Jooish News

He went on to emphasize the significance of the reported reversal by Tehran, saying, “You had, yesterday, scheduled, over 800 hangings. They didn’t hang anyone. They cancelled the hangings. That had a big impact,” according to his remarks.

Trump’s comments followed earlier statements made two days prior, when he asserted that the killing of protesters in Iran had stopped at a moment when a potential U.S. military action appeared close. At that time, he told reporters in the Oval Office, “We have been notified pretty strongly that the killing in Iran is stopping, and there’s no plan for executions or an execution.”

He added that the information had come from reliable sources but cautioned that the situation would continue to be monitored. “I’ve been told that in good authority. We’ll find out about it, I’m sure. If it happens, we’ll be very upset.”

Additional details emerged Thursday night from Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who spoke at the opening session of the 10th Israeli American Council National Summit in Florida. Witkoff said that, acting on Trump’s instructions, the United States had contacted Iranian officials on Wednesday to convey concerns over reports of impending mass executions. “And that’s been shut down, I think, as everyone knows, the President has announced that. He’s the only one in the world who has that indomitable strength that can bend people. I watch it happen. It’s quite remarkable to watch it happen.”

When asked whether he anticipated military action against Iran, Witkoff said he hoped diplomacy would prevail. “Well, I hope there’s a diplomatic resolution. I really do. There are four issues: Nuclear enrichment, missiles, they have to cut back on their inventory, the actual material that they have, which is roughly 2,000 kilograms which is enriched anywhere between 3.67% to 60%, and the proxies, of course.”

{Matzav.com}

“Absolutely disgusting,” Vizel said, calling the video a shock piece that is “decontextualized” and designed to mislead viewers. She said it exploits residents’ reluctance to share private financial information with outsiders in order to portray Hasidic men as unemployed.

“It uses people’s unwillingness to discuss personal economic details to create a portrait of a bunch of people who don’t work,” Vizel said.

Vizel acknowledged that Kiryas Joel, like many insular communities, has real challenges and legitimate areas for criticism, including scrutiny over its relationship with government welfare programs. But she said portraying the community as broadly dependent on public assistance ignores economic realities on the ground.

According to Vizel, the vast majority of Hasidic men in the community are gainfully employed and work long hours across a wide range of industries. She said she has previously documented the scope of Hasidic-owned businesses by reviewing phone directories and business listings.

Absolutely disgusting- shock piece by @tyleraloevera ,
decontextualized, and uses people’s reluctance to share private economic information with outsiders to create a portrait of a bunch of people who don’t work. https://t.co/ivCr2iJyfI

— Frieda Vizel (@FriedaVizel) January 16, 2026

Vizel accused Oliveira of leaning into inflammatory language to drive engagement, arguing that shock value has replaced nuance in much viral content about religious and minority communities.

She described her response as a raw, first-reaction video recorded while watching Oliveira’s content in real time, acknowledging its emotional tone. Vizel said her goal was not to portray the community as flawless, but to highlight its complexity.

“This is a complicated and imperfect community,” she said. “It deserves honest criticism, but not caricature.”

Oliveira has not publicly responded to Vizel’s criticism. Vizel said she hopes the debate encourages viewers to approach viral portrayals of insular communities with greater skepticism and care.

Just a reminder that I made a video on how Hasidic Jews earn a living (with vasts amount of sources, not by accosting anxious lay people in the streets) and it has well over a million views.https://t.co/PjFuEwRval

— Frieda Vizel (@FriedaVizel) January 16, 2026

According to authorities, at approximately 11:20 p.m. on April 25, 2025, officers from the Berkeley Township Police Department responded to a residence on Evernhan Avenue following a report of a domestic disturbance. Upon arrival, officers determined that Sayegh—who was off duty at the time and employed as a Toms River Township police officer—had smashed the front glass door of the home and entered the residence. Investigators further determined that she damaged the hood of a vehicle belonging to one of the victims that was parked in the driveway.

Sayegh was located at the scene and taken into custody after resisting officers’ efforts to peacefully place her under arrest. She was subsequently released from the Ocean County Jail in accordance with New Jersey Bail Reform.

As part of her sentence, Judge Ryan ordered that Sayegh have no contact with the victims and pay restitution for the damage she caused. She was also required to forfeit her position as a Toms River Township police officer effective November 17, 2025, the date she pled guilty, and she has forfeited all future public employment in the State of New Jersey.

Demonstrations escalated sharply after the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman, during an incident connected to Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.

The growing unrest has also placed renewed focus on the tactics used by immigration officers during vehicle stops and arrests, prompting public criticism and legal scrutiny.

The Associated Press reported Friday that Aliya Rahman, a U.S. citizen, was pulled from her car and detained by immigration officers in Minneapolis, an incident that further fueled anger among demonstrators.

Also on Friday, the AP reported that a federal judge ordered the release of a Liberian man arrested by immigration agents in Minneapolis, ruling that the detention violated Fourth Amendment protections.

Trump’s remarks followed earlier comments in which he suggested he could invoke the Insurrection Act, a rarely used law that allows a president to deploy military forces domestically under narrowly defined circumstances.

Minnesota officials have urged residents to remain calm while condemning what they describe as an expanded federal footprint, as protests continue and multiple investigations and court challenges move forward.

{Matzav.com}

The Making of a Gadol

Rav Leib Malin was born in 1906 in Bialystok, a major industrial city in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire. At the time, this region of northeastern Poland was under Tsarist rule, home to a dense concentration of Jewish life and learning. His father, Rav Avraham Moshe Malin, served as the local dayan and traced his lineage back to Rav Isser Yehuda Malin, a prominent rav in Brisk. The young boy—known affectionately as “Leib Bialystoker”—showed remarkable aptitude for learning from his earliest years.

His first major stop was the Shaar HaTorah Yeshiva in Grodno, situated about fifty miles northwest of his hometown. During the interwar period, Grodno had earned a reputation as a powerhouse of Torah scholarship. The bochurim there used to say that just as a person cannot survive without breathing air, so too in Grodno one could not exist without breathing Torah. Under the tutelage of Rav Shimon Shkop, the young Leib quickly distinguished himself as a talmid of unusual depth.

An incident from those years left an indelible impression on him. Together with his close friend Rav Dovid Lifshitz zt”l (who would later become the Suvalker Rav and a Rosh Yeshiva at RIETS), young Leib once approached Rav Shimon to discuss a personal matter. After an extended conversation, the two bochurim apologized profusely for consuming time that their rebbi could have devoted to his own learning. Rav Shimon’s response surprised them. He invoked the Gemara’s teaching of “aser bishvil she’tis’asher“—give a tenth so that you may become wealthy—and explained that this principle extends beyond monetary matters. When a rebbi invests time in his talmidim, he explained, he doesn’t lose; rather, his own Torah grows richer as a result. This lesson about the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning would profoundly shape Rav Leib’s future approach to chinuch.

Rav Leib subsequently spent time learning under Rav Elchonon Wasserman hy”d in Baranovitch, located in what was then the newly independent Second Polish Republic, and under Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz zt”l. He also forged a lifelong bond with his Bialystok compatriot Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro zt”l, with whom he learned b’chavrusa; Rav Shapiro would eventually lead Yeshivas Be’er Yaakov in Eretz Yisrael.

Yet it was in the Mirrer Yeshiva that Rav Leib Malin discovered his true calling. Mir—a small town surrounded by forests in Belarus, roughly sixty miles southwest of Minsk—had become a magnetic center for the most talented young scholars in the yeshiva world. There, Rav Leib earned his place among an elite cadre of senior talmidim who wielded significant influence over the yeshiva’s direction. They were known informally as the “lions of Mir,” and Rav Leib—whose very name means “lion” in Yiddish—emerged as the leader among them.

A Bond Forged in Fire: Rav Yeruchem’s Influence

The Mir of that era was unusual among Lithuanian yeshivos in the extraordinary role played by its Mashgiach, Rav Yeruchem Levovitz zt”l. While Rosh Yeshiva Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel handled administrative and financial matters with characteristic humility, it was Rav Yeruchem who shaped the spiritual character of the institution and its talmidim. His magnetic personality drew the cream of the yeshiva world to Mir’s doors.

Rav Leib became one of Rav Yeruchem’s closest disciples. The depth of his attachment to his rebbi was legendary. Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, who came to Mir only after Rav Yeruchem’s passing in 1936, testified that even years later the reverence for the Mashgiach remained palpable in the yeshiva’s halls. He recounted that Rav Leib had viewed Rav Yeruchem with such overwhelming awe that he considered himself as mere dust before his rebbi—and that had Rav Yeruchem commanded him to walk into fire, he would have obeyed without hesitation.

For Rav Leib, Rav Yeruchem’s mussar discourses were not merely ethical instruction; they constituted an entire approach to understanding Torah. The precision and analytical rigor that the Mashgiach brought to interpreting the words of Chazal, Rav Leib later explained, served as a template for how one should approach every aspect of Torah study.

One encounter with Rav Yeruchem crystallized a principle that would guide Rav Leib throughout his life. Disturbed by a situation in the yeshiva, the young Leib Malin organized a group of bochurim to stage a walkout in protest. As they rose from their seats and headed toward the door, they suddenly noticed Rav Yeruchem standing in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes blazing with an intensity that stopped them in their tracks. Without a word being spoken, the group retreated to their places.

Sometime later, Rav Yeruchem summoned Rav Leib for a private conversation. What he told his talmid was unexpected. “I disagreed with your intended course of action,” the Mashgiach acknowledged. “But clearly you had thought it through and concluded it was correct. So why did you reverse yourself simply because you saw me standing there? Once you determine that something is right, you must have the courage to see it through. A person must take achrayus—responsibility.”

That charge—to shoulder responsibility and stand behind one’s convictions—became the driving force of Rav Leib’s life. It would propel him to lead the rescue of an entire yeshiva when others counseled caution, and later to rebuild a bastion of Torah on foreign shores when easier paths beckoned.

Rav Leib’s command of Rav Yeruchem’s teachings was so comprehensive that he was entrusted with editing the second volume of Da’as Chochmah U’Mussar, the published collection of the Mashgiach’s discourses. When Rav Yeruchem passed away on the 18th of Sivan 5696 (June 1936), his devoted talmidim—led by Rav Leib along with the Mashgiach’s sons—undertook to preserve his teachings for posterity. Rav Leib presided over the first yahrtzeit commemoration and oversaw the initial publication of a volume of maamarim in Vilna in 1940, even as the clouds of war gathered. Remarkably, they continued issuing additional pamphlets of Rav Yeruchem’s teachings throughout their years of exile in Shanghai.

Leadership in Mir and the Brisker Connection

What set the Mir apart from other yeshivos of the era was the remarkable autonomy granted to its senior students. These elite talmidim—each of whom possessed the stature to lead his own yeshiva—exercised genuine authority over the institution’s daily operations. They assigned incoming bochurim to study groups and often served as the primary teachers for these chaburahs. Both the student body and the official hanhalah accorded them the respect due to Torah leaders in their own right.

Rav Sholom Shapiro, a veteran of those years, left a vivid description of the yeshiva’s physical layout and social hierarchy. Contrary to what one might expect, the most distinguished scholars did not occupy the prestigious eastern wall (mizrach). Instead, they sat along the western wall, on benches at the rear of the beis medrash. In the first position sat Rav Yonah Karpilov (known as “Rav Yonah Minsker”), and parallel to him sat Rav Aryeh Leib Malin. Whenever a bochur encountered difficulty in his learning, these were the addresses to which he turned—and he invariably came away with clarity.

The esteem in which younger talmidim held the “lions” bordered on reverence. When Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel selected a group of outstanding students to travel to Brisk for advanced study, one of those chosen was Rav Simcha Sheps. Upon learning that Rav Yonah Karpilov would be part of the same delegation, Rav Simcha withdrew. His explanation: Rav Yonah occupied the status of “mori v’rabi” to him, and it would be inappropriate for a talmid to study alongside his rebbi as equals at the feet of a third party.

An episode involving Rav Meir Shapiro illustrates the intellectual firepower concentrated among the Mir’s senior students. Before establishing Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, the renowned Polish Torah leader toured several Lithuanian yeshivos to observe their methods. When he visited Mir and delivered a shiur, Rav Leib and his peers engaged him in vigorous debate. The give-and-take grew so spirited that it seemed the walls might shake. When the dust settled, Rav Meir Shapiro—not yet forty years old—smiled wryly at those assembled and remarked: “When I reach your age, perhaps I’ll know as much as you ‘lions of the Mir’ do!”

A pivotal chapter in Rav Leib’s development began in 1929, when Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer traveled from Yerushalayim to Poland for the dedication of a new building at the Kletsk Yeshiva. During that visit, he remarked to Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel that the unique brilliance of Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik—the Brisker Rav—was not being adequately transmitted to the next generation. Rav Leizer Yudel acted swiftly. Despite the severe financial constraints imposed by the onset of the Great Depression, he arranged for a select group of his finest talmidim to travel to Brisk (Brest-Litovsk, situated on the Bug River near the Soviet border) to study under the Rav.

Among this elite delegation were Rav Leib Malin, Rav Yonah Karpilov Hy”d, Rav Michel Feinstein, Rav Henoch Fishman, Rav Naftali Wasserman, and Rav Ephraim Mordechai Ginsburg. The Brisker Rav developed a particular fondness for Rav Leib, treating him almost as a son. Blessed with a phenomenal memory and an exceptional ability to capture complex ideas in writing, Rav Leib transcribed the Rav’s shiurim on Seder Kodshim; these notes would later circulate in stencil format and become prized possessions in the yeshiva world.

The Brisker Rav’s trust in Rav Leib extended to an extraordinary privilege: permission to borrow and study his personal notebooks containing his own chiddushei Torah, as well as manuscripts of his father, Rav Chaim Brisker. Rav Leib would commit these precious insights to memory, return the notebooks, and receive another set to absorb. The Rav also engaged Rav Leib as a tutor for his son, the future Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik of Brisk in Yerushalayim.

So thoroughly did Rav Leib internalize the Brisker approach that it became virtually indistinguishable from his own thinking. Rav Dovid Finkel, another close talmid of the Brisker Rav, related a telling incident. Rav Leib once sent a letter to his rebbi containing original Torah insights. After studying the contents, the Brisker Rav expressed bewilderment: “Who authored these chiddushim—Rav Leib or myself? The letter came from him, yet I feel as though I wrote every word.”

Years later, when the Brisker Rav read Rav Leib’s introduction to HaTevunah—a philosophical treatise on the nature of Torah study—he offered the highest praise imaginable: “Since the time of Rav Chaim Volozhiner, no one has articulated the essence of Torah in this manner.” In that introduction, Rav Leib had written: “If even the greatest man has not been deeply involved in Torah study at every moment, if the finest conduit within him is empty of Torah, he enters a general state of bittul Torah… Torah’s essence is that it has no interruption; there are no difficult circumstances that can interrupt it. By nature, it never stops.”

“Stay With Rav Leib”: A Letter That Saved a Life

The force of Rav Leib’s personality made a profound impression even on those who encountered him briefly. In the mid-1930s, Reb Menashe Karmel—a prosperous businessman and communal leader in Krakow—sought guidance from his Rebbe, the Imrei Emes of Gur, regarding his sons’ education. The Gerrer Rebbe’s advice was unexpected: send them to study under Rav Yeruchem Levovitz in distant Mir. For a family rooted in cosmopolitan Galician chassidus, dispatching their boys to a remote Lithuanian yeshiva town was virtually unheard of. Nevertheless, Reb Menashe complied. His second son, Avraham Yitzchak, arrived in Mir as a sixteen-year-old in 1937.

The Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel, assigned the young Galicianer to learn with Rav Leib Malin. A deep bond formed quickly between them. Though Rav Leib was still technically a bochur himself, he became a surrogate father figure to the impressionable teenager.

As the summer of 1939 drew to a close and the threat of war loomed ever larger, Reb Menashe Karmel wrote to his son instructing him to return home to Krakow. The boy shared his father’s request with Rav Leib. The response was characteristically direct: “Azoi vi ich farshtei doss—the way I understand the situation, your place is here with the yeshiva.”

When Reb Menashe learned of Rav Leib’s assessment, he faced an agonizing decision. His fatherly instincts urged him to bring his son home to safety. Yet he had met Rav Leib and experienced firsthand the power of his conviction and the clarity of his judgment. Despite the stakes involved, Reb Menashe deferred to the young talmid chacham’s wisdom.

In a heartrending letter—written with the implicit understanding that father and son might never see each other again in this world—Reb Menashe urged Avraham Yitzchak to remain with the yeshiva no matter what transpired. “Stay with Rav Leib and the yeshiva,” he wrote, “for like a rare flower blooming in a desert, you will always remain a ben Torah no matter what befalls you and no matter where circumstances take you.” That letter proved prophetic. The son who stayed with the yeshiva survived; his father and family who remained in Poland were murdered by the Nazis. Through his survival, Avraham Yitzchak Karmel established generations of bnei Torah.

Rav Malin’s Decisive Leadership

By the eve of World War II, Rav Leib Malin—though only in his thirties, unmarried, and holding no official title—had emerged as one of the most respected figures in the yeshiva world. When the war erupted in September 1939, Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz of the Vaad Hatzalah offered him a personal escape route to America. Rav Leib declined without hesitation. Abandoning his talmidim and colleagues was unthinkable.

Together with his close friend Rav Chaim Visoker (Wysoker), Rav Leib assumed the mantle of responsibility for saving the Mir Yeshiva. What followed ranks among the most extraordinary rescue operations of the Holocaust.

The Maharal writes that there is a distinction between individual holiness and collective holiness—and that certain exceptional souls feel compelled to shoulder responsibility for the entire community. This quality, his Rebbetzin later observed, “could be discerned in Reb Leib throughout his life, both in the old Yeshivas Mir and when he was in Lithuania at the height of the dreadful war.”

The geopolitical situation shifted with terrifying rapidity. On August 23, 1939—just days before the German invasion of Poland—Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. A secret protocol attached to the agreement divided Poland between the two totalitarian powers. Following Germany’s invasion on September 1st, Soviet forces swept into eastern Poland from the other direction, swallowing up the region that housed many of the great yeshivos.

In an unexpected development, Moscow ceded the city of Vilna and its surrounding territory to Lithuania, which remained nominally independent. The gadol hador, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky zt”l, recognized this as a narrow window of opportunity and urged all yeshivos to relocate to the Vilna region, where they could escape both Nazi and Soviet control without crossing an international border. After Simchas Torah, the Mir Yeshiva made the journey and established itself in Kehdan, a small town in the Lithuanian countryside.

The respite proved brief. By the summer of 1940, the Soviets had absorbed Lithuania into the USSR. Religious life now faced an existential threat—not yet from the Nazis (whose invasion lay a year in the future), but from Communist authorities determined to eradicate Torah observance. For young men whose entire existence revolved around learning and mitzvah observance, remaining under Soviet rule was spiritually untenable.

Reb Moshe Zupnik, who played a crucial operational role in the escape, later offered this assessment: “Many have recounted this story without stating the facts accurately. The person who deserves primary credit for the rescue is Rav Leib Malin. The conventional wisdom at the time—shared even by the greatest Torah authorities—was that attempting to obtain Soviet exit visas was reckless and would likely result in deportation to Siberia. Rav Leib saw the situation differently. He believed that remaining under a regime committed to destroying Torah, Shabbos, and Yiddishkeit was the greater danger. One had to pursue any possible avenue of escape, even if it appeared to be merely a crack in the wall.”

Reb Moshe Zupnik recalled Rav Leib framing the imperative in historical terms: just as the Kohanim in the time of the Chanukah story had been willing to sacrifice their lives fighting the Greeks who sought to sever the Jewish people from their Torah, so too the bnei yeshiva had to take extraordinary risks to escape the godless Communists. Acting on this conviction, Rav Leib orchestrated an effort to secure Polish passports for the hundreds of yeshiva students who were Polish citizens. These documents were obtained through the Polish government-in-exile, which operated out of the British consulate in Kovno. The passports, he hoped, would provide the legal basis for departure.

“A Yeshiva Transcends Even the Gadol Hador”

Word of the escape plans reached Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky, the acknowledged leader of world Jewry in that era and the patron of the refugee yeshivos. Rav Chaim Ozer harbored grave reservations. The proposed course of action struck him as dangerously impractical—far more likely to land the young men in Siberian labor camps than to deliver them to freedom. It must be remembered that at this point, no one foresaw the Nazi death machine; the calculus centered entirely on how best to navigate Soviet oppression.

As Rav Chaim Ozer lay in his final illness, Rav Chaim Visoker visited him. The gadol hador inquired about the mood in the Mir: “What is the consensus among the ‘lions’?” When Rav Chaim Visoker reported that Rav Leib Malin and his circle were actively formulating an escape plan, Rav Chaim Ozer’s response was remarkable. Rather than insisting on his own contrary judgment, he declared: “A yeshiva iz gresser vi der gadol hador!” A unified decision by the yeshiva’s senior talmidim, he acknowledged, carried a weight that could override even his own assessment.

This concept—that the yeshiva as a collective entity possessed a sanctity and wisdom exceeding that of any individual, however great—lay at the heart of Rav Leib’s approach. He insisted, against the prevailing tendency of the time, that the Mir must escape as a unified body rather than scattering as individuals seeking their own paths to safety. His conviction was that the yeshiva’s spiritual wholeness would itself generate the divine assistance needed to survive the perilous journey.

Orchestrating the Escape

Beyond the Mir, an escape route was beginning to crystallize. A Dutch student at the Telz Yeshiva named Nathan Gutwirth had discovered that the honorary Dutch consul in Kovno, Jan Zwartendijk, could stamp passports with a notation indicating that no visa was required to enter Curaçao, a Dutch possession in the Caribbean. Zorach Warhaftig, a Mizrachi leader and tireless rescue activist, succeeded in extending this arrangement to Polish citizens. The next critical link was obtaining transit visas from Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno, permitting passage through Japan en route to the supposed final destination.

The moment Rav Leib Malin grasped the potential of this chain, he sprang into action. “The moment that an avenue of deliverance opened up,” his Rebbetzin later wrote, “he knew no rest and urged the rest of the group to lose no time in nervous dithering from giving in their papers in order to obtain a visa and escape from their place of approaching danger.”

Rav Leib dispatched operatives to handle the practical details. Yaakov Ederman, Eliezer Portnoy, and Moshe Zupnik served as his agents on the ground. Zupnik actually worked inside Sugihara’s office, processing documents and compiling lists of visa recipients. Meanwhile, Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz, who had reached America in early 1940, worked feverishly to raise the substantial funds needed for train tickets across the Soviet Union. So urgent was his mission that he famously traveled on Shabbos to meet with potential donors.

Rav Kalmanowitz later shared the inner drive that fueled his superhuman efforts. He had encountered a Midrash Tanchuma describing how the lion aboard Noach’s Ark attacked Noach for being late with its feeding. How, he wondered, could Noach be punished so severely for a minor delay when he was single-handedly caring for countless animals? The answer struck him with force: this was no ordinary lion—it was the last surviving member of its species. Every moment of its care was infinitely precious. “I suddenly understood,” Rav Kalmanowitz explained. “The Mirrer bochurim are not ordinary yeshiva students. They are the last of the lions—the final remnant of a world. How could I allow myself to be tired?”

To coordinate the escape, Rav Leib and four other senior talmidim—Rav Yonah Karpilov, Rav Chaim Visoker, Rav Michel Feinstein, and Rav Yaakov Brabrovsky—established a formal committee. They maintained ongoing communication with Rav Kalmanowitz in America, providing updates on conditions in Lithuania and the progress of the visa effort.

Not everyone escaped. Rav Yonah Karpilov, one of the greatest of the “lions,” ultimately decided not to leave. He was brutally murdered in Slabodka in June 1941, shortly after the German invasion. His loss represented an incalculable blow to the Torah world.

Throughout the frantic weeks of visa processing, opposition surfaced within the yeshiva itself. Some feared that these activities would provoke Soviet retaliation, bringing catastrophe upon everyone. Rav Leib refused to waver. The survival of Torah was at stake; calculated risk was not merely justified but obligatory.

When about forty bochurim declined to accept their visas, Reb Moshe Zupnik held onto the documents despite the mortal danger this posed—possession of such papers could mean execution or deportation if discovered by the NKVD. Among those forty reluctant recipients were three men who would become towering figures in the postwar Torah world: Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, Rav Shmuel Brudny, and Rav Nachum Partzovitz. The visas Zupnik preserved eventually saved their lives.

Across the Frozen Continent

Then came the most perilous gamble: applying to the Soviet authorities for exit visas. Against all expectations, permission was granted. During the winter of 1940-41, hundreds of refugees—the Mir talmidim among them—embarked on the Trans-Siberian Railroad for the nearly six-thousand-mile journey across the frozen expanse of Russia to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.

The logistics were Byzantine and dangerous. Payment for the train tickets had to be made in American dollars—currency that was illegal for Soviet citizens to possess. This meant that the very act of purchasing tickets constituted registration with the authorities as someone seeking to flee. Funds from Rav Kalmanowitz, Rav Moshe Feinstein, Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, and Irving Bunim in America made the journey possible.

From Vladivostok, the refugees crossed by ship to Kobe, Japan, where they found temporary haven for approximately eight months. Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel, the Rosh Yeshiva, had by this time reached Palestine, where he hoped the yeshiva would eventually join him.

Exile in Shanghai

As 1941 progressed, the Japanese military began preparing for the attack on Pearl Harbor that would bring America into the war. To minimize the risk of espionage, they expelled all foreign nationals from the Japanese mainland. Refugees who lacked onward visas—including the majority of the Mir students—found themselves deposited in the international zone of Shanghai, a city under Japanese occupation. There they would remain for the next five years.

Throughout the Shanghai years, Rav Leib remained a pillar of the yeshiva’s existence. His Rebbetzin later testified that he “was one of the pivotal figures in maintaining contact, by letter and telegram, with those who were working to save the yeshiva and deliver it from its exile.” His unwavering faith that their rescue reflected Hashem’s plan to preserve Torah in the world sustained the community through grinding hardship.

Conditions in Shanghai were brutal. The students were confined to a ghetto called Hongkew and required to wear identifying letters on their clothing—”A” for Americans, “B” for British. The Japanese referred to all foreigners as “Naquni.” This author’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Sally Hirsch (née Cohen), who later traveled with the Mir contingent to America, recalled those years vividly. Despite the deprivations, the bochurim maintained their commitment to learning and even reached out to teach Torah to Shanghai’s established Sephardic Jewish community. “They gave classes in the main Sefardic shul,” Mrs. Hirsch remembered. “They were single bochurim and they made us all frummer. Many of them became important Rabbis later in America.” The Mir students conducted their own maariv minyan in the Sephardic synagogue and even held weddings there at night.

The young Shmuel Berenbaum, who later became one of the generation’s leading Roshei Yeshiva, shared quarters with Rav Leib during part of the Shanghai exile. He marveled at how Rav Leib maintained exactly the same standards of conduct and dignity that had characterized him in Mir. While the oppressive heat and humidity—temperatures frequently topped one hundred degrees Fahrenheit—led most students to abandon their jackets when venturing outside, Rav Leib refused to compromise. His sole concession was to drape his jacket over his shoulders rather than wearing it fully. The diet consisted almost entirely of rice, yet Rav Leib sustained fourteen-hour days of intensive study in the sweltering beis medrash. Torah was his sustenance.

Rav Leib’s intensity could be intimidating. When asked whether he had ever approached Rav Leib during those five shared years in Shanghai to discuss a point in learning, Reb Simcha Nadborny replied immediately: “Me? I was young. The younger talmidim were nervous to speak with Rav Leib! We stood in awe of him. The only person our age who conversed with him regularly about Torah was Rav Nachum Partzovitz.” Indeed, disciples of Rav Nachum would later attribute their rebbi’s distinctive methodology—the meticulous reading and analysis of texts to extract every nuance of meaning—to those countless hours of study alongside Rav Leib in Shanghai.

Rav Chatzkel Levenstein, the Mashgiach who accompanied the yeshiva throughout its wanderings, later characterized the Shanghai years as a period of remarkable spiritual achievement. The yeshiva, he said, functioned as a “greenhouse”—insulated from the surrounding chaos. Yet those living through it experienced genuine suffering. For most of the war, the refugees had no reliable information about events in Europe. Word of the horrors in the Warsaw Ghetto reached Shanghai in 1942, and gradually the terrible truth about systematic mass murder became known. The senior bochurim, including Rav Shmuel Charkover, worked constantly to bolster the spirits of those tormented by uncertainty about their families’ fates.

The Dateline Question and an Extraordinary Sacrifice

Before leaving Kobe for Shanghai, the yeshiva received communication from Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel in Palestine relaying the Chazon Ish’s ruling on the international dateline—a halachic question with immediate practical implications. According to the Chazon Ish, Shabbos in Japan should be observed on the day the civil calendar designated as Sunday. This placed Rav Leib at the center of one of the era’s most intriguing halachic controversies.

Two young cousins under Rav Leib’s care, Nechemia and Meir Malin, brought independent corroboration: their father, Rav Isser Yehuda Malin, possessed a tradition from Rav Chaim Brisker himself that aligned with the Chazon Ish’s position. (This Rav Isser Yehuda Malin should not be confused with Rav Leib’s ancestor of the same name.) It bears noting that not all authorities agreed. This author’s rebbi, Rav Dovid Kviat zt”l, followed the alternative “Chassidish” view and observed Shabbos on the civil Saturday throughout his time in Japan and Shanghai.

What Rav Leib did next defies ordinary calculation. He and twenty-one other Mir students had actually obtained American visas that would have allowed them to proceed directly to the United States. They chose not to use them. One obstacle was timing: the ship was scheduled to depart on Erev Yom Kippur, and the dateline complication would have required fasting for two consecutive days—an impractical burden to impose on such a large group.

But the primary reason ran far deeper. In a letter to Rav Kalmanowitz, Rav Leib explained: “For all of us who received the visas, our souls are bound with the souls of all the bnei hayeshivah. Our goals and aspirations are to be constantly in the company of our yeshivah in its entirety… It is difficult for us to separate from the rest of the holy yeshivah. It would be inconceivable for a significant group to depart on Erev Yom Kippur, a time when everyone should be gathering together to bask in the presence of the yeshivah on this holiest day of the year… It is very important to us to travel together. In this way, we will be a joint foundation for the future edifice, and we will strengthen each other in Torah and yirah through our shared efforts. Whereas if we were to disperse, then perhaps some individuals won’t be able to hold their own without the group.”

This decision extended Rav Leib’s exile by five years. He could have reached American shores in relative comfort and safety; instead, he remained with his yeshiva through years of deprivation in Shanghai. The reasoning was perfectly consistent with his lifelong philosophy: the leader does not abandon his flock; the yeshiva survives as a whole or not at all.

To American Shores

On July 18, 1946, a large contingent of Mir talmidim disembarked in San Francisco from the General M.C. Meigs, having crossed the Pacific from Shanghai. Among them were Rav Leib Malin and Rav Chaim Visoker—the two architects of the rescue, arriving together in the land where they would labor to rebuild what had been destroyed.

Mrs. Sally Hirsch, then an eighteen-year-old, traveled with a later group of Mir-connected refugees on the same vessel. Her ship departed Shanghai on January 1, 1949 and arrived January 24th. The accommodations were spartan: third-class passage with no private rooms, just rows of beds in open dormitories, men and women housed separately.

“Almost everyone was sick the entire time,” she recalled. The ship made stops in Guam (for supplies, though passengers remained aboard) and Honolulu, where the local Jewish community received them with extraordinary warmth. “They gathered us in one house. The people were so kind. They loaded us up with sardines and canned goods.”

Keeping kosher during the voyage proved challenging. “The cooks kept trying to convince us to eat, insisting that this or that pot contained no pork and was therefore kosher. But we were all shomer Shabbos and wouldn’t rely on that. We ate what kosher food we had brought.” The question of Shabbos travel had been resolved before departure: since they boarded several days before Shabbos, the journey was deemed permissible.

Remarkably, the American Navy charged nothing for the passage. Upon arrival in San Francisco, HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), working with various Torah organizations, arranged three days of hotel accommodation before the refugees boarded trains for New York. “The Mir boys went straight to the Yeshiva in Brooklyn,” Mrs. Hirsch remembered. “They were taken into the dormitories. Room was made for them.”

Recreating the Mir in America

The late 1940s witnessed the first stirrings of Torah’s postwar renaissance in America. Yeshivos established footholds and began to grow. The Mir students who had survived Shanghai as a cohesive unit gradually dispersed—some married and entered business, others secured teaching positions in various yeshivos, still others made their way to Eretz Yisrael. A significant number remained with Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz, who reestablished the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn.

Yet Rav Leib Malin and Rav Chaim Visoker felt that none of the existing options captured the authentic spirit of what they had known in prewar Europe. They yearned to recreate the atmosphere of the Kelm Talmud Torah and the Mir under Rav Yeruchem—an environment of total immersion in Torah and mussar, unsullied by compromise. Armed with little beyond their vision—no significant funding, no wealthy backers—Rav Leib set out to honor his rebbi’s charge.

In the final period before his death, Rav Yeruchem had addressed a gathering of Mir alumni in Lodz. Rav Leib came to regard that address as his rebbi’s ethical will: “Who more than you understands what the authentic form of a yeshivah [tzuras hayeshivah] should be? To dwell in the depths of Torah study… You are all students of our holy yeshivah and I see that beyond the vast Torah knowledge you’ve acquired—an external achievement—you’ve internalized the essence and spirit of what a holy yeshiva truly is… You can influence those who never entered the yeshiva’s walls. Through their connection to you, they too will be considered its talmidim. Through this merit, you will remain talmidim of the holy yeshivah for eternity.”

Meanwhile, a parallel story was unfolding in Eretz Yisrael. In 1947, a young woman named Yaffa Kreiser—daughter of Rav Dovid Dov HaLevi Kreiser zt”l, who had served as a maggid shiur in Rav Aharon Kotler’s yeshiva in Kletsk—received an unexpected package from her brother-in-law, Rav Dovid Povarsky zt”l (who would later lead Yeshivas Ponevezh). It was a newly published sefer titled HaTevunah, Part One. Rav Dovid asked her to read the introduction. She read it once, then again. When she searched for the author’s name, she found none. “Who wrote this?” she asked. Rav Dovid’s reply was simple and direct: “Reb Leib Malin. And you are going to America…”

Two weeks before Rosh Hashanah 5708 (1947), with Tel Aviv under nighttime curfew amid the turbulent final days of the British Mandate, Yaffa Kreiser learned she would be departing for America that Sunday. She boarded a ship and arrived in New York on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. On Asarah B’Teves the couple became engaged; in Adar Sheini they married in Canada.

Upon reaching America, Rav Leib received two distinguished offers: Rav Moshe Feinstein invited him to head Yeshivas Tiferes Yerushalayim; Rav Avraham Kalmanowitz sought him as a Rosh Yeshiva at the newly reconstituted Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. He declined both. His sense of mission pointed in a different direction.

Shortly after the wedding, a historic gathering convened in the Malins’ modest living room. Present were the luminaries of the Mir’s senior generation, united by a shared determination to resurrect the world that had been destroyed. From that meeting emerged Beis HaTalmud.

The founding cohort read like a roster of the Mir’s greatest: Rav Chaim Visoker, Rav Shmuel Charkover, Rav Leizer Horodzeisky, Rav Levi Krupenia, Rav Leibel Shachar, Rav Simcha Zissel Levovitz (son of the Mashgiach), Rav Betzalel Tannenbaum, Rav Binyomin Paler, Rav Avrohom Levovitz, Rav Sholom Menashe Gottlieb, Rav Yisroel Perkowski, and Rav Binyomin Zeilberger. Initially conceived as an elite kollel for these seasoned scholars, Beis HaTalmud would gradually expand to include younger talmidim. In the early years, they lived in “stanzias”—family-style boarding arrangements—just as they had in the original Mir.

The Rebbetzin’s recollection of that founding generation is poignant: “These men were Torah princes who carried blood-soaked memories of the dreadful war with them. They had lost their families and all that they held dear. It took strength and determination to bear the burden of their pain and grief. However, they did not swerve from their customary conduct and they remained firmly bound together as a group, occupying themselves with Torah and Mussar.”

The Sacred Form: Beis HaTalmud’s Distinctive Character

Rav Yeruchem’s charge to preserve and transmit the “tzuras hayeshivah“—the authentic form and spirit of the yeshiva—became the animating principle of Beis HaTalmud. In his introduction to HaTevunah, Rav Leib had articulated this vision with crystalline clarity, describing how Rav Yeruchem “guarded the tzuras hayeshivah as his most precious possession, ensuring it never deviated in the slightest from the tradition received from our ancestors… Within the yeshivah’s walls, one sensed the presence of Hashem’s sovereignty… The entire atmosphere was saturated with Torah… The Shechinah dwelt there.”

Beis HaTalmud’s physical circumstances were humble. After beginning in East New York, the yeshiva found space in a small beis medrash belonging to Polish chassidim in Crown Heights. The Malins’ tiny apartment served multiple functions; its covered balcony became the yeshiva’s administrative office. Eventually they acquired a modest three-story building at 351 Bradford Street: kitchen on the ground floor, beis medrash on the middle level, dormitory upstairs.

The material poverty was deliberate. Beis HaTalmud was designed as a place of total spiritual immersion, stripped of worldly distraction. One story captures this ethos perfectly. A veteran talmid recounted: “It was Yom Kippur afternoon, during Minchah. Ne’ilah needed to begin before sunset, but the Beis HaTalmud tradition—inherited from Kelm—called for a brief mussar session before Ne’ilah. Time was running short, and the chazzan was about to begin Avinu Malkeinu when Rav Leib brought his hand down on his shtender with a decisive bang: ‘Tzvei minut mussar seder!‘ Two minutes for mussar! Avinu Malkeinu was omitted to preserve the sacred custom.” The talmid concluded: “That was the most powerful mussar experience of my life. Rav Leib’s absolute clarity about priorities—that defined Beis HaTalmud.”

Rav Leib challenged his students to reconceptualize their relationship to the yeshiva’s physical spaces. “You imagine that you learn in the beis medrash, sleep in the dormitory, and eat in the dining room? Wrong. You learn in the beis medrash, you sleep in the beis medrash, and you eat in the beis medrash. The dormitory is simply the beis medrash designated for sleeping; the dining room is the beis medrash designated for eating.”

When attendance at morning davening began to slip, Rav Leib addressed the problem with a single devastating sentence: “If the bochurim won’t come to Shacharis, we will have to close the yeshiva. This is not the tzurah of a yeshiva.” A talmid recalled: “Nothing more needed to be said. Of course we all came to davening after that. We knew Rav Leib meant every word.”

On another occasion, Rav Leib entered the beis medrash to deliver his shiur. He surveyed the room, sat in silence for a long moment, then rose and left without saying a word. When someone asked why he hadn’t taught, his answer cut to the bone: “The talmidim weren’t sufficiently thirsty for my Torah.”

A bochur once approached him with a complaint: “My chavrusa isn’t working out well, and the food here is also lacking.” Rav Leib’s retort was instantaneous: “If your chavrusa and the food appear in the same sentence, you haven’t yet entered the yeshiva’s atmosphere.” He had a term for students who hadn’t fully absorbed the institution’s values: “nisht arein“—not yet inside.

Rav Michel Shurkin, later a prominent maggid shiur at Yeshivas Toras Moshe in Jerusalem, once inquired which tractate the yeshiva would study the following semester. “Menachos,” Rav Leib replied. Rav Michel mentioned that another yeshiva was also learning Menachos that term. Rav Leib fixed him with a penetrating gaze: “S’iz an anderer Menachos“—it’s a different Menachos entirely. The level of immersion possible at Beis HaTalmud, free from all distraction, would produce a qualitatively different mastery of the material.

Glimpses of the Inner Man

Rav Leib’s presence exerted a transformative effect on those around him. Rav Chaim Ozer Gorelick described a Rosh Hashanah meal at the Malin home. Virtually no conversation took place. The eimas hadin—the awesome weight of the Day of Judgment—filled the room. The Rebbetzin served the food; Rav Leib occupied himself with Mishnayos Rosh Hashanah. The day was stifling—air conditioning was rare in 1950s Brooklyn—and Rav Chaim Ozer found himself desperately thirsty. A bottle of soda stood on the table within easy reach. “Yet I couldn’t bring myself to pour a glass,” he recalled. “It was Rosh Hashanah. How could one think about soda? In Rav Leib’s presence, materialism simply ceased to exist. Pure, unalloyed yiras Shamayim was the only reality.”

Reb Chaim Stein of Brooklyn related that as a young bar mitzvah boy, he brought friends from Mesivta Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin to observe davening at Beis HaTalmud. “We watched Rav Leib Malin daven a regular weekday Shemoneh Esrei. He looked like someone davening Ne’ilah on Yom Kippur.”

The Rebbetzin’s intimate recollections reveal further dimensions. Rav Leib was indifferent to money—”and it,” she observed, “seemed equally indifferent to him.” Yet he insisted that every dollar entering the yeshiva come from untainted sources. On multiple occasions, she watched him decline contributions that would have eased their constant financial strain rather than compromise this principle.

His exacting standards regarding schedules and davening times coexisted with deep emotional sensitivity. He shared fully in the joys and sorrows of his colleagues. When Rav Leibel Shachar—his closest partner in the yeshiva—fell gravely ill, Rav Leib’s devotion exceeded all bounds. When Rav Shmuel Charkover was hospitalized, Rav Leib spent hours at his bedside, neglecting meals and rest. It is worth noting that Rav Leib and his Rebbetzin were never blessed with children, yet guests at a bris would never have guessed this from the genuine joy radiating from his face.

The Rebbetzin remembered Shabbos nights when Rav Leib was summoned from the middle of their meal to take a phone call from a hospitalized patient who urgently needed his guidance. “He lived in such close connection with the members of the chaburah, and he always had time for those in distress.”

Sometimes, exhausted from the day’s labors, Rav Leib would find himself unable to return to the yeshiva in the evening. On those nights, he would sit at home and study mussar, chanting in the ancient traditional melody. The Rebbetzin described its effect: “That niggun had the power to transport the listener to a world of beauty, consolation, and peace. It echoes in my ears to this day. I still long to hear it.”

A Light Extinguished

The East New York neighborhood deteriorated rapidly during the 1950s, leaving Beis HaTalmud increasingly isolated as the last Orthodox institution in the area. One day in 1961, as Rav Leib walked from the yeshiva to his home on Pennsylvania Avenue, he was attacked by a local assailant and suffered serious injuries, bleeding from the mouth. A specialist he consulted the following day delivered a sobering assessment: the trauma had come perilously close to affecting his brain. He was fortunate to be alive.

The death of his dear friend Rav Shmuel Charkover had already taken a toll on Rav Leib’s health. He grew weaker and experienced chest pains. Yet he refused to slow down. His great dream was to construct a proper building complex for the yeshiva. Land had been acquired, and the Rebbetzin accompanied him to meetings with an architect to develop plans for the new facility.

On Thursday evening, January 4, 1962 (29 Teves 5722)—just weeks after the assault—a fundraising meeting took place at Congregation Ohab Zedek on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The shul’s rabbi, Theodore Adams, was related to the Rebbetzin and had long supported the yeshiva. Reb Shabse Frankel attended, as did Rav Chaim Visoker, who arrived late because he had been helping prepare for the yeshiva’s annual dinner scheduled for that Motzaei Shabbos.

In the middle of the meeting, Rav Leib suddenly collapsed. His soul returned to its Maker. He was fifty-six years old.

The American Torah world had never witnessed an outpouring of grief like that which followed. Rav Aharon Kotler was so stricken that he became bedridden. After recovering sufficiently to travel, he accompanied the aron to Eretz Yisrael for burial and delivered a hesped that revealed the magnitude of the loss.

“Iz avek der groise baal achrayus!” Rav Aharon cried. “The great bearer of responsibility has departed!” He then disclosed what he had often told his own talmidim in Lakewood: he had believed that Rav Leib would be the one to assume responsibility for American Torah Jewry in the next generation.

Rav Aharon was mourning not only a towering scholar but a leader who possessed that rarest quality: genuine achrayus. He invoked the blessing bestowed upon Yehudah: “Your brothers will acknowledge you.” Yehudah began as one of the twelve tribes yet rose to kingship through his willingness to lead. So too Rav Leib had started as one member of the Mir chaburah and ascended to become something extraordinary.

Rav Yisroel Gustman, who had known Rav Leib since their Grodno days, offered a different image in his hesped. The Menorah in the Beis HaMikdash, he noted, was adorned with elaborate decorative elements. The Aron HaKodesh, by contrast, was utterly plain. Why? Because the Aron contained the Torah itself, and Torah requires no embellishment—it shines with its own light. “Veil di Aron iz gevein Torah!” Rav Leib needed no external trappings because he embodied Torah in its purest form.

Rav Leib was laid to rest on Har HaMenuchos in Jerusalem, in the section reserved for rabbinic leaders, directly adjacent to the grave of his beloved rebbi, the Brisker Rav. In death as in life, the bond between them remained unbroken.

The architectural rendering of the planned Beis HaTalmud building remained hanging on the wall of the Malin apartment for years afterward—a poignant reminder of the dream left unfulfilled. The yeshiva eventually acquired the building of the Kalever Rebbe in Bensonhurst and relocated there. Rav Chaim Visoker, Rav Leib’s partner from the earliest days of the rescue through the founding of Beis HaTalmud, continued leading the institution for another thirty-seven years until his own passing in 1985. He lived at 2122 82nd Street in Bensonhurst, and his mussar discourses were renowned for their profound depth.

The Rebbetzin, reflecting on her husband’s life, invoked the lamentation of the prophet Yirmiyahu: “How the gold has dimmed, the sacred stones scattered at every street corner.” She explained the metaphor: when a clay vessel shatters, only worthless shards remain. But when a golden crown studded with precious gems is broken, each gem retains its brilliance. “That was how Reb Leib eulogized the Alter of Kelm,” she said. “And it applies equally to him. There are rare individuals who are like precious stones—they continue to sparkle and gleam even after they are gone.”

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Inside the administration, officials have examined a range of approaches to the issue, including the idea of purchasing the territory, though no formal proposal has been announced.

Greenland and Denmark have consistently rejected the notion, stating that the island is not for sale and has no desire to become part of the United States.

Denmark’s position has been echoed by several European leaders, who have publicly backed Copenhagen and said Washington has no right to take control of the Arctic island.

Trump’s comments marked the first time he publicly suggested tariffs as a potential tool to advance his stance on Greenland.

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In his remarks, the general accused the United States of ignoring Iran’s restraint and cautioned against further escalation. “You do not pay attention to the restraint and strategic patience we have shown,” Rezaei added. “Stop right now. Step back, otherwise none of your bases in the region will be safe.”

The comments were delivered amid reports that the United States has begun repositioning military assets closer to the Middle East. Sources confirmed that at least one U.S. aircraft carrier has been moved toward the region as tensions between Washington and Tehran intensify.

Officials have not disclosed which carrier is involved. Military officials say the voyage could take roughly a week, with additional forces potentially deploying afterward, expanding the range of military options available to Trump.

Rezaei is a longtime powerbroker within Iran’s military and political establishment. He led the IRGC from 1980 until 1997 and currently holds several senior roles, including vice president for economic affairs and secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for Economic Coordination. He is also a prominent figure within the Principlist Resistance Front of Islamic Iran.

Internationally, Rezaei has faced legal and financial consequences. In 2006, Argentine authorities issued an international arrest warrant for him over his alleged role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The U.S. Treasury Department later sanctioned him in 2020, citing his involvement in advancing destabilizing activities.

The escalating rhetoric comes as Iran faces growing internal unrest. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, at least 2,677 people have been arrested, with another 1,693 cases currently under investigation.

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Under prior regulations, non-citizens in the US serving in religious capacities on R-1 visas were required to leave the United States for a minimum of one year once their visa expired at the end of its five-year term before they could apply for and obtain a new R-1 visa. This requirement imposed significant hardships on religious workers as many of them serve in leadership positions such as rabbis and teachers causing serious disruptions for the schools and institutions they serve. The new rule eliminates this mandatory waiting period, allowing religious workers to apply for and receive a new R-1 visa without being forced to spend a fixed period of time outside the United States.

“Agudath Israel of America welcomes the Department of Homeland Security’s thoughtful and much needed rule change regarding religious workers.” said Mr. David Grunblatt, partner at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP and chair of Agudath Israel of America’s Immigration Committee. “For too long, religious organizations have faced the painful loss of dedicated rabbis, ministers, teachers, and other essential religious workers simply because their temporary visas expired before the lengthy green card process could be completed. By removing the requirement for religious workers to leave the country for a full year after reaching the maximum period of stay, DHS is providing much needed stability for our institutions and the communities they serve. This interim final rule promulgated by USCIS, recognizes the vital role that religious workers play in American society and helps ensure that synagogues, churches, and other faith-based organizations can continue their sacred mission without unnecessary disruption. We commend DHS and USCIS for their commitment to supporting religious life in the United States.”

Agudath Israel of America has long advocated for reforms to the R-1 visa program and continues to urge Congress to pass the bipartisan Religious Workforce Protection Act. That legislation would eliminate the need for individuals on an R-1 visa to leave the US at all while further strengthening protections for people of faith in the workforce.

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The resident specifically called on leaders to tighten access to synagogues and community institutions and to advise residents to avoid interviews or on-camera interactions with visitors seeking to “agitate” or “investigate.” The creator’s official social media presence includes a YouTube channel under his name @tyleroliveiraofficial.

Community members said their immediate goal is to alert residents and local leadership, reduce the risk of escalation, and prevent people from engaging with this Anti-Semite.

Barnea’s visit follows a phone call earlier this week between President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that centered on the situation in Iran. During the conversation, Netanyahu reportedly asked the United States to hold off on any military action in order to give Israel additional time to prepare for a possible Iranian response.

Israeli officials have raised concerns that potential U.S. strikes, as currently under discussion, would focus primarily on Iranian security forces and might not significantly weaken the regime itself. U.S. officials, meanwhile, have said that military action remains on the table if Iran resumes deadly force against protesters. Israeli assessments suggest that even with a delay, a U.S. strike could still take place in the near future.

At the same time, U.S. military preparations are continuing, with additional forces and equipment being moved into the region. These reportedly include the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group, along with expanded air defense systems, fighter jets, and possibly submarines.

In parallel, Abbas Araghchi has suggested reviving nuclear negotiations during his contacts with Witkoff. Israeli officials are concerned that Tehran could use renewed talks to ease international pressure and buy time, though some believe the current crisis may push the Iranian regime to consider concessions it has previously refused.

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Describing the operation, Lieutenant Commander Shlomi Harosh, who heads the Binyamin Region of the Israel Fire and Rescue Service, said: “This is a tragic event in which a young man lost his life. This was a complex and challenging search because there was a lot of drift in the stream and in the water crossings under the bridges along the stream, as well as the stormy weather that prevailed during the first days of the search.”

Police officials stated that search activity was carried out without interruption over the course of four days, involving close coordination among law enforcement, rescue services, and civilian volunteers.

A police spokeswoman provided further details, saying: “On the morning of the fourth day of searches conducted by the Judea and Samaria District police, along with numerous emergency security and rescue personnel, alongside hundreds of volunteers, the body of the missing young man who had been swept away in the Modi’im Stream was located.”

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Ratcliffe’s visit is likely to be seen as another sign of Trump’s willingness to work with Rodríguez, who had been Maduro’s second in command until the audacious U.S. military operation two weeks ago that spirited him to the United States to face drug trafficking charges.

The visit, which included a small team of American officials and was first reported by The New York Times, was intended to lay the groundwork for additional cooperation between the Trump administration and Venezuela’s new leaders, the official said.

Ratcliffe discussed potential economic collaboration between the two countries and warned that Venezuela can never again allow the presence of American adversaries, including drug traffickers, the official said.

The CIA played a key role in the operation to apprehend Maduro, providing critical intelligence support, as well as mounting an earlier drone strike on a dock used by cartels, U.S. officials have said.

Rodríguez used her first state of the union message as acting president Thursday to advocate for opening the crucial state-run oil industry to more foreign investment following the Trump administration’s pledge to seize control of Venezuelan crude sales.

That appeal was a key factor in Trump’s decision to postpone orders for U.S. forces to proceed with a strike, according to officials briefed on the matter.

U.S. officials emphasized that military action remains under consideration should Iran resume violent suppression of protesters, including killings. Israeli officials, meanwhile, believe a U.S. strike could still occur in the coming days despite the current delay.

The discussions come amid reports that Iran has halted planned executions and reduced lethal force against demonstrators, information that Trump cited Wednesday as a reason for stepping back from immediate action. White House officials have confirmed ongoing monitoring of the situation, with all options still on the table.

Trump has repeatedly warned Tehran of severe consequences if the crackdown continues, while highlighting intelligence indicating a temporary pause in the violence.

The phone calls reflect close coordination between Washington and Jerusalem on the Iranian crisis, with Netanyahu maintaining frequent contact with Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in recent days.

Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Egypt, have also urged the U.S. to refrain from strikes to avoid broader regional escalation, according to diplomatic sources.

The situation in Iran remains fluid, with protests entering their second week amid reports of thousands of deaths and ongoing internet restrictions.

Guildford’s position has been precarious since Wednesday’s publication of a report into the decision to ban Maccabi fans from attending the match at Villa Park on Nov. 6. The report found the decision last year overstated the threat posed by Maccabi fans and understated the risk to them.

Following its publication, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she had lost confidence in Guildford and urged him to stand down.

Mahmood said she didn’t have the power to fire Guildford as a result of a policy change by the previous Conservative government in 2011, but she was looking to reinstate that power to home secretaries. Currently, locally elected police and crime commissioners have that power.

The ban came at a time of heightened concerns about antisemitism in Britain following a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue and calls from Palestinians and their supporters for a sports boycott of Israel over the war with Hamas in Gaza.

West Midlands Police said at the time it had deemed the match to be high risk “based on current intelligence and previous incidents,” including violence and hate crimes that took place when Maccabi played Ajax in Amsterdam last season.

As a result of the impact, the scooter’s operator was ejected and dragged beneath the pickup truck for a short distance. The victim was transported to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, where he is listed in serious but stable condition.

As a result of the investigation, Lloyd Ferrara, 30, of Toms River, was charged on January 16, 2026, with operating a motor vehicle with a suspended driver’s license while involved in a motor vehicle crash resulting in serious bodily injury. Investigators further determined that the license plates on the pickup truck were fictitious.

Responding officers also observed that Ferrara appeared to be intoxicated at the scene. He was unable to successfully perform standardized field sobriety tests and was charged with driving under the influence. Ferrara was placed under arrest and transported to Ocean University Medical Center in Brick Township, where a blood draw was obtained pursuant to a court-authorized warrant. The results of the blood draw are pending.

Ferrara was subsequently transported to the Ocean County Jail, where he remains lodged pending a detention hearing.

In a statement posted on X, the U.S. Embassy in South Africa said it was “unconscionable that South Africa welcomed Iranian security forces as they were shooting, jailing, and torturing Iranian citizens engaging in peaceful political activity” — a reference to the ongoing protests in Iran and a bloody crackdown by authorities that has killed more than 2,600 people, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

The U.S. Embassy said it had noted with concern reports in the South African media that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s instruction that Iran only have observer status in the drills may have been flouted by South Africa’s Defense Ministry or its military officials.

The Trump administration has been critical of South Africa over its diplomatic ties with Iran, citing them as an example of South Africa taking what it called an anti-American stance in its foreign policy. South Africa says it follows a neutral, non-aligned foreign policy and is open to diplomatic discussions with Iran.

It’s not clear what Ramaphosa ordered over the drills. The president hasn’t commented on the issue, and his spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The Defense Ministry said in its statement that Defense Minister Angie Motshekga ensured Ramaphosa’s instructions were “clearly communicated to all parties concerned” without detailing what they were. The investigation would find out if Ramaphosa’s instructions were “misrepresented and/or ignored,” the Defense Ministry said.

The South African armed forces said Iran sent two warships to take part in the drills, while the AP saw a third Iranian warship anchored in a harbor in Simon’s Town, near Cape Town alongside Chinese and Russian warships.

The drills, which were due to end Friday, were led by China and organized under the BRICS bloc of developing nations. South Africa, China and Russia are longtime members of the bloc, while Iran joined in 2024 and this week’s naval drills were its first with BRICS.

The expanding BRICS group was created as a counter to perceived U.S. and Western dominance of the global economy and international institutions and has often been used by China and Russia as a forum to criticize the West.

South Africa’s ties with the U.S. have plummeted since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office, with his administration also making baseless claims that South Africa’s government is allowing the violent persecution of its white minority Afrikaner people in order to seize their land.

According to Trump, that committee will operate under the authority of the newly created board of peace, which he said he will personally chair.

The broader plan also envisions the arrival of an International Stabilisation Force that would be tasked with maintaining security in Gaza and assisting in the training of approved Palestinian police units.

Reacting to the developments, senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said Thursday, “The ball is now in the court of the mediators, the American guarantor and the international community to empower the committee.”

The U.S.-backed initiative originally took effect on Oct. 10, leading to the release of all hostages held by Hamas and bringing an end to active fighting between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist organization in Gaza.

While the second phase of the plan has now begun, it is unfolding amid continued claims of humanitarian aid shortages and sporadic violence.

For Palestinians, a central unresolved issue remains the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, a provision included in the framework but one that lacks a specific implementation schedule.

At the same time, Hamas has declined to publicly agree to full disarmament, a condition Israel has stated is non-negotiable.

Addressing the issue earlier this week, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff wrote on Truth Social that Washington expects Hamas to “comply fully with its obligations.”

Separately, Hamas has begun preparations for internal elections intended to reconstitute its leadership, much of which has been eliminated during the war.

A Hamas official told AFP on Monday that the vote is expected to take place “in the first months of 2026.”

Trump shared Witkoff’s remarks on Thursday and added his own endorsement of the transitional leadership, writing, “These Palestinian leaders are unwaveringly committed to a PEACEFUL future!”

He also outlined broader regional backing for the initiative, stating, “With the support of Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, we will secure a COMPREHENSIVE Demilitarization Agreement with Hamas, including the surrender of ALL weapons, and the dismantling of EVERY tunnel.”

{Matzav.com}

Among the speakers were Rav Yitzchak Yosef; Rav Yechiel Chaim Sofer, rosh yeshiva of Kaf HaChaim; Rav Shlomo Yedidya Zafrani; Rav Ovadia Chazan; Rav Elchanan Sharabani, rosh yeshiva of Lev Eliyahu LeTze’irim; members of the yeshiva’s staff; and the yeshiva’s director-general, Meir Zechariah.

Speakers recalled the mesirus nefesh of the late rosh yeshiva zt”l for Torah learning and teaching, and offered words of chizuk to the bochurim during a period they described as one of mounting pressure on those dedicated to Torah study.

In a forceful address, Rav Shlomo Yedidya Zafrani told the bochurim: “If they come to arrest you, tell them that you are already detained by the Torah. Why is the Yom Tov called Atzeres? Because we received the Torah and we are ‘held’ by the Torah. If you want not to be detained, be detained by the Torah. Give yourselves over to Torah learning. Fortunate are you that you merit completing the entire Shas together.”

Following the remarks, a formal Siyum HaShas was conducted by Rav Eliyahu Moshe HaKohen Saban, one of the yeshiva’s rabbeim who spearheaded the initiative and encouraged the bochurim throughout their intensive learning of the masechtos. The evening concluded with the writing of letters in a new, beautifully crafted Sefer Torah, which was brought into the yeshiva in a celebratory procession marked by song and dance in honor of the Torah.

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The death has deeply affected the local Jewish community, where Grubreger was known as a warm and dedicated presence in the neighborhood bakery.

Chesed Shel Emes responded immediately to the scene, working swiftly to ensure kavod hames — the proper dignity and respect for the deceased — during the emergency response.

Rabbi Mark Rosenberg, head of Chesed Shel Emes and a police chaplain, praised the cooperation of authorities in handling the sensitive situation.

“This is a very sad situation,” Rosenberg said. “We are deeply thankful to the North Miami Beach Police Department and to the Medical Examiner’s Office for their rapid, compassionate and professional response — especially on a Friday before Shabbos. The fact that this occurred at a kosher supermarket makes this even more sensitive, and we truly appreciate the cooperation of all agencies involved in ensuring the deceased was treated with the utmost dignity and respect.”

In a message released to customers and community members, bakery owner Yitzie Spalter described the loss as devastating.

“To our community, we suffered an unimaginable tragedy with the shocking death of our beloved baker, Mordechai — Miki — Grubreger,” Spalter wrote. “Our store is open, but the bakery will not be at regular capacity today. Thank you for understanding while we process this tragedy. Good Shabbos. Besuros Tovos.”

Police said the investigation remains ongoing, but preliminary findings point to a workplace accident.

Community leaders said grief counselors and support services are being made available to employees and residents affected by the loss, as friends and neighbors prepare to honor Grubreger’s memory in the days ahead.

Officials said the figure was encouraging
Under Australian law, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33.2 million) if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are exempt.

To verify age, platforms can either request copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age estimation technology to an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available such has how long an account has been held.

About 2.5 million Australians are aged between 8 and 15, said the country’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, and past estimates suggested 84% of 8- to 12-year-olds held social media accounts. It was not known how many accounts were held across the 10 platforms but Inman Grant said the figure of 4.7 million “deactivated or restricted” was encouraging.

“We’re preventing predatory social media companies from accessing our children,” Inman Grant said.

The 10 biggest companies covered by the ban were compliant with it and had reported removal figures to Australia’s regulator on time, the commissioner said. She added that social media companies were expected to shift their efforts from enforcing the ban to preventing children from creating new accounts or otherwise circumventing the prohibition.

Meta removed 550,000 accounts
Australian officials didn’t break the figures down by platform. But Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said this week that by the day after the ban came into effect it had removed nearly 550,000 accounts belonging to users understood to be under 16.

In the blog post divulging the figures, Meta criticized the ban and said smaller platforms where the ban doesn’t apply might not prioritize safety. The company also noted browsing platforms would still present content to children based on algorithms — a concern that led to the ban’s enactment.

The law was widely popular among parents and child safety campaigners. Online privacy advocates and some groups representing teenagers opposed it, with the latter citing the support found in online spaces by vulnerable young people or those geographically isolated in Australia’s sprawling rural areas.

Some said they had managed to fool age assessing technologies or were helped by parents or older siblings to circumvent the ban.

Other countries might follow
Since Australia began debating the measures in 2024, other countries have considered following suit. Denmark’s government is among them, saying in November that it had planned to implement a social media ban for children under 15.

“The fact that in spite of some skepticism out there, it’s working and being replicated now around the world, is something that is a source of Australian pride,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday.

Opposition lawmakers have suggested that young people have circumvented the ban easily or are migrating to other apps that are less scrutinized than the largest platforms. Inman Grant said Friday that data seen by her office showed a spike in downloads of alternative apps when the ban was enacted but not a spike in usage.

“There is no real long-term trends yet that we can say but we’re engaging,” she said.

Meanwhile, she said, the regulator she heads planned to introduce “world-leading AI companion and chatbot restrictions in March.” She didn’t disclose further details.

Schools participating in the program, which serves nearly 30 million students, can now offer whole and 2% milk — flavored or unflavored, organic or conventional — alongside skim and low-fat options. Non-dairy alternatives that meet nutritional standards, such as fortified soy milk, also remain available.

Supporters, including the dairy industry and some nutrition experts, have long argued that low-fat mandates led to reduced milk consumption among children due to taste preferences, resulting in wasted food and missed nutrients. Some studies suggest whole milk may be associated with lower obesity risk in children, though causation remains debated.

The change aligns with the newly released 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which emphasize full-fat dairy as part of a healthy diet. It also supports American dairy farmers by expanding market access for higher-fat milk products.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the law “a long-overdue correction to school nutrition policy.” The USDA has promoted the shift with a campaign featuring Trump sporting a classic “milk mustache” and the slogan “Drink Whole Milk.”

Implementation could begin as early as the next school year, though some districts may need time to adjust supply chains and assess student demand. Whole milk is generally more expensive than skim, which could pose challenges for budget-constrained schools.

The policy shift marks one of the first legislative actions of 2026 and reflects the administration’s broader “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.

Israeli media reports describe sharp disagreements during recent discussions. While several Chassidic courts pushed for a strongly worded, updated declaration, Belz reportedly worked to block the publication of a new resolution, citing concerns over internal unity.

The solution ultimately adopted was described by insiders as principled: Rather than issuing a new text, the Moetzes chose to republish its 5779 resolution and reaffirming it as the binding and official position of UTJ’s Chassidic leadership.

In its original—and now renewed—language, the Moetzes expresses deep anguish over what it describes as an escalating campaign by state authorities against bnei yeshivos. The resolution calls for the formal regulation of the status of Torah learners, while insisting that this be done without personal or institutional sanctions, without arrests, and without any numerical enlistment targets.

The document further states that any legislation harming those engaged in Torah study, or setting compulsory goals for enlistment, is unacceptable and must be opposed “with all force.”

{Matzav.com}

— New York City Council (@NYCCouncil) January 16, 2026

The proposal would mirror — and potentially expand on — a similar effort announced this week by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has called for a 25-foot protest buffer around houses of worship. Menin said the Council is considering a wider perimeter, possibly extending up to 100 feet.

“I make no apology for insisting on a proportionate response to the disproportionate discrimination facing our Jewish community,” Menin said, adding that she applies the same zero-tolerance standard to hate targeting any group.

Menin has framed the effort as part of a broader five-point plan to confront antisemitism, focusing on education, community safety and enforcement tools. The initiative includes expanding reimbursements for security guards at schools and religious institutions, funding for security cameras, and mandatory safety training for houses of worship.

Other elements of the proposal include creating a city hotline for reporting antisemitic incidents to the Commission on Human Rights and allocating $1.2 million over the next two years for Holocaust education programs.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said antisemitic incidents accounted for more than half of all reported hate crimes in New York City last year — 330 of 576 cases — even as overall hate crimes declined.

Menin said she briefed Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the initiative ahead of the announcement, calling the discussions “productive,” while emphasizing that the plan is not aimed at the mayor or his administration.

Mayor Mamdani, who has been outspoken in his criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza, has sought to balance his progressive base with assurances to Jewish New Yorkers that he is committed to their safety. His office has said the mayor supports protecting religious communities but is reviewing the legal implications of protest buffer zones.

Menin said her motivation is personal as well as political, noting that her mother and grandmother survived the Holocaust after hiding in Hungary during World War II.

“At this moment, when antisemitism is rising and the Jewish community feels vulnerable, we must confront this head on,” she said.

The proposals follow a series of protests near synagogues in recent months that included chants widely condemned as antisemitic, heightening calls for stronger safeguards around religious institutions.

Menin said the Council will begin advancing legislation in the coming weeks, with the goal of strengthening protections while respecting constitutional limits on protest and free expression.

Following his release, Harkin reunited with his five-year-old daughter Monica, who lives in Russia, as well as with his mother. Speaking to Ynet, he described the reunion as deeply emotional, saying, “It gives so much strength — a dream that came true. I promised my daughter that I am with her, and I will stay with her.”

Shortly after his release, Harkin’s mother told the Russian news agency RIA that her son had expressed a strong desire to receive Russian citizenship and had planned to complete the process upon his return from captivity.

In his conversation with Ynet, Harkin also addressed the public response to his ordeal, saying, “I’m in an emotional storm from the love I’m receiving from you, the people. It’s important for me to say that unity is an insane achievement — preserve it. Be together, and that’s how we’ll live happily, as we deserve. You see people, what they’re doing for us. I try to hold on to the hope that people gave us.”

{Matzav.com}

Just 16% of Republicans say Trump has helped “a lot” in addressing the cost of living, down from 49% in April 2024, when an AP-NORC poll asked Americans the same question about his first term.

At the same time, Republicans are overwhelmingly supportive of the president’s leadership on immigration — even if some don’t like his tactics.

John Candela, 64, who lives in New Rochelle, New York, said the cost of living hasn’t improved for his family — his salary and bills remain the same as before.

“Still paying $5 for Oreos,” he said. But he’s willing to be patient: “I would expect it to be different by the time his four years are up.”

The poll reveals signs of weakness among consumers on the economy, especially Trump’s core campaign promise to reduce costs. Inflation has cooled somewhat, but prices on many goods are higher than they were when the Republican president took office last January.

There is little sign overall, though, that the Republican base is abandoning Trump. The vast majority of Republicans, about 8 in 10, approve of his job performance, compared with 4 in 10 for adults overall.

“I don’t like the man as a human being. I don’t like his brashness. I don’t like his roughness. I don’t like how he types out his texts all capital as if he’s yelling at everybody. But what I approve of is what he is doing to try and get the country on track,” Candela said.

Trump not improving costs, most Republicans say
On various economic factors, Trump has yet to convince many of his supporters that he’s changing things for the better.

Only about 4 in 10 Republicans overall say Trump has helped address the cost of living at least “a little” in his second term, while 79% said he helped address the issue that much in his first term, based on the 2024 poll. Just over half of Republicans in the new poll say Trump has helped create jobs in his second term; 85% said the same about his first term, including 62% who said he helped “a lot.”

Only 26% of Republicans in the January survey say he’s helped “a lot” on job creation in his second term.

And on health care, about one-third of Republicans say Trump has helped address costs at least “a little,” while 53% in the April 2024 poll said he helped reduce health care costs that much during his first term. Federal health care subsidies for more than 20 million Americans expired on Jan. 1, resulting in health care costs doubling or even tripling for many families.

In the town of Waxahachie, Texas, south of Dallas, 28-year-old three-time Trump voter Ryan James Hughes, a children’s pastor, doesn’t see an improvement in his family’s financial situation. He said the medical bills haven’t declined.

But, he said, “I’m not looking to the government to secure my financial future.”

Immigration is a strength among the Trump base despite controversy
The new poll underscores that Republicans are largely getting what they want on immigration, even as some report concerns about the federal immigration agents who have flooded U.S. cities at Trump’s direction.

About 8 in 10 Republicans say Trump has helped at least “a little” on immigration and border security in his second term. That’s similar to the share in the April 2024 poll that saw a positive effect from Trump’s leadership on immigration and border security during his first term.

Most Republicans say Trump has struck the right balance when it comes to deporting immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, and about one-third think he hasn’t gone far enough.

But Trump’s approval on immigration has also slipped among Republicans over the past year, falling from 88% in March to 76% in the new poll.

Kevin Kellenbarger, 69, a three-time Trump voter who retired from a printing company, said his Christian faith led him to the Republican Party. The Lancaster, Ohio, resident thinks the president’s immigration crackdown is necessary, though he expressed dissatisfaction at the recent killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis.

“I don’t like anybody getting killed, but it wasn’t Trump’s fault,” Kellenbarger said, adding that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, “let millions of people in. They have to be taken out.”

Several Republicans said in interviews they thought the aggressive tactics seen recently in Minneapolis went too far, suggesting that Trump should focus more on immigrants with criminal backgrounds as he promised during the campaign.

Overall, just 38% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s leadership on immigration, while 61% disapprove.

“These families that are being separated and they’re just here to try to live the American dream,” said Republican Liz Gonzalez, 40, the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a self-employed rancher and farmer from Palestine, Texas.

At the same time, Gonzalez said, she doesn’t think people opposed to the crackdown should be interfering at all. “I think if they just let (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), you know, like the patrol people, do their jobs, then they would see it’s not — it doesn’t have to be chaos,” she said.

More Republicans see the country improving than their personal lives
About two-thirds of Republicans say the country as a whole is “much” or “somewhat” better off than before Trump took office, but only about half say this about themselves and their family.

The broad sense that the country is moving in the right direction may be counteracting Republican dissatisfaction with the state of the economy.

Phyllis Gilpin, a 62-year-old Republican from Booneville, Missouri, praised Trump’s ability to “really listen to people.” But she doesn’t love his personality.

“He is very arrogant,” she said, expressing frustration about his name-calling. But she said the divisive politics go both ways: “I really, honestly, just wish that we could all just not be Democrat or Republican — just come together.”

Newsom reaffirmed his support for immigration reform and California’s sanctuary policies but said heated language about law enforcement can undercut productive dialogue.

The appearance continues a pattern of the governor engaging ideological opponents on long-form platforms. He has previously hosted former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, as Newsom seeks to broaden his reach beyond traditional Democratic audiences.

Political observers say the outreach comes as speculation grows about Newsom’s national ambitions after the 2026 midterms. The governor has acknowledged in past interviews that he has considered a future presidential run.

Other Democrats often mentioned as potential 2028 contenders include former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Newsom’s conversation with Shapiro underscores the expanding role of podcasts in political life, as leaders increasingly turn to long-form interviews to engage new audiences — and face tougher scrutiny outside friendly venues.

The same individual posted a follow-up message on social media soliciting tips about Lakewood, New Jersey, home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish populations in the country.

Jewish social media figure “Clappy” released a video rebuttal on Friday slamming the deliberate hit job against Kiryas Joel and warning that such rhetoric risks normalizing harassment and hostility toward Orthodox Jews.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Behind the scenes, local community leaders in Monsey and Kiryas Joel circulated a letter in Yiddish urging residents to avoid engaging with individuals filming in the area. The guidance advises community members to walk away from cameras rather than respond, arguing that confrontation often feeds narratives that are later distorted online.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Witkoff then reflected on his own personal connection to the mission, explaining how the loss of his son shaped his perspective and his work alongside the families of the hostages.

“I’m a member of that really bad club that has lost a child. So, for me, it was very personal, and I think the President knew that. And so, when he allowed me to take this job, it was the greatest blessing of my life, because my son’s death then got to mean something for me. I got to meet these incredible families and work with them and meet the most incredible people I ever had the privilege of working with. It was a very special experience.”

He concluded by describing how he feels guided by his late son as he continues this work, portraying the experience as both painful and profoundly meaningful.

“I feel that my boy puts his hand on my shoulder and leads me to these places. And his death now feels like it counts for something. Like that was his purpose. God took him back at 23, but asked me through him or asked him through me to meet these wonderful families. It’s the blessing of my life. I don’t know how to describe it any more than that.”

{Matzav.com}

The 32 Cuban officers were part of Maduro’s security detail killed during the Jan. 3 raid on his residence to seize the former leader and bring him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges.

Cuba’s national hymn rang out at Friday’s demonstration as large Cuban flags waved in the chilly wind and big waves broke nearby along Havana’s famed pier. President Miguel Díaz-Canel shook hands with the crowd clad in jackets and scarves.

The demonstration was a show of popular strength after U.S. President Donald Trump recently demanded that Cuba make a deal with him before it is “too late.” He did not explain what kind of deal.

Trump also has said that Cuba will no longer live off Venezuela’s oil and money. Experts say the move could have catastrophic consequences since Cuba is already struggling with severe blackouts.

Friday’s demonstration was expected to become a parade that Cubans call a “combatant march,” a custom that originated during the time of the late leader Fidel Castro.

Washington has maintained a policy of sanctions against Cuba since the 1960s, but during Trump’s presidency, the sanctions were further tightened, suffocating the island’s economy, an objective explicitly acknowledged by the White House.

On Thursday, tens of thousands of Cubans gathered at the headquarters of the Ministry of the Armed Forces to pay their respects to the 32 officers killed.

Their remains arrived home on Thursday morning, and they are scheduled to be laid to rest on Friday afternoon in various cemeteries following memorial ceremonies in all of Cuba’s provincial capitals.

At the highest levels of the FDA, questions remain about which officials have the legal authority to sign off on drugs cleared under the Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher program, which promises approval in as little as one month for medicines that support “U.S. national interests.”

Traditionally, approval decisions have nearly always been handled by FDA review scientists and their immediate supervisors, not the agency’s political appointees and senior leaders.

But drug reviewers say they’ve received little information about the new program’s workings. And some staffers working on a highly anticipated anti-obesity pill were recently told they can skip certain regulatory steps to meet top officials’ aggressive deadlines.

Outside experts point out that FDA drug reviews — which range from six to 10 months — are already the fastest in the world.

“The concept of doing a review in one to two months just does not have scientific precedent,” said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor at Harvard Medical School. “FDA cannot do the same detailed review that it does of a regular application in one to two months, and it doesn’t have the resources to do it.”

On Thursday Reuters reported that FDA officials have delayed the review of two drugs in the program, in part due to safety concerns, including the death of a patient taking one of the medications.

Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said the voucher program prioritizes “gold standard scientific review” and aims to deliver “meaningful and effective treatments and cures.”

The program remains popular at the White House, where pricing concessions announced by the Republican president have repeatedly been accompanied by FDA vouchers for drugmakers that agree to cut their prices.

For instance, when the White House announced that Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk would reduce prices on their popular obesity drugs, FDA staffers had to scramble to vet new vouchers for both companies in time for Trump’s news conference, according to multiple people involved in the process.

That’s sparked widespread concern that FDA drug reviews — long pegged to objective standards and procedures — have become open to political interference.

“It’s extraordinary to have such an opaque application process, one that is obviously susceptible to politicization,” said Paul Kim, a former FDA attorney who now works with pharmaceutical clients.

Top FDA officials declined to sign off on expedited approvals
Many of the concerns around the program stem from the fact that it hasn’t been laid out in federal rules and regulations.

The FDA already has more than a half-dozen programs intended to speed up or streamline reviews for promising drugs — all approved by Congress, with regulations written by agency staff.

In contrast, information about the voucher program is mostly confined to an agency website. Drugmakers can apply by submitting a 350-word “statement of interest.”

Increasingly, agency leaders such as Dr. Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s top medical officer and vaccine center director, have been contacting drugmakers directly about awarding vouchers. That’s created quandaries for FDA staffers on even basic questions, such as how to formally award a voucher to a company that didn’t request one.

Nixon, the HHS spokesman, said that voucher submissions are evaluated by “a senior, multidisciplinary review committee,” led by Prasad.

Questions about the legality of the program led the FDA’s then-drug director, Dr. George Tidmarsh, to decline to sign off on approvals under the pathway, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. Tidmarsh resigned from the agency in November after a lawsuit challenging his conduct on issues unrelated to the voucher program.

After his departure, Sara Brenner, the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner, was set to have the power to decide, but she also declined the role after looking further into the legal implications, according to the people. Currently the agency’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr. Mallika Mundkur, who works under Prasad, is taking on the responsibility.

Giving final approval to a drug carries significant legal risks, essentially certifying that the medicine meets FDA standards for safety and effectiveness. If unexpected safety problems later emerge, both the agency and individual staffers could be pulled into investigations or lawsuits.

Traditionally, approval comes from FDA drug office directors, made in consultation with a team of reviewers. Under the voucher program, approval comes through a committee vote by senior agency leaders led by Prasad, according to multiple people familiar with the process. Staff reviewers don’t get a vote.

“It is a complete reversal from the normal review process, which is traditionally led by the scientists who are the ones immersed in the data,” said Kesselheim, who is a lawyer and a medical researcher.

Not everyone sees problems with the program. Dan Troy, the FDA’s top lawyer under President George W. Bush, a Republican, says federal law gives the commissioner broad discretion to reorganize the handling of drug reviews.

Still, he says, the voucher program, like many of Makary’s initiatives, may be short-lived because it isn’t codified.

“If you live by the press release then you die by the press release,” Troy said. “Anything that they’re doing now could be wiped out in a moment by the next administration.”

The voucher program has ballooned after outreach by FDA officials
Initially framed as a pilot program of no more than five drugs, it has expanded to 18 vouchers awarded, with more under consideration. That puts extra pressure on the agency’s drug center, where 20% of the staff has left through retirements, buyouts or resignations over the past year.

When Makary unveiled the program in October there were immediate concerns about the unprecedented power he would have in deciding which companies benefit.

Makary then said that nominations for drugs would come from career staffers. Indeed, some of the early drugs were recommended by FDA reviewers, according to two people familiar with the process. They said FDA staffers deliberately selected drugs that could be vetted quickly.

But, increasingly, selection decisions are led by Prasad or other senior officials, sometimes unbeknownst to FDA staff, according to three people. In one case, FDA reviewers learned from GlaxoSmithKline representatives that Prasad had contacted the company about a voucher.

Access to Makary is limited because he does not use a government email account to do business, according to people familiar with the matter, breaking with longstanding precedent.

Under pressure from drugmakers, some FDA reviewers were told they can skip steps
Once a voucher is awarded, some drugmakers have their own interpretation of the review timeline — creating further confusion and anxiety among staff.

Two people involved in the ongoing review of Eli Lilly’s anti-obesity pill said company executives initially told the FDA they expected the drug approved within two months.

The timeline alarmed FDA reviewers because it did not include the agency’s standard 60-day prefiling period, when staffers check the application to ensure it isn’t missing essential information. That 60-day window has been in place for more than 30 years.

Lilly pushed for a quicker filing turnaround, demanding one week. Eventually the agency and the company agreed to a two-week period.

Nixon declined to comment on the specifics of Lilly’s review but said FDA reviewers can “adjust timelines as needed.”

Staffers were pushed to keep the application moving forward, even though key pieces of data about the drug’s chemistry appeared to be missing, according to one person involved in the process. When reviewers raised concerns about some of the gaps during an internal meeting, the person said, they were told by a senior official: “If the science is sound then you can overlook the regulations.”

Former reviewers and outside experts say that approach is the opposite of how FDA reviews should work: By following the regulations, staffers scientifically confirm the safety and effectiveness of drugs.

Skipping review steps could also carry risks for drugmakers if future FDA leaders decide a drug wasn’t properly vetted. Like other experts, Kesselheim says the program may not last beyond the current administration.

“They are fundamentally changing the application of the standards, but the underlying law remains what it is,” he said. “The hope is that one day we will return to these scientifically sound, legally sound principles.”

“New Jersey has a long and proud tradition of home rule, under which municipalities retain local authority over their schools and other public institutions,” The Lakewood Board of Education told TLS exclusively. “The Commissioner’s actions represent a direct threat to that tradition by attempting to strip control of the Lakewood School District from the community it serves and transfer day-to-day operations to unelected, State-appointed officials—potentially for decades.”

The Board added, “Let us be clear: the Lakewood Board of Education will vigorously oppose this misguided attempt at State takeover. Our foremost responsibility has always been, and will continue to be, the educational welfare and well-being of all school-aged children in Lakewood.”

“Under the ongoing oversight and guidance of State monitors, the District has made meaningful and consistent progress in addressing the challenges it faces—progress that the State’s filing fails to acknowledge. While the State attempts to place blame on local leadership, the reality is that many of the District’s challenges stem from longstanding, systemic funding deficiencies caused by the well-documented failures of the School Funding Reform Act.

“State takeover is not the solution. Collaboration is. A cooperative approach between the State and the District would have produced far more constructive and sustainable results for students, families, and taxpayers alike. It is deeply disappointing that the State has instead chosen an adversarial path, without warning and without regard for the progress already underway.

“The Lakewood Board of Education remains committed to defending local governance, advocating for fair school funding, and ensuring that every child in Lakewood receives the education they deserve.”

According to the officials, Trump has not yet reached a final decision, but has ordered military resources to be positioned in the region should he choose to authorize a major attack.

“The president and his team have communicated to the Iranian regime that if the killing continues, there will be grave consequences,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.

“Only President Trump knows what he’s going to do and a very, very small team of advisers are read into his thinking.”

At one point Wednesday, tensions appeared to peak, with U.S. military action against Iran seeming increasingly likely. The situation later eased after Trump said he had been informed that the killing of protesters had come to a halt.

“We have been notified pretty strongly that the killing in Iran is stopping, and there’s no plan for executions or an execution,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

He added, “I’ve been told that in good authority. We’ll find out about it, I’m sure. If it happens, we’ll be very upset.”

By Thursday morning, Iranian authorities had reopened the country’s airspace, which had been shut for several hours. The regime also announced it would not carry out the execution of Erfan Soltani, a 26-year-old man detained during the recent protests whose case had become a rallying point for demonstrators.

{Matzav.com}

The SS4A program provides funding to local governments to develop comprehensive roadway safety action plans. Grant funds are typically used for crash data analysis, public outreach, identification of high-risk roadways and intersections, and the development of strategies to reduce traffic-related injuries and fatalities. Eligible applicants include townships, counties, metropolitan planning organizations, and tribal governments that meet federal requirements.

With the funding secured, Jackson Township will begin planning efforts that may include reviewing local crash trends, identifying problem areas on roadways, gathering public input, and creating a prioritized safety action plan. Officials said these steps will also position the Township to pursue future federal funding for roadway and traffic safety improvements.

Council President Mordechai Burnstein praised the effort, saying, “We are grateful to Mayor Jennifer Kuhn for her hard work in securing this grant. Her efforts will help Jackson Township take important steps toward safer roads for all residents.”

During the Township’s next grant coordination meeting, officials are expected to review next steps, including finalizing the award agreement and coordinating with the Federal Highway Administration to formally launch the project. Mayor Kuhn said she looks forward to moving ahead with the program and advancing roadway safety initiatives for the community.

The president said the next stage of the plan would involve a new governing structure inside Gaza during a transition period. “As Chairman of the Board of Peace, I am backing a newly appointed Palestinian Technocratic Government, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, supported by the Board’s High Representative, to govern Gaza during its transition. These Palestinian leaders are unwaveringly committed to a PEACEFUL future!” Trump stated.

Trump said regional support would be central to enforcing security provisions in Gaza, particularly the dismantling of Hamas’ military capabilities. “With the support of Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar, we will secure a COMPREHENSIVE Demilitarization Agreement with Hamas, including the surrender of ALL weapons, and the dismantling of EVERY tunnel. Hamas must IMMEDIATELY honor its commitments, including the return of the final body to Israel, and proceed without delay to full Demilitarization. As I have said before, they can do this the easy way, or the hard way. The people of Gaza have suffered long enough. The time is NOW.”

Trump ended his message with a familiar slogan: “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”

Earlier Thursday, Trump separately announced the formal establishment of the “Board of Peace for Gaza,” describing it as a cornerstone of the broader initiative and saying details about its membership would follow.

“It is my Great Honor to announce that THE BOARD OF PEACE has been formed. The Members of the Board will be announced shortly, but I can say with certainty that it is the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Witkoff’s declaration that Phase Two had begun came even as the body of Ran Gvili, the final hostage, remains in Gaza.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hamas was required to return all hostages during the first phase, but it continues to hold Gvili’s body while claiming it does not know its whereabouts.

Israeli officials have said they provided Hamas with specific information regarding Gvili’s burial location, but the group has disregarded the details.

The Israeli government has repeatedly stated that it opposes moving forward with the second phase of the agreement until Hamas fully complies with all commitments from Phase One, including the return of Gvili’s body.

{Matzav.com}

Search and rescue efforts began without delay, involving a large-scale collaboration between multiple agencies. The Israel Fire and Rescue Service deployed 15 specialized teams, including dozens of firefighters trained in complex water and flood rescues. They worked around the clock alongside officers from the Israel Police (Judea and Samaria District) and volunteers from ZAKA, a non-profit organization specializing in disaster response and recovery.

The operation continued through challenging weather conditions and difficult terrain until the body was located on Friday morning, marking the fourth day since the teenager went missing.

In an official statement, Deputy Fire Chief Shlomi Harush addressed the public directly, emphasizing the extreme dangers posed by flooded waterways:

“Citizens must stay away from flood sites. When someone is near an overflowing stream, he must distance himself from it for his safety.”

Authorities have repeatedly warned that flash floods can develop rapidly during storms in Israel, turning seemingly harmless areas into life-threatening hazards within moments. The tragic outcome serves as a stark reminder of these risks, particularly during the winter rainy season.

Lodimer’s family, friends, and community are now in mourning. May his memory be a blessing.

The Toms River Police Department is currently estimated to be about 20 officers short below its staffing level. Council members have expressed concern that if the current promotional list expires and a new list must be created, the required testing and certification process could take up to a year. They warn that this could delay promotions and slow the department’s ability to hire additional officers during that time.

The mayor also opposed restoring a position in Town Hall, though the council passed the resolution to do so. Mayor Rodrick stated that he would not onboard anyone into the role, noting that the necessary paperwork requires his signature.

Animal shelter services were also discussed. Mayor Rodrick reiterated his support for the township’s existing agreement with Ocean County, which provides animal shelter services to Toms River at no direct cost to the municipality.

The mayor additionally stated that under the Faulkner Act form of government, certain administrative actions cannot be taken by the council without approval from the executive branch.

Council members have not agreed with the mayor’s interpretations or positions, and the ongoing debate reflects broader divisions within local government over authority, public safety, and financial decision-making.

Another Tehran resident described a city paralyzed by fear, as police and security forces flood major roads, set up checkpoints, and stop vehicles at will.

The source said the relative quiet seen in Tehran on Thursday followed widespread killings of demonstrators, estimating that more than 2,600 people have died since the protests erupted, citing figures from the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

“There are no protests anymore because of massive killings. With 12,000 dead, people are terrified,” the local said, referring to higher casualty estimates cited by activist groups.

The source urged President Trump to intervene immediately, despite Trump’s statement Wednesday that “the other side” had suggested Iran had stopped killing protesters.

“We are waiting for Trump’s action, he promised to support Iranian protesters if the regime killed them! It is the time to attack this brutal regime!” the local said.

Trump had previously warned that military action was possible if the Iranian government continued to massacre demonstrators.

Photographs from Tehran on Thursday showed residents cautiously moving through the city, attempting to resume daily routines amid burned-out vehicles and other wreckage left behind by the unrest.

Some people were seen traveling to hospitals and morgues in an effort to retrieve the bodies of relatives killed during the protests. One source told The Post that authorities had threatened to dispose of unclaimed bodies in a mass grave if families failed to collect them quickly.

Iranian security forces have been accused of carrying out one of the most severe crackdowns on dissent in the history of the Islamic Republic, with nearly 17,000 arrests reported by HRANA.

Video footage circulating online has shown mass shootings of civilians, as well as a violent assault on the Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ilam, where armed forces reportedly injured patients and medical staff.

According to witnesses cited by DW, security personnel opened fire inside the hospital and deployed tear gas while searching for individuals wounded during earlier protests, with approximately 11 patients taken away by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“We knew the security agents were coming to arrest the wounded or record their identities,” a nurse, who did not reveal her real name, told the outlet.

“People gathered at the entrance to stop them,” she added. “At the same time, we were desperately short of blood, so calls for donors went out on social media.

“But the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and special units prevented donors from reaching us.”

Human rights organizations reported that the siege of the hospital lasted more than a day, leaving patients, doctors, nurses, and even children injured in the violence.

“Security forces allegedly raided the Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ilam, deploying tear gas and beating patients and medical personnel,” the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in its latest Fact-Finding Mission report.

The true scale of the crackdown remains unclear, as a nationwide communications blackout has prevented independent verification of events across Iran.

The violence and suppression of protesters were addressed during an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Thursday.

Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad warned UN members that the Islamic Republic must not be treated as a normal state, comparing its actions to those of the Islamic State terrorist organization.

She argued that Iran’s leadership must be “treated like” ISIS to prevent further bloodshed.

“Millions of innocent, unarmed Iranians have been silenced through bullets, mass arrests, imprisonment and a total communications blackout — no internet, no mobile phones and no landlines,” she said in an emotional speech. “Iran is in total darkness.”

Alinejad, who lives in exile and is known for urging Iranian women to defy mandatory hijab laws, was the target of a regime-directed assassination attempt at her Brooklyn home in July 2022.

That plot failed due to multiple mistakes by the Russian gang members involved, who were later sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in October.

{Matzav.com}

Trump has repeatedly warned that the United States would intervene if Iran continued killing protesters amid nationwide anti-regime demonstrations. But in recent days, the president has appeared to pull back from the brink, even as Iran warned it would retaliate against Israel and U.S. military bases across the Middle East if attacked.

The hesitation is not limited to Washington. Senior officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt have urged the Trump administration to avoid a strike, warning it could ignite a regional conflagration without delivering a decisive blow to Iran’s leadership.

The urgency is driven by the scale of the bloodshed. The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group says it has verified the deaths of at least 3,428 protesters killed by Iranian security forces, based on its own investigations, corroboration from independent sources and data from within Iran’s health ministry for the period of Jan. 8–12. The group cautioned the true toll is likely far higher, citing an internet blackout imposed earlier this month that has severely hampered verification efforts.

Trump has claimed in the past 48 hours that the killing has slowed and that Iran paused executions under U.S. pressure, though independent confirmation remains elusive. Administration officials say military action remains on the table, and U.S. assets are continuing to move into the region to ensure readiness if the president orders strikes.

At the same time, doubts are growing inside the administration — and among allies — over whether airstrikes would fundamentally weaken the regime. Some officials are pushing instead to exploit Tehran’s weakened position to press for a broader deal on nuclear and regional issues.

Adding pressure from outside the government, Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s exiled former crown prince, publicly appealed to Trump on Friday, saying the protesters are placing their trust in the U.S. president to intervene.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington after footage of violent crackdowns and protest signs reading “Trump, don’t let them kill us,” Pahlavi argued the regime’s fall is inevitable but warned it will take “more time and more blood” without outside military action. He called for strikes on what he described as the regime’s “architecture of repression,” including command-and-control nodes of the Revolutionary Guards.

Asked repeatedly about Trump’s delays, Pahlavi said he still believed the president would act. “I believe the president is a man of his word,” he said.

Pahlavi estimated that as many as 12,000 people may have been killed during the protests, a figure that has not been independently confirmed. He rejected claims that the demonstrations are losing momentum, saying protesters are “bloodied but unbowed,” and laid out a proposed transition plan that would keep non-complicit public servants in place and restore Iran’s international ties.

He also floated a “Cyrus Accords,” modeled on the Abraham Accords, to normalize relations with Israel and regional powers such as Saudi Arabia — a proposal that would mark a historic reversal in Iranian foreign policy.

Still, the core question confronting Trump remains unresolved: whether military intervention would accelerate the regime’s collapse or risk entrenching it further, and whether a president who promised decisive action is prepared to wait longer as the death toll mounts.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Israeli Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar has ordered the establishment of a military investigative committee to examine the circumstances of the crash, including the failure of the lifting harness.

Black Hawk helicopters in Israeli service are used for routine transportation missions and for inserting and extracting troops during military operations. The fleet has been a key asset for the IAF since the 1990s

The shooting has ignited a nationwide debate, fueling sharp disagreements over federal immigration enforcement, police conduct, and the rhetoric used by elected officials when discussing actions by law enforcement agencies.

“Your press office tweeted out that it was state-sponsored terrorism,” Shapiro said, before pushing back on the characterization of federal agents.

“Our ICE officers obviously are not terrorists,” Shapiro added.

“Yeah, I think that’s fair,” Newsom agreed. The governor also said he “disagreed” that ICE should be abolished.

Clips of the exchange quickly circulated online, with critics pointing to the moment as proof that Newsom was walking back statements made by his own press team.

Later in the interview, the conversation shifted to public education and gender identity, with Shapiro repeatedly pressing Newsom on whether biological sex can be changed and how the topic should be addressed in schools.

“There are certainly cases in which kids are being socially transitioned at school without parents knowing about it,” Shapiro said. “The fundamental question… is whether boys can become girls.”

Newsom appeared uncomfortable and failed to offer a clear response, saying, “Yeah… well, I think… for the grace of God… yeah.”

Shapiro questioned why the governor seemed unable to answer directly.

“We’re talking about so few people,” Newsom said, adding that the issue was surrounded by “so much hate, and bigotry, so much condemnation.”

Shapiro rejected that characterization outright, insisting his position was rooted in biology rather than animus.

“It is not an act of bigotry to say that a boy cannot become a girl, nor should my children be taught in K-12 public schools that a boy can become a girl,” he said. “That’s not an act of bigotry; that’s an act of rationality and biological simplicity.”

Even after multiple follow-up questions, Newsom declined to give a definitive answer, instead returning to broad and noncommittal language.

The governor also appeared uneasy when Shapiro praised Donald Trump as the most effective foreign policy president of his lifetime and challenged Newsom on why he would not “radically” cut California income taxes.

Shapiro further criticized Newsom’s repeated warnings that Trump might attempt another presidential run in 2028, calling the claim reckless and suggesting the governor did not truly believe it. Newsom, however, insisted that he did.

{Matzav.com}

It continued, “Presented as a personal symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people in recognition of President Trump’s principled and decisive action to secure a free Venezuela.”

“The courage of America, and its President Donald J. Trump, will never be forgotten by the Venezuelan people. “

Trump publicly acknowledged the gift shortly afterward, thanking Machado in a post on social media.

“It was my Great Honor to meet María Corina Machado, of Venezuela, today,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She is a wonderful woman who has been through so much.

“María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!”

Machado, who received the Nobel Peace Prize last October for her campaign to restore democracy in Venezuela and challenge the authoritarian rule of Nicolás Maduro, said the presentation of the medal was accompanied by a message rooted in shared history.

“I told him this: 200 years ago, Gen. [Marquis de] Lafayette gave Simon Bolivar a medal with George Washington’s face on it. Bolivar kept that medal the rest of his life,” Machado said.

“It was given by Gen. Lafayette as a sign of the brotherhood between the people of the US and the people of Venezuela in their fight against tyranny. 200 years on in history, the people of Bolivar are giving back to the heir of George Washington a medal, in this case a medal of the Nobel Peace Prize,” she continued.

Known among supporters as Venezuela’s “Iron Lady,” Machado said she offered Trump the prize “in recognition of his unique place with our freedom.”

Earlier Thursday, Trump hosted Machado for a private lunch at the White House, marking the first time the two had met in person.

Machado remained at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for approximately two and a half hours during the visit.

Trump, who has spoken openly about his interest in the Nobel Peace Prize and has received multiple nominations, told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week that it would be a “great honor” to receive the medal from Machado.

In previous remarks, Machado had indicated she was prepared to give the prize to Trump or share it with him.

“I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we believe — the Venezuelan people, because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people — certainly want to, to give it to him and share it with him,” Machado said Monday.

“What he has done is historic. It’s a huge step towards a democratic transition.”

Before the White House meeting took place, the Nobel Prize Committee weighed in on the discussion surrounding the medal, stating: “A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.”

Despite the cordial meeting, Trump has previously expressed skepticism about Machado’s ability to govern Venezuela following the capture of Maduro and has instead voiced support for interim president Delcy Rodríguez. He referred to Maduro’s former vice president as a “terrific person” after speaking with Rodriguez by phone on Wednesday.

{Matzav.com}

Forged in the Fires of Pre-War Europe

Born in Adar 5680 (1920) in the small Polish-Lithuanian town of Knyszyn (Kinishev), the young Shmuel Birnbaum entered a world still reeling from the devastation of the First World War. Poland had just regained its independence after over a century of partition among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and the newly established Second Polish Republic was struggling to define itself. For Jews, who numbered over three million – the largest Jewish community in Europe – the interwar years brought both cultural flourishing and growing economic hardship, as antisemitic legislation and boycotts increasingly marginalized the Jewish population.

Yet amid these challenges, the great yeshivos continued to burn brightly as beacons of Torah. The young Shmuel made his way to the legendary Yeshiva Ohel Torah in Baranovich (Baranavichy), a railway junction city that had grown rapidly in the late nineteenth century at the intersection of the Warsaw-Moscow and Cracow-Minsk lines. Originally part of the Russian Empire, Baranovich had been incorporated into Poland after World War I. The city’s Jewish population comprised nearly half the residents, and the famed yeshiva, almost exclusively supported by the impoverished local population through the widespread practice of essen teg – where families would invite students to dine on different days – had become one of the crown jewels of the Torah world.

There, Rav Shmuel learned under Rav Elchonon Wasserman Hy”d for three years. Rav Elchonon, who had assumed leadership of the yeshiva at the direction of the Chofetz Chaim in 1921, was famous for demanding of his chavrusa – even a young bochur – that he not leave the beis medrash during their six-hour seder. Unlike other yeshivos that accepted only advanced students, Baranovich under Rav Elchonon’s leadership accepted students who had not yet achieved full proficiency and groomed them to learn the Talmud independently. This rigorous training would shape Rav Shmuel’s legendary hasmodah for the rest of his life.

In Baranovich, the young Reb Shmuel also developed a close relationship with the mashgiach Rav Yisroel Yaakov Lubchansky zt”l, son-in-law of the Alter of Novardok, founder of the vast Novardok mussar yeshiva network.

Even then, his rabbeim recognized his unique stature. Once, when poverty gripped the yeshiva and the bochurim were given only stale bread to eat, the students protested and refused the meager fare. Rav Lubchansky approached the young Shmuel with words of mussar, urging him to eat so he would have strength to learn. Then the mashgiach paused and added with emotion: “Vey tzu mir that I have to give mussar to such a choshuve bochur like Shmuel Birnbaum.”

From Baranovich, Rav Shmuel proceeded to the famed Yeshivas Mir, located in the small town of Mir in what was then eastern Poland (today Belarus). Founded in 1815, just twelve years after the establishment of the Volozhin Yeshiva, the Mir had grown into one of the premier Torah institutions in the world by the 1930s. Its reputation attracted students not only from throughout Europe, but also from America, South Africa, and Australia, and the student body grew to nearly 500. By the time the second World War broke out, there was hardly a rosh yeshiva of the Lithuanian school who had not studied in Mir.

In the Mir, Rav Shmuel became very close with the Mashgiach, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein zt”l. He joined the elite circle of talmidim who would later become the gedolei Yisroel of the next generation. His chaveirim from that golden era – Rav Nochum Partzovitz, Rav Leib Malin, Rav Aharon Kreiser, and others – remained bound to him like family throughout their lives.

Flight Through Fire and Ice

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Sixteen days later, pursuant to the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed just weeks earlier, the Soviet Red Army invaded from the east. Poland was dismembered, and the world of Torah that had flourished for centuries was consumed in flames. The town of Mir now fell under Soviet Communist rule, making continued yeshiva operations impossible.

The Mirrer Yeshiva fled westward to Vilna (Vilnius) in Lithuania, which had briefly remained independent. For three anxious weeks, they waited for visas to escape the tightening noose. Lithuania’s Jewish population had swelled from 160,000 to approximately 250,000 as refugees from Poland streamed across the border. Then, on June 15, 1940, Soviet tanks rolled into the Lithuanian capital, and the country was forcibly annexed to the USSR. The Soviets announced that all foreign consulates would be closed by late August – and with them, any hope of escape.

The yeshiva dispersed to several small towns – Keidan (Kedainiai), Krakinova, Ramigola, Shat, and Krok – operating without official permission while Soviet authorities turned a blind eye. But everyone knew this was only temporary. Escape seemed impossible: rigorous immigration laws restricted entrance to the United States under the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, and British-controlled Palestine was largely closed to Jewish immigration.

Through the intervention of Divine Providence, two unlikely saviors emerged. Jan Zwartendijk, the Dutch consul in Kaunas (Kovno), began issuing destination permits to Curacao, a Dutch island in the Caribbean that required no entry visa. And Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul who had been posted to Kaunas to monitor Soviet and German troop movements, agreed to provide transit visas through Japan – despite Tokyo’s explicit orders forbidding him to do so.

A young Mir student named Moshe Zupnik, borrowing a presentable suit from a fellow bochur, made his way to the Japanese consulate. After being turned away the first day due to massive crowds of desperate refugees, he returned the next day with a friend, bribed a guard, and was finally brought before Sugihara. When he requested over three hundred transit visas for the entire yeshiva, Sugihara’s German-born secretary declared it impossible. But Sugihara, defying his government, agreed to help. In an act of extraordinary courage, he spent the next two weeks issuing some 2,140 visas – saving the lives of thousands of Jews. [The original idea, by the way, was the brainchild of the mother of the famous Rubashkin lawyer, Nat Lewin.]

The yeshiva embarked on an odyssey that would last years. In groups of fifty, beginning in January 1941, they boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway for a grueling two-month journey across more than 5,700 miles of frozen Siberian wilderness – through the Ural Mountains, across sparse forests and frozen plains – to Vladivostok, the easternmost city of the USSR. One of my rebbeim, Rav Dovid Kviat zt”l, who also served as a maggid shiur along with Rav Shmuel, described it very emotionally to me.

From there, they sailed to the Japanese port city of Kobe, where the local Sephardic community – Jews originally from Baghdad – offered them a synagogue for their studies. They remained in Kobe for seven months until the Japanese government, under pressure from Germany and in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, forced all Jewish refugees to relocate to Shanghai in Japanese-occupied China.

Shanghai was a city of contradictions – a crowded, unsanitary international settlement that nonetheless required no visa to enter, making it one of the only places in the world that unconditionally offered refuge to Jews fleeing the Nazis. Shanghai had accepted more Jewish refugees than either Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or India. In fact, it accepted more than all of them combined. By the time the Mir arrived, the city already housed some 17,000 German and Austrian Jews who had fled persecution in the late 1930s.

In the sweltering heat of the Shanghai beis medrash in the Beth Aharon Synagogue – built in 1920 by Silas Aaron Hardoon, a prominent Sephardic Jewish businessman – Rav Shmuel was widely recognized for his total immersion in Torah study.

Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi, a Lubavitcher chassid who served as the spiritual leader of the Jewish refugees, had arranged for the yeshiva to occupy the synagogue. Temperatures regularly exceeded 100 degrees, and the diet consisted largely of rice. Yet Rav Shmuel maintained the same unwavering devotion to Torah that had characterized his years in Poland.

His roommate in Shanghai, the future Rosh Yeshiva of Beis HaTalmid, Rav Leib Malin zt”l, stood as a model of steadfast commitment. While other bochurim abandoned their jackets in the oppressive heat, Rav Leib insisted on proper dress at all times. Together, these young lions of Torah sustained fourteen-hour days of intensive learning, their sole sustenance being rice – and the life-giving waters of Torah. The Mir Yeshiva emerged as the only Eastern European yeshiva to survive the war intact.

Building Torah in America

Following Japan’s surrender in August 1945 and the end of World War II, the Jewish refugees began leaving Shanghai. Most emigrated to the newly established State of Israel or to the United States. Rav Shmuel arrived in America in 1947 with the rest of the Mirrer Yeshiva, landing first in San Francisco before making his way to New York. The yeshiva initially settled in Far Rockaway, then the New Lots section of East New York, and finally moving to its permanent home on Ocean Parkway in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Rav Avrohom Kalmanowitz zt”l, who had escaped to America before the war and labored heroically to sustain the yeshiva in Shanghai by sending funds and hundreds of Gemaras, chose Reb Shmuel as a husband for his daughter, Reichel. The couple married in 1950.

When Rav Kalmanowitz passed away in 1964, Rav Shmuel Berenbaum and Reb Avrohom’s oldest son, Rav Shraga Moshe Kalmanowitz, were appointed as Roshei Yeshiva of the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. For the next fifty-six years, Rav Shmuel devoted every fiber of his being to teaching Torah and nurturing thousands upon thousands of talmidim. Under his leadership, the Mirrer Yeshiva grew into one of the most prestigious centers for Torah study in America, with several hundred talmidim.

His remarkable full-time involvement in learning and presenting shiurim, coupled with his intense dedication to the well-being and progress of each talmid in the yeshiva, as well as his concern for interested ba’alebattim, created an unusual impact on all with whom he had contact.

The Essence of Hasmodah

Rav Shmuel’s hasmodah was legendary, becoming the very definition of what it means to be anchored to the beis medrash. He would sit in the last seat of the row closest to the seforim shelves, learning with an intensity that inspired all who witnessed it. His diligence was unparalleled – so immersed would he become in his learning that he often did not hear people knocking at his door.

A remarkable incident illustrates this total devotion. One year, on Asara B’Teves, a former talmid came to invite him to serve as sandek at his son’s bris. It was an hour and a half after the fast had ended. The Rosh Yeshiva was in his private office in the yeshiva – simply a room for learning in privacy – so absorbed in his learning that he did not hear the knocking. When finally reached, before the young man could explain his visit, he asked, “Would the Rosh Yeshiva like something to eat?” The Rosh Yeshiva replied matter-of-factly, “First, I must complete the sugya with the Rambam.” Torah was his lifeblood. Before he could nourish his body, he needed to feed his neshama with the sugya and Rambam.

This was complete devotion of body and soul to Torah. Rav Shmuel would not leave the yeshiva for any simcha or function until after second seder ended. When the head of a prominent organization once asked Rav Shmuel to attend a function where several roshei yeshiva would be present, his first question was, “What time does it begin?” When told it was at 5:00 PM, Rav Shmuel responded simply, “5:00 PM? I’m sorry — that’s the middle of Second Seder. There’s no way I can leave Second Seder.” Weddings across the Torah world were scheduled late into the evening so that he could serve as mesader kiddushin without missing a moment of learning. Even when doctors prescribed walks for his health in later years, those who observed him could see that he was completely immersed in learning as he walked.

His son, R’ Elchonon, testified: “My father never stopped shteiging! Even as he was constantly teaching Torah and worrying about his talmidim’s growth, he was never satisfied with his own level of learning. Rav Yitzchok Kleinman zt”l, one of his longtime talmidim, once commented that his rebbi, Rav Shmuel now, was a different person than his rebbi, Rav Shmuel of fifty years ago – he had become so much greater since then.”

The first two summers after his first heart attack, he was in South Fallsburg during bein hazemanim. He spent virtually the entire day learning in the beis midrash of Yeshiva Zichron Moshe. When Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel asked him, “What about resting a bit?” the Rosh Yeshiva replied, “But I am resting! During the z’man, I prepare shiurim on Bava Basra; now I am learning Chullin.”

Once, during a visit to Eretz Yisroel, Rav Shmuel addressed a group of bochurim during bein hazemanim. With characteristic passion, he declared: “Rashi says that the world was created for the sake of the Torah. Without Torah, we are inferior to all other nations!” At the shiur’s end, when someone mentioned that the zman would begin the following Sunday, Rav Shmuel pounded the table: “Do not wait for the beginning of the zman! If you don’t learn now, how will you become great? I beg of you: Do not let a single minute go to waste.” Then he asked: “Will you agree to have a shorter breakfast tomorrow, and to use the time you save for learning?” When the bochurim nodded, Rav Shmuel beamed. “In that case,” he said with satisfaction, “it was worthwhile for me to come to Eretz Yisroel.”

Rav Shmuel was attending the wedding of one of his grandchildren. At a certain point, the hall became quite stuffy, and his children felt it would be good for him to step outside for some fresh air. As soon as they walked out of the hall, Rav Elia Baruch Finkel approached him to offer mazal tov. The two immediately began talking and learning together. One of Rav Shmuel’s children remarked, “I thought the reason we came out was to get some air.” Rav Shmuel looked at him and replied, “Torah — that is my air.”

Malchus – True Royalty

Rav Shmuel would often expound on the concept that Torah scholars embody true royalty. He noted that Hashem commanded Moshe Rabbeinu to make trumpets that would be sounded before him “as is done before a king.” Why should this have been done for Moshe Rabbeinu? According to Chazal, someone who learns Torah lishma is worthy of malchus, kingship. Since true royalty is embodied in the great talmid chacham, no one personified malchus more than Moshe Rabbeinu.

In the Rosh Yeshiva himself, one saw malchus – the nobility that comes from being totally immersed in Torah and living a life in which every step, every act and every word is a reflection of Torah. He was totally self-effacing; his humility was genuine, natural. Yet, anyone in his presence could easily perceive that he was head and shoulders above other people.

In our generation, the Rosh Yeshiva was the symbol of utter dedication to the study and teaching of Torah. He had no desire for anything outside of Torah and mitzvos. He derived indescribable pleasure from serving Hashem, especially from limud haTorah, and he had absolutely no need for anything material. When he would deride over-involvement in food (“Steak? Who needs it!”), everyone knew that the Rosh Yeshiva was far removed from such indulgence.

Just Visiting – A Life of Simplicity

The home of the Chofetz Chaim in Radin was the quintessential abode of one who truly lived as a “visitor” on this planet. As the Chofetz Chaim once told someone who expressed surprise at his home’s stark simplicity, “Does a traveler take his furniture with him? I am merely a traveler passing through this world.” His home had a set of table and chairs, a small bookcase and a few beds.

In his total disinterest for material things, the Rosh Yeshiva had a most fitting partner in life. Anyone who visited their home could not fail to be impressed by its utter lack of adornment. To everyone’s knowledge, the only new piece of furniture they acquired in some 50 years was a recliner purchased a few years before his passing when the Rosh Yeshiva, due to health problems, was unable to sleep in a bed. The Rosh Yeshiva was a true oved Hashem b’Simcha. He and his Rebbetzin had no need for what others consider necessities.

Yissachar’s Tranquility

Rav Shmuel would often quote Yaakov Avinu’s blessing to Yissachar, who represents dedication to Torah study. In that beracha, Yissachar is likened to a donkey that carries a heavy load. Yet, in the next pasuk, Yaakov speaks of menucha, tranquility, as being tov, good. The juxtaposition of a hard-working donkey without respite and menucha seems contradictory.

The Rosh Yeshiva would become excited as he explained: The world has a misconception about menucha. They think that “the easy life” – vacations, baseball, steaks, having a “good time” – is menucha, and that it is tov. But that is wholly incorrect. That sort of life is one of atzlus, laziness; it is not “good,” and it does not result in a feeling of tranquility and peace of mind.

On the other hand, true attachment to and growth in Torah does not come easily. One must be like a hard-working donkey in accepting upon himself the yoke of Torah. Easy? Certainly not. But it is this sort of dedication that results in true menuchas hanefesh, joy, and accomplishment.

A Father to Thousands

How did a man born and raised in pre-war Europe connect so profoundly with American boys? The answer, as his son explained, was simple: “With ahavah – love! He loved all his talmidim, sometimes even more than a father loves his son.”

When a talmid lost his wife and was left to care for young children alone, Rav Shmuel not only attended the levaya – he accompanied the talmid and his children in the car to the airport, escorted them into the house where they would observe shiva, made sure that they were settled and had whatever they needed, and offered precious words of comfort and chizuk. When he noticed that a talmid who traveled from Lakewood weekly to learn with him was wearing a frayed jacket, Rav Shmuel told him gently: “It doesn’t pas for a ben Torah to walk around with such a jacket. Here is money to buy a new one.”

Perhaps the most remarkable testament to his love was his willingness to fast for his talmidim. When a struggling bochur in Mir was on the verge of being expelled due to gambling and other problems, some yungeleit approached the Rosh Yeshiva to suggest that the bachur be asked to leave the yeshiva. It was the only time that talmidim ever saw the Rosh Yeshiva become flushed with anger. “Did you fast 40 ta’aneisim?” he demanded. “After you fast 40 ta’aneisim, then you can come to me to suggest that we send a talmid out of the yeshiva!” From that day on, the Rosh Yeshiva took a special interest in this bachur, learning with him personally. Due to his loving influence, the bachur underwent a complete transformation and is today an outstanding talmid chacham and marbitz Torah.

Years later, a mother who heard this story at a dinner thought to herself: “If Rav Shmuel can fast for a talmid, then I can surely fast for my son!” She did – and her struggling son transformed completely. The ripples of Rav Shmuel’s ahavas Yisroel continued to spread far beyond his immediate reach.

So great was his love for every single talmid that no matter who they were, each one felt his fatherly care and compassion. One Shavuos night, a talmid who had recently heard one of Rav Shmuel’s shiurim was struggling to understand a particular sevara. He asked Rav Shmuel several times but still could not grasp it. In the middle of the night, he went to ask other talmidei chachamim, but he still did not understand. Finally, at 3:00 AM, he returned to Rav Shmuel and asked him to explain it once more. Rav Shmuel joyfully sat with him and explained the sevara again, staying with him until Shacharis.

When a grandson came to inform him of the good news that his wife was expecting their first child, the Rosh Yeshiva responded, “And what is with…?” and he proceeded to say the Hebrew names (and mothers’ names) of five childless talmidim for whom he davened constantly. His heart never stopped carrying the burdens of his talmidim.

Emes – Truth Without Compromise

Rav Shmuel’s beloved chaver, Rav Aharon Kreiser, used to say about him that he was “vi a leib” – like a lion. This was true in all aspects. His driver and the one who took care of him once related to me after I had my defibrillator installed that Rav Shmuel also had a defribrillitaor that had shocked his heart back to activity several times, and he just dealt with it – like a lion. When it came to emes in Torah, Rav Shmuel also possessed unwavering strength. Once, during a shiur kloli given by a distinguished talmid chochom, Rav Shmuel disagreed with a point. He rose with passion and began arguing in the middle of the shiur, refusing to yield. When later asked how he could do such a thing, he replied: “If you would have seen how Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l hut geshlugen in lernen vi a leib, you would not have any questions!”

The Rosh Yeshiva did not engage in chanifa (flattery); he would never accord anyone special honor because of his wealth. To the contrary, he would sometimes tell a big donor, “Do not consider yourself a great ba’al tzeddaka. A person must give according to his means. And according to your means, you should be giving more.” At parlor meetings, his first order of business was often not fundraising, but “raising the bar” in Torah learning. At one particular meeting, he asked for a collection — not of money, but of Torah — asking each person present how they could strengthen and elevate their own learning.

And this is precisely why many wealthy men in the Torah community were attached to the Rosh Yeshiva heart and soul. A number of them maintained regular, private learning sessions with him. They wept at his passing as a son would weep for a father, and some accompanied the coffin to Eretz Yisroel. He was kulo emes – his essence was truth. They were also taken by his ehrlichkeit, by the fact that millions of dollars of tzeddaka funds passed through his hands, but he would nevertheless take nothing for himself – even when he was clearly entitled to it.

His shiur was “kodesh kodashim.” Every word of the Gemara was carefully examined and analyzed – he expended much time and effort over the years on the study of Chumash with Rashi and derived scores of chiddushim from this limud. Talmidim who heard him describe him as making the most profound concepts simple and understandable, always with joy and often eliciting laughter.

Even in his final illness, when he was already a choleh mesukan, Rav Shmuel insisted on going to yeshiva to say shiur. Though he was so weak he could barely speak, the moment he began the shiur, he was like a new person – talking clearly, smiling, delivering Torah with his characteristic patience. The shiur gave him life.

The Measure of a Man

The Kohen Gadol wore the Choshen upon his chest. The face of the Choshen had twelve precious stones, the Avnei Milluim (Stones of Filling, for they filled the golden settings into which they were placed). The Rosh Yeshiva once asked: What makes this a name of distinction for precious stones? Do we call a diamond a “diamond,” or do we call it a “filling stone” because it fills its setting?

The Rosh Yeshiva explained: There is a message here. These stones, with the names of the Shevatim engraved upon them, represent Klal Yisroel. A Jew’s greatness is measured by how much he “fills” – meaning, he gives to others.

Rav Shmuel and the Rebbetzin were extraordinary in hachnasas orchim. They arranged their basement to house people coming from Eretz Yisrael to collect tzedakah. For years, Rav Shmuel would go every Erev Shabbos to visit Jews in hospitals to give them chizuk. On one occasion, Rav Shmuel himself was hospitalized for several days. A talmid who came to visit was walking with him up and down the hallway, talking and learning. Every so often, Rav Shmuel would say, “We have to be mechazek the Yidden here,” and he would look for Jewish patients to visit and encourage.

On Erev Yom Kippur, one year before his passing, the Rosh Yeshiva had a small snack after Shacharis and then visited someone who was hospitalized. From there, he went to a family burdened with the stress of a homebound patient who needed round-the-clock care, care that the government did not pay for. The Rosh Yeshiva visited, offered his beracha for the coming year, and quietly left an envelope on the table containing $15,000. When his driver asked what the Rosh Yeshiva would eat – it was almost Yom Kippur – Rav Shmuel replied with a smile: “Mir geit essen mitzvos! I will eat mitzvos!”

When his son Reb Leib was hospitalized in New York with cancer, the Rosh Yeshiva became friendly with a man whose teenage daughter was in the same hospital, in need of a refuah. One Motza’ei Shabbos, while walking from shul back to the hospital, the Rosh Yeshiva inquired about the man’s daughter. When the man replied that the situation did not look good, the Rosh Yeshiva responded, “Send me an invitation to her wedding – I’ll be there.” Baruch Hashem, a few years later, this young woman became a kalla. The Rosh Yeshiva made an exception by leaving the beis midrash during second seder to serve as mesader kiddushin. As soon as the chuppa ended, he returned to the Mir for the remainder of second seder.

Goodness to the Klal, Goodness to the Individual

Rav Shmuel would note a remarkable insight from the Torah: “And Yosef was the ruler over the land, and he was the provider to all the people of the land.” When in world history did a king, prime minister or president personally involve himself in providing food for his people? Even the best of presidents would not busy himself with such matters. For this, he has members of cabinet, chiefs of staff, heads of departments. But Yosef Hatzaddik was different. As viceroy, he was “the ruler over the land,” yet, at the same time, he was the “provider to all the people,” personally involved with the needs of the individual.

This was the Rosh Yeshiva. He was the great marbitz Torah, whose mind was forever preoccupied with Torah. Yet, in his last years, he accepted upon himself new responsibilities for the klal. He founded and oversaw a multi-million dollar fund for bnei Torah of Eretz Yisroel who had been hard hit by deep cuts in government funding. He became an “ambassador of Torah,” delivering brilliant shiurim in other yeshivos and kollelim in addition to his regular shiurim at the Mir. And yet, he was forever cognizant of the needs of the individual. While it is human nature during times of illness to focus inward, Rav Shmuel was the opposite. One week before his passing, he was advocating on behalf of a child to be accepted into a yeshiva. Just four days before he was niftar, Rav Shmuel was actively helping with a shalom bayis case.

Through Personal Tragedy

Rav Shmuel’s life was marked by profound personal losses. He lost his entire family in the Holocaust – among the six million kedoshim, including the approximately 12,000 Jews of Baranovich who were murdered when the ghetto was liquidated in late 1942, and the nearly 90% of Lithuanian Jewry who perished – one of the highest rates in Europe. He overcame two massive heart attacks. Two of his sons were niftar – one, Chaim Shlomo, was tragically killed, and the other, Rav Aryeh Leib zt”l, passed away after an illness.

When he came to be menachem aveil a talmid chacham whose young child had been tragically killed in an accident, the Rosh Yeshiva said, “Twice the Satan took children from me to get me to stop learning, but he did not succeed.”

When he sat shiva for his son, Rav Shmuel shared a remarkable insight. “Rashi says that Yitzchak became blind in his older years because of the Akeidah. When the malachim saw Yitzchak being taken to be slaughtered, they cried, and their tears fell into his eyes. The lashon Rashi uses is ‘niftachu haShamayim’ – the Heavens were opened – and through that, the malachim were able to see the Akeidah. But malachim can see everything from one end of the world to the other! Why did Hashem have to ‘open the Heavens’ for them?”

Rav Shmuel answered: “There are two ways to look at the world. We can look with heavenly eyes, from which everything makes sense. Or we can look with human eyes, from which tragedy is incomprehensible. When Hashem ‘opened the Heavens,’ He allowed the malachim, for one moment, to see the Akeidah through human eyes – and that is why they wept.”

Despite his suffering, the simcha that radiated from Rav Shmuel as he was mechadesh a chiddush in Torah never left him. His son testified: “He went through a few tragedies in his life, but the simcha that radiated from him as he was mechadesh a chiddush in Torah never left him. We watched him daven, literally omeid lifnei haMelech. He would beg the Eibishter like a child talks to his father. He was so real.”

After his first massive heart attack in 1972, in which eighty percent of his heart muscle was destroyed, the doctors said that the fact that his arteries were absolutely clean had saved his life. His family then revealed that several years earlier, the Rosh Yeshiva had stopped eating meat because of kashrus concerns. When this was told to his dear friend and chavrusa, Rav Nachum Partzovitz zt”l of Mir-Yerushalayim, Reb Nachum quoted the passuk “Shomer nafsho yirchak midavar ra – He who guards his soul will distance himself from anything of evil.”

The doctor had told him that he did not expect him to survive. The Rosh Yeshiva responded, “Have you ever been wrong before? This time, you’ll be wrong.” He defied the doctors’ predictions, and some six months later, resumed his intensive schedule of learning and delivering shiurim with no easing up at all. When his family asked him to allow time for more rest, he replied that according to the doctors, the fact that he was alive and functioning was a miracle, and in that case, he could assume that the miracle would allow him to learn just as before. It did.

After one of his heart surgeries, Rav Shmuel underwent open-heart surgery. After several hours, he finally began to regain consciousness and was desperately trying to communicate something to his family, though they could not understand what he was saying. After listening closely, they realized that he was asking to learn. They immediately brought him a sefer, and only then was he able to relax and return to rest.

His Final Journey

On the 28th of Teves 5768 (January 6, 2008), Rav Shmuel was niftar at his home in Brooklyn after battling illness. He was 87 years old. His levaya in New York, held the following day at the Mirrer Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway, drew tens of thousands of mourners. It began at 8:45 AM – the same time the Rosh Yeshiva himself would arrive early to seder to learn. Even in death, he taught by example.

His aron was then flown to Eretz Yisroel for kevura. At Ben Gurion Airport, hundreds waited to receive him, including HaGaon Rav Aharon Leib Steinman zt”l, who delivered a hesped at the airport. From there, the levaya proceeded to Yeshivas Mir in Yerushalayim’s Beis Yisroel neighborhood, where revavos (tens of thousands) gathered, standing in the rain to pay their final respects.

Among the maspidim were the Roshei Yeshiva of Mir Yerushalayim, HaGaon Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel zt”l and HaRav HaTzaddik Rav Aryeh Finkel zt”l; HaGaon Rav Boruch Dov Povarsky; HaGaon Rav Shmuel Auerbach zt”l; HaGaon Rav Boruch Shimon Salomon, Rav of Petach Tikvah; the Mashgiach Rav Don Segal; the Novominsker Rebbe; and many others.

The scene was remarkable: Young men stood on rooftops around the yeshiva, straining to catch a glimpse of the gedolei Yisroel who had come to escort this giant to his final rest. Hatzolah volunteers had to remove dozens of bochurim from a dangerously unstable roof. It was a testament to the impact of a man who rarely left his shtender, yet whose light had reached the farthest corners of the Torah world.

Rav Shmuel was laid to rest in the Sanhedria Cemetery in Yerushalayim, near the kevarim of his two sons who had preceded him in death.

The Living Legacy

Rav Shmuel left behind a magnificent family of talmidei chachamim: his sons Rav Asher Dov (Rosh Yeshiva in Mir), Rav Meir Shimon, Rav Elchonon, Rav Avrohom, and Rav Yisroel; and his sons-in-law Rav Hershel Kaminsky, Rav Eliyahu Meir Sorotzkin zt”l (Rosh Yeshiva in Springfield), and Rav Reuven Schepansky (a rebbi in Mir Yeshiva).

He also left behind the Keren that bears his name, which continues to support thousands of yungeleit in Eretz Yisroel. In his final years, despite tremendous illness, Rav Shmuel traveled to Eretz Yisroel for fundraisers with mesiras nefesh. When Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l ruled that he should attend a crucial meeting despite his weakness, he was mevatel daas and went.

A Beacon That Still Shines

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s statement upon Rav Shmuel’s passing captured what so many felt: “Today we lost Rabbi Shmuel Birnbaum, who led the Mir Yeshiva for nearly 50 years and built it into one of the largest centers for Torah study in the world. A Holocaust refugee who, as a young man, sought shelter in Shanghai from Nazi persecution, Rabbi Birnbaum’s love of learning and wealth of wisdom will live on through his tens of thousands of students worldwide.”

Talmidim knew four decades ago that in the Rosh Yeshiva, they were seeing the grandeur of Torah. And yet, as the years passed, he seemed to grow greater and greater before their eyes, broadening his horizons, embarking on new undertakings for the sake of Torah and its students. And all that time, he remained firmly anchored to his seat and shtender in the back row of the Mirrer beis midrash.

He learned and he taught until he literally had no strength. His lesson inspired and will continue to inspire an entire generation.

As one who was at the levaya wrote: “We will miss his shining example of hasmodah. Even when he used to take walks that his doctor prescribed, you could see he was araingetuhn in learning. One of the last of the shufra of that previous beautiful dor is no longer with us. The only way to have a ktzas nechama is for us to try to emulate his ameilus baTorah.”

The author can be reached at [email protected]

In the name of G-d, he had tried to appeal to the Nazis’ sense of justice. His words only made things worse. Now he stood facing execution.

Strangely, the death sentence brought him a moment of relief. At least, he thought, he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell his community the terrible news. Facing the wall, Rav Pinchas recited Shema Yisrael, said Vidui (the confession before death), and whispered quietly: “Let my death be atonement for all my sins.”

Then something extraordinary happened.

In that moment of complete surrender, something shifted deep within him. “During the course of reciting the Shema Yisrael—and I myself do not know how this happened—I was suddenly transformed into a new person,” he later wrote. “I had become hardened. I showed no reaction, no hysteria. I looked objectively at the situation and made peace with my fate—to become the messenger of such ‘glad tidings’—namely, the expulsion of the Jews.”

The Nazi, in a twisted act of cruelty, refused to grant him the “pleasure” of dying before completing his terrible mission. He lowered his weapon and ordered the young rabbi to first deliver the expulsion order—and then return to be killed.

But Rav Pinchas Hirschprung would not die that day. Instead, he would live to become one of the greatest Torah leaders of the twentieth century.

The Boy Genius of Dukla

“When looking at my father’s life,” one of his children reflected, “one has to ask: where does someone come from? And then it helps us better understand the type of person we’re talking about.”

R’ Pinchas was born on July 13, 1912, in Dukla, a peaceful shtetl (small Jewish town) nestled in the Subcarpathian region of Galicia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He later described his hometown with deep affection:

A peaceful town with three hundred Jewish families and one hundred Christian ones. One and all were faithful and pious—no one desecrated the Shabbos in public. The girls attended the Bais Yaakov school while the boys sported beards, learned until they were married, and wore gartels and attended the mikve.

Dukla was located in a region dominated by Zanzer Chassidim, near Nowy Sacz (Zanz), the hometown of the famous Divrei Chaim. However, young Pinchas’s family were Chortkover Chassidim, followers of Rabbi Israel Friedman, grandson of the Ruzhiner Rebbe. After World War I, the Chortkover Rebbe moved his court from Ukraine to Vienna, like many other rebbes of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. His son, Rabbi Nachum Mordechai, took over the court in 1934 and moved it to Eretz Yisrael in 1939.

R’ Pinchas’s primary teacher was his grandfather, Rav Dovid Tzvi Sehmann, known as the Minchas Soles after his famous sefer (religious book). The Minchas Soles was himself a student of the great Rav Yitzchak Yehuda Schmelkes, author of the Beis Yitzchak, and was known as one of the Gedolei Galicia. He served as the beloved rav of Dukla.

Years later, one of his children had the privilege of traveling with Rav Hirschprung back to Dukla. “I will never forget how my father pointed to the balcony where Zeide lived,” the child recalled. “And my father said, ‘Here’s where I learned my whole Torah.’”

The bond between grandfather and grandson was extraordinarily deep. Years later, Rav Hirschprung would tell his children that before any major event in his life, his grandfather came to him in his dreams.

From his earliest years, it was clear that Pinchas possessed something extraordinary. He was gifted not only with a brilliant mind but with an almost supernatural memory. His classmates during those formative years would themselves become legendary figures: Rav Yaakov Leizer, who would become the Admor of Pshevorsk, and Rav Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam, the future Klausenberger Rebbe. But even among such future gedolim (great Torah leaders), Pinchas stood apart.

By his bar mitzvah at age thirteen, he had already published his first sefer, Pri Pinchas, and had begun editing a monthly Torah journal called Ohel Torah. Think about that: at an age when most boys are just becoming responsible for mitzvos, Pinchas was already a published author and editor.

The Crown Jewel of Lublin

Word of the young prodigy from Dukla spread, and eventually Pinchas found his way to Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin—the largest and most magnificent yeshiva in all of Europe.

Chachmei Lublin was the dream of one man: Rav Meir Shapiro, a brilliant rabbi, educator, and leader who was also a Chortkover Chassid—the same chassidus as young Pinchas’s family. After witnessing the destruction and displacement caused by World War I, Rav Shapiro dreamed of building a grand international Torah institution rather than rebuilding small, scattered yeshivos. After six years of extensive fundraising across the Jewish world, ground was broken for the building at 68 Lubartowska Street in Lublin on May 30, 1924. An astounding 50,000 people attended the ceremony, including one hundred rabbis and the Rebbes of Ger and Chortkov.

The yeshiva’s grand opening in 1930 was so impressive that it was filmed and screened in the Regent Theater in Stamford Hill, London, on December 19, 1930. The building boasted modern luxuries like central heating—virtually unknown in other yeshiva dormitories at the time. But what made Chachmei Lublin truly unique was its academic standards: students were required to know 1,000 pages (2,000 leaves) of Talmud by heart just to be admitted.

Rav Shapiro served as Galician delegate to the founding convention of Agudath Israel at Kattowitz in 1912, and ten years later was named national president of the Polish branch. He was also elected to the Sejm (Polish parliament) that same year, serving until 1927. In 1931, he was named Chief Rabbi of Lublin and became known as the Lubliner Rav.

Rav Shapiro is also remembered for another revolutionary idea he introduced at the 1923 World Agudath Israel gathering in Vienna: Daf Yomi (the daily page), a program in which Jews around the world study the same page of Talmud each day, completing the entire Talmud in about seven and a half years. This program continues to unite Jews worldwide to this very day.

When young R’ Pinchas arrived at Chachmei Lublin, he quickly became Rav Shapiro’s prized student. Rav Meir Shapiro spoke of him constantly. As one family member noted, “The biggest maven was Rav Meir Shapiro. He said it was worth building the yeshiva for two talmidim—and one of them was my father.”

The rosh yeshiva would declare: “It would have been worth opening the yeshiva just for Pinchas from Dukla.”

The basis for such extraordinary praise? While still a teenager, Pinchas knew all 2,711 dapim (double-sided pages) of the Talmud Bavli by heart. His knowledge was so vast and reliable that Rav Shapiro appointed him to examine prospective students—a role that required mastery of at least 400 dapim of Gemara with commentaries, since applicants needed to know 200 dapim for admission.

His student, Rav Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, later testified that Rav Hirschprung remembered not only the entire Talmud Bavli but also all four sections of the Shulchan Aruch (the Code of Jewish Law) by heart. Those who knew him said that the entire Talmud “lay in his mind like items in a box.”

Rav Hirschprung received semicha (rabbinical ordination) in 1932 from Rav Chanoch Eigesh (author of Marcheshes) and Rav Shmuel Firer. He began teaching at the yeshiva and testing prospective students. Before turning twenty, he had written several seforim and was already exchanging letters with the gedolei hador, including the Gerrer Rebbe. His future seemed bright and secure in the world of Torah scholarship.

Then the Nazis came, and that world was destroyed.

A Birthday Gift for the Rebbi

On those Yom Tov afternoons in Montreal, sitting on his burgundy couch, Rav Hirschprung would speak of a special memory from his yeshiva days—a birthday gift for his beloved rebbi.

Rav Meir Shapiro had no children; the ocean of love in his heart flowed toward his talmidim and the Torah they learned. His students wanted to find a way to honor him on his birthday.

They came up with an extraordinary idea: they divided up the entire Shas, every talmid taking ten blatt to master over the course of a single day. At sunset, they all joined together to make a Siyum HaShas in their rebbi’s honor. It was a gift that could only come from students of Chachmei Lublin—young men who lived and breathed Torah with such intensity that mastering ten pages in a day was within their reach.

In his true Galicianer fashion, speaking in his breathless way, Rav Hirschprung would add flavor to his stories about the yeshiva. He would tell how once, during the early years, his rebbi noticed that one of the bochurim appeared near fainting on a Friday night. It turned out that the family where he was meant to eat had been too busy to feed him, and he had been fasting since the day before.

Immediately, the Lubliner Rav made the decision to open a real yeshiva, with a dormitory and dining room, so that young bnei Torah could thrive. That dream would become Chachmei Lublin.

At this point in his retelling, Rav Hirschprung would stop, smile gently, and share a joke about the old system of essen teg, where local families would feed yeshiva students on different days of the week.

Two bochurim, he said, were talking about the homes where they ate.

“My host family only serves kasha, every single day, again and again, it’s always kasha,” the first bochur complained.

“I wish my family would give me kasha,” said the second. “Instead, I get a teirutz: ‘We just ran out, we forgot you were coming, the food got burnt.’”

This was Rav Hirschprung—master of kol haTorah kulah with the soft touch, blessed with the ability to quote lines of Tosefta and also share a delightful joke.

The World Explodes

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. World War II had begun.

Rav Hirschprung was in Dukla when it fell to the Nazis. Areas further east came under Soviet control on September 17, 1939, according to the secret Molotov-von-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He found himself trapped in Nazi territory.

While many Jews clung to desperate hopes that Poland could withstand the German army, or that Germany was merely waging a “war of nerves,” the young scholar had no such illusions. His heart broke for those who refused to see the catastrophe unfolding before their eyes.

He watched how quickly civilization could crumble. Even before the Germans physically arrived in Dukla, Ukrainian neighbors felt free to rob Jewish merchants. Daily decrees restricted religious observance. When he saw the Nazi soldiers march into town, he was struck by something chilling: how each one of them, in their “robotic mechanizations and steely rigidity,” physically resembled the others, as if they had been mass-produced in a factory. It was, he felt, a terrifying symbol of how technological power without holiness becomes an instrument of evil.

And then came that terrible day when he was summoned to Gestapo headquarters and told to order his community’s expulsion—leading to his near-execution.

But Rav Hirschprung did not simply accept defeat. After his miraculous reprieve, he returned to the Nazi commander and appealed to whatever humanity might remain within him. Could fifty merchants remain to supply the German barracks with goods? Could wagons be provided for the elderly, women, and children who couldn’t walk? Could people take additional belongings?

Incredibly, the commander agreed to all three requests. When asked to provide a list of fifty people who could stay, Rav Hirschprung deliberately wrote down sixty-three names—refusing to be the one who decided who lived and who was expelled. And he pointedly left his own father’s name off the list, so that no one could question his fairness. The commander, perhaps moved by this display of integrity, allowed all sixty-three to remain.

As the Jews of Dukla prepared to leave their homes forever, a Christian woman stood watching. When the Nazis asked her what she thought of the scene, she gave an answer that Rav Hirschprung would never forget: “The Jews’ G-d is here. He who took revenge on Pharaoh, Haman, Titus, and Sancheriv… will also take revenge on you.”

The Escape

In the chaos of those early war days, Rav Hirschprung received a powerful inner calling: he must escape to Vilna (Vilnius), where the great gaon Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky resided. As one family member recounted, “He escaped to Vilna at the beginning of the war. He met Rav Chaim Ozer and a lot of other Gedolim. He was very concerned about the refugees. He did everything possible to help out people.”

This mission became his consuming purpose, the beacon that would guide him through years of unimaginable hardship.

His family—especially his mother—begged him not to go. But after the arrests, beatings, and constant life-threatening persecution, Rav Hirschprung made the agonizing decision to leave. He would never see his parents, sisters, or beloved grandfather again. As one of his children later said with deep pain, “My father came alone. His grandmother and his grandfather and his parents and his sisters were all killed.”

To reach Vilna, he had to smuggle himself from Nazi-occupied Poland through Soviet-occupied territory and then into Lithuania. The journey was harrowing beyond imagination.

He crossed the San River between Nazi and Soviet zones, nearly drowning in waters that were deeper and more turbulent than expected. His shoes fell apart; he bound his swollen, frozen feet in rags. Days passed without food. He had no winter clothes to protect him from the bitter cold.

Yet even in such extremity, his noble character shone through. After waiting more than twelve hours in a bread line, he was approached by an elderly Polish woman who couldn’t stand due to problems with her legs. Without a moment’s hesitation, he cut his precious loaf in half and gave it to her, refusing any payment.

Three times Soviet border police caught him trying to cross into Lithuania. The third time, he was loaded onto a truck with other Jewish refugees. But this apparent disaster turned out to be Divine providence: had he not been arrested, with his feet in such terrible condition, he would have frozen to death in the wilderness.

The truck brought him to a large, dimly lit building that seemed strangely familiar. “Where am I?” he asked himself. “Am I awake or dreaming?”

He was in Radin. He was in the Chofetz Chaim’s yeshiva.

“My entire body began to tremble,” he wrote, “and out of sheer ecstasy, my eyes welled up with tears. I began weeping like someone condemned to death who is unexpectedly pardoned. I felt as if the spirit of the holy tzaddik, the Chofetz Chaim, was hovering over us, caressing his children.”

A mystical rabbi, a watchmaker, had assured him that he would succeed in reaching Vilna because it represented his soul’s desire, which was eternal—while the obstacles holding him back were only temporary. On his fourth attempt, after a grueling nighttime trek over mountains and through forests, Rav Hirschprung finally crossed into Lithuania. He had reached Vilna—the Jerusalem of Lithuania.

Vilna – A Brief Refuge

Vilna in late 1939 and early 1940 was a remarkable place. Occupied by Poland since 1919, it had been recaptured by Lithuania in October 1939 and, for a brief window, became an independent city. During this short-lived independence, Vilna became a refuge for Jews fleeing both Nazi and Soviet oppression.

Among the tens of thousands who sought shelter there were close to two thousand rabbinical students and their teachers from the most renowned yeshivas of Eastern Europe: Mir, Slabodka, Telz, Bialystok, Kamenetz, Kletzk, and Radun. The greatest yeshivas of the Jewish world had gathered in one city.

In Vilna, Rav Hirschprung had the privilege of meeting the legendary Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky. He would later tell a remarkable story from that encounter.

Rav Chaim Ozer spoke in learning with the boy from Dukla, quoting a Gemara in Bava Basra 87. The young Pinchas Hirschprung suggested that it was on daf 88. They argued about this, until Rav Hirschprung said he would go find a Gemara so they could see the truth.

Rav Chaim Ozer grabbed hold of his own beard and asked, “Do you want to shame this white beard?”

Rav Hirschprung didn’t get the Gemara. But later, he went to check.

He had been wrong.

Rav Chaim Ozer had been right.

And Rav Chaim Ozer had known that he was right—and he had wanted to protect the dignity and honor of the young talmid chacham.

The story, Rav Hirschprung would say, wasn’t about the great genius of Rav Chaim Ozer, nor about his modesty—but about the way both traits lived together in one person, each complementing the other. The humility is that much more valuable against the genius, the genius so much more impressive against the humility.

Under Rav Chaim Ozer’s guidance, Rav Hirschprung helped reestablish Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin in Vilna. Money was raised, a location was secured, and students began arriving. For a precious moment, it seemed that something of the lost world might be preserved.

But everyone knew Vilna’s independence couldn’t last. On June 15, 1940, according to a secret agreement between Hitler and Stalin, Vilna was annexed by the Soviet Union and religious suppression began. Rav Chaim Ozer, consumed with worry that the Communists would close the yeshivos, became unrecognizable. His petirah (passing) soon after was felt throughout the Jewish world, but nowhere more keenly than among the refugee students who had found in him a father.

The Impossible Escape Route

Even before the Soviet occupation, some far-sighted individuals began planning for further escape. In the early summer of 1940, two Dutch yeshiva students, Nathan Gutwirth and Leo Sternheim, approached Jan Zwartendyk, the Dutch Honorary Consul in Kovno, Lithuania, requesting entry permits to the Dutch colony of Curaçao in the Caribbean.

Zwartendyk’s superior informed the boys that no such visa existed—permission to enter was granted only upon arrival by the governor. But knowing the yeshiva students desperately needed formal documentation to cross Soviet territory, Zwartendyk designed a creative solution: a “false entry permit” for Curaçao that could serve as a final destination on paper.

With a destination document in hand, the next step was getting transit visas. Here another hero emerged: Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno. Sugihara agreed to provide transit visas allowing refugees to pass through Japan. Finally, for a fee, the Soviets agreed to let refugees travel across the USSR to reach Japan.

Both Sugihara and Zwartendyk understood the mortal danger facing these Jewish refugees. Sugihara gave visas to people who didn’t meet the official requirements, directly against his government’s orders. Legend has it that Sugihara was writing and signing visas from the window of his departing train compartment until the very last moment, throwing them out to whoever might catch one. Both men have been honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem.

For weeks, Rav Hirschprung traveled throughout Lithuania and even into Latvia, seeking the funds needed for visas—150 US dollars each, a huge sum at the time. He gathered money not only for himself but for others as well. Eventually, with financial support from Dr. Chaim Nachman Shapiro (son of the Chief Rabbi of Kovno and Lithuania, Rav Dov Ber Shapiro, who had returned from Switzerland to Lithuania at the outbreak of war, arguing that “the captain is the last to leave”—he would die in the Kovno ghetto in 1943), Rav Hirschprung purchased his exit visa.

Across the World

On or about February 10, 1941, documentation in hand, Rav Hirschprung boarded a train to Moscow. He remained in the Soviet capital for only one day—long enough to be impressed. “I did not see even one horse in Moscow,” he noted, marveling at the “beautiful subway.”

The seventeen-day train journey to Vladivostok took him through Birobidzhan, the autonomous Jewish region in Siberia, where he noticed the Yiddish signs in the train station—a strange reminder of Jewish life even in the depths of the Soviet Union.

From Vladivostok, he sailed to Japan, arriving in the port city of Tsuruga on Shabbos afternoon, March 14, 1941. Unable to leave the ship until after Shabbos, he was overcome by the warm reception from the refugee committee representatives when he finally disembarked. He quoted the verse from Chronicles: “Who is like You, Israel, one people all over the earth.”

Rav Hirschprung was taken to Kobe, Japan, where he remained for nine months. During this time, along with other students from Chachmei Lublin, he continued his Torah learning under the guidance of Rav Shimon Shalom Kalish, the Amshinover Rebbe. Even in the chaos of flight and displacement, Torah study never stopped.

In late fall of 1941, the Japanese authorities sent the refugees on to Shanghai, China. This teeming international city would become home to thousands of Jewish refugees during the war. But Rav Hirschprung would not remain there long.

While fleeing through Lithuania, Rav Hirschprung made a solemn promise. As one of his children recounted: “While he was running away, he said, ‘If I survive the war, I’ll dedicate my whole life to Torah.’” From Japan, he went on the last boat before Pearl Harbor to America—and eventually to Canada.

The Canadian Visas

Getting into Canada during World War II was nearly impossible for Jewish refugees. Canadian immigration policies openly favored Americans and Britons, followed by Northern Europeans, then Southern and Eastern Europeans. Jews, Asians, and Blacks were at the very bottom of the list.

Making matters worse was Frederick Charles Blair, Canada’s director of immigration—an outspoken anti-Semite who actively blocked Jewish immigration. He argued that Jews would not work the land but would become an “urban burden.” When asked about admitting eighty rabbinical students, Blair suspiciously claimed this was just a trick to “get the door open” for many more, and wondered why the refugees couldn’t simply return to Vladivostok.

Nevertheless, pressure to admit Polish refugees came from multiple sources: the British and Polish governments, as well as Canadian and American Jewish organizations. A delegation traveled to Ottawa to pressure Thomas Crerar, the Minister of the Department of Mines and Resources, to overturn previous negative rulings. Among those in attendance were Saul Hayes and Michael Garber of the Canadian Jewish Congress, H. Wolofsky of the Federation of Polish Jews, and Peter Bercovitch, Liberal MP from Montreal.

After much negotiation, the Canadian war cabinet overrode Blair’s objections and agreed to issue seventy-nine visas to Jews of Polish citizenship living in the Far East.

The next question was agonizing: who would receive these life-saving documents? In an historic decision, the Canadian Jewish Congress chose to offer all seventy-nine visas to rabbis and rabbinical students. Despite lobbying from Zionist, secular, and Yiddishist groups, the Orthodox leaders made a compelling argument: these Torah scholars represented not just their own lives, but the past and future of traditional Judaism itself.

The most moving appeal came from Rabbi Oscar Fasman of Ottawa in a letter dated May 18, 1941:

Here we are not dealing with only seventy individuals. These seventy embody a wealth of Jewish sacred learning, the like of which can no longer be duplicated, now that the European Yeshivoth are closed. In these people we have that intensive tradition of Torah which buoyed up the spirit of Israel. Thus, we are saving not merely people, but a holy culture which cannot be otherwise preserved. When the US admitted Einstein, and not a million other very honest and good people who asked for admission, the principle was the same. It is certainly horrible to save only a few, but when one is faced with a problem of so ghastly a nature, he must find the courage to rescue what is most irreplaceable.

By August 1941, the visas were ready. Rav Hirschprung was among the seventy-nine recipients. But as Rabbi Fasman presciently warned in his letter, “Strained American-Japanese relations may stop boats from crossing the Pacific at any time.”

The Final Voyage

Finding passage to North America was difficult. Finally, news came that an American ship, the SS President Pierce, would sail from Shanghai to San Francisco on September 30, 1941, with forty-one open spaces. Passage was booked for forty-one refugees, with others hoping for a later sailing.

But a serious halachic (Jewish legal) complication arose. Yom Kippur in 1941 fell on October 1—the day after the ship was to depart. The voyage would cross the International Date Line during the holiest day of the Jewish year.

There are differing rabbinic opinions about how to observe Shabbos and holidays when crossing the dateline. Many authorities rule that the halachic dateline differs from the conventional one, as it must be centered on Jerusalem rather than Greenwich. Some held that travelers should observe Yom Kippur for two full days to be certain of not violating the holy day. This meant potentially fasting for forty-eight hours while at sea.

This halachic question caused a painful split among the refugees. Eleven students from the Mir Yeshiva, known for their strong group loyalty, refused to board the ship. The Mirrer bochurim had developed especially strong fraternal bonds throughout their exile and flight, agreeing to move as a unit. There wasn’t room for all thirty Mirrer students, and they chose to stay together. They also had strong financial support from Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz in America, giving them a sense of greater security.

As a result, only twenty-nine of the forty-one spaces were filled, and eleven remained unused.

The twenty-nine who did board included students from Telz, Kletzk, Chachmei Lublin, Lubavitch, and Slabodka. Among them was Rav Pinchas Hirschprung. They “eagerly seized the opportunity to leave,” deciding to observe a two-day Yom Kippur on the ship.

Also aboard were nine Lubavitcher rabbis sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe (then residing in New York) to establish a Lubavitch yeshiva in Canada. The group included Rav Aharon Poupko-Kagan, the son of the Chofetz Chaim, and Rebbetzin Freida Poupko-Kagan, the Chofetz Chaim’s second wife (who underwent surgery at sea and had to be hospitalized in San Francisco). These precious souls represented the living legacy of European Torah Judaism.

Rav Hirschprung had left Japan on September 20 aboard the Taia Maru to Shanghai, arriving around September 23. The ship manifest notes that the refugees, “in transit under Immigration Guard paid by the aliens,” were denied shore leave as they did not have valid documentation. This meant Rav Hirschprung was not allowed off the ship until he boarded the President Pierce six days later.

The sailing was without incident. The SS President Pierce docked in San Francisco on October 20, 1941. From there, the refugees took the Southern Pacific Railroad to Chicago—a four-and-a-half day trip—accompanied by two US immigration guards to ensure no one slipped away into America. They were provided kosher food: fruit, vegetables, and eggs.

After a warm reception in Chicago, the group transferred to the Canadian National Railway, accompanied by Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz of the Va’ad Hatzalah. On Thursday, October 23, 1941, they crossed into Canada at Sarnia, Ontario.

In Montreal, they were met at the train station by hundreds of people, led by Montreal’s Chief Rabbi, Hirsch Cohen. A celebratory breakfast was served in the Talmud Torah School. The refugees had arrived safely—on the very last ship to leave Shanghai before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor just weeks later on December 7, 1941.

Those eleven Mirrer students who stayed behind, along with the fifty other visa holders, would remain trapped in Shanghai for the duration of the war. They would finally arrive in Canada in 1946, after five years of hardship.

Building a New World

Rav Hirschprung arrived in Canada as a refugee who had lost nearly everything: his parents, his sisters, his beloved grandfather, his entire world. The full extent of the tragedy was still unknown—the murder of six million Jews would only be fully revealed after the war’s end.

But he had made a promise during his desperate flight: “If I survive this war, I’ll dedicate my whole life to Torah.” And he kept that promise.

In October 1941, even before the refugees arrived, Hirsch Wolofsky, publisher of the Keneder Adler newspaper, announced the establishment of a new yeshiva: Mercaz Hatorah, which would educate and employ the soon-to-arrive immigrants. The yeshiva was initially housed in the Montefiore Orphan’s Home at 4650 Jeanne Mance Street. Rabbi Elya Chazan, who had studied at Telz, Slabodka, Kaminetz, and most recently Mir, came to head the new institution. By January 1942, the elementary division had been opened.

How Rav Hirschprung came to teach at Mercaz Hatorah is itself a remarkable story. Rav Elya Chazan had been offered a position at Torah Vodaath in New York and needed a temporary replacement. But why would a talmid of the great Lithuanian yeshivas give his job to a Galicianer chassid?

“Rav Chazan said he wasn’t sure if it would work out in New York,” explained Tzudyk Mandelcorn, one of Rav Hirschprung’s closest talmidim, “so he needed someone who would do his job well, but also give it back if necessary. He knew that Rebbi would give it up easily.”

Rav Chazan didn’t come back, and Rav Hirschprung became the maggid shiur at Mercaz Hatorah along with his role on Montreal’s Vaad Harabbanim. As one family member recalled, “My father took a job in the Vaad Ha’ir. He was very young, in his twenties. They gave him semicha.”

He also studied with ten yeshiva students at Congregation Adas Yeshurun (Adath Jeshurun), where he served as spiritual leader. A person close to him recalled the impact he had: “Rabbi Hirschprung came to lead the Agudas Yisroel synagogue on St. Urbain Street. And if he spoke Shabbos afternoon or Monday night, the people were there. He could speak verbatim. It came to him naturally. He could explain it in a way that when you left, you knew everything.”

The yeshiva operated in the spirit of his beloved Chachmei Lublin—keeping alive the tradition of that magnificent institution that the Nazis had so gleefully destroyed.

A New Family

Montreal in those days was, as one family member put it, “a midbar, like a desert. There was no Yiddishkeit.” Yet it was there that Rav Hirschprung would build his future.

He met his future wife in an unusual way. As one of his children recounted, “My mother used to come to my father’s shiur. My father used to always want to know, ‘Who’s that woman with the black hair?’”

In 1947, Rav Hirschprung married Alte Chaya Stern, the Canadian-born daughter of Montreal’s pious shochet (ritual slaughterer). But the shadow of the Holocaust hung over even this joyous occasion.

“My father did not want a big wedding,” one of his children explained, “and he did not want my mother to wear a gown at the wedding because he said, ‘I suffered so much and my parents will not be at the wedding.’ And my mother, to her credit, didn’t even question it and accepted it immediately.”

Together they would raise nine children. The Rebbetzin was remembered with deep love. “What resonates most for me about my mother,” one child reflected, “is how much she cared about other people and about their stories and how she was so concerned for other people. And that made her so endearing, not just to us, but to everyone else.”

Their home on Querbes Street, though small, became a place of extraordinary warmth. “A house is just a house,” observed one of the children. “What made our small 230 Querbes a home was the people in it and the openness it had. Our home was incredibly open for just about everybody. So the size really wasn’t even an issue. It’s the energy and the spirit you have in your home. And the energy and spirit was so big that it really allowed everybody to fit.”

Soon after their marriage, the young couple demonstrated their extraordinary chesed. A Holocaust survivor recounted: “My mother lost her father when she was very young. And she went through the Holocaust, through terrible times. After the war, Reb Hirschprung sponsored my mother. He was a newlywed, maybe married a year. Mrs. Hirschprung, who was a Canadian—my mother didn’t even speak a word of English. And he brought her to the house and made her feel 100% that she belonged there, and she lived with them, and she was so part of the family.”

This spirit of chesed defined how they raised their children. “I think we were raised in a family where chesed was the greatest thing that we were taught,” one child reflected. “Even though being a good student is a very important thing, but the greatest thing was, ‘Are you a mensch? You have to be a mensch.’”

The Talmid

The balebatim of Montreal loved Rav Hirschprung, were as dedicated to him as to a father, and he connected with each one on his own level, offering them individual chances to learn with him b’chavrusa. But none was as close as the talmid who first encountered him in 1945—when the pride of Chachmei Lublin landed in a new world as a bereaved survivor searching for solace within the pages of the Gemara.

Tzudyk Mandelcorn was just a teenage student, a Canadian-born child of immigrants, in Montreal’s Mercaz HaTorah, when the gaon of Poland first walked into the classroom. Back in Lublin, Rav Hirschprung had been the bochen, charged with testing applicants to Rav Meir Shapiro’s elite yeshiva. And now he sat facing a small group of Canadian boys, introducing himself as their new rebbi.

Tzudyk Mandelcorn was just twenty-one years old, an unmarried college graduate working at his father’s fur business, when he got a life-changing call. It was Rebbi: “Tzudyk, they closed the Bais Yaakov.”

Montreal’s Bais Yaakov school had been running at a deficit for too long, and the teachers had walked off the job, leaving students scrambling.

“Ich vil es ibernemmen, I want to take it over,” Rav Hirschprung said.

“I was young,” Mr. Mandelcorn recalled, “and I said, ‘Nu, zohl zein mit mazel.’ I wished him well.”

But the Rebbi wasn’t finished. “Tzudyk, you have good credit. Go to the bank and take out a loan so we can pay the teachers what they’re owed. We’ll get the school running again, and I’ll pay you back.”

Tzudyk Mandelcorn opened an account and formed a new board. Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung became the school’s president, his twenty-one-year-old talmid its secretary.

One of his children remembered those early days: “They called up my father that they were going under, and my father said this school should remain. And he took it over. My sister said they didn’t even have a desk, and my father took a desk from his house and brought it into the school.”

For close to half a century, they worked hand in hand: the Rebbi’s vision coupled with the talmid’s efficiency to create a world-class school.

A School for All

Rav Hirschprung founded the Bais Yaakov of Montreal in the 1950s, providing Jewish education for girls. The school now carries his name: Bais Yaakov d’Rabbi Hirschprung.

“We were one of the first community schools, attracting students from chassidish homes along with students from homes that were very modern,” Mr. Mandelcorn explained. “Rebbi was very proud of that. He felt that we have to be welcoming, that the school was for all Yidden. The only criterion was that the home had to be shomer Shabbos. That was it.”

A longtime educator at the school recalled Rav Hirschprung’s philosophy: “The first thing that he told me is that it’s from Orach Hachaim, children that come from different backgrounds should be together. He used to tell me, ‘I would like a girl from Outremont and a girl from Côte St. Luc to live b’shalom together and to see each other and to learn from each other.’”

One of his children observed: “Later on in life, it’s a tolerance and accepting of one another, which was one of his proudest things in this school.”

A graduate of the school, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, recalled: “I went to Beis Yaakov all my life. Of course, to my mother, it was Reb Hirschprung’s school. There was not even a question of where I would go. And my parents didn’t have any money. My mother, fresh immigrants, both of them.” But the school welcomed all.

One family member explained what made Bais Yaakov unique to him: “If a Jew came to him and asked him for help, any sort of help whatsoever from parnassah to shalom bayis to any kind of a problem, he would drop his learning and he would help him. That’s when he was asked. But Bais Yaakov, he wasn’t asked for. Bais Yaakov, he went himself and he stopped his learning to build a school for girls.”

“My father loved everyone,” another child added, “but a Beis Yaakov girl, there was a special place in his heart.”

The graduation and the annual dinner became major events. The educator recalled: “The graduation and the Beis Yaakov dinner was to Rebbetzin Hirschprung very important. Why? Because it was very important to her husband. Her husband enjoyed coming to the graduation and seeing the fruits of his labor.”

One of the children reflected on the partnership between their parents: “Whatever my father was able to do in Bais Yaakov was only because my mother enabled my father to do it.”

The rav worked tirelessly to raise funds for Bais Yaakov. One of his children remembered: “I had to go from one building to another building. Who do I see on the street walking? My father with Mr. Abe Bronfman. There were a lot of people that helped my father along the way.”

Rav Hirschprung’s integrity in financial matters was legendary. Someone close to him passed away and left all his money to tzedakah, naming Rebbi as the executor. Rebbi called in a talmid and divided the money among the city’s various mosdos—leaving out Bais Yaakov.

“Rebbi, how come none of the money goes to Bais Yaakov?” asked the perturbed talmid.

“Because people know I’m partial to the mosad, that it’s close to my heart,” Rav Hirschprung explained. “It’s negius (bias). A rav can’t pasken that way.”

A Leader of Principle and Compassion

In 1965, Rav Hirschprung was named Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch in Montreal—the institution founded by the nine Lubavitcher rabbis who had traveled with him on the President Pierce. In 1969, following the passing of Rabbi Yehoshua Hirshhorn, he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Montreal—a position he would hold with distinction until his own petirah in 1998. He served as head of the Beis Din (rabbinical court) and managed the Va’ad HaRabbanim (Council of Rabbis) for the entire Montreal community.

He was offered positions in larger communities—London, Antwerp, and elsewhere—but he refused them all. Montreal was his home, and its Jews were his responsibility.

“It’s interesting,” Tzudyk Mandelcorn reflected, “how Rebbi was nearly always gentle and humble. He would give kavod to other rabbanim in his speeches, treating them with deference. When we had to meet people for community matters, Rebbi would suggest that we go to their homes or offices rather than ask them to come to him. He never stood on ceremony. There was one area, however, in which Rebbi was firm and resolute: in matters of kashrus he didn’t show his softer side.”

A fascinating example emerged in the 1960s when a change in Canadian agricultural law demanded that animals be completely restrained before slaughter. This created a halachic challenge for kosher slaughter.

When the Agudath HaRabbanim in New York prohibited a new restraint method that had been initially approved by Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik by telephone, Rav Hirschprung disagreed with their ruling but didn’t want to openly challenge them. Instead, he set out to find a better method while stating clearly: “I say again that this method is perfectly acceptable within halacha.”

When rumors spread that Rav Aharon Kotler wanted to send rabbis to Montreal to inspect the new system before approving it, Rav Hirschprung stood his ground with dignity: “We in Montreal have no doubts or questions about the kashrus of the new slaughtering system. We need invite no one to approve our work. But, if someone wishes to come here, we will welcome them with great respect.”

He was a man who could bridge divides. One of his children recalled: “He spoke once in Mizrachi and he said, ‘I’m Agudah, you’re Mizrachi. The Torah doesn’t belong to either one of us. The Torah belongs to Klal Yisroel, so let’s learn.’”

His relationships with the gedolei hador were legendary. He maintained close friendships with Rav Chaim Zimmerman, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and the Satmar Rebbe. The third essay in the Satmar Rebbe’s Vayoel Moshe—dealing with lashon hakodesh (the Hebrew language)—was written as a response to Rav Hirschprung’s questions about the language of instruction in Bais Yaakov schools.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe held him in such high esteem that he directed his own students to send their she’eilos (halachic questions) to the gaon of Montreal.

When the Pnei Menachem of Gur visited Rav Hirschprung in Eretz Yisrael, he took his leave by walking backward—as one retreats from an Aron Kodesh (Holy Ark). This profound gesture of respect showed how the greatest Torah leaders of the generation viewed this refugee from Dukla.

The Belzer Rebbe once observed: “My chassidim only know about the gaonus (genius) of your rebbi, but they don’t even see his pure yiras Shamayim (fear of Heaven).”

The Heart of Gold

Yet for all his brilliance, for all his encyclopedic knowledge, Rav Hirschprung was known above all for his character. His humility, kindness, and compassion were legendary. “You never have to ask me to do a favor,” he would often say. “Just tell me what to do for you.”

A person close to him remarked: “I’ll tell you, before you even said hello to him, he had an effect on you. His mannerisms, the way he talked, he never pushed. He never tried to be a world speaker. It was all from the heart.”

One of his children put it beautifully: “His heart—cardiologists would have a good time trying to figure out that heart because he was all heart.”

“He loved people,” his daughter Carmella recalls. “He loved life, and he loved you for who you were. Even though he was involved in the klal (community), he never overlooked the yachid (individual) in the klal. He was a visionary, but he never only saw the forest—he saw every tree in the forest.”

A family member elaborated: “Helping people out on a personal level, not only at the tzibbur level—every individual was to him important, and he was so sensitive to people’s concerns.”

Someone who worked closely with him recalled: “He never wanted things for himself. He wanted it for other people. We did a lot of work together, and it was impossible—for me, it was impossible to say no to him.”

One of his children reflected on his remarkable authenticity: “My father was incredibly who he was. He really was who he was, and I think that’s why people loved him, because they saw him as human as anybody else. And he celebrated that in people, and he allowed people to be who they were. And that’s the biggest gift you can give to people. It’s being honest.”

Another family member summed up his philosophy: “The Torah says the whole thing is shalom. I think in a very simplistic level, that was really his thing. He was totally accepting of all different groups.”

Even as the community migrated west and most of his talmidim settled uptown, his residence remained on Querbes Street, in the chassidish community downtown.

“This was on purpose,” Mr. Mandelcorn explained. “Rebbi wanted to learn—sitting by a Gemara was his oxygen—and he knew that if he moved uptown, people would be coming in and out of his house all day. He liked the relative peace of downtown.”

Devoted talmidim, eager to remain connected to Rebbi even though they no longer lived nearby, opened a shul uptown and named it Minchas Soles, in tribute to the sefer written by Rebbi’s beloved grandfather. Rav Hirschprung would come uptown for Shabbos Hagadol and Shabbos Shuvah to give the derashah in that shul.

One child described the atmosphere in their home despite the demands of communal leadership: “You know, being a Chief Rabbi and everything that he took care of had a lot of stress—a yeshiva, a community. There was so much that the phone was always ringing, and my father’s line we were never allowed to use. My mother, likewise, was a very busy person doing everything else. But there was such calmness in the house.”

The longtime Bais Yaakov educator reflected on the Rebbetzin’s role: “To live that kind of a life, you have to have a Rebbetzin to take care of such a gadol b’Yisroel. And she did, and she loved it. She enjoyed it.”

Perhaps the most touching tribute came from the Rebbetzin herself, as one child recalled: “My mother said, ‘Do you want to know what my fifty years with Daddy was like, being married to Daddy?’ My mother said, ‘I could sum it up in one or two minutes.’ And she said, ‘Being married to Daddy was like being a kallah my whole life.’”

Remembering Amalek

The war never left him. He told his wife that not a day passed that he didn’t think about those terrible years. In 1944, just three years after arriving in Montreal—while the memories were still raw and the full extent of the tragedy still unknown—he wrote his memoir in Yiddish: Fun Natsishen Yomertol: Zikhroynes fun a Polit (“From the Nazi Valley of Tears: Memories of a Refugee”).

Some Torah scholars discouraged him from writing such an emotional, personal account, believing it was beneath a talmid chacham (Torah scholar). He disagreed. “I told myself that it was in no way demeaning for a Torah student to fulfill the commandment to ‘remember what Amalek did to you’ by describing at least a bit of what I’d seen with my own eyes.”

Remarkably, most of his own children didn’t know the memoir existed until a close friend brought a copy to the shiva house after their father’s passing. The book confirmed what they already knew: how meaningful tefillah (prayer) was in his life, how he found comfort in learning Torah even surrounded by death and destruction, and that even as a young man he possessed that heart of gold they all recognized.

“Every time I read it,” his daughter Rochel says, “it touches me the same way it did when I first picked it up.”

His daughter Sossy was struck by the loving way he portrayed his community, and by how much the Jews of Dukla loved her great-grandfather. “My father said that before any major event in his life, his grandfather came to him in his dreams.”

His son Reb Yitzchak first read the memoir in the original Yiddish at age fourteen. The words continue to inspire him decades later. “In the worst situations, my father was able to turn to Hashem and feel His comfort in very tangible ways.”

Finding Strength in the Darkness

How does one maintain faith when the world is collapsing? Throughout his life, Rav Hirschprung pointed to the examples he witnessed during the darkest times.

He watched Jews hiding in cellars from German bombs, certain they would die at any moment. Yet even there, in the depths of terror, they “chanted their Shabbos prayers… partook in the third meal… and performed the Havdalah ceremony.” Their faith, he realized, transcended nature itself.

At a crowded train station, he met a simple Jewish woman traveling with her two children. She told him her story: During the Warsaw bombings, she had sought shelter in a cellar filled with Poles. They begged her to leave, convinced that as a Jewess she would bring G-d’s wrath upon them all. When she and her children emerged from the cellar, a bomb struck the shelter, killing everyone inside.

“Where are you going now?” Rav Hirschprung asked her.

She didn’t know. But she knew that Hashem would continue to accompany her wherever she went. This simple woman’s profound faith, he wrote, strengthened his own.

His grandfather’s teachings sustained him: that relief resides within distress itself, that there is purpose in pain and suffering. By immersing himself in prayer and retreating into his “four cubits of halacha,” he mined that purpose. “The melody of learning itself led me to ‘the world of complete good,’” he wrote. “It filled my senses… and freed me from my mental and emotional confusion.”

The Letter

At one point, Rav Hirschprung underwent a serious operation. In the hospital, he gave his talmid Tzudyk Mandelcorn a handwritten letter.

He did not know how the surgery would go, he wrote. In the event that he wouldn’t pull through, he was leaving all decisions regarding his beloved school to his talmid.

Hakoach shehayah li, yihyeh lecha… whatever power I held, you will hold…

A few years later, when Rav Hirschprung was in the throes of his final illness, he turned to the talmid who was never far from his bedside and said, “Remember my letter.”

Reb Tzudyk’s voice cracked when he recalled this moment.

“Think about this,” he said. “This man whose entire vitality came from the Torah itself, who lived in a dimension of pure Torah, a tzaddik—a sensitive, compassionate man—and he’s writing, ‘Maybe I won’t be found worthy of a refuah.’”

Reb Tzudyk said it again, in wonder. “Maybe I won’t be found worthy…”

Then he looked up. “That’s what makes me cry. That sort of greatness with that sort of humility.”

A Legacy That Lives

Rav Pinchas Hirschprung was niftar (passed away) on 27 Teves 5758 (January 25, 1998). All of Montreal mourned. He was a member of the Va’ad HaRabbanim HaKlali (the General Council of Rabbis) of the United States and Canada, recognized as one of the greatest Charedi rabbis in Canadian history.

He left behind numerous published works: Pri Pinchas (his childhood masterpiece), Aish Pinchas (published by his student Rabbi Shlomo Stein), and his profound Holocaust memoir. After his passing, his son Reb Yitzchak transcribed his father’s recorded lectures on Maseches Berachos and published them as another volume of Pri Pinchas, with additional insights from his son-in-law Rabbi Yehoshua Tzvi Yuda.

His memoir has now been translated into English as The Vale of Tears, published by the Azrieli Foundation and translated by Vivian Felsen. A new generation can now hear his voice and draw strength from his faith.

Among his notable students were Rav Professor Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, Rav Levi Bistritzky, and Rav Levi Yitzchak HaKohen Cohen—Torah leaders who carried forward his teachings.

The fate of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, the institution where Rav Hirschprung had flourished, was tragic. Out of a prewar student population of approximately 500, only forty-two are known to have survived the war. The Nazis made destroying the yeshiva a special priority. As the Frankfurter Zeitung reported on March 28, 1941: “It was a matter of special pride to destroy the Talmudic Academy, which was known as the greatest in Poland… We threw the huge Talmudic library out of the building and carried the books to the marketplace, where we set fire to them. The fire lasted twenty hours. The Lublin Jews were assembled around and wept bitterly, almost silencing us with their cries. We summoned the military band, and with joyful shouts the soldiers drowned out the sounds of the Jewish cries.”

But the Nazis could not destroy what Rav Hirschprung carried within him. In 2003, the original Chachmei Lublin building was returned to the Jewish community and reopened as a synagogue in 2007. The yeshiva itself was reestablished—first in Detroit in 1942 by survivor Rabbi Moshe Rottenberg, then relocated to Bnei Brak in the 1960s under the leadership of Rabbi Shmuel Wosner, where it continues today.

Conclusion: The Living Sefer Torah

What can we learn from Rav Pinchas Hirschprung?

Perhaps it is that even in the darkest valley, the light of Torah can sustain a soul. That complete surrender to Hashem’s will can transform a person, turning a moment of certain death into the birth of a new life. That the greatest Torah genius can also possess the greatest humility, seeing every tree even while surveying the forest. That one person, carrying the sacred learning of a destroyed world within him, can rebuild that world on new shores.

He carried with him to Montreal the Torah he had absorbed directly from the giants of Europe—Rav Meir Shapiro, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky, and countless others. Through his teaching, his leadership, and his living example, he transmitted that Torah to generations who never knew the world that was destroyed.

Rav Pinchas Hirschprung walked through the valley of tears—and emerged a living Sefer Torah.   Zecher Tzaddik Livrachah

Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung

13 Tammuz 5672 – 27 Teves 5758

July 13, 1912 – January 25, 1998

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Greenblatt said those efforts extend beyond public statements. He said the ADL is actively assisting lawmakers and right-leaning influencers in pressuring major social media platforms to more aggressively enforce their own rules against hate speech.

“We definitely are working a lot to try to get the platforms to kind of enforce their own terms of service so that we can pull down the most offensive hate speech,” Greenblatt said. “What we try to do at ADL is provide data, provide tools and step up — often quietly — behind the scenes.”

The remarks shed light on an increasingly assertive approach by the ADL as antisemitism becomes a bipartisan political flashpoint, with Jewish advocacy groups accusing both the far right and the left of tolerating or amplifying hostile rhetoric toward Jews and Israel.

Greenblatt also took aim at left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, calling him a “revolting person” and accusing him of spreading antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric to a massive online audience. Greenblatt warned that Piker’s influence on platforms like Twitch, YouTube and Instagram makes him especially dangerous to younger viewers.

“You might not know Hasan Piker,” Greenblatt said, “but if your kids are watching video games, you better believe they do.”

Carlson responded after Greenblatt’s comments circulated online, portraying the ADL’s outreach as an effort to suppress dissenting speech. In a post on X, Carlson accused Cruz of collaborating with what he called an “anti-white” organization to silence critics, writing that such cooperation fuels public mistrust in American institutions.

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Greenblatt said those efforts extend beyond public statements. He said the ADL is actively assisting lawmakers and right-leaning influencers in pressuring major social media platforms to more aggressively enforce their own rules against hate speech.

“We definitely are working a lot to try to get the platforms to kind of enforce their own terms of service so that we can pull down the most offensive hate speech,” Greenblatt said. “What we try to do at ADL is provide data, provide tools and step up — often quietly — behind the scenes.”

The remarks shed light on an increasingly assertive approach by the ADL as antisemitism becomes a bipartisan political flashpoint, with Jewish advocacy groups accusing both the far right and the left of tolerating or amplifying hostile rhetoric toward Jews and Israel.

Greenblatt also took aim at left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, calling him a “revolting person” and accusing him of spreading antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric to a massive online audience. Greenblatt warned that Piker’s influence on platforms like Twitch, YouTube and Instagram makes him especially dangerous to younger viewers.

“You might not know Hasan Piker,” Greenblatt said, “but if your kids are watching video games, you better believe they do.”

Carlson responded after Greenblatt’s comments circulated online, portraying the ADL’s outreach as an effort to suppress dissenting speech. In a post on X, Carlson accused Cruz of collaborating with what he called an “anti-white” organization to silence critics, writing that such cooperation fuels public mistrust in American institutions.

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The estimate highlights the immense challenge facing Gaza as international diplomats point to reconstruction and postwar governance.

Moreira da Silva warned that the humanitarian crisis is deepening even as talk of rebuilding gains momentum, citing harsh winter weather and heavy rains that have compounded already dire living conditions.

“People are exhausted, traumatized and overwhelmed,” he said, adding that children face the risk of becoming a “lost generation” after years of displacement, injury and psychological trauma. With schools shuttered for a third year, he warned, “their wounds — physical and psychological — are hard to heal with every day passing.”

Fