised – or not – by what greets them on the other side of where the olam is emes. In fact, they might very well be responsible for people who will actually leave the map altogether and find acceptance somewhere else

Yes, life sometimes seems dependent on the throw of the dice. Yes, sometimes, G-d says no. And it feels unfair and lonely. And we have questions. And we cry. And people hurt us. But nothing is arbitrary, and nothing is unplanned. And you can always plant flowers in a desolate place. And you can always find people like you. And you can always be a winner of your own fate.

TJH Centerfold

White House Trivia

1. Which president installed a secret taping system in the White House?

a. Harry Truman

b. Dwight Eisenhower

c. Richard Nixon

d. Bill Clinton

2. How many fireplaces are there in the White House?

a. 28

b. 4

c. 2

d. 0

3. On average, how many people visit the White House per day?

a. 500

b. 1,000

c. 3,000

d. 6,000

to get married inside the White House?

a. James Madison

b. James Buchanan

c. Grover Cleveland

d. Woodrow Wilson

5. Which president had a special “Diet Coke” button installed on his desk in the Oval Office?

a. Donald Trump

b. Bill Clinton

c. Ronald Reagan

d. George W. Bush

6. What secret feature exists beneath the White House for emergency situations?

a. A nuclear-proof bunker

b. A network of underground tunnels

c. An escape chute from the Oval Office

7. Which part of the White House is said to have the most reported ghost sightings?

a. The East Room

b. The Lincoln Bedroom

c. The Rose Garden

d. The West Wing

Answers: 1-C

2-A

3-D 4-C

5-A

6-B

7-B

Wisdom Key:

6-7 Correct: You know a lot about the White House. Are you the ghost of Lincoln?

3-5 Correct: You know your way around, somewhat. As long as you know where the DC button is, you are good (DC, as in Diet Coke).

4. Who was the only U.S. president

d. A surveillance room with live feeds of all rooms

You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

A man calls the White House and asks to talk to President Biden. The operator tells him that Biden is no longer the president.

Two minutes later, the man calls again and asks to speak to Pres. Biden. Again, the operator tells him that Biden is no longer the president.

0-2 Correct: Mr. Biden, how is your retirement going?

He calls a third time, and the frustrated operator asks the caller, “Did you not understand what I told you twice already – Biden is not the president! Why do you keep calling and asking for him?!”

The man responds, “Because nothing brings me more joy than hearing that Biden is not the president!”

The Spooky House

Abraham Lincoln Contemplating First Lady Grace Coolidge claimed to have seen the ghost of Lincoln standing at a window in the Oval Office, hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the Potomac River.

Andrew Jackson Laughing Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to have heard the ghost of President Andrew Jackson laughing and cursing.

First Lady Abigail Adams’s Laundry Abigal Adams used the East Room to do her laundry. According to legend, at times, there is an odor of detergent that wafts through the East Room.

Doors Suddenly Closing According to former White House chief Usher Garty Walters (1986 through 2007), there was one occasion when he and two other people were standing near two doors that were wide open. Suddenly, the two doors started slowly closing. They checked to see if there were any other doors down the hall that may have been opened or closed, creating a wind tunnel, but there were none. His theory? It was the ghost of a prior president walking through.

Sounds like Fun!

“The White House is the finest prison in the world.”Pres. Harry S. Truman

“The White House is not a home. It’s an office with a bedroom attached.”- First Lady Nancy Reagan

“Being in the White House is kind of like being a teenager in your parents’ house – nobody really tells you exactly what you can and can’t do.”- First Lady Michelle Obama

“The White House is a strange place. On any given day, somebody’s out to get you.”- President Richard Nixon

Something Happening on The Third Floor Wilson Jerman, who worked as a butler during Pres. Lindon Johnson’s tenure, claimed that he heard some noise coming from the 3rd floor at 3:00 AM. Why was he concerned? Because there was nobody staying on the 3rd floor. He went up to investigate but did not see anybody…although he remained certain that something was going on up there.

Lights On Dennis Freemyer, who served as an usher in the Reagan White House, claims that he went into the Lincoln Bedroom one night and shut the lights and then left the room. He suddenly noticed that the chandelier went back on, so he went back into the room, but there was nobody there. Suddenly, he felt a very cold chill and felt the presence of someone there, but there was nobody else in the room…that he could see, at least.

“I told my wife living in the White House would be like a vacation. She hasn’t spoken to me since.”- President Lyndon B. Johnson

“The trouble with living in the White House is you have to drive 20 miles just to go for a walk.”- President Herbert Hoover

“I have to confess that it’s an honor to live in the White House. It’s just not as good as living above a pizza place.”- President Bill Clinton

“Living in the White House is like being in a fishbowl –if fish could leak to the press.”- President Ronald Reagan

Torah Thought

Parshas Va’eira

By Rabbi Berel Wein

The L-rd, so to speak, according to Rashi and the Talmud, longs for the previous generations of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel who seemingly bore their trials and difficulties without complaint even though G-d’s revelation to them was in a lesser level than was the case with Moshe. Yet we do find that the patriarchs Avraham

and Yaakov did challenge G-d at moments of crisis. Avraham says to G-d, “What can you grant me as I go childless?” And Yaakov says to G-d, “And You promised me that You would be good to me [and now Eisav threatens to destroy me.]”

Why is the L-rd disturbed by Moshe’s statement that the lot of the Jewish peo -

ple in Egypt has not yet been improved? Where do Moshe’s words differ radically from those of Avraham and Yaakov? And why does G-d, so to speak, long for the previous generations over the behavior of the current generation? According to the aggadic interpretation of the verses in the parsha, Moshe is punished for asking that obvious question as to why the Jewish situation has shown no improvement even though Moshe is apparently fulfilling G-d’s mission accurately and punctually. Where

realizes that perhaps G-d’s promises to him can also be fulfilled through his faithful disciple and servant Eliezer. The doubts of the patriarchs are personal, not national. They never for a moment waver in their belief in the ultimate survival and triumph of the Jewish people, of the truth and justice of their cause and code, and of the validity of the mission of the Jewish people. Moshe’s moment of complaint is not only personal, but it is national. Maybe this people will never leave Egyptian

They never for a moment waver in their belief in the ultimate survival and triumph of the Jewish people

is the shortcoming that provokes such a critical response from Heaven?

I think that the answer perhaps lies in recognizing the difference between the individual Jew as an individual and the belief in the fate of the Jewish people as a nation and community. The individual Jew, Avraham, Yaakov, you and me, regularly face crises and difficulties in our lives as individuals. We have no guarantee that the L-rd will extricate us from our difficulties.

As Yaakov put it: “Perhaps my sins will have cancelled out any Heavenly promises of success and aid.” Avraham

bondage. Maybe the Jewish people as a nation will not be able to come to Sinai and accept the Torah and become a kingdom of priests and a holy people. Maybe they are not worthy of the grandiose promises made to them. Moshe is forced to account for doubting the people and implying that G-d has not chosen well, for the troubles of that people have not subsided.

One can doubt one’s own place in the story of Israel. One can never doubt the validity of Israel and the Heavenly promises made to it itself.

Shabbat shalom.

From the Fire

Parshas Va’eira

Two Types of Leadership

By Rav Moshe Weinberger

Adapted

for publication by Binyomin Wolf

Let us understand what the Torah teaches us about what it means to be a true Jewish leader based on one Rashi in this week’s parsha. First, we know that love comes in two varieties, conditional and unconditional. In the language of Chazal, these are called “love which is dependent on something” and “love which is not dependent on something” (Avos 5:16).

Although there is a wide spectrum of personality traits for both mothers and fathers, generally speaking, fathers tend more toward conditional love and mothers tend more toward unconditional love. Children, especially boys, often experience their fathers as having a strict set of expectations for them, and their expressions of love are predicated on the fulfillment of those expectations. Many men find communicating the depth of their love for their children very difficult unless their hopes, dreams, and expectations for them are met.

Mothers, on the other hand, generally have an easier time communicating their love for their children no matter what. Children need to grow up with expectations and the fatherly love which comes with the fulfillment of those expectations to increase their chance of success in life. But without that immovable motherly love undergirding the measures of success they attempt to attain, they cannot survive. They cannot go on. If a person lacks that foundation of unconditional love, demands and expectations are likely to completely break a person.

This dichotomy exists in the two primary ways Hashem expresses Himself in His relationship with us – as The Holy One Blessed is He (the fatherly expression) and the Divine Presence (the motherly expression). The masculine side manifests itself through pesukim

like, “If you will walk in my statutes and observe My mitzvos and do them, I shall give you rain in its time, the earth shall give its produce, and the tree of the field its fruit” (Vayikra 26:3-4). The promises are predicated by the word “If.” These expressions of Hashem’s love come with strings attached , k’vayachol.

On the other hand, Hashem manifests His motherly side through pesukim like, “And even when they are in the land of their enemy, I will not despise or hate them to destroy them to nullify My covenant with them, for I am Hashem their G-d” (Vayikra 26:44) and “Who dwells with them within their impurity” (Vayikra 16:16). Hashem shows us that He loves us unconditionally, no matter what, and nothing can sever our connection to Him.

This parental and Divine dichotomy also presents itself in the two paradigmatic leaders of our people – Moshe and Aharon. As the Gemara says, “Moshe would say, ‘Let justice pierce the mountain [i.e., be absolute]’” (Sanhedrin 6b). We explained that fathers often have dif-

ficulty expressing their love when their children do not meet their expectations. As the Maharal explains in Gevuros Hashem (28), sometimes great, spiritual people are unable to communicate to others the depth of what is in their heart. As intellectually lofty as they are, they lack a fully developed power of speech, which is a lower-order, but critical, faculty.

While we cannot understand the complexity of Moshe’s greatness, he himself acknowledged this difficulty when he said, “I am not a man of words” (Shemos 4:10), the last letters of which spell “Shammai” – the tana who paradigmatically expressed strict judgment. The Torah says about Aharon, on the other hand, “And he will be a mouth for you” (ibid. 16), the initial letters of which spell “Hillel” –the tana who paradigmatically expressed mercy. And it was Hillel who said. “Be of the students of Aharon” (Avos 1:12).

We see that this dichotomy in their leadership styles played itself out in the Torah as well. Even though Moshe loved the Jewish people deeply, after the sin

of the Golden Calf, he distanced himself from them, always placing a veil over his face (Shemos 34:33) and moving his tent outside the camp (ibid. 33:7) . Moshe ascended Mount Sinai to commune with Hashem alone, while Aharon remained with the people, trying to work with them in their confusion and delay their sin, hoping that Moshe would return before it went too far.

Aharon was a motherly figure to us, always together with the people, speaking their language and showing them his love for them. By acting as Moshe’s “mouth,” he was always there for us to translate what Moshe was saying into language we could understand. That is why, in the union between Hashem and the Jewish people, Chazal call Moshe the King’s (Hashem’s) “best man” and Aharon the Bride’s (Jewish people’s) “maid of honor” (III Zohar 20a).

Which type of leadership is more important or takes precedence? Strict expectations or unconditional love? We find the answer in a Rashi in this week’s parshah on the pasuk, “That is Aharon and Moshe” (Shemos 6:26). Rashi asks, “In some places, the Torah places Aharon before Moshe, and in other places, it places Moshe before Aharon.” Why does it do this? “To tell us that they are equal.” The Torah wants us to know that both types of leadership are equally essential. We need leaders who are not afraid to make demands on their constituents, who are not satisfied with the status quo. Without this fatherly type of leadership, we would not grow or elevate ourselves. But without an undergirding of immovable love, we would lack the emotional wherewithal to survive, much less achieve what our leaders ask of us.

Now that we know both types of leadership, Moshe’s and Aharon’s, are equally

essentially, we must ask ourselves which one comes first and which one comes second. The Torah explicitly tells us this when it says, “And Moshe was eighty years old, and Aharon was eighty-three years old when they spoke to Pharaoh” (Shemos 7:7). Hashem brought Aharon into the world three years before Moshe to teach us that when educating our children or leading those in our charge, we will fail if we do not first establish motherly, Aharon-like love. Attempting to set expectations and demands without pre-establishing a foundation of love is not a recipe for success.

There was once a community leader in the Hungarian community of Tisefird who commissioned the writing of a Sefer Torah and held a great hachnasas Sefer Torah ceremony upon its completion in the mid-1800s. He invited two great tzaddikim from the region to this celebration, Rav Tzvi Hirsch from Liska, zy”a, and Rav Hillel from Kolmaya, zy”a. Though these two tzaddikim were equally great, they could not have been more different from one another in disposition. While both would have liked to spend Shabbos and the beginning of the week in the wealthy man’s community, Rav Hillel Kolmayer

was not able to come for that Shabbos but postponed his visit to the following week.

During his visit the first week, Rav Tzvi Hirsch could not stop himself from praising the community in general, and the wealthy man hosting the hachnasas Sefer Torah in particular, for the great honor they showed for the Torah and for those who study it. He praised the community and blessed them that they should continue honoring the Torah. Everyone felt elevated and strengthened by the Rebbe’s visit and his encouraging words.

The following week with Rav Hillel Kolmayer was completely different. He asked to speak to the entire congregation Shabbos morning and began by saying, “It is a shame that the donor of the Sefer Torah is providing a covering for the Torah but not providing his wife with the proper clothing to cover herself appropriately.” His message to the community only became harsher from there. He criticized its departures from traditional Jewish customs as in keeping with the ways of the Enlightenment and influenced by the evil inclination. The Rebbe’s criticism of the wealthy man in particular, and the community in general, continued throughout his visit.

After Rav Hillel had left the commu-

nity, they were reeling and feeling broken. The wealthy man sent a messenger to Rav Tzvi Hirsch, ostensibly to ask how he could reconcile his praise of the community with Rav Hillel’s staunch criticism. In reality, he was probably hoping to stir up a dispute between the tzaddikim by obtaining a letter from Rav Tzvi Hirsch criticizing Rav Hillel’s strict approach. He did not receive the answer for which he hoped.

Rav Tzvi Hirsch explained that both his and Rav Hillel’s approaches were correct. As the Torah tells us in Parshas Shemos, “And the king of Egypt said to the Jewish midwives, ones of whose name was Shifra and the name of the second was Puah” (Shemos 1:15). There are two ways to give life to the Jewish people. There is the way of Shifra, whose name means “beautiful,” which is to see the beauty and goodness in others, encouraging them to see the good in themselves. He said about himself, “I cannot help myself. Hashem made me a ‘Shifra’ Yid. My way is seeing and showing Jews the good in themselves and in others.”

Rav Tzvi Hirsch continued by telling the messenger that Rav Hillel is a “Puah” Yid. The name Puah is an onomatopoeia implying that this midwife made “Pu, pu” sounds to soothe the babies she helped

deliver. Thus, Puah is a name implying speech. Rav Hillel’s way is giving life to the Jewish people by speaking to them, by giving them mussar. Rav Tzvi Hirsch explained to the wealthy man’s messenger that the Jewish people need both types of leadership. They need the Aharon/motherly/Shifra approach to develop the emotional and psychological wherewithal to believe in themselves. And they need the Moshe/fatherly/Puah approach to challenge themselves and grow.

May Hashem grant us leaders, rebbeim, and teachers who know when we need the Aharon/motherly/unconditional love approach and when we need the Moshe/fatherly/conditional love approach. And may He open our hearts and our minds to accept both forms of leadership equally so that we may fulfill our communal and individual potentials such that we merit bringing the ultimate leader into this world, Moshiach Tzidkeinu, with the arrival of the complete redemption soon in our days.

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.

Think. Feel.Grow.

The Birth of Torah She’baal Peh Part II

By Rabbi Shmuel Reichman

In our previous article, we began exploring the deep and inspiring ideas relating to the birth of Torah She’baal Peh. To briefly review, the first stage of history lasted from Creation until the time of Purim and Chanukah. This stage was highlighted by the miracles of yetzias Mitzrayim and Matan Torah and the presence of nevuah. During this period, Hashem’s revelation in this world was apparent and clear. The physical world was naturally seen as an expression of a spiritual reality, and it was easy to source the physical back to the spiritual.

The second stage, which began around the time of Purim, marked the end of open miracles and prophecy. We no longer experience open miracles, only hidden ones. Hashem is no longer openly manifest and clearly visible in this world; we no longer naturally source ourselves back to Hashem. In this stage, the world denies Hashem’s involvement in the world, claiming that life is meaningless, disconnected from anything higher. This age is one of atheism and nihilism, of accepting only that which can be quantified using science, logic, technology, and the five senses. Our challenge, therefore, is to choose to see Hashem; we must choose to see past the surface, to uncover the miraculous within the natural, the infinite within the finite, and the ethereal within the mundane.

Accompanying this transition from the first stage to the second was another unique shift, one that has become the very lifeblood of the Jewish People. When the curtain fell over the first stage of history, the stage of Torah She’baal Peh was born.

The

Transition to Torah She’baal Peh

The initial stage of Torah was that of Torah She’bechsav. Torah was transmitted through nevuah, reflecting the open reve -

lation of Hashem and truth in the world. There was little to no machlokes (argument) and virtually no human creativity, opinion, or input. If you had a question, you went to a Navi. The Navi made himself a receptacle to receive and transmit Hashem’s message. Once nevuah ended, however, the canon of Tanach was closed and a new age began: the age of Torah She’baal Peh.

The light faded, the darkness thickened, but something wondrous happened: The makom of Torah transitioned from Shamayim (the Heavens) to the hearts and minds of Klal Yisrael. “Lo ba’Shamayim hi” — the clarity and authority of Torah’s revelation is no longer in the Heavens, given clearly and freely from Hashem (Devarim 30:12; Bava Metzia 59a). It rests in the hearts and minds of the Jewish sages, who become the walking, living embodiments of Torah, radiating light in a darkened world. The gift of Torah clarity was lost; we now have to rebuild it ourselves, poring over the pages of Gemara and exerting every ounce of our strength to absorb its meaning.

The transition from Torah She’bechsav to Torah She’baal Peh introduced

a number of fundamental shifts in our relationship with Torah. These include the introduction of machlokes, a mode of “hearing” as opposed to “seeing,” and the priority of a sage over a prophet. Let us delve into each of these three topics in order to develop a deeper understanding of the evolution of Torah.

Machlokes and Multiple Truths

The first and most significant change between the two stages of history is the nature of truth. In the era of Torah She’bechsav, the emes was one-dimensional. There was no machlokes , no disagreement. But just as when white light is refracted through a prism various shards and shades of light manifest, the same occurred with the truth of Torah. The oneness of Torah truth is now expressed in multiplicity. The light has been shattered, scattered into disparate shards and shades of truth. Our job is to pick up the pieces and recreate that oneness. This is the deeper explanation of “Eilu va’eilu divrei Elokim chaim” — the principle used to signify that there is truth within each conflicting opinion of

the sages in the Talmud. (See Eruvin 13b and the Ritva’s commentary there.) When the holistic and higher truth breaks down into multiplicity, numerous smaller truths crystalize. Only by reconnecting these smaller truths back together can we recreate that original, higher truth. This is why machlokes now exists; each talmid chacham (Torah sage) fights for the truth of his own unique perspective, and from the unison of these smaller truths, the ultimate truth emanates.

This transition is clearly expressed in the evolution of Pirkei Avos. Pirkei Avos is a record of transmission between the sages of Klal Yisrael from the very beginning of Jewish history. The first Mishnah mentions the tradition that passed from Moshe, to Yehoshua, to the Neviim of the following generations, concluding with the Anshei K’nesses Hagedolah. Within this mesorah, no machlokes is mentioned. Only in the post-nevuah era does machlokes begin.

In the fourth Mishnah of Avos (1:4), the two dissenting opinions of Yosi Ben Yoezer and Yosi Ben Yochanan are mentioned. The Maharal (Derech Chaim 1:4) identifies this as the very first documented occurrence of machlokes. This characterizes the age of Torah She’baal Peh, where we must create oneness from multiplicity.

Static (Seeing) vs. Evolving (Hearing)

Another characteristic of the shift from Torah She’bechsav to Torah She’baal Peh is the switch from the mode of “seeing” to the mode of “hearing.” Torah She’bechsav, the Written Torah, is inherently linked to sight. On a straightforward level, it is a written text and is thus read with one’s eyes. On a deeper level, sight represents that which is static; when one sees, they witness everything in their field of vision at once. There is no process or

development. Torah was given to us as a complete book, closed and immutable.

Torah She’baal Peh, on the other hand, is associated with hearing. At the most basic level, it is an oral tradition, passed down from teacher to student, transmitted and received by means of speaking and listening. On a deeper level, the very nature of Torah She’baal Peh mandates this mode of transmission.

Committing something to writing renders it static and finalized, and writing down the Oral Torah would limit its wisdom to finite fragments of individual statements, causing the shards of truth to remain shattered and broken. When Torah She’baal Peh is transmitted orally, however, the shards remain in flux and in a malleable, abstracted form, allowing us to continually undergo the process of “hearing,” of putting the pieces together in the hopes of creating true Torah oneness. It is for this reason that Torah She’baal Peh was not meant to be written down. However, Chazal realized the great need to write it down in order to ensure that we do not forget the mesorah. Therefore, to retain the mesorah of Torah She’baal Peh, while still maintaining its “baal peh” identity, Chazal created an extraordinary solution, striking a beautiful balance. They wrote the Gemara in such a way that the words, while recorded in writing, cannot be understood without deep analysis and discussion. This ensures that we must still work and strive to recreate the oneness of Torah when learning Torah She’baal Peh Every single line of Talmud requires us to fill in the blanks and connect all the pieces together. Every single concept has endless commentary, requires comprehensive background knowledge, and leads us on a journey into the infinite depths of Torah. This is also why learning Gemara requires a rebbi-talmid relationship. One cannot simply open a Gemara and learn it; proper understanding requires breaking down the text, asking questions, advocating for alternate opinions, and ultimately, the direction of a teacher. In essence, Torah She’baal Peh was never written down. All that was written were the “seeds” necessary to guide us back into the sea of Torah She’baal Peh.

The very process of learning Gemara represents man’s search for truth. It requires a constant process of breakdown and rebuilding. The process begins with a theory, which one then breaks down and refines until an improved theory emerges, at which point the process repeats. (While Hegel coined this as “thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,” Jewish wisdom has always taught this concept through the principles

of chessed (starting point), din (qualification, limitation), and tiferes (harmony, balance).) Learning Torah She’baal Peh is an ongoing process, and the body of Oral Torah is continuously growing and developing. Every Jew has the potential to add chiddushim and insights to the mesorah of Torah She’baal Peh.

The connection between Torah She’baal Peh and “hearing” is evident throughout; Torah She’baal Peh itself begins by discussing the laws of Shema (Berachos 1:1). Furthermore, this Mishnah discusses saying Shema at night. One cannot see in the dark but only listen. The entire mode of Torah She’baal Peh is hearing — listening in the dark and putting the pieces together, creating clarity amidst chaos and confusion, and sourcing the shards of truth back to their original oneness. It is only once you have “listened,” i.e., accomplished “Shema,” that you can truly “see” the oneness of Torah. (It is fascinating to note that the first masechta of Torah She’baal Peh is Berachos. A bracha represents the transition from oneness to twoness, but it also represents the connection between twoness and its original oneness. The first masechta of Torah She’baal Peh is Berachos, as the essence of Torah She’baal Peh is taking the shards of twoness and recreating the original oneness of Torah truth, the very essence of a bracha. In our next article, we will delve deeper into this fascinating topic and try to understand it on an even deeper level.

Rabbi Shmuel Reichman is the author of the bestselling book, “The Journey to Your Ultimate Self,” which serves as an inspiring gateway into deeper Jewish thought. He is an educator and speaker who has lectured internationally on topics of Torah thought, Jewish medical ethics, psychology, and leadership. He is also the founder and CEO of Self-Mastery Academy, the transformative online self-development course based on the principles of high-performance psychology and Torah. After obtaining his BA from Yeshiva University, he received Semicha from Yeshiva University’s RIETS, a master’s degree in education from Azrieli Graduate School, and a master’s degree in Jewish Thought from Bernard Revel Graduate School. He then spent a year studying at Harvard as an Ivy Plus Scholar. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife and son where he is pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago.

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

Which is the better option: a yeshiva located in a premises with a cave, dragon, and dungeon, or a brand-new, modern building? Why would anyone choose an ancient building over a new, state-of-the-art one?

The Gemara in Sanhedrin (38b) discusses a verse that could lead to heretical interpretations. The verse states, “Let us make man” (Bereishis 1:26). The Gemara explains that Rav Yehuda, in the name of Rav, taught that when the Holy One, Blessed is He, intended to create man, He first created a group of ministering angels and asked them, “Would you want us to make man in our image?”

Hashem consulted with the angels before creating man. Furthermore, the phrase “let us make man” implies a collaborative effort, which could indicate a plurality in Creation. However, it is crucial to understand that Hashem alone created man and did not require any input. Rashi on the Chumash explains that Hashem was imparting a lesson in humility; one should seek advice from those of lesser stature. Hashem consulted with the ministering angels to encourage us to do the same. If Hashem, who needs no advice, consulted with angels, then certainly we should seek counsel from those of lesser stature, even if we feel we do not need it.

An intellectually honest individual will recognize that Hashem alone created man, as demonstrated in the subsequent verse that describes man’s creation with the word “Vayivra,” meaning “and He created.” This clearly indicates that only Hashem was responsible for the creation of man. The plural verb used in the previous verse conveys a moral lesson about consulting with those of lesser stature.

The Alter of Slabodka emphasized that this Gemara highlights the importance of moral lessons. Teaching this principle was deemed worthwhile, even at the risk that some might misinterpret the Torah and suggest a plurality in Creation.

The Maayana Shel Torah highlights a

Delving into the Daf

Words of Advice

By Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

profound lesson about the timing of Hashem’s consultation with the ministering Angels about creating man. This occurred after the creation of the entire world. Man’s role is the culmination of Creation. As elucidated in Sanhedrin 39a, without man, the world lacks purpose.

This sequence teaches us the importance of remaining open to advice and reconsideration, even in the advanced stages of a project. It’s tempting to believe that a project’s completion is inevitable as it nears its end. However, Hashem’s example demonstrates that the option to abandon a project always exists.

Rav Henoch Leibowitz, zt”l, the Rosh HaYeshiva of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, took the entire yeshiva to Eretz Yisrael for a year on two occasions. In the 1990s, he decided to do it again, and the yeshiva was filled with excitement as people began to make various plans. However, one morning, he requested that his shtender be placed on the bima. He cited the above Maayana Shel Torah and explained that despite all the preparations, time, and effort that had been invested, they needed to be ready to abandon the idea if it no longer seemed appropriate.

He acknowledged that there would inevitably be individuals who would suffer if the yeshiva went to Israel for a year, and therefore, the project must be abandoned

even at such a late stage.

For many years, Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim sought to relocate from its Forest Hills location. The building was not originally designed as a yeshiva. The back wall of the Beis Medrash featured two square openings intended for movie projectors, and the study hall was primarily built underground to prevent light from interfering with the films. A poorly lit side room, referred to as “the cave,” housed mechanical equipment as well as racks of bookshelves for seforim. JEP of Long Island also had to use this space for their operations. Bochurim stored their tefillin there, and if, heaven forbid, a bochur missed davening, he would pray in this room, earning the nickname “caveman.” Every square foot was utilized, and there were even a few shelves of seforim for sale.

The dormitory facilities were overcrowded. One year, a Purim play humorously depicted a dormitory room with ten mattresses stacked directly on top of each other. As someone entered to wake the boys, arms would protrude from between each mattress!

The dining room was originally a projection hall and lacked central heating. Instead, there was a large commercial heater in the corner affectionately known as “the dragon.” When it became too hot, a call would go out to “put the dragon to sleep.”

Due to limited space, an additional

room on the first floor was converted into a dormitory, which was nicknamed “the dungeon” because of its below-ground location.

In the high school and dormitory wing, the hallways were too narrow for two people to pass each other comfortably. Many can recall the persistent roof leak in front of the main office. Rav Avrohom Ginzberg, zt”l, the long-time executive director of Chofetz Chaim, once jokingly remarked, “If the building catches fire, just take out the seforim and let it burn!”

With this background, one can imagine how excited the Rosh HaYeshiva was when the Yeshiva finally built a state-of-the-art, spacious building in Kew Gardens Hills. This marked the culmination of half-a-century of effort. However, some controversy arose. A group opposed the Yeshiva’s relocation and requested a meeting with the Rosh HaYeshiva. HaRav Yosef Singer, shlita, the menahel of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, exclaimed, “The building is already constructed! The Yeshiva will be relocating soon! What is there to discuss?!?” Nonetheless, the Rosh HaYeshiva was prepared to forego the long-awaited building if daas Torah dictated such a decision. The Rosh HaYeshiva was willing to live with the cave, dungeon, and dragon if that course of action proved correct.

Even after considerable effort and investment, the willingness to reassess and potentially abandon a project in light of changing circumstances reflects a deep commitment to the Torah ideals. As we navigate the complexities of our own endeavors, may we carry this lesson with us, ensuring that our actions remain aligned with our Torah regardless of how far along we are in our journeys.

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

How Pigs Helped Us All Keep Kosher Better

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

It happened in the late 1950s. But first, a brief description of a problem that really has nothing to do with us.

It happens to be that a pig can sometimes be, well, a pig. And sometimes, a pig can be so into itself and not care about his or her fellow pig and start munching on a fellow pig’s ears and/or tail. This cannibalistic practice, of course, is not very good news for pig farmers.

Enter Macfarlan Smith, a 200-plus year pharmaceutical company located in Edinburgh, Scotland. They were working on inventing a new type of local anesthetic one that enhanced the use of lidocaine as a dental anesthetic when by accident they discovered a bitter truth. They accidentally created the bitterest item known to man –denatonium benzoate. And they called it, “Bitrex.”

Someone then thought of an einfal (that’s Yiddish for brilliant idea). Why not use this new item and put it in a greasytype paint in order to coat the ears and tails of the potential victims of the cannibal pigs? It worked. It was first implemented on a Danish pig farm in the late 1950s and spread throughout the 1960s.

In the 1980s, a second einfal developed. Why not use it to deter young children from ingesting poisonous chemicals? This, too, worked beautifully.

And finally, the third einfal. We know that when milk falls on the outside of hot fleishig pot, it causes serious problems of treifing up the pot and possibly the food. This question has particular relevance for factories and industrial food production, especially those that use jacketed steam systems and or pipes for heating that need to be kashered. The discussion is rooted in Shulchan Aruch Yoreh De’ah 92:5. We will first discuss the einfal and then the different positions of the poskim on this issue. The third einfal was to introduce Bitrex into the water behind the steam jacket. This would prevent the need for dumping the water in the steam jacketed system which heightens the production costs.

The Most Stringent Position

The Smag (Lavin 140) presents the strictest approach. According to his understanding, when a drop of milk falls on the outside of a meat pot during cooking, the taste travels throughout

the Beis Yosef YD 96:5) and the Ri present a detailed two-stage process of taste transfer. They explain that the milk drop can spread up to sixty times its volume in the pot’s walls, making that section of the wall non-kosher. Subsequently,

Why not use this new item and put it in a greasy-type paint in order to coat the ears and tails of the potential victims of the cannibal pigs?

the entire vessel. This makes the pot and its contents non-kosher, regardless of the volume ratio between the milk and the food. Even if the pot contains more than sixty times the volume of the milk drop, everything remains assur.

The Intermediate Approaches

The Maharam M’Rottenberg (cited in

this affected area of the wall can make the food inside non-kosher unless there is sixty times the volume of the affected wall area. This effectively means the food must be 3,600 times the volume of the original milk drop to remain kosher.

The Smak (213) offers a nuanced compromise position that depends on where the milk falls. If the drop lands

on the outside of the pot below the food line, it is completely absorbed into the food and can be nullified with a sixtyto-one ratio. However, if the drop falls above the food line, it makes the wall area non-kosher up to sixty times its volume, which in turn requires sixty times that amount of food to remain kosher. The Shulchan Aruch (96:5) adopts this position.

The Most Meikil View

The Raavan (272 and 311) presents the most lenient approach, stating that the milk drop is automatically dispersed and nullified if the pot walls contain sixty times its volume.

The Textual Foundation

These different positions stem from different pshatim in the Gemara in Zevachim 96b. The passage can be understood in three ways: either it demonstrates that absorptions travel completely throughout the pot walls (as per the Smag), that absorptions are limited to the cooking area (following the Maharam), or that the matter remains unresolved (as suggested by the Smak).

A Note About the Tur

Also a bit of a tumul about what the Tur holds in 92:5. While the Beis Yoseph understands the Tur as holding that milk spreads in stages and makes everything forbidden, the Bach (92:10) and Taz (92:19) argue that this is not actually the Tur’s position, but rather he was merely discussing the Maharam’s view.

And that, in a nutshell, is how cannibal pigs helped make kosherizing factories easier and bring down the price and time involved in koshering.

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

Iparticipated in my first challah bake to celebrate and remember the Bibas family.

As we await the details of the hostage deal, angry over the published demands being put forth by Hamas, we continue to carry the heavy burden of worry over the fate of our imprisoned, long-suffering men, women and children. I am not alone in my total lack of understanding about the conditions that are being put on the table by Hamas.

Even more puzzling, so angry, is the response of people, especially world leaders, who support Hamas and promote the destruction of Israel and the Jews. A trusted friend recently recommended a book by Dara Horn, “People Love Dead Jews,” a collection of essays exploring the exploitation of Jewish history, the rise of antisemitism, and, among other concerns, advocating for Jewish respect.

I believe Horn’s premise is right as certainly it seems that more and more, people are not happy with live ones.

Israel and its people are tired.

I don’t bake challah, although I have always thought about doing it. I guess that desire will now reside in the place wherein Bob wants to learn to do it. Our daughter Rachel (a private chef who bakes delicious ones) lovingly cautioned him that in order

School of Thought

Still Waiting for the Bibas Family

By Barbara Deutsch

to make good challah, you need powerful hands; he may no longer have the hand strength needed in his aging fingers.

Undeterred, he wants to try.

Challah and Jewish women enjoy a visceral connection; challah is a celebratory bread that sits proudly on the table at simchas, all holiday meals (not Pesach) and every Shabbat. Women baking challah to -

lated causes after the outbreak. Women, young to old, from all over Jerusalem and the world come together to sing, dance, eat (of course, there is food) and daven for the hostages. The Bibas family event that I attended marked the 60th challah bake.

Not everyone actually bakes a challah; there is a designated one that is prepared by the guest speaker, in this case the Bibas

As they soared, the balloons found each other in the sky and flew away together.

gether as a group is considered universally healing – gathering the ingredients, mixing them together, working the dough, adding water to get the right consistency, etc., all makes for a lot of hard work.

Waiting for the soft, doughy mixture to rise adds to the anticipation of the final step of separating a piece of dough, saying the special bracha, and burning it. This process reinforces a Jewish core belief of not “having it all” by making an offering.

Chabad of Talbiya and Mamilla began hosting Challah Bakes to benefit war-re -

family sister; some women bring their prepared dough from home so that they can participate in the communal hafrashat challah bracha: Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to separate challah.

It’s a very powerful communal moment.

All participants were asked to write messages of support to the hostages. These small strips of paper were then attached to the strings of hundreds of

balloons. We stood together holding our message-bearing balloons as the Bibas family’s sister/aunt made the bracha for her very first time.

It is customary to give tzedakah, small change, after the recitation. I searched my bag for some change and came up empty. But when I put my hand in my pocket, I was surprised to feel a hard, round object; it was the 10 shekel coin I had found on the ground that morning.

The women then gathered in the courtyard with our balloons and tears. Together, we carefully released the balloons to their fate. As they soared, the balloons found each other in the sky and flew away together.

I closed my eyes and imagined that the balloons would be spotted by the hostages and seen as the sign for the long-awaited freedom that should and must be theirs now!

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.

“RInvisible Tribe Stories of strength and encouragement  for children coping with the loss of a parent

by Sara MiriaM GroSS

emember Niagara Falls — the Maid of the Mist boat ride?” Sarah asked. She pointed to a photo in the cream-colored album. “When you forgot to put on the hood of your raincoat?”

“Only I’m allowed to remember that,” said Yehudis. “But who could forget? My hair got soaked! Good thing Ima had brought towels in the car.”

“Yeah…” Sarah reflected. “Ima was ready for anything.”

There was no room on the two-seater couch, so eleven-year-old Akiva sat on a metal folding chair next to his big sisters, looking over their shoulders and listening in. He was thirsty and needed water. But more than that, he needed to stay in that chair and listen. Even though none of those memories were familiar. This was their “before” life.

Seven years younger than his big sisters, Akiva wasn’t only a different generation, he sometimes felt he’d been born into a different family. A family in which Ima was sick and couldn’t take trips to Niagara Falls, Bear Mountain, Miami, or even the grocery store.

Ima had an adjustable hospital bed in her room, and Akiva was happy when she was in it — because that meant she wasn’t in the hospital for treatment.

Sarah and Yehudis had a healthy mother — one who shopped with them and baked birthday cakes and even took them bowling. That was so hard to believe. Ima lifting a bowling ball? Some days she had needed Akiva to lift the blanket on her bed.

Enough, Akiva decided as he pulled himself off the uncomfortable chair. I’m so thirsty, my throat hurts.

The walk from the living room to the kitchen took longer as Akiva thought about his morning. Why did Bentzy have to talk and talk about his mother? A little is okay — but to go on and on? His ima bought him a drone for his birthday, and she took him out to eat at that new restaurant, and she — doesn’t he remember that I don’t have an ima? If I had a friend who lost their ima or abba, I wouldn’t be like that.

Akiva filled a tall green cup with water and tossed in three ice cubes. He grabbed a handful of chocolate chip cookies from a bag and sat down at the kitchen table.

That’s when the ambulance siren began to wail. Is someone sick? he wondered. He went to the window but couldn’t see anything. Must be the other end of the block, he decided. He said a perek of Tehillim, sighed,

then started on his snack.

By the next morning, everyone in Cresthill knew: Mr. Avigdor Sonnenberg, a young father from the neighborhood, had passed away suddenly the day before.

Akiva sat on his bed and scrunched his eyes closed as tightly as he could. Maybe if he kept them closed long enough, when he’d open them it wouldn’t be true?

The Sonnenbergs had eight kids, and the oldest was only fifteen. So many new yesomim…and right on his street, too. Mostly girls, so Akiva couldn’t do much.

But maybe I could do something for Dov? he thought once his eyes were open and reality hadn’t changed. Tenyear-old Dov was the Sonnenbergs’ oldest son. Not that Akiva had ever been close with him, but unfortunately, now they had a lot more in common…

A few weeks after the shivah, Akiva ran into Dov in the playground and split his chocolate bar in half for the two of them.

Then, a few days after that, Akiva found himself picking up the phone and calling Dov to invite him over to play. They played Monopoly and had ice cream. Just normal stuff.

“I like that you play with me like I’m the same kid,” Dov said between licks of vanilla ice cream.

“You are the same,” Akiva replied. “I mean, sort of.”

The boys exchanged knowing looks.

“Here,” Abba called out to Akiva as he walked in the door after Maariv, waving a piece of paper. “The shul’s having a father-and-son trip, and a barbeque afterward.”

Akiva took the yellow-and-blue flyer and read every word.

“That sounds fun…” he said, “and sad.”

“Sad?”

“Yeah. ’Cause who is Dov gonna go with?”

“Oh… Well… Maybe an uncle or a cousin could go with him. I’m sure it doesn’t mean only a father.”

“Then maybe they shouldn’t write it that way,” Akiva said in a shaky voice.

“You might be right,” Abba said. “But our family understands that better because of what we went through…

“I have an idea. Let’s call Rav Shusterman and talk about it. Avos U’Banim is about to start up again, and Dov will have the same problem with that. Let’s fix things so he feels good the whole year!” Akiva declared.

“Yes. We’ll figure it out. You know, some shuls have

started calling it Dor L’Dor instead,” Abba said. “Maybe we could do that, too.”

“And if Dov wants, could you take him along with us on the trip? Could we share you, Abba?”

“Sure,” said Abba. “Good idea.”

Akiva smiled.

It was another regular Sunday afternoon. The new kind of regular Sunday because Akiva and Dov were together. This time they were playing cards.

“I never thought we’d be friends,” Dov said as he took a new card from the draw pile. “Because we’re not in the same grade.”

“Right. But we’re both kind of old,” Akiva replied. “Don’t you feel older than the kids in your class sometimes?”

“Yeah, sometimes I’m almost eighty.” Dov looked down. “But when you and me play, I feel younger. And when we went on the trip together, I almost felt like we’re brothers.”

The boys sat quietly.

“You know what?” Akiva said, his green eyes sparkling with inspiration. “We’re like a tribe, you and me. We understand each other. We help each other. Only it’s an invisible tribe ’cause nobody who looks at us would know what connects us.”

“An invisible tribe? Sounds like something from a comic book,” Dov said. “I’ll go grab a cape and a sword from the Purim boxes!”

“Are two boys together called a tribe?” Dov wondered aloud.

“Who says we’re only two? There are kids like us all over — in Boro Park, Monsey, Lakewood. Los Angeles, Eretz Yisrael, even England and Australia.”

Dov sat quietly, considering Akiva’s words.

“A lot of kids with something major in common,” Akiva added. “And we’re connected to all of them. Even if we’ve never met.”

“A big, invisible tribe?” Dov asked.

“Yep,” Akiva replied, “we’re in it together.”

President Donald J. Trump

“The Golden Age of America Begins Right Now”

Below is a transcript of President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address after being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States

Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very, very much. Vice President Vance. Speaker Johnson. Sen. Thune. Chief Justice Roberts. Justices of the United States Supreme Court. President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, President Biden, Vice President Harris and my fellow citizens.

The golden age of America begins right now.

From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first.

Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end. And our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous and free. America will soon be greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before.

I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success. A tide of change is sweeping the country, sunlight is pouring over the entire world, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before. But first, we must be honest about the challenges we face. While they are plentiful, they will be annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing in the United States of America.

As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from

our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad. It fails to protect our magnificent law-abiding American citizens, but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.

We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders, or, more importantly, its own people. Our country can no longer give basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina. Been treated so badly. And other states who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago. Or more recently, Los Angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn. From weeks ago, without even a token of defense, they’re raging through the houses and communities, even affecting some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our

country, some of whom are sitting here right now. They don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting. But we can’t let this happen. Everyone is unable to do anything about it. That’s going to change. We have a public health system that does not deliver in times of disaster, yet more money is spent on it than any country anywhere in the world. And we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them. All of this will change starting today, and it will change very quickly.

My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed, their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.

Our liberties and our nation’s glorious destiny will no longer be denied. And we will immediately restore the integrity, competency and loyalty of America’s government.

Over the past eight years I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history. And I have learned a lot along the way. The journey to reclaim our Republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you. Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom, and indeed, to take my life.

Just a few months ago, in that beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by G-d to make America great again.

That is why, each day, under our administration of American patriots, we will be working to meet every crisis with dignity and power and strength. We

will move with purpose and speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed. For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day.

It is my hope that our recent presidential election will be remembered as the greatest and most consequential election in the history of our country. As our victory showed, the entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda, with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society: young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, urban, suburban, rural, and very importantly, we had a powerful win in all seven swing states, and the popular vote we won by millions of people.

To the Black and Hispanic communities, I want to thank you for the tremendous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your vote. We set records, and I will not forget it. I’ve heard your voices in the campaign, and I look forward to working with you in the years to come. Today is Martin Luther King Day and his honor, this will be a great honor. But in his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.

National unity is now returning to America, and confidence and pride is soaring like never before. In everything we do, my administration will be inspired by a strong pursuit of excellence and unrelenting success. We will not forget our country, we will not forget our constitution, and we will not forget our G-d. Can’t do that.

Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. It’s all about common sense.

First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. We will reinstate my Remain in Mexico policy. I will end the practice of catch and release. And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.

Under the orders I sign today, we will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gang criminal net-

works, bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities.

As commander-in-chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before. Next, I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices. The inflation crisis was caused by massive

“I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do.”

overspending and escalating energy prices. That is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill.

America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it. We’re going to use it.

We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world.

We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid

gold under our feet that will help to do it. With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers. In other words, you’ll be able to buy the car of your choice. We will build automobiles in America again at a rate that nobody could have dreamt possible just a few years ago. And thank you to the autoworkers of our nation for your inspiring vote of confidence. We did tremendously with their vote.

I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens. For this purpose, we are establishing the External Revenue Service, to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues. It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our treasury, coming from foreign sources.

The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before. To restore competence and effectiveness to our federal government, my administration will establish the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency.

After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.

Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents, something I know something about. We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again. Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law. And we are going to bring law and order back to our cities.

This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based. As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.

This week, I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate, with full back pay. And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty. It’s going to end immedi-

ately. Our armed forces will be free to focus on their sole mission: defeating America’s enemies.

Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.

My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be, a peacemaker and a unifier. I’m pleased to say that as of yesterday, one day before I assumed office, the hostages in the Middle East are coming back home to their families.

America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on Earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world. A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich, through tariffs and through talent. He was a natural businessman and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama after the United States. The United States — I mean, think of this — spent more money than ever spent on a project before and lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal. We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made. And Panama’s promise to us has been broken. The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated.

American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape, or form. And that includes the United States Navy. And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And we’re taking it back.

Above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization. So as we liberate our nation, we will lead it to new heights of victory and success. We will not be deterred. Together we will end the chronic disease epidemic and keep our children safe, healthy and disease-free.

The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our manifest destiny into

the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.

Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation. And right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation. Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds

“We will not forget our country, we will not forget our constitution, and we will not forget our G-d.”

from within our souls. Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth. No one comes close.

Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand. If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.

Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback. But as you see today, here I am. The American people have spoken.

I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do. In America, the impossible is what we do best.

From New York to Los Angeles, from Philadelphia to Phoenix, from Chicago to Miami, from Houston to right here in Washington, D.C., our country was forged and built by the generations of patriots who gave everything they had for our rights and for our freedom. They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steel workers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward, marched forward and let no obstacle defeat their spirit or their pride. Together, they laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and triumphed over every single challenge that they faced. After all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. With your help, we will restore American promise, and we will rebuild the nation that we love, and we love it so much.

We are one people, one family and one glorious nation under G-d. So to every parent who dreams for their child, and every child who dreams for their future, I am with you, I will fight for you and I will win for you. We are going to win like never before.

In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly. But we are going to bring it back and make it great again, greater than ever before. We will be a nation like no other, full of compassion, courage and exceptionalism. Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent and totally unpredictable.

America will be respected again and admired again, including by people of religion, faith and good will. We will be prosperous, we will be proud, we will be strong and we will win like never before. We will not be conquered, we will not be intimidated, we will not be broken and we will not fail. From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign and independent nation.

We will stand bravely, we will live proudly, we will dream boldly, and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans. The future’s ours. And our golden age has just begun. Thank you, G-d bless America, thank you all.

Nation

R’ Baruch Gartner Judaism, the Highest of the Highs

By Eliyahu RosEnBERg

Disclaimer: This article covers the topic of psychedelics, strong, dangerous substances of which their use are not condoned by this publication.

The boy looked to be in a trance. Among the crowd of people watching Rabbi Baruch Gartner speak, one young man stood out. The boy’s eyes, glued to the rabbi, were focused intensely on the speaker—and Rabbi Gartner noticed.

The speech ended. Rabbi Gartner stood on the sidelines. And then, the boy approached.

“Rabbi Gartner, I heard you on a podcast talking about psychedelics,” the young man said. “I listened to every word. And I have to tell you my story…”

“This was a beautiful, young man from a good family, who had been learning in yeshiva,” Rabbi Baruch Gartner recounts.

In His Words…

“And for several years, he’d been praying to Hashem, ‘Help me, Hashem. I want to get married.’ He had a specific problem that was preventing him from getting married. And he heard from a friend that there’s a psychedelic drug he could take that might solve his issue.”

Thus, the boy consulted with his rav about the drug’s halachic permissibility. And after getting the green light, he tried it out.

Lo and behold, as soon as he took the miracle drug, the young man’s problem magically faded away. He was ecstatic.

“You won’t believe it!” he told his friends and family. “This is the magic elixir. It took away my problem. You have to try it!”

“Then, a week later, he drank a glass of wine, and from that day on, his life turned to literal gehenom,” continues Rabbi Gartner. “He started seeing demons. He fell into a depression. And this has now been going on for several years. He came up to

My life’s work is connecting people who are on the outside to help them reintegrate and recognize the beauty, the power, the holiness, and the healthiness of our heritage: Judaism.

People think that their treasure, what they’re looking for, is out there. But really, they have to travel out there to find that, in truth, the treasure was inside of them all along.

People are looking for an easy way out. But that’s not going to happen. Easy is not the way out.

me and said, ‘I want to tell you how much I’m suffering.’ And he’s not addicted, he’s not doing it anymore. He’s suffering till this very day from just one episode.”

Oftentimes, when Rabbi Gartner tells over that story, someone interjects with, “Wait a minute. Of course, psychedelics can have side effects, but only a few people out of a thousand experience what happened to that boy.”

That may be true. But even so, we’re still, in Rabbi Gartner’s words, “talking about playing Russian roulette.”

* * *

Psychedelics are a subclass of drugs that induce hallucinations and feelings of euphoria.

Users of psychedelic drugs report experiencing altered states of consciousness, commonly known as trips. In other words, they see, hear, and feel things that aren’t actually there—an experience that could either traumatize them or “expand their consciousness,” making them realize that there’s a deeper reality to life.

When one has a so-called “good trip,” an experience involving positive hallucinations, one may feel spiritually enlightened, joyful, and calm. On the other hand, a “bad trip,” which features negative or even demonic hallucinations, could cause tremendous fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and, in extreme cases, suicidal thoughts.

Proponents of these substances claim their use can treat anxiety, depression, and addiction. Some people have become religious or more connected to G-d after experiencing a spiritual trip. And some individuals claim that psychedelics changed their entire personality or outlook on life.

But, on the other hand, psychedelics have destroyed the lives of many, including the boy whose story Rabbi Gartner shares.

Some, driven by curiosity or desperation, have experimented with psychedelic drugs and regretted it for the rest of their unbearable lives. The nightmarish risks, no matter how remote, could easily outweigh the perceived perks.

Though he doesn’t condone any drug use, Rabbi Baruch Gartner also doesn’t deny that, in some cases, a person may benefit from psychedelics. In extreme situations, the substances, like ordinary medicine, could help an individual if administered safely with supervision from a medical professional and rabbi.

But given the risks, Rabbi Gartner and most halachic authorities maintain that one may only use psychedelic drugs as a last resort.

“A person should first be going to therapy. A person should be doing a lot of things. For example, if you’re not using the free drug called exercise, which is known to make people happy, then you can’t really be serious; you’re not really searching for answers,” Rabbi Gartner declares. “You’re just perpetuating the problem by saying, ‘I tried this. I tried that, and I’ll try another thing.’ People are looking for an easy way out. But that’s not going to happen. Easy is not the way out.”

Indeed, psychedelic drugs, despite being illegal in most contexts, have become more mainstream in recent years. Yet, very little research has been conducted on these substances, with far too many misconceptions littering the subject. Many proponents of the drugs fail to acknowledge side effects, falsely branding psychedelics as absolutely safe. And far too many people speak highly of the substances’ effects, yet don’t acknowledge that there are real risks involved.

“I think the reason why psychedelics

are so popular today is because people are stuck. And the reason why they’re stuck is because we live in an affluent society. People have what they want, and they’re still not happy. They’re not successful in breaking through in their Judaism, and they’re looking for a way to take away their pain and get to the truth,” Rabbi Gartner explains.

“Now, just to take it back to my childhood: When I was young, I was serious about this topic. So, I studied it, and I went to the gurus of psychedelics. And they all said the same thing: A person can get through the doorway with these ‘medicines’, but at the end of the day, it’s just a door. And once a person goes through that door, he needs something—some kind of room, some kind of spiritual practice—to make the experience real.” * * *

Yaakov, a Jew from Krakow, kept having the same dream over and over again. He dreamed of a treasure hidden beneath a bridge in Prague.

Yaakov felt the dream was a surefire sign from G-d. And eventually, he could contain his curiosity no longer.

Thus, he journeyed to Prague in search of the treasure. Amazingly, when he arrived, he spotted the same bridge that was in his dream, despite never having seen the city in his life. The only issue: the bridge was heavily guarded. Thus, he left and came back, left and came back, left and came back, but to his dismay, the guards always remained.

Eventually, a suspicious soldier confronted Yaakov regarding his presence.

“Why do you keep coming here?” the soldier asked.

“I’ll tell the truth,” Yaakov confessed. “I had a dream that underneath this bridge, there’s a treasure. Come, let’s dig together, and we’ll split it!”

The soldier burst into laughter.

“You Jews, you’re all dreamers,” he said, chuckling. “Last night, I also had a dream—that in a little town called Krakow, in a little shack, under -

neath the oven, there’s a treasure. You think I’m going to travel there and look for that treasure? No way!”

“As soon as Yaakov heard this, he understood clearly: That was his house and that was his stove that the soldier dreamed about,” explains Rabbi Gartner. “He ran back home, and sure enough—this is a true story—he found a treasure. And with the money, he built a shul that people still visit today: Reb Yaakov’s shul in Krakow. What’s the moral of the story? People think that their treasure, what they’re looking for, is out there. But really, they have to travel out there to find that, in truth, the treasure was inside of them all along.”

As a teenager, Rabbi Baruch Gartner, unlike many of his hippie peers, was always on the lookout for truth.

Born and raised secular in Baltimore, Rabbi Gartner had one spiritual experience with Judaism as a child. When he opened the Aron Kodesh at his bar mitzvah, he saw Torah scrolls for the first time in his life. And suddenly, young Rabbi Gartner, in awe of the holy Sifrei Torah, began to shake uncontrollably.

That experience, which he believes to be supernatural, stuck with him. But his connection with Yiddishkeit, until years later, ended at that.

“I had the great advantage of being brought up around very affluent Jewish people. They weren’t at all religious, and they were, on the outside, extremely successful, but inside, miserable,” recalls Rabbi Gartner. “And I said, ‘This is not where I want to go.’ I was very lucky that I had this clarity from age 16 that I wasn’t part of this society, and I was looking for something deeper. But because I grew up among secular Jewish people, and I wasn’t exposed to real Judaism, it was clear to me that Judaism was not where I wanted to go.”

Thus, teenage Rabbi Gartner went a different route. He experimented with Eastern religion, trying to find the faith that he felt most connected to. And eventually, Rabbi Gartner dove headfirst into the world of psychedelics.

Being that it was the 1960s, his behavior wasn’t seen as all that peculiar. His fam-

ily thought that young Rabbi Gartner, like most hippies, was just trying to party. But he wasn’t interested in having a good time; he just wanted to find the truth.

Eventually, his family grew concerned with his spirituality and thus suggested that he give Judaism another shot.

Fast forward a few years, and at age twenty, the boy went on a trip to Israel—an experience that changed his life and later shaped him into the frum, happy person he is today.

Far too many Jews, blinded by the external world’s flashing lights, search for truth outside of Judaism, only to find that they had the real treasure all along: the priceless gift of Yiddishkeit. Like Reb Yaakov of Krakow, many people believe that what they’re searching for can be found in some other place, such as under the bridge in a faraway city or in a psychedelic experience.

But, as Rabbi Baruch Gartner discovered, the ultimate high in life cannot be achieved through drugs, but rather, only through connecting with Hashem through Torah and mitzvos. As he puts it, “Judaism is really the highest of the highs, the trip of all trips.”

Rabbi Gartner declares, “That’s my life’s work—connecting people who are on the outside, and helping them bridge the gap from the problems that they have in life and with Judaism—to help them reintegrate and recognize the beauty, the power, the holiness, and the healthiness of our heritage: Judaism.”

* * *

Six nights a week, Rabbi Baruch Gartner hosts the “Jerusalem Midnight Experience,” an energizing event that changes people’s lives.

The experience, which lasts for five hours after midnight, is based on Kabbalistic teachings from the Zohar, which says that at midnight, Hashem mourns the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash and comforts Himself by going to Gan Eden and listening to those on Earth learning Torah at midnight. Rabbi Gartner brings the participants to the Kotel, where they say the powerful midnight prayer, and then, they

learn in a kollel with 36 great tzaddikim.

“It’s in the middle of the night, but I’ve never had a person fall asleep on me. It’s very engaging, and it really is out of this world,” Rabbi Gartner explains. “The people who are up at that hour feel this energy. You could literally feel the holiness in the air. And I ask people, ‘Do you feel it?’ And they say, ‘Yes.’ It’s very energizing.”

The experience teaches participants how to connect to Hashem—which is a “high” like no other.

“How does a person cling to G-d? There’s a problem here. G-d’s like ‘fire.’ Thus, the Gemara says to cling to tzaddikim; to connect ourselves with people who embody the Torah in a way of joy and frumkeit,” shares Rabbi Gartner. “The tzaddikim are the way. They are the bridge for the people who are on the outside. We need to connect ourselves to the people who are happy. We need to connect ourselves to the people who are connected. Many people in America think, ‘Okay, I have a rabbi and I live in Ohio, and that’s good.’ Well, it’s great that you have a rabbi in Ohio, but is he happy? Is he connected? Does he inspire you? Does he daven the way you want to daven?”

That’s one of the secrets, as shared in Pirkei Avos, to living a spiritual life: make for yourself a rav. As the Gemara says: a person who’s connected to Hashem is like a walking Beis HaMikdash. Spending time with a happy and spiritual rabbi, who genuinely cares for and inspires us, can do wonders for our relationships with Hashem. There’s a reason Judaism is so community-centered: it’s difficult to connect to Hashem when we’re doing so without support from others.

Conversely, living life without a mentor—without a holy person to guide us—can lead us to feeling lost, disconnected, and deluded into believing the answers to life’s questions could be found elsewhere—like, say, in psychedelic experiences.

In reality, there’s no need to venture out into uncharted territory, risking our lives to search for an illusory treasure in Prague— because the real treasure, the greatest and only genuine high in life, could already be found within ourselves.

Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

I’ve noticed this as a common thread in my daughter’s 5-plus years in shidduchim. The guys she is best fit for and who like her the most are the ones she makes the most ridiculous excuses to end things with – the guys who my husband and I think will be the best for her, fine men with amazing middos and good character. Then, when the more glitzy men come along who aren’t as best matched and frankly have bad middos and character, she goes ga-ga over and then gets so upset when they end it.

In the past, we have tried explaining what is truly important in a marriage, but it falls on deaf ears. We have stepped back over the past year and have allowed her to do her own thing but would love to get some advice. Is there anything we can do to show her the light?

Thank you, Sam & Marla*, concerned parents

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”

Rebbetzin

Lisa Babich

Rebbetzin 5th Ave Synagogue

Thank you so much for your question as it is an important one. There is this phenomenon in life in which we tend to be attracted to either those who are not good for us or those who create a certain “chase.” It feels more fun and exciting for some people to experience a chase as it’s not as “boring” as the solid, stable guy. It is very hard to watch someone you love keep making immature choices and going for the wrong type of person. I do feel, however, that at a certain point, we have to let our kids make their own choices and learn through experience. This is not to say that if she is making a dangerous choice that you can’t step in, however, it may take some maturing or difficult experiences for your daughter to figure out what is truly important.

She should definitely be excited to marry her future husband, but I always describe the right one as bringing a feeling of immense security and safety. It may not be the same fireworks as the “bad boy” or the “chase,” but it is usually a very calming feeling.

It is hard not being able to make her see the light, so to speak, but you have been explaining these ideas to her for years and you are trying your best to get the message across. Perhaps a dating coach can help guide her and help her realize why she is attracted to the wrong things. There are many wonderful coaches out there who can help her gain some clarity and maturity to be ready for the right one.

Wishing you the best and lots of

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

What you are describing is actually quite common, and I appreciate you bringing this question to the panel. Although, unfortunately, there is no clear-cut answer anybody can give you, it is important for you as parents to know that you are not alone. The most important first step in every problem one faces with their children is to recognize that our children (as young or old as they may be) are their own person. As we navigate toddlerhood, elementary age, teenage years, and then as our kids enter adulthood, we, as parents, must undergo a cognitive transition that is extremely difficult. Our children become adults who must make their own choices and learn their own lessons, and sometimes these lessons will hurt. It understandably hurts as a parent to see your child making mistakes that you know could have been avoided. It is emotionally and physically painful to see the years go by as your daughter navigates her shidduchim in a way that resembles fake Hollywood movies rather than real, unfiltered life. As someone who has been through life, you know what factors are important in a relationship and marriage. Your daughter, however, is navigating her dating life with the complete opposite perspective. She does not seem to have the ability yet to process what is truly im-

portant in a long-term marriage partner. Her maturity level might be significantly low, or her ta’aiva for the “glitzy external” factors, as you describe it, might be too much for her to overcome.

The only thing you have control over right now is your relationship with your daughter. My advice for you is for you to develop a very raw and real accepting relationship with her, so she will get to a place where she will start to accept your advice. In the meantime, be positive and effusive when the nice, menschlech guys come around. Do not say anything negative about any insignificant factors which you may see in these guys. You both should work towards creating an atmosphere of a safe-haven for your daughter vs. an atmosphere of negativity and judgment zone. If the atmosphere at home towards her is the latter, she will just negate any advice you have altogether; remember, your goal is for her to truly want your input. Once she is able to accept your input, you can talk straight with her, offer book suggestions, and recommend a great therapist who can help her navigate her feelings.

I will never forget a conversation I had years ago with a close friend who gave me permission to share this without using names. She had broken off an engagement with a nice young man because he was (in her words) “not cool enough, and so nice it creeped me out.”

Eight months later, she got engaged to a new guy, and I watched as she saw stars and described how amazing the banter was, and how perfectly handsome, cool and adventurous he was. “He’s literally everything I was looking for,” she said as I congratulated her, however on the inside I was feeling very hesitant. Unfortunately, I spent many nights on the phone trying to be a listening ear while her marriage unraveled. Simply put, the guy she married turned out to be the absolute perfect boyfriend but the most horrible husband. She confided many times that had she gotten engaged to the first guy, she would have been so much happier. As we all know, everything is meant to be, but the lesson learned is obvious.

May your daughter have clarity, peace of mind, and find her true bashert very soon!

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey Galler

Your letter reminds me of what my mother always used to say: “The way you make your bed is the way you will sleep in it.” Unfortunately, sometimes, we must live with the unpleasant consequences of our actions.

It sounds like your daughter is personifying the well-known phenomenon, known as the Bad Boy Syndrome. A psychologist friend of mine explained that “some girls are attracted to ‘bad boys’ for a variety of reasons – whether it’s the thrill of the unpredictable nature of the relationship, a desire to ‘fix’ them, or the allure of taboo.”

A sociologist once pointed out that “bad Boys exude confidence like no one else. They walk into a room with a sense of self-assurance, oozing charisma. They offer a sense of boldness that is something that some women, especially those with a bit of self-doubt, find irresistible.”

Sadly, despite all the advice and explanations well-meaning parents or therapists may offer, it can be hard to change someone’s behavior. Your daughter is an independent adult, and while it’s difficult to watch, she might need to experience this lesson firsthand before it sinks in. Nevertheless, here’s a suggestion that might be helpful. Why not watch a movie together with your daughter that deals with this very theme? There are plenty of films that depict the dangers of getting involved with a Bad Boy.

One recent example is a movie from 2018 where the lead character, Elle, falls for the classic Bad Boy, her best friend’s older brother, Noah. Another, much darker example, is from 1996, where a young girl is swept off her feet by a charming but dangerous man who turns out to be a sociopath.

Perhaps our readers can recommend other movies, or books, with a similar premise. Watching these movies, or reading these types of books, together with your daughter might open up an opportunity to have a discussion about the reality of such relationships. Perhaps you and your daughter can discuss the lessons these characters have learned.

It might help her see that, while excitement and rebellion can seem enticing, qualities like kindness, stability, and mutual respect are what really matter in a long-term relationship.

Reader’s response

Yehuda Weingarten

Ican’t imagine how difficult this must be for you as parents, watching your daughter go through such an emotionally exhausting process. Dating truly is a journey of self-discovery. As one goes through it, the hope is to learn more about oneself, aspirations, and life goals while meeting new people. However, it can be especially challenging to navigate that process at a

younger age, all while watching peers get married and move forward in their lives.

As parents, it’s important to understand that—regardless of cultural norms—choosing someone to marry is a monumental decision. This is your daughter’s future life, the one she will be building and living every single day. It’s a deeply personal decision, and ultimately, she is the one who must feel confident in the choice she makes. Your role, then, becomes one of support: creating an environment where she feels empowered to explore her own values and priorities.

If your daughter was asking this question herself, the focus would likely be on helping her clarify what she is looking for in a partner. This clarity is vital for her to make a decision she can stand by

with confidence. For you, as parents, the best approach is to ask: How can we best support her in this process? This involves offering tender love and care, regardless of whether or not she seems to be fully listening at the moment. Your consistent support will go a long way, both now and in the future.

There are many approaches that could help her during this time, such as working with a dating coach, mentor, or someone who can guide her throughout the process. Having an impartial figure she can talk to might help her gain clarity in a way that feels supportive and nonjudgmental. Encouraging her to reflect on her aspirations and what truly matters to her in a marriage can also be incredibly helpful, but this often comes more naturally when it’s done in a safe, judgment-free environment.

It’s also important to acknowledge how difficult it is to have these broader

Pulling It All Together

The Navidaters

Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns. It’s clear how deeply you love your daughter and how invested you are in her happiness. Watching someone you care about make choices that feel misaligned with their best interests can be incredibly painful, especially when it’s your own child. Your letter reflects not just frustration but also wisdom and a heartfelt desire to guide her toward a fulfilling and meaningful relationship. First, I want to validate how hard this must be for you. You’re seeing your daughter gravitate toward partners who don’t seem to be the right fit while letting go of those who, in your eyes, hold the values and character traits that would support a strong marriage. It’s natural to want to intervene, but it’s also clear you’ve recognized the importance of stepping back and allowing her to learn from her own experiences. That’s a

courageous and wise choice, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

Dr. Shefali Tsa - bari talks about the concept of surrendering control when it comes to our children. As parents, we want to guide and protect, but ultimately, our children’s lives are their own to navigate. The process of growth often requires experiencing discomfort, disappointment, and even heartbreak. This doesn’t mean we step away completely—it means we shift from trying to control the outcome to being a steady, loving presence as they figure things out. It sounds like you’re already on this path, and I commend you for it.

Your daughter’s journey in shidduchim may be teaching her lessons she wouldn’t otherwise learn. Perhaps the more “glitzy” men are revealing what doesn’t work for

a dating or relationship question to the panel anonymously, please email

her, even if she doesn’t yet fully realize it. Growth often happens in the space between what we think we want and what we discover we need. Every relationship she enters, even the ones that don’t end well, offers her valuable insight into herself, her needs, and what truly matters to her.

Instead of focusing on what she might be missing in her decision-making, consider gently encouraging her to reflect on how she feels in each relationship. Without directing her to a specific conclusion, you might ask questions like:

• “How do you feel about yourself when you’re with him?”

• “Do you feel seen, respected, and supported?”

• “Does this relationship make you feel safe and authentic?”

These questions are not about pointing out flaws in the other person but about helping her tune into her own inner wisdom.

I also wonder if, as parents, you might explore your own attachment to the outcome. Dr. Shefali reminds us that our children’s paths are not ours to control or shape, but sometimes, without realizing it,

conversations with someone who has never experienced the complexities of marriage yet, feels the societal pressure to get married, and is excited for what this next chapter of life may bring. By focusing on understanding her perspective, listening deeply, and putting your own thoughts and feelings aside as she speaks, you can help her feel supported in navigating this process.

Sharing in the highs and lows of this journey is equally important. Celebrate the excitement of good dates, empathize with the disappointments, and be present with her throughout this process. People often take guidance from those they feel truly understand them. By being that understanding presence, you create an environment where she may feel more comfortable reflecting on her choices and recognize what’s truly important for her future.

May she find her zivug b’karov, iy”H !

we carry unconscious expectations about what their lives should look like. When these expectations aren’t met, it can stir feelings of disappointment, fear, or even frustration. Taking a step back to explore those feelings in yourselves—not to judge them but to understand them—can bring clarity and peace.

Lastly, it’s important to hold onto hope. Your daughter’s story is still unfolding, and she’s learning, even if it’s not immediately visible. Trust that the seeds you’ve planted, the values you’ve modeled, the love you’ve poured into her will guide her in time. She may need to take the scenic route, but the lessons she learns along the way will be uniquely her own.

For now, being her safe space, her source of unconditional love and support, is the greatest gift you can give. It may not “show her the light” in the way you’re hoping, but it will ensure she feels secure and grounded as she navigates her journey.

You are wonderful parents doing the hard work of loving and letting go. Keep trusting in her process—and in your own.

Warmly, Jennifer

Health & F tness Breaking Free from the Anxiety Trap How to Stop Feeding the Fear and Reclaim Your Life

By Rivka Kramer, PMHNP-BC

Sari is a 30-year-old woman who is intelligent, successful in her career, and well-loved by her family and friends. On the surface, she seems to have everything together, but beneath that exterior, anxiety is a constant companion. Despite her outward confidence, Sari’s anxiety grips her daily, influencing everything from social interactions to her personal routines.

For Sari, one of the biggest triggers is her close friend. Just thinking about spending time with this person sends her mind spiraling into a whirlwind of worry—What if I say the wrong thing? What if they judge me? What if I embarrass myself? These fears often make social events feel insurmountable, and she feels the urge to avoid them altogether. But avoiding anxiety-provoking situations doesn’t make the anxiety go away; in fact, it feeds it.

In this article, we’ll explore how anxiety disorders develop, how the people around us can unintentionally fuel the anxiety cycle, and how Sari’s experience highlights how we can stop feeding anxiety and break the cycle for good.

Understanding Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is more than just a passing feeling of nervousness—it’s a persistent, overwhelming sense of fear or dread that can linger even in the absence of a clear threat. Anxiety disorders, such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, and Specific Phobias, occur when the brain misinterprets normal situations as threats. As a result, a person with an anxiety disorder can find even the most mundane tasks daunting.

For Sari, her anxiety is triggered mainly by social situations, especially when she anticipates spending time with her friend. Even though her friend has never been anything but supportive, Sari’s mind runs wild with fear of judg-

ment or saying something awkward. The thought of these interactions makes her heart race, and the anticipation becomes overwhelming.

This kind of anxiety is especially tricky because it tends to be self-perpetuating. The more Sari avoids social situations or seeks reassurance, the stronger her anxiety becomes. Over time, instead of diminishing, her fears intensify, trapping her in a cycle that feels nearly impossible to escape.

The Anxiety Cycle: How Avoidance Fuels Fear

Anxiety disorders create a cycle that repeats itself over and over, often escalating in intensity. In Sari’s case, the cycle begins with a trigger, which might be a simple social situation with her friend. The fear of being judged or saying something wrong sets her mind racing, and the cycle kicks into full gear:

1.

Triggering Event

Sari’s anxiety might begin with the thought of meeting her friend, leading her to imagine worst-case scenarios: What if I embarrass myself? What if they judge me? What if I say the wrong thing? These anxious thoughts send her mind spiraling, making the upcoming event seem more like a threat than a simple social gathering.

2. Anxiety Response

Once triggered, Sari’s body enters a heightened state of alert. Her heart starts racing, her palms sweat, and her stomach tightens with tension. Even though the event is not truly dangerous, her brain perceives it as a threat, activating the fight-or-flight response. This intense physical reaction makes the situation feel much more dangerous than it actually is.

3. Avoidance or Reassurance-Seeking

To cope with the overwhelming fear, Sari might cancel plans with her friend or back out at the last minute. Alternatively, if she does go through with it, she might seek constant reassurance from others: Do you think everything will be okay? Should I wear this? What if they don’t like me? While these behaviors provide temporary relief, they don’t address the root cause of her anxiety and ultimately reinforce the cycle.

4.

Reinforcing the Anxiety

Avoiding the event or seeking reassurance only strengthens Sari’s anxiety over time. By avoiding the social situation, her brain doesn’t learn that these events are manageable, reinforcing the idea that they are too dangerous to face without assistance. With each instance of avoidance, the anxiety grows stronger, making it more difficult to face similar situations

in the future.

This cycle can feel exhausting, but it’s important to recognize that it’s self-reinforcing. The more Sari avoids or seeks reassurance, the more her anxiety grows, turning ordinary social interactions into daunting challenges.

Enabling Behaviors: How Well-Meaning Actions Can Make Anxiety Worse

One of the major challenges for people with anxiety disorders is that well-meaning family and friends can unintentionally reinforce the anxiety cycle. Sari’s family and friends, including the friend who triggers her anxiety, often try to ease her distress by offering reassurance or accommodating her fears. While their intentions are good, these behaviors can actually make it harder for Sari to overcome her anxiety.

Enabling occurs when others respond to a person’s anxiety by making things easier for them—by avoiding triggers or offering constant reassurance. While this may reduce anxiety in the short term, it prevents the person from learning how to face their fears on their own. By shielding someone from situations that cause anxiety, you reinforce the belief that they can’t handle the situation without help.

In Sari’s case, her friend might avoid certain topics of conversation or repeatedly reassure her that everything will be fine. Though this is done out of care, it inadvertently reinforces Sari’s belief that her fears are valid, preventing her from learning how to manage them on her own. Over time, these enabling behaviors create a cycle where Sari’s anxiety continues to grow, as she becomes less and less confident in her ability to cope.

Breaking the Anxiety Cycle: How to Take Back Control

The good news is that anxiety can be managed and even overcome. Breaking

the cycle of anxiety requires a shift in how Sari responds to her fears. By facing anxiety head-on rather than avoiding it, she can start to take back control. Here are some strategies that can help break the cycle:

1. Gradual Exposure

Gradual exposure is one of the most effective ways to reduce anxiety. This involves slowly and intentionally confronting feared situations in small, manageable steps. For Sari, this might mean starting with shorter interactions with her friend—like a quick coffee or a brief chat—before working up to longer, more complex social events. By taking small steps, she can desensitize herself to the anxiety-provoking situations, making them feel less intimidating over time.

2. Encouraging Self-Sufficiency

It’s essential for Sari to learn how to manage her anxiety independently, rather than relying on others for constant reassurance. This could mean practicing deep breathing, mindfulness, or progressive muscle relaxation before and during stressful situations. These techniques can help Sari stay calm and grounded when anxiety arises, allowing her to regain control of her physical and

emotional responses.

3. Cognitive Restructuring

Much of Sari’s anxiety is rooted in irrational, negative thoughts. Thoughts like “What if I mess up?” or “What if they don’t like me?” are often exaggerated and don’t reflect reality. In therapy, Sari can learn to identify these distorted thoughts and challenge them. Instead of assuming the worst, she can ask herself: What’s the evidence for this thought?

For example, simply attending a social event for a brief time, engaging in a light conversation, or showing up without feeling overwhelmed are all small victories that reinforce her ability to cope. With each success, Sari’s confidence grows, and she begins to view anxiety-provoking situations as less daunting.

5.

Support Without Enabling

Family and friends can provide cru-

A person with an anxiety disorder can find even the most mundane tasks daunting.

How likely is it that something bad will happen? Reframing these negative thoughts helps reduce anxiety by putting the situation into perspective.

4. Building Confidence Through Small Wins

Each time Sari faces a feared situation and successfully manages it, she builds confidence. These small wins accumulate over time, gradually changing the way her brain responds to anxiety.

cial support, but it’s important that they don’t enable Sari’s anxiety by constantly reassuring her or accommodating her fears. Instead, they can offer emotional support while gently encouraging her to face her fears. By offering encouragement without “fixing” the situation, Sari can begin to feel empowered to handle anxiety on her own. Support without enabling helps her build resilience and develop the skills necessary to break the cycle.

Reclaiming Your Life from Anxiety

Sari’s journey with anxiety is ongoing, but by understanding the anxiety cycle and recognizing how enabling behaviors can perpetuate it, she is beginning to break free. Through gradual exposure, building self-sufficiency, and challenging negative thoughts, Sari is slowly taking back control of her life.

Overcoming anxiety isn’t easy – it requires time, patience, and consistent effort. But with the right strategies, support, and persistence, anyone, including Sari, can stop feeding the fear and break the cycle. The key is to recognize that while anxiety may feel overwhelming, it doesn’t have to control your life. By taking small, deliberate steps, you can reclaim your peace of mind and begin living with confidence once again.

Rivka Kramer is a Board Certified Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. She has an Integrative psychiatric private practice based in Cedarhurst, NY. She serves as a member of the board of JANPPA, the Jewish American Nurse Practitioner Psychiatric Association. She can be reached at 516-945-9443.

Parenting Pearls Bringing Them Home

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

Last week, the proposed hostage deal was the major conversation topic. Emotions were high, and the discussions were very serious. Every one of us wants to see each of our brothers and sisters return home safely, but there were mixed opinions on the other details. While there are those with strong political influence that can make a practical change, most of us are not in that category, and our private arguments with each other will not change the eventual outcome. Ultimately, tefillos and tears are the only means we have to positively

influence these events.

I avoid politics in this column, and I plan on continuing that policy. During all the arguing and debating, I noticed two comments that really made an impression on me. The first was a call for united tefillos with the awareness that whether we love or hate the details, we all recognize the need to appeal to our Father in Heaven. The second comment said simply that whatever deal goes through was the ratzon Hashem, because otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. This second comment provided much comfort and a

crucial reminder of Who is in charge and moving the players.

We have an obligation to do our hishtadlus and to daven, but ultimately, it’s not in our hands. The exact role of hishtadlus and tefillos and their impact is beyond understanding, but all of us can enhance our awareness of Hashem’s leadership and control over the world and our personal lives.

While some of the topics in this article feel a little overwhelming to discuss, this is a parenting column and I firmly believe that children learn best from their parents’ (hopefully) positive examples. When we live a life of truth then our children can absorb the message naturally. With this in mind I wanted to spend a little time discussing the ways we can bring this crucial message of Hashem’s continuous presence into both our lives and our parenting. This article is written with much humility and hope that only the emes will be conveyed. I am not a rav or rebbetzen, and I advise families to seek their own guidance for more details.

A Few Thoughts On Hashgacha Pratis

As Torah Jews, we know nothing can happen without Hashem’s permission or awareness. Nothing is haphazard, and every detail is with intention and wisdom. While we have free will and the ability to choose, that does not take away from Hashem’s total oversight. The lives of each hostage are guided by the same Hand that holds ours here. Every detail of any deal, each moment that it is imple -

mented, and the results are all with the same wisdom that oversees even the most seemingly mundane aspects of our lives. It can be overwhelming to think of this concept with our finite mental capabilities, yet we can still apply this awareness throughout our daily lives. It’s easy to say, “Hashem is in control,” but it takes deep introspection and practice to implement this in our personal day. Our children know when we are saying mere words, and they respect us when they see us actively live this truth.

We reassure children that everything is in Hashem’s Hands and for the best, but that can be misleading to a young mind. Children may erroneously think this means they are getting what they want. Children can become disappointed, frustrated and upset if they expect the Divine Plan to run according to their personal expectations and that doesn’t happen. Being aware of Hashem’s presence doesn’t mean we get what we want; it means that whatever does happen was with intent and purpose. Seemingly bad and painful things can happen, but that doesn’t take away from there being intent behind it, and we don’t need to fully understand something to remember The Source of it. Similarly, everything being “for the best” doesn’t mean it’ll be what we hoped for or what feels like the best option to us. We know painful things exist in this world, and we don’t need to understand why it’s part of the plan to recognize that there is a plan. Hashem can love us more than humanly possible yet still give us

Emily Damari with her mother Amanda

challenges and discomfort or pain on our journey.

There is so much uncertainty and stress but having an awareness that Someone is running things can do much to relieve some of this tension. People with this awareness will tell you how much calmer they are and even how much easier it is to forgive others for small slights since they recognize they were meant to have this experience.

As much as working on this middah will improve our personal lives, it will change the way we think and act, a side effect that will naturally spill over on to our children. Children repeat what they hear, and they learn from what they see. Even young children can make comments demonstrating emunah, bitachon or another deep concept, and you know they learned it somewhere.

Media Precautions

Over the next few weeks, I expect the news to have a greater place in our daily schedule. As parents, we need to be mindful of how each of our actions affect our children.

Children should not be exposed to disturbing photos or details. Without even knowing the nuanced details, we already

know their experiences were horrific. Based on previous hostage returns and the current news being posted, there will likely be many more reports providing information of what these individuals experienced. While I question the appropriateness of publishing photos and details

that most of the news exposure children receive is through these indirect means. Children will hear things are happening, and parents should anticipate difficult questions. The reality is that many of these questions don’t have answers because some things are beyond human

While we have free will and the ability to choose, that does not take away from Hashem’s total oversight.

of their painful and private moments, it’s certainly not something children should see. After October 7, many adults experienced a variety of symptoms, such as trouble sleeping. Children, too, are at risk of displaying signs of trauma and terror after being exposed to information that isn’t appropriate for them.

Parents should be mindful to not check the news or discuss it – even among themselves – with children in the vicinity. Children tend to have excellent vision and hearing when they want to. I suspect

comprehension. Still, children will look to us to provide understanding and comfort. Don’t avoid their questions but do use developmentally appropriate language.

Parents need to self-regulate and think carefully about how much news is healthy for themselves. For many, checking the news can become almost obsessive and the details all consuming. Daven, say Tehillim, but try to limit your news intake to what you can emotionally tolerate. Parents should not hesitate or be embarrassed to seek professional help for

themselves or their child. Perhaps help is needed to assist in answering their questions or to provide support during a turbulent time for Klal Yisroel. As parents, the stronger we are emotionally, the more we can devote to our precious children. It’s important to remember that seeking help is ultimately a strength and not a sign of weakness.

While I know our family members returning from captivity are unlikely to read this column, I still want to give them a warm welcome home and let them know we love them and waited for them. One important lesson we learned from this painful time period is how truly connected we are to each other. Keep davening – our tefillos are more important than ever, and our brothers and sisters will still need a long-term refuah once they are back. May Hashem bring all of Klal Yisroel home and protect us wherever we are as we await the ultimate geulah, bimheira b’yameinu.

Sara Rayvych, MSEd, has her master’s in general and special education. She has been homeschooling for over 10 years in Far Rockaway. She can be contacted at RayvychHomeschool@gmail.com.

School of Thought

By Etti Siegel

Q:Dear Etti,

How can I support my children’s learning at home, especially when they seem disengaged or unmotivated about school? I do not want school to become a fighting point and cause problems with my teenagers. Thanks, -Wants to be Supportive

A:Dear Supportive, I hear you. Trying to get on top of a child’s homework schedule is hard and is especially true for parents of teenagers, where the stakes feel higher and many kids seem determined to avoid talking to their parents.

Parents with disengaged or unmotivated teens can feel at their wit’s end. According to research, when kids are in third grade, 76% say they love school. But by 10th grade, only 24% still feel that way ( https://www. brookings.edu/articles/the-disengagement-gap/ ). Hopefully, our children have higher percentages. Despite this, parents have more influence than they might realize. Research shows that parents play a key role in student learning. In the 1980s, educator Herbert Walberg found that what parents do at home— especially having conversations with their kids—has a huge impact on learning. These conversations about everyday life, books, or even the people they spoke with or the things they are watching on screens help boost student engagement and learning.

Walberg’s research also highlighted the importance of affection, laughter, and fun moments at home. He found that these interactions were twice as predictive of academic success as socioeconomic status.

Today, research continues to back up the idea that these kinds of parent-child interactions help kids thrive. Findings from almost 450 studies demonstrate U.S. parents’ influence on student engagement, well-being and learning. For young kids, the time spent playing and talking with parents builds the foundation for learning. For older kids, it’s about encouraging conversations and showing support. Parents who talk with their teens about what they’re learning and help them through tough times create a love of learning and foster curiosity and motivation.

Partnering with teachers can make a real difference.

Parents who talk with their teens about what they’re learning and help them through tough times create a love of learning and foster curiosity and motivation.

1. Find out what your kids are learning : When you know what your child is learning, you can have conversations about it. The goal isn’t to quiz them but to show that you value their learning and are curious about it. This helps kids feel that learning is important, without the pressure of focusing on test scores.

2. Tell your kids positive feedback that you hear from their teachers or administration . They act like they don’t care, but they do. We all do!

3. Tell the administration and teachers how much you appreciate them and repeat positive feedback (lessons, events, etc.) you heard about. We all appreciate hearing the positive. And it might spill over into their attitude towards your child. That never hurts.

4. Help your child avoid a fixed mindset : Encourage your kids not to say things like, “I’m just not a math person,” or “I don’t get poetry.” Make sure you don’t say it either! When parents express that attitude, it can give kids the impression that it’s okay to avoid those subjects too. Parents don’t have to pretend to love every subject, but they can show that it’s worth persevering through challenges.

5. Suggest that all conversations start with positives : Encourage your kids to talk about their favorite class first, rather than focusing on the ones they’re struggling with. Constantly asking about a subject they’re having trouble with can feel frustrating for your child or give your child the impression that that is all you care about. Reminding them of what they enjoy about school can help keep their confidence up.

The path to helping our kids succeed often feels unclear to us parents, which can create anxiety. We all can use reassurance that supporting our children’s learning through conversations, maintaining a growth mindset, and celebrating successes can make a big difference. When we feel more empowered, we can help our children feel more hopeful and positive about the path they are on.

Hatzlacha. Etti

Fd for Thought Castell’s

By Nati Burnside

Castell’s might be the best kept secret in Brooklyn kosher restaurants these days. Located in Gravesend, it’s not on the road most traveled. In fact, if you aren’t looking for it, you will almost certainly walk right past the entrance. There’s a small plaque with the name of the restaurant and a man standing outside to open the door for you. But that door is no ordinary door. It’s a portal from a busy street in Brooklyn to what is perhaps the most elegant kosher dairy restaurant on the planet.

Castell’s looks amazing. From large, majestic mirrors and fancy flooring to imported table linens and service staff in white coats, you’ll forget the outside world within seconds of walking in. The staff here comes with experience at some of the finest restaurants in the world. That starts at the top with Chef Vitaliy Pinitsa and continues with the manager, the sommelier, and the barman.

Patrons can sit at the bar and order the Castell’s Martini (cardamom-infused vodka, homemade sweet vermouth, and coffee liqueur) and appreciate that this is the kind of place that makes their own campari and vermouth because it’s hard to procure kosher versions. Or you can sit at the pizza bar and watch the staff make delicious artisan personal pies in the two wood-burning ovens.

When I was invited to Castell’s, I sat at a fairly normal table on a very busy night. The buzz was palpable and just watching everything happen would’ve been interesting enough given the focaccia that starts out on your table. But despite the free version, I had to order the Garlic Bread due to the sheer number of people that demanded I try it. And right they were. What came to my table was similar to the focaccia, but topped with parmigiano, chili flakes, and parsley with an entire gravy boat of the house

marinara on the side. I could’ve eaten all four of the hearty slices, but I decided to show restraint given the rest of the menu in front of me.

You may find it impossible to sit in the dining room facing those pizza ovens without ordering one. I recommend you choose the Bianca Pizzete. This is a white pie that uses a three cheese blend (ricotta, mozzarella, and parmigiano) as a base and is topped with sliced zucchini and drizzled with hot honey. The char on the bottom of the pie was clearly a perfect result of the pizza oven and the unique flavors came together nicely.

I understand if you might want something with slightly less dough and cheese. In that event, try the Carpaccio di Tonno. A supremely fresh tasting dish, the tuna is topped with olive oil, lemon juice, capers, arugula, onions, fresno peppers, and sunchoke chips. The tuna is sliced so thin that it will melt in your mouth, the toppings add elements of acidity, saltiness, and crispiness, and the plate is so beautiful that you’ll be sad you had to destroy it. But destroy it you must. Your tastebuds demand it.

If we are being honest with ourselves, the main reason you came to Castell’s is likely the pasta. You’ll find it hard to choose from the handful of options, so I’ll try to help out a bit. If you want something a little bit on the spicier side, go for the Chiocciole ala Vodka Picante. This house-made pasta comes with a spicy vodka sauce and shouldn’t be underestimated despite its fairly simple presentation. The sauce is to die for, and the pasta is everything you want it to be.

The most special thing on the menu is the Capellini al Forno. This is the kind of dish that is common only in fancy Italian restaurants of the non-kosher variety. The Venetian dish uses a wide,

shallow, ceramic bowl, and a spaghetti-like pasta is cooked in a bechamel sauce by being placed in an oven. The big attraction is actually the fact that the bowl is topped with a healthy layer of grated parmigiano that bakes until it forms a solid golden brown layer that seals the top of the bowl. They bring it to your table and cut it into slices which you are able to eat with a knife and fork. The bottom is a creamy pasta that would be great by itself, but it’s attached to the baked parmesan crust top. This is a must-order and is a good dish to split as your server can cut it into any number of slices you want.

A more protein-centric choice of a main dish is the Branzino Intere. I’ve had plenty of branzino in restaurants,

but this was the crispiest one by far. There’s nothing like a fish where the skin is perfectly crunchy, and you can get some of the filet with each bite. This plate includes both halves of the branzino topped with a small amount of salsa verde with a small arugula salad on the side. For somebody looking for a less carb-heavy meal, this is a great selection.

At some point, you’ll have to leave Castell’s and step back onto the street in Brooklyn. While that will obviously be a sad moment, you can try to tide yourself over by figuring out what to order the next time you step through that portal and into paradise.

At least now you know where to find it.

Dairy - Italian - Waiter Service 222 Avenue U, Brooklyn, NY (718) 908-0060

In The K tchen

Shivas Haminim Salad

Pareve / Yields 8 servings

By Naomi Nachman

I developed a minim salad several years ago while on a visit to Israel during Tu B’Shvat. This salad calls for all the shevah minim to be used, making it the perfect Tu B’Shvat salad for the holiday coming up this month.

Ingredients

◦ ²⁄₃ cup barley

◦ Oil, for deep frying

◦ 1 Tablespoon flour

◦ 5 cups arugula or spinach

◦ 1 cup green grapes, halved

◦ ½ cup pomegranate seeds

◦ 8 dried figs, quartered

Dressing

◦ ¼ cup olive oil

◦ 2 Tablespoons silan

◦ Juice of 2 limes

◦ ½ teaspoon whole grain mustard

◦ 1 teaspoon kosher salt

◦ ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preparation

1. Cook barley according to package directions. Set aside to cool.

2. Heat oil in a small pot over medium heat.

3 Toss ½ cup cooked barley with flour. Add to hot oil; fry for a few minutes, until golden and crispy. Set aside.

4. Prepare the dressing: Place all dressing ingredients into a small bowl. Whisk until combined.

5. Assemble salad: Place greens, grapes, pomegranate seeds, figs, and remaining cooked (not fried) barley into a large bowl. Pour dressing over; toss to combine. Garnish with fried barley.

Naomi Nachman, the owner of The Aussie Gourmet, caters weekly and Shabbat/ Yom Tov meals for families and individuals within The Five Towns and neighboring communities, with a specialty in Pesach catering. Naomi is a contributing editor to this paper and also produces and hosts her own weekly radio show on the Nachum Segal Network stream called “A Table for Two with Naomi Nachman.” Naomi gives cooking presentations for organizations and private groups throughout the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan area. In addition, Naomi has been a guest host on the QVC TV network and has been featured in cookbooks, magazines as well as other media covering topics related to cuisine preparation and personal chefs. To obtain additional recipes, join The Aussie Gourmet on Facebook or visit Naomi’s blog. Naomi can be reached through her website, www.theaussiegourmet.com or at (516) 295-9669.

Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

Biden used his last speech as president to warn us about a new American oligarchy. And you can tell the message hit home because of how many people — and this is true — how many people immediately went to Google to search “What is oligarchy?” And weirdly, Google responded: “Don’t worry about it.’”

— Jordan Klepper

Where was this guy? Biden couldn’t sing “Happy Birthday.” Suddenly he pulls out “oligarchy” and “tech industrial complex”?

— Jimmy Fallon

In his speech, Biden proposed higher taxes on billionaires, a ban on congressional stock trading, and term limits for the Supreme Court. Man, if only Biden were president.

— Jimmy Fallon

During his farewell address last night, President Joe Biden seemed sleepy and bitter as he mumbled for only 13 minutes. Who did he steal this speech from, Ozzy Osbourne?

— Greg Gutfeld

Instead of making highly produced clap back videos with social media influencers, you should get to work helping Californians. You’re the leader of a state in crisis, and you should finally start acting like it.

- Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) responding to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) during a podcast appearance accusing him of playing politics with relief funds

No. We have to recognize there was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. Look how that turned out.

- Incoming U.S. Ambassador to Israel Micke Huckabee, when asked by Fox News if he believes in the “two-state solution”

It’s really sad on so many levels that, when people are at their lowest and in their most difficult times, people are doing things like this.

- Tennis Hall of Famer Pam Shriver after most of her grand slam trophies were stolen from her car after she evacuated her home because of the California wildfires

In May 2024, I read an article that talked about Trump’s speech in Charlottesville, where he said there are good people on both sides, and the article said it was completely propaganda and didn’t actually reflect what he said that he denounced the Nazis a bunch of times in his speech, so then I went and watched that video. And that was my red pill moment.

- Tech billionaire and lifelong Democrat Mark Pincus on “The AllIn Podcast” talking about why he switched to the Republican party

I think it was for a lot of people because it wasn’t just the media or politicians spinning it. That speech was one of the pillars of why you were supposed to hate Trump— that speech. Then you see Biden say that’s why he had to run a second time, and Obama says it, and Biden brings it up again at the DNC.

- Ibid.

I am beyond outraged and in utter disbelief that President Biden would announce clemency for Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson –two men who admitted to being responsible for brutally killing Officer Allen Gibson, a hero and dedicated servant to our community.

- Viriginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin reacting to Pres. Biden’s last minute pardon of two murderers who, in 1998, viciously beat a Virginia police officer and then shot him at point-blank range, leaving his wife a widow and his then-8-year-old daughter an orphan

What makes this even more unconscionable is the Biden U.S. Attorney advised the White House not to commute these sentences as they are violent offenders.

- Ibid.

President Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president today. He is the second president to serve nonconsecutive terms and the first convicted felon to hold the office.

- An NBC bulletin update minutes after Pres. Trump was sworn in

It’s tragic what happened here. Gross mismanagement. Gavin Newsom is a terrible manager. He is the Justin Trudeau of California. He’s horrific.

- Entrepreneur and Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary on Fox News

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-FL) talking to the press

We were friends for 50 years; it was disappointing.

- Jill Biden, in an interview with the Washington Post , talking about Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who she blames for forcing her husband out of the presidential race

Let’s just say I was disappointed with how it unfolded. I don’t know; I learned a lot about human nature. I think that’s all I’m going to say.

- Ibid.

If I was Lady McBiden, I’d put on my big girl pants, play the long game and think about my husband’s legacy. There aren’t that many people left in America who have something nice to say about Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi is one of them.

— Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra Pelosi, in an interview with Politico, responding to Jill Biden

Axios ran a story on how getting the water out of the hydrants in Pacific Palisades was more complicated than it seems. I’m sure it’s very complicated. That’s why I pay 13% of my income in the state every year to people who I assume were working on things like this.

- Bill Maher, HBO

When asked why so many of the hydrants in the Palisades ran out of water, Governor Newsom said, “The local folks are trying to figure that out.” Yeah you gotta do that before the fire.

- Ibid.

LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, the Nero of American politics, was fiddling in Ghana while the city burned and later placed the blame on “eight months of negligible rain, and winds that have not been seen in LA in at least 14 years…” Maybe look in the history books to see how our ancestors handled it back in 2011.

- Ibid.

I’m not going to that rat-infested place out in San Francisco.

- NBA Hall of Famer and current NBA broadcaster Charles Barkley declaring on air that he will not go to the Allstar game in San Francisco

Never before in history has a side claimed that they suffered a genocide and at the same time that they won the war they had started.

– Hillel Neuer on X, after Hamas claimed victory in Gaza

I hate politics… There is a darkness to that world that I don’t really want to welcome into mine.

- Ivanka Trump on a recent podcast explaining why she is not going back to Washington for her father’s second term

Senator, I’m here to answer your questions. I’m not here to do your homework and study for you.

- Pam Bondi, at her Senate confirmation hearing to become the new Attorney General, responding to Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) who asked her if she knows what the 14th Amendment says

[Donald Trump] didn’t become the president of the United States because of merit. He hasn’t really, he had no political experience whatsoever, he had no business experience. He was given everything he has. He is a legacy hire. He is if anything a DEI hire, a “didn’t earn it” hire.

- Sunny Hostin on “The View”

What concerns me is these are the questions you believe are most important to ask the U.N. Ambassador.

- Trump’s pick for UN Ambassador Rep Elise Stefanik (R-NY) at her confirmation hearing when Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CN)repeatedly claimed that Elon Musk did a Nazi salute (he did not do that) and asked Stefanik if she was concerned about that

With TikTok Ban, Americans Now Only Being Spied On By Pentagon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Samsung, Doorbell, Toaster - Babylon Bee headline

Ohtani Generously Donates 7 At-Bats’ Worth Of Salary To California Fire Victims - Ibid.

I thought this was an incredible speech, honestly, and truly watching Donald Trump indict these gangsters to their faces while they had to sit right in front of him in that intimate setting in the rotunda for Republicans was remarkable. They had to sit there and take it just minutes after Biden, who we’re looking at here, pardoned his entire family. I mean, it was glorious.

- Scott Jennings on CNN

The two-state solution is something which, on record, I supported in the past, many times. But I would say that I had a wake-up call following October 7.

- Israeli President Isaac Herzog in an interview with Fareed Zakaria

Davos

at the World Economic Forum in

Every president strives to create a legacy that will be part of the headline in their obituary. They crave policy achievements or a foreign triumph with which their name will always be associated, while at the same time seeking to avoid the sort of disgrace or defeat to which they will also forever be linked.

In just the last century, though there are cogent critiques to be made of even those presidents considered successful, leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan will always be remembered for their great successes. Though not in the same class as those two, Barack Obama will go down in history as the nation’s first African-American president, who created an eponymous national health-care plan that will likely endure. On the other end of the spectrum, Richard Nixon’s and Bill Clinton’s places in the annals of the presidency will be confined to their scandals. George W. Bush’s blundering into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that turned out to be disastrous quagmires will overshadow his post-9/11 leadership.

But Joe Biden is in a class by himself.

No president in living memory—or perhaps ever—has been supplanted even before he left the White House in the way that President Joe Biden has been by Donald Trump, who is both predecessor and successor. Trump played a decisive role in the ceasefire/hostage deal between Israel and Hamas while Biden was still technically the commander-in-chief. Trump eclipsed Biden on a policy question in a way no other president-elect and his aides had ever done.

The Absent President

As appalling as that may be, it’s a fitting end to a presidency that will likely be primarily remembered for his mental decline, as well as an undistinguished

Israel Today

The Pathetic Finish to Joe Biden’s Failed Presidency

By Jonathan S. Tobin

four-year interregnum bookended by Trump’s two administrations.

But as it fades into memory, it’s important for his successors to learn from his many mistakes and never repeat them.

Evaluations of a president about whom the best it could be said that, as a largely favorable review in Foreign Policy magazine put it, “He meant well,” will inevitably be impacted by partisanship.

Yet Democrats who supported him and his policies are even more hostile to Biden these days than Republicans. That’s because they blame Trump’s victory on Biden’s stubborn refusal to give up a bid for a second term, despite his obvious growing mental incapacity. His decline was conclusively exposed in a June 2024 presidential debate. That led to a coup by party elites to force his withdrawal from the race and replace the candidacy by Vice President Kamala Harris, who was equally unlikely to beat Trump.

The last months of Biden’s presidency have been largely characterized as a shadow game in which it isn’t clear who is

actually in charge. There’s good reason to believe that it wasn’t the president, who seemed even more out of touch with reality and less mentally present than ever.

Fears that Biden would mimic Obama and stab Israel in the back at the United Nations on his way out of office turned out to be unfounded. But the reason for that may be as much a function of a power vacuum at the top of the administration as anything else. That made it hard for the Jewish state’s many foes in the West Wing and the U.S. State Department to make as simple a decision as not exercising a veto on an anti-Israel resolution at the U.N. Security Council.

This kind of cluelessness was on display in both of the president’s farewell speeches.

His boastful address at the State Department when he made the astounding claim that he had improved America’s standing in the world, strengthened alliances, and weakened foes was a classic exercise in denial, if not completely delusional.

Weakness Set the World on Fire

Biden admitted no mistakes—not even the over-hasty and poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan that turned into a bloody rout that left Americans and Afghan allies dead and put the Taliban back in power. The episode epitomized the fecklessness and weakness of the administration with war in Ukraine and the Middle East as the inevitable result.

The president took credit for helping Ukraine hold off a Russian invasion, but that initial success took place before the massive infusions of $175 billion in U.S. aid arrived. Moreover, the war would never have occurred had not Biden convinced Russia’s authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin that he would never respond with strength to provocations the way Trump had done. The main impact of Biden on that war was to ensure that it dragged on pointlessly, while casualties grew on both sides as he refused to work on ending the conflict, rather than prolonging it.

One of the main themes of American foreign policy during the last four years was a return to Obama’s strategy of appeasing Iran. The 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran proved to be a disaster since far from stopping its push for a weapon of mass destruction, it guaranteed that the Islamist regime would eventually get one. Biden’s attempt to revive it was even worse since Tehran not only happily accepted the relaxation of Trump’s tough sanctions and the unfreezing of billions of frozen funds; its leaders accelerated their push for a bomb and doubled down on their support for terrorism throughout the region.

The attacks in Jewish communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war that followed an orgy of Palestinian atrocities were in no small measure caused by the Biden foreign-policy

team of Obama alumni’s mindset about the Middle East. Their former boss was convinced that the United States needed to pivot away from traditional allies like Israel and s audi Arabia. This was partly rooted in a belief in multilateralism and diplomacy for its own sake.

Yet there was something more to it than that. Obama embraced woke ideas about critical race theory and intersectionality even before most Americans had heard of them. That was why he proclaimed misguided guilt about past American sins against muslim nations and other Third World people. Biden was merely mimicking Obama’s desire to create a new balance of power in the Middle East centered on a rapprochement with Iran that the Islamist regime wanted no part of.

Instead, they viewed Washington’s pathetic attempts to tempt them to return to the weak nuclear pact as a signal that the West was vulnerable. The seven-front war against Israel organized by Tehran was their response to such weakness.

s o, far from strengthening America’s allies, Biden weakened them throughout the world. Instead of leaving Trump a stable and strong position from which

to operate, the president-elect is inheriting a world set on fire by a longtime Washington insider who was incapable of learning from his predecessors’ mistakes—or his own.

Gaslighting, Censorship and Antisemitism

His subsequent farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office was in some ways even more troubling. Sounding themes that were standard Democratic campaign rhetoric these past four years, he claimed that Trump and the Republicans were threatening democracy and instituting an “oligarchy” where the wealthy ruled and took away the rights of everyone else.

This was as ironic as it was untrue since it had been during his four years in office that the Democrats had completed their journey from its old stance as the party of the working people to one that is now solely aimed at protecting the interests of the credentialed elites.

Yet in the same speech, he lamented the end of “fact-checking” on Facebook, which was supposedly aimed at stopping “misinformation” but was really a censorship regime. Indeed, in his announcement and subsequent interviews about

the decision, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg confessed that it was a scheme largely driven by politics and used by the Biden administration to silence views on a wide range of issues that dissented from their policies.

As he had for four years, biden was gaslighting the country. He claimed that his foes were against democracy. But it was his Department of Justice that prosecuted Trump, his chief political opponent. It treated Americans who differed from liberal orthodoxy on gender ideology, critical race theory or abortion as if they were domestic terrorists while largely ignoring the very real threat of Islamist terror.

Biden was no ideologue; he was an unprincipled politician who always followed his party’s fashion of the day, whether it tilted right, as it did in the 1990s, or hard left, as it has in recent years. Elected as a moderate who would restore normalcy to the nation, he took his cues from left-wingers on most domestic issues. That’s why he became a supporter of the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and imposition of it throughout the government. His policies not only enabled the same leftist ideology that fueled the un-

precedented post-Oct. 7 surge of Jew-hatred that happened on his watch. His inability to unreservedly condemn those who engaged in antisemitic agitation on college campuses and elsewhere was motivated by a futile effort to rally support from his party’s intersectional left wing that he previously done so much to appease.

Biden proved that having a half-century of experience in government is no guarantee of wisdom, political or ethical principles or an ability to learn from the past. He also showed what happens when weakness is treated as a virtue rather than a liability.

he leaves office as a forgotten man who, regardless of one’s opinion of Trump, was largely overshadowed by him even when his opponent was out of office. Though historians will likely treat him as an accidental president better remembered for his decline in office than any achievements, his mistakes must be remembered. As pathetic as his exit from the White House has been, the record of failure he leaves behind is his true legacy.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate).

Political Crossfire

Depose Maduro

By Bret Stephens

Donald Trump has set some grandiose foreign-policy goals for his second term, from buying Greenland to ending the war in Ukraine “in a day.” Here’s one goal that is overdue, morally right, and in our national security interest: deposing the regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, through coercive diplomacy if possible or force if necessary.

Last week, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term after a fraudulent election last July that independent surveys show he lost by about 35 percentage points. His opponent, Edmundo González, is in exile; the head of the opposition movement, María Corina Machado, had to spend months in hiding. As many as 10 Americans are languishing in Venezuelan jails on dubious charges. The regime has treated past American prisoners as political hostages.

That’s not even the worst of it. As of November, the regime held an estimated 1,800 political prisoners. Since Maduro came to power, close to 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country, amounting to a quarter of the population; at least 600,000 are now in the United States. Malnutrition affects millions; the crime rate was among the highest in the world in 2024. This is a country that was once among the wealthiest in Latin America.

And Maduro continues to court our enemies, starting with Iran, which has reportedly established a “drone development base” at a Venezuelan air base. What could bring the regime down? In his first term, Trump tried punitive economic sanctions. They didn’t work. The Biden administration eased some of those sanctions in hopes of better behavior from Maduro. It didn’t work. Last year’s election plainly didn’t work. A $25 million bounty for Maduro’s arrest, imposed this month by the United States, also won’t work, since it only serves as an incentive for Maduro to hold on more tightly to power.

There’s always the possibility of a

coup, but the army’s senior ranks have remained loyal — for good reason: Senior officials have long been suspected of turning the country “into a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering,” according to a 2015 Wall Street Journal article. There were also the stirrings of a popular revolt in 2019, but it fizzled: The regime seems to have learned from its friends in Havana that

likes of Naomi Klein and Jeremy Corbyn) should have failed a long time ago. It hasn’t. “Th’ abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power,” Shakespeare’s Brutus says in “Julius Caesar.” Maduro’s is a regime without remorse.

That means the only thing that will dislodge Maduro and his cronies is the combination of a powerful incentive and a credible threat.

The only thing that will dislodge Maduro and his cronies is the combination of a powerful incentive and a credible threat.

mass emigration is a good way of depleting a nation of its most discontented, energetic and talented citizens.

Economist Herb Stein famously said that if something can’t go on forever, it will stop. It’s a truism that isn’t really true. The so-called Bolivarian revolution that started with Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in 1999 (once cheered on by the

The incentive is an offer that he and his henchmen go into permanent exile, probably to Cuba or Russia, along with a guarantee of amnesty for all Venezuelan military and intelligence officials who stay behind and pledge loyalty to a government led by the legitimate president. The threat is U.S. military intervention of the sort that in 1990 swiftly ended

the regime of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. That could be followed by extradition and prosecution in U.S. courts: In Noriega’s case, it led to 27 years of imprisonment. American troops withdrew swiftly, and Panama has been a democracy ever since.

If this sounds bellicose, it’s by design: Maduro and his cronies will relinquish power peacefully only if they are convinced the alternative is worse. The point of a powerful threat is that it reduces the chances of having to carry through with it.

And if we must? Military intervention always entails risks, lost lives and unintended consequences, even against a weak military widely detested by its own people. It should be undertaken only if it is in an urgent and compelling national interest. Putting an end to a criminal regime that is a source of drugs, mass migration, and Iranian influence in the Americas should not be a hard sell with the incoming administration.

It shouldn’t be a hard sell for liberals, either. The moral basis for deposing Maduro is clear: he stole the election, terrorizes his opponents, and brutalizes his people. He shows no sign of letting up, much less letting go. Every other option for political change has been attempted. How much more suffering are Venezuelans supposed to endure, and how much worse does this hemispheric crisis have to get, before the nightmare finally ends?

The president-elect inspires a lot of nervousness, loathing and fear. Like it or, probably, not, that’s the man Americans elected. His choice for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, understands better than most Americans the real nature of these tropical despotisms. Ending Maduro’s long reign of terror is a good way to start their administration — and send a signal to tyrants elsewhere that American patience with disorder and danger eventually runs out.

Political Crossfire Donald Trump Finally Gets His Honeymoon

Watching Donald Trump taking the oath of office Monday, I was struck by the differences between his 2017 inaugural address and today. Yes, the venue was different – the Capitol Rotunda instead of the Capitol steps – but so is the political moment.

Eight years ago, there were riots in Washington as protesters set vehicles on fire, smashed windshields and broke windows. Today, the streets of the nation’s capital are quiet, filled with patriotic Americans in MAGA gear who have come from across the country to celebrate the inauguration.

Eight years ago, Trump had lost the popular vote, so Democrats treated his election as a fluke, or even the product of a conspiracy with Russia. “Not my president,” went the cry on the left. His 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, declared Trump an “illegitimate president” and suggested the election was “stolen.” Trump’s opponents launched the “resistance” and an unprecedented campaign of personal destruction. Trump survived it all: the Mueller probe, two impeachments, 91 indictments, civil suits and even two assassination attempts.

Not only did he survive, but Americans delivered him a swing-state sweep, a decisive popular-vote victory and unified control of the federal government. There’s no way to dismiss him as an accidental president. He has staged the greatest political comeback in American history. His opponents are defeated and demoralized.

And Trump finally is getting what he was denied eight years ago: a political honeymoon.

Trump is seizing the moment with promises of swift action. Eight years ago, his inaugural address was seen as unnecessarily dark. But today, in place of “American carnage” was Trump’s prom-

By Marc A. Thiessen

ise that “the golden age of America begins right now.”

“A tide of change is sweeping the country. Sunlight is pouring over the entire world, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before,” Trump said, adding that “America will

life was saved for a reason: I was saved by G-d to make America great again.”

He then listed a litany of actions he would take to spark “a thrilling new era of national success” and “bring back hope, prosperity, safety, and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed” –

“My life was saved for a reason: I was saved by G-d to make America great again.”

soon be greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before.”

He promised a “revolution of common sense,” which he felt a divine calling to usher in. Describing how an assassin’s bullet ripped across his ear in a Pennsylvania field, Trump declared, “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my

from securing the border to unleashing U.S. energy production, tackling inflation, reclaiming the Panama Canal and planting the American flag on Mars. “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries

our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars.”

At times, the speech sounded more like a State of the Union than an inaugural address, with less poetry for the ages than policies to meet the moment. But Americans want action, and Trump promised to give it to them.

The question is: Will Democrats work with him to deliver on any of the agenda he laid out? That is another difference from eight years ago: Many Democrats are publicly declaring their willingness to do so. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) pledged “to find compromise on parts of the president-elect’s agenda.” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey) said, “There are plenty of places where we can find common ground.” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) asked, “Aren’t we here to help the lives of the American people?” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona): “The fact that we work across the aisle really matters to people.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) even published an op-ed –on FoxNews.com no less! – declaring that when Trump acts as an “antiestablishment populist prepared to take on the political class and act on behalf of working families,” then “I will gladly support him.”

Whether they follow through remains to be seen. After the past eight years, I will never underestimate the depths to which opponents of Trump will go to stop him. But Trump might finally get the presidency he should have had in 2017.

Trump has survived everything his adversaries have thrown at him, emerging unscathed and with a popular mandate. “Here I am,” Trump said in his address. “The American people have spoken. I stand before you now as proof.”

© 2024, Washington Post Writers Group

Political Crossfire

Jake Sullivan, White House National Security Adviser, Reflects on China Policy

By Edward Wong

WASHINGTON — As White

House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan coordinated China policy for President Joe Biden over four years. He traveled to Vienna, Malta, Bangkok and elsewhere to meet with Wang Yi, the top Chinese foreign policy official, and he talked with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, in Beijing last August.

I sat down with him recently in a conference room in the West Wing to discuss the administration’s approach to China. Here are some of his comments, which have been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

On the first Trump administration’s approach to China and the Biden team’s policy:

Sullivan said the Biden administration tried “to shift from a strategy of hub-and-spoke and just pure bilateral alliances” to “creating this latticework, or this network of relationships, across the region.”

That included rejuvenating the nonmilitary Quad coalition with Australia, India and Japan, as well as creating three new U.S. security arrangements with Japan and South Korea; Japan and the Philippines; and Australia and Britain.

The Trump administration “had begun an effort with respect to semiconductor manufacturing equipment around EUV [extreme ultraviolet lithography] technology … that was quite informal, that was essentially an informal understanding with the Dutch government and so on.”

“We thought we actually needed an export control regime that gets put into place and then built upon. … They were pointing in the right direction, but there was no real systematic undertaking on that front.”

“Honestly, we felt a huge gap in our defense industrial base. We just were not making the investments in either muni-

tions or platforms necessary, and so we worked to try to arrest the slide and put us on a long-term trajectory to be healthy, fully healthy at magazine depth and submarine defense, industrial base, that kind of thing.”

“The other thing is that COVID exposed to us the broader supply-chain challenge in a very visceral, quite evocative way … They were grappling with COVID through 2020, so that’s another thing that I think we all came to a realization together, the outgoing and incoming administration in 2020. But it was left to us to really begin the work of a critical supply-chain strategy, both as it applies to the defense industrial base, but then also this broader issue of critical minerals, semiconductors, EV [electric vehicle] batteries, that sort of thing. So that was something that we were kind of building from scratch, coming in from ’21.”

On trying to coordinate on China with allies:

The administration set up two “big tent poles” of policy, he said: “investments at home to try to change the dynamic with

respect to the relative trajectories of the U.S. and China when it comes to industrial and innovation capacity; and investments in alliances and partnerships, so that we broaden China strategy to really be a regional and global strategy.”

“We also recognized the need to engage Europe on China in a way to get that ship to turn.”

On technology competition with China and export controls on advanced semiconductor chips and equipment:

“What we assess is that their inability to access the high-end equipment means that there is a ceiling on their ability to make the most cutting-edge semiconductors in China, and then their inability to access the various highest-end GPU’s [graphics processing units] restricts their capacity at the frontier of AI [artificial intelligence]. And we think both of those have been effective.”

Sullivan said critics of the export controls make two arguments, both of which he discounts. One is on the difficulty of enforcement.

The other is whether the Biden administration’s policies pushed China to accelerate innovation. “My answer to that question is quite straightforward: It gets the chronology wrong. Our semiconductor export controls were actually a reaction to China’s very overtly, very systematically stated policy that they were going to indigenize their semiconductor manufacturing capability.”

On dealing with nations that want to work with both the United States and China on advanced technology:

“One level has less to do with China and more to do with: Will the United States be the place where the main buildout of frontier AI infrastructure occurs, or will that get outsourced? So set aside China. When we think about the Gulf or India, do we want a world in which we are trading dependence on foreign sources for energy today, or dependence on foreign sources for AI data centers tomorrow? And that has less to do with China, and that requires a theory of ensuring that a sufficient amount of the capacity for AI compute is built in the United States. And that has to have an impact on how we think about the export of AI models, AI semiconductors and so forth. That’s one level.”

“The second level is about diversion. So if you have high-end technology in a third country, can it slip out the backdoor to China? Either the hardware or the know-how, or the model weights.”

“That to me, I think, has a practical answer, which is government-to-government agreements that emplace effective security safeguards and transparency around the hardware, the model weights and the know-how, and that’s what we have worked through in our MOU [memorandum of understanding] with the UAE, and I believe that is a sustainable model for having a strong technology partnership with that country, as well as other

countries, that gives the U.S. a series of both economic and strategic advantages, where the alternative is to have them go into the Chinese technology orbit, which we do not want.”

On the kinds of trade agreements that Asian nations want:

“What countries are looking for, in my view, has become increasingly bespoke. It’s not just about a kind of broad market access. It’s the particular needs of a country thinking about its economic model for the future. And so the economic dialogues we were having with these countries and the attractiveness of the United States is about a lot more than just can we lower barriers to market access?”

“So let me give you some examples. With Japan, they really wanted the critical minerals MOU so that they had a route into the benefits of the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]. That was kind of their number one ask, much more important to them than some broader-based trade deal. With Indonesia, it’s quite similar. That’s what Indonesia is looking for. Fundamentally, they want to work out a high-standards, critical minerals agree -

ment so that there can be a flow of Indonesian nickel into American electric-vehicle manufacturing, batteries and so forth with other countries.”

On whether American workers and industries benefited from earlier free-trade agreements:

“So where did workers fit into that?

Now you could say, well, workers fit into that. They’re going to get lower-cost

agreement with Japan are a more rational way to think about free trade going forward.”

On what Sullivan learned from his meetings with Xi and Wang:

“The single biggest thing that jumps out at me comes out of the meeting with Xi — and it was reinforced in the meeting that President Biden had with Xi, and

“We also recognized the need to engage Europe on China in a way to get that ship to turn.”

goods, and that’s good for them and, to a certain extent, that’s right, so I’m not averse to free trade. But it has to have some element of a theory for how the U.S. industrial base, the capacity to build here, is sustained, and that’s why I actually think things like the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] and a critical minerals

very much in the meetings with Wang Yi as well, but punctuated — which is my view that when we came into office, the Chinese view was: If you are going to compete with us, then we will not cooperate with you, and we will not have lines of communication. You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose. And we’ve just

stuck with our theory, which is managed competition: We’re going to compete, we’re going to compete vigorously, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t find areas to work together where it’s in our mutual interest at the same time that we’re competing. And, in order to compete responsibly, we have to have communication at all levels, including sustaining military-to-military communication.”

“As we leave, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has, at least for the time being, adopted, not in the way they talk, but in the way the relationship is conducted, managed competition. We have found areas to work together: on counternarcotics, AI, nuclear risk and climate. We have sustained communication, including military-to-military communication, and we are competing, obviously competing vigorously, and yet still the relationship has an element of stability so that we’re not presently on the brink of a downward spiral. That is a significant evolution over four years for how the relationship is managed on both sides, and it is consistent with our theory of management of the relationship that the PRC has now mirrored.”

© The New York Times

Political Crossfire A House at Auschwitz Opens Its Doors to a Chilling Past

By Andrew Higgins

OSWIECIM, Poland — The mother lived for 42 years in a three-story house overlooking a former gas chamber and a gallows at Auschwitz, sometimes losing sleep at the thought of what had happened on the other side of her garden wall.

But the house in Oswiecim, in southern Poland, once the home of the death camp’s wartime commandant, Rudolf Höss, was “a great place to raise children,” said Grazyna Jurczak, 62, a widow who raised two sons there.

The home, the subject of the Oscar-winning movie “The Zone of Interest,” had “safety, silence, a beautiful garden,” easy access to a river across the road, and, in winter, space for an ice-skating rink for her two boys, she said.

Alone in the house after her husband died, she finally decided to leave. One reason, she said, was that she was disturbed by people who, after watching “The Zone of Interest,” were tramping through her garden, peering through her windows and reminding her of her home’s connection to the Holocaust.

Last summer, Jurczak agreed to sell her stake in the home to the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based group

that wants to open the house to visitors. She moved out in August, and in Octobe,r the New York group completed its acquisition of the home and an adjacent house built after the war.

“I had to get out of there,” Jurczak said at her new home in a modern apartment block in Oswiecim, a mile from her former house. She declined to say how much the house was sold for, but indicated that it was somewhat more than the property’s estimated value of around $120,000.

Mark Wallace, a lawyer and former U.S. diplomat who is the CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, also declined to give the price, saying once other family members were paid for their stakes in the property, the total price was “significantly more” than what Jurczak had indicated. He also said his organization “wanted to do right” by Jurczak’s family but “did not want to pay a big premium for a former Nazi property, even if we could.”

Now the house, at 88 Legionow St., just outside the camp’s perimeter fence, is being prepared to receive visits by the public for the first time, as part of commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the Soviet army’s liberation of Auschwitz.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Mu-

seum, a Polish institution in Oswiecim committed to the remembrance of Nazi victims, will be hosting dozens of world leaders on Jan. 27.

At the house, workers hired by the new owners have removed 14 dumpsters of debris and stripped away wallpaper and other postwar additions. That has left the property much as it was when the Höss family lived there from 1941 to late 1944, including the Nazi-era lock on the bathroom door reading “frei/besetzt.,” German for free/occupied.

A mezuzah, a parchment containing biblical verses, has been attached to the front door frame to honor Jewish tradition — and repudiate the fanaticism of its former occupant, the Auschwitz commander. After the war, Höss recalled how the successful experimental gassing of Russian prisoners in 1941 “set my mind at rest, for the mass extermination of the Jews was to start soon.”

He was hanged in 1947 at a gallows placed between his former home and a Nazi crematory.

On a table in a downstairs corner room that Höss used as a home office lies a heap of torn and crumpled Nazi-era newspapers and other wartime artifacts found after the

house was sold. There is also a coffee mug, embossed with the seal of the SS, and German beer bottles.

Retrieved from the attic, where they had been stuffed to block a hole, were the striped trousers once worn by an Auschwitz prisoner. Researchers are trying to work out who wore them by deciphering a faded prisoner number, written next to a small red triangle signifying that the wearer was a political prisoner and a nearly vanished yellow star designating a Jew.

“This house has been closed for 80 years. It was out of reach to the victims and their families. Finally, we can open it to honor survivors and show that this place of incredible evil is now open to all,” Wallace said.

The plan, Wallace said, is to turn the house, along with the adjacent property, into the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization, a new organization that will work to expand the pledge of “Never Again” from historical memory to current action.

Piotr Cywinski, a Polish historian and director of the Auschwitz-Birkanau Museum since 2006, said his state-run institution wanted to preserve its core mission of remembrance but saw value in supporting

a project focused on the present and future, as well as the past.

“Fighting against today’s reality is easier for an NGO than for a state institution,” he said, lamenting the rise across Europe of populism, which he calls “the cancer of democracy.”

The new center will encompass the entire territory of Höss’ wartime property, including a long sealed-off garden area where he met with Hitler’s security chief, Heinrich Himmler, Josef Mengele, the “angel of death” doctor, and other Nazi dignitaries tasked with exterminating Jews. Daniel Libeskind, an American architect, has been commissioned to redesign the property.

Libeskind said he had drawn up preliminary plans that envisage turning the interior of the house into “a void, an abyss” — the external walls are protected by a UNESCO preservation order — and the construction of a new partly buried structure in a garden area with meeting rooms, a library and a data center.

More than 2 million people visit the former Auschwitz camp each year and, the architect said, come away “horrified and mesmerized by death” but also need “to engage with contemporary antisemitism and other extremism in our political culture.”

Jacek Purski, the director of a Polish

anti-extremism group, who is involved in the project, said he wants to use the house and the past Nazi horrors as a weapon against what he sees as a resurgence of extremist ideologies.

“A house is a house,” Purski said, looking out of a second-story window of the

ry that I sound like Ms. Höss,” she said, referring to the commandant’s wife, Hedwig Höss. In the movie, Hedwig Höss gushes about her Polish home as “paradise” and is shown trying on a fur coat stolen from a prisoner sent to slaughter by her husband.

The commandant’s wife, Jurczak decid-

The house where Höss lived was built between the two great wars of the last century by a Polish military officer serving in an adjacent army camp, which was seized by the Nazis after their 1939 invasion of Poland and turned into an extermination factory. At least 1.1 million men, women and children were murdered there, mostly in gas chambers.

After the war, Höss recalled how the successful experimental gassing of Russian prisoners in 1941 “set my mind at rest, for the mass extermination of the Jews was to start soon.”

Grabbed by the SS as a home for the Auschwitz commandant, who changed the street number to 88, a numerical code for Heil Hitler, the house was returned to its original owner after the war and later sold to the family of Jurczak’s husband, who owned it until last year.

Cywinski, the Auschwitz-Birkanau museum director, said he was eager to work with the Counter Extremism Project, in its efforts to combat extremism.

former Höss house toward the chimney of a former Nazi crematory. “But it is in uninteresting, regular houses like this where extremism is happening today.”

Jurczak, the former owner, said she still struggles to reconcile happy, ordinary memories of the house with its gruesome past.

Reminiscing about her family’s time there, she suddenly stopped herself: “I wor-

ed after watching the movie, “was perhaps even worse than her husband,” in her indifference to human suffering.

While awaiting execution in a Polish jail after the war, Rudolf Höss, the former commandant, wrote an autobiography that Primo Levi, an Italian writer and Auschwitz survivor, described as the work of a “drab functionary” who “evolved step by step into one of the greatest criminals in history.”

Extremism, he said, “is unfortunately not a mental illness; it is a method” that exploits widespread feelings of frustration.

Ordinary people with ordinary ambitions, he added, can turn into monsters.

Höss, he said, “was a wonderful father to his kids and, at the same time, the main organizer of the most brutal killings in the history of the world.”

© The New York Times

Forgotten Her es Jewish Marine Heroes

By Avi Heiligman

One of the smallest branches of the American military during World War II was the Marine Corps. Less than 600,000 people served in the branch that had just 15,000 when the U.S. entered the war. Even though they were small in numbers, the Marines made headlines with their successes in the Pacific campaign. Even though only a small percentage of the 550,000 Jewish service members during World War II served in the Marines, many of those that did see action were awarded medals and citations for bravery in battle. Here are some Jewish marines who were awarded medals for bravery during World War II.

First Lieutenant David Goldwater, from Reno, Nevada, joined the Marine Corps just six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to the Second Battalion, Eighth Marines, Second Marine Division and was a .37 mm gun platoon leader. On August 1, 1944, his battalion was on the island of Tinian in the Marianas fighting against determined Japanese soldiers. Despite being wounded, Goldwater insisted on staying and leading his platoon in the tough terrain. The Japanese fire was heavy, but Goldwater remained in position until the enemy attacks were driven back. For his courageous leadership and bravery

in the face of heavy enemy fire, he was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart for his wounds.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Second Lieutenant Herman Abady was another Marine officer to earn the Silver Star. He joined the Marine Reserves before Pearl Harbor and was a platoon leader with Company K, 3 rd Battalion, 1 st Marine Division on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The Guadalcanal

the marines were left on the island for a while without much in the way of supplies. Still, they fought with such tenacity that they were able to hold out until they were resupplied, and the Japanese left the island in early 1943.

On the night of September 13, 1942, Abady and his platoon were deployed on the Overland Trail and fought with an enemy formation on their way to attack Henderson Field. Soldiers from

Still, they fought with such tenacity that they were able to hold out until they were resupplied.

Campaign started just seven months after the U.S. entered the war, and the Marines were sent ashore to stop the Japanese from completing an airfield.

The Marines named the airfield Henderson Field, and it became a focal point of the fighting as the Japanese tried to retake the soon-to-be-functioning airbase. However, due to Japanese naval activity and attacks on American ships,

the Japanese Kuma Battalion with fixed bayonets entered the platoon’s perimeter and fierce hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Abady took cover as he aimed his pistol and killed several enemy soldiers. He gave encouragement to the marines as they held their positions through the night. The next morning, they discovered dozens of Japanese that had been killed in front of the platoon’s position

and dozens more that were stuck in the barbed wire. For his actions in the successful defense of Henderson Field, Abady was awarded the Silver Star. Starting on December 7, 1941, American and Allied outposts in the Pacific were the targets of Japanese air and ground attacks. One of the largest American bases that were targeted was in the Philippines Islands. Known as the Gibraltar of East, Corregidor Island was a key defensive position to this base as it was fortified with coastal artillery units and the 4th Marine Regiment. Private Alexander Katchuck was with the 3 rd Battalion, 4th Marines when the attack came on December 29, 1941. The attack was intense and destroyed half of the island’s wooden structures and other key infrastructure. Katchuck and another marine noticed an abandoned truck with two wounded men in the back. Together, the marines raced towards the truck despite the heavy bombardment and drove the truck to an aid station. There, they searched for medics and saved the lives of the two men. Katchuck and the other marine were the first two marines to be awarded the Silver Star during World War II. Corregidor fell a few months later, and Katchuck was held as a prisoner of war for the rest of the war.

Marine patrol on Guadalcanal, 1942

Marines landing on Iwo Jima

A Marine mortar team preparing for action against the Japanese

The fighting on Iwo Jima was one of the biggest and most intense battles of the Pacific Campaign. Casualties were extremely high for the Americans, as close to 7,000 were killed in the battle that lasted from February 19 until March 26, 1945. Sergeant Werner Julius Heumann was a Jewish refugee from Germany who moved to New York in the 1930s. After completing Marine boot camp, he was assigned to Company G, Third Battalion, Twenty-Eighth Ma-

rines, Fifth Marine Division. During the assault on Iwo Jima on February 19, he was a rifle squad leader, but his unit was pinned down by heavy enemy fire. He repeatedly exposed himself to assemble the squad. Finally, they were able to move inland but were met by a series of pillboxes and bunkers with one housing an anti-tank gun. Heumann was instrumental in helping his unit destroy these bunkers that were causing major problems for tanks in the sec -

tor. Two days later, they encountered a similar situation, and he used the phone on the outside of one of the American tanks to direct fire on the enemy position. Later that day, Heumann was seriously wounded when trying to help his wounded platoon leader. For his courageous leadership in one of the bloodiest battles of the war, Sergeant Heumann was awarded the Silver Star. Receiving the Silver Star for bravery in battle is a much-respected

honor in the military and especially in the Marines. The stories of these Forgotten Heroes, and many that haven’t been told yet, were from battles that changed the tide of the war.

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.

David Goldwater Herman Abady

Alexander Katchuck

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For big or small jobs, Sheetrock, carpentry, painting, electrical, plumbing, install & repair appliances Call Ephraim at 347-593-4691

MANAGEMENT STAFF WILL ASSIST you with: * Obtaining Medicaid and Pooled Income Trust

* In-home Assessments, Individual and Family Counseling

* Securing reliable home care assistance

* Case and Care Management services Dr. S. Sasson, DSW, LCSW (718) 544- 0870 or (646) 284-6242

HAIR COURSE:

Learn how to wash & style hair & wigs. Hair and wig cutting, wedding styling Private lessons or in a group Call Chaya 718-715-9009

ZEVIZZ WOODTURNING JUDAICA  Challah knifes, batei mezuzah, besamim holder, kiddish cups, havdalah candle holders, yad for sefer torah, pens, stenders, bowls and more  952-356-2228

MY MOTTO IS DON’T WAIT TO buy real estate Buy real estate and wait Your realtor for life 516-784-0856 Alexandra at Realty Connect USA

HOUSES FOR SALE

CEDARHURST

Don’t miss this opportunity!

4 Bedroom 21/2 Bathroom House  Perfectly located in Cedar Bay Park, walking distance to all. Oversized property for expansion, A Must See. LOCATION, LOCATION. For More Info call (516) 881-7727 Leave Message

HOUSES FOR SALE

WOODMERE

Beautiful, brick, colonial boasting 5 bdr 3.5 Bth in pristine condition. Excellent location, near all! Move right in! RCUSA 516-512-9626

WOODMERE

Introducing a stunning 14-side hall colonial home in the Hewlett Woodmere School District. Formal living room, formal dining room, den with a skylight. Eat in Kitchen, two sinks, a double oven, a warming draw and a microwave. First floor bedroom, a full bathroom and laundry room. Two-car garage. Upper level has four bedrooms, two full bathrooms. Finished basement with playroom, storage and utilities. Well-groomed exterior with porch adjoining the master bedroom. Hardwood floors and back patio. Central air conditioning, inground sprinkler system, alarm system. Close proximity to schools, shopping centers, restaurants, and transportation options. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

Classifieds

CAN’T AFFORD YOUR PROPERTY TAXES?

MORTGAGE?

Must sell for any reason? Call for FREE Consultation. Call now 212-470-3856 Cash buyers available!

WOODMERE

Spacious home within school district 14 with exquisite upgrades and central air conditioning, splendid kitchen with dual sinks, five bedrooms. Main level encompasses a spacious great room, office space, complementing the formal living and dining areas. Unfinished basement, detached garage. Expansive lot, measuring 80 x 100. Conveniently located near shopping, railroad, restaurants and places of worship.

Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International • 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

HEART OF CEDARHURST

Entrance off Gourmet Glatt lot, second floor, shared bath, ideal for therapist/ office work, includes utilities, $600. Call 516-371-3715

5 Towns - PARKING LOT & Storage

Approx 4000SF

Cor. Bayview & Lawrence Attractive Pricing! Call/text/Whatsapp: 516-206-1100

HOUSES FOR RENT

Woodmere, spacious 4bedroom 2 full bath split level.2 car garage +driveway.

Backyard on water SD#14. W&D. Tons of storage space. 347-517-3552

SYNAGOGUE ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR

Hours; 4+Hours Per Week (Additional Hrs.Pre Holidays)

Seeking a P/T Assistant to support the Administrative and Logistical functions of our Synagogue .We are seeking a candidate proficient in Shul Cloud, organized, detail oriented, and able to manage various tasks related to Synagogue operations, Life Cycle Events ,and Member Communications. Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite,(Word, Excel)and email marketing platforms. Training for Shul Cloud can be provided for the right candidate. Salary Commensurate with experience.

DON’T GET STUCK WITH A TWO STORY HOUSE YA KNOW, IT’S ONE STORY BEFORE YOU BUY IT BUT A SECOND STORY AFTER YOU OWN IT!

Call Dov Herman For An Accurate Unbiased Home Inspection Infrared - Termite Inspection Full Report All Included NYC 718-INSPECT Long Island 516-INSPECT www.nyinspect.com

MDS REGIONAL NURSE

5 Towns area Nursing Home management office seeking a Regional/Corporate level MDS Nurse to work in our office. Must be an RN. Regional experience preferred. 2-3 years MDS experience with good computer skills required. Position is Full Time but Part Time can be considered. Great Shomer Shabbos environment with some remote options as well. Email: officejob2019@gmail.com

FOR CURRENT SCHOOL YEAR

Starting from March: Seeking first grade General Studies teacher. Far Rockaway area boys’ school, M-Th, PM hours, strong support. Excellent salary. Possibility to continue for next year.  Send resume to teachersearch11@gmail.com.

FOR CURRENT SCHOOL YEAR

Starting from March: Seeking assistant teacher for General Studies.  Candidate should have skills to take over for teachers if needed. Far Rockaway area boys’ school, M-Th, PM hours, strong support. Excellent salary. Possibility to continue for next year.  Send resume to teachersearch11@gmail.com.

SEEKING A FRIENDLY MALE

ABA provider for a lower elementary boy at a local Yeshiva. Competitive pay, great supervision. Email rachelb@everestaba.net for details!

Classifieds

•

HELP WANTED HELP WANTED

MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN SOMEONE special’s life!

Great com/hab opportunities available! Excellent Pay!

*Far Rockaway: *Male to transport and shadow high functioning, down syndrome teenage boy to Sunday program Sunday afternoons

*Valley Stream: *Female to escort young lady in the community

* Kew Gardens/Hillcrest: *Male in mornings for high functioning adult with disability to accompany on outings, to arcades and to the zoo; to shop with him and to help organize his apartment. Partial coverage ok. Call: 718 -252-3365 ext: 102 renay@specialcarefor.com

BOOKKEEPER

Excellent growth potential, Frum environment, Excellent salary & benefits. Email resume to: resumetfs1@gmail.com

REGENTS EXPERT

Tutoring regents in Algebra and Geometry A Darchei Torah instructor. Guaranteed results Text 347-491-8045

WhatsApp 347-767-1755

DELIVERY PERSON NEEDED

to deliver this Newspaper every Thursday  morning to locations in Brooklyn. Must have Mini van or SUVand availability to work Consistently every week. Good pay

Please email gabe@fivetownsjewishhome.com or call (917) 299-8082

5 TOWNS BOYS YESHIVA

Seeking Elem Gen Ed Teachers

Excellent working environment and pay. Only lic/exp need apply. Email resume to yeshivalooking@gmail.com

DEVELOPMENT

ASSISTANT

A multi-tasker needed for general office work. The ideal candidate is someone who is detail-oriented, responsible, and can take ownership. Looking for someone who is eager to learn, and expand his/her skill set while possessing the ability to work independently and as part of a team. Experience with Excel required. Five Towns location. In-office position only, not remote. Please send resume to 5tpart.timecareer@gmail.com

YESHIVAT KOL YAAKOV

In Great Neck, NY, is seeking general studies teachers for both the elementary and middle schools, for the upcoming academic year. Mon-Thur afternoons. Competitive salary, warm and supportive environment.  Send resume to m.kalati@kolyaakov.org

HASC seeks Special Ed Teachers for our Early Learning Program. Warm, supportive and enjoyable working environment. Great Pay and Benefits! Sign on Bonus! Referral Bonus! Please email resume to jobswd@hasc.net

Life C ach Whether or Not

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

Are you somewhere vacationing? Is it working for you? Or is it raining when it should be sunning?

Sunning when it should be snowing?

Freezing when it should be warming?

Or are you having one of the more precise experiences? Is your weather on target for your activities, destination and planning?!

In the alternative, are you perhaps skiing in slush, sunning in clouds, or swimming in storms?

We planned a water park for one day of our Miami trip. Great planning! We did get a water park! Right outside our front entrance. Let’s just call it the splash mountain.

Too cold to swim but definitely an opportunity to get soaked and wet without needing to drive anywhere.

Missing the outing wasn’t the toughest part, though. It was reading that the weather would be ideal for this outing right up to the last day we could cancel.

Where’s the science in weather predictions that are as good a guess as our own?!

All that talk…. Winds are coming from the east, sun from the west, snow from the north. Basically, go outside, that’s still the best way to find out the weather.

So much for barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, and anemometers. You can discard rain and snow gauges and wind veins, as well. We can throw them all out along with the meteorologists – and I don’t mean into the garbage. I mean out the front door to find out the dependable facts about the weather.

We were once in Orlando about to go on a roller coaster, but the skies looked quite iffy. We were smart – we had cell phones and checked the up-to-theminute AccuWeather and it read: zero chance of rain. We got on!

Ergo, we experienced the newest ride: the rocking-roller deluge. So much for the “accurate” in AccuWeather.

I think the name might still work, but the spelling is off. It should read: Accu-WHETHER, an opportunity to accurately see whether they’re right or wrong. All these advancements in our lifetime and still one cannot be sure what temperature tomorrow will bring. It’s

ability? Why show the multiple maps of air movement, wind flows, and ocean masses? Why not just put up a giant question mark and call it a day?! It would be so much easier not to be misinformed than to get geared up for something just to get discouraged.

Where’s the science in weather predictions that are as good a guess as our own?!

frustrating, but I think somewhat acceptable. After all, like they say, G-d’s running the world.

However, why then, are we being subjected to the myths of some predict-

The backup plan is a spa day with massages and steam room. Wait, that’s a dream! There are over 400,000 kids on school break looking to us for their entertainment. And I think that number of kids is in our family alone or maybe it just feels like that many.

So the backup plan to the adult fantasy could be perhaps these choices: yet another museum day, a play space experience, a visit to a craft center, or in the alternative, a day of reckoning with all these meteorologists. Let them instead come up with some usable information. Such as, ideas for how to keep kids busy. Places to go in the east. Things to visit in the west. Entertainment coming to town from the north.

Let their barometers be bar-roometers. They can tell us about places to take kids to to do bar balancing or gymnastics.

Let their hygrometers have something to do with hydration. In other words, educate us as to places to get drinks or have access to water activities (should the weather miraculously somehow hold up).

And let their thermometers represent therm-o-places, locations to get thermos-packed food or drinks or thermal clothing for cold weather activities.

And finally, let us be the anemometers. Whatever that word actually may mean, let it be our attitudes.

In other words read and pronounced as : Ani maamin -eters. I am a believer. That is to say, believers who can say that whatever happens today, it all turned out exactly the way it was supposed to be. “Weather” we saw it coming or not!

Today, I figure we’ll go kayaking on ice. Biking in the rain. And digging in the mud.

With that kind of planning, the weather can’t mess with our plans.

Rivki Rosenwald is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist working with both couples and individuals and is a certified relationship counselor. Rivki is a co-founder and creator of an effective Parent Management of Adolescent Years Program. She can be contacted at 917-705-2004 or at rivkirosenwald@gmail.com. A book is the ultimate apparatus.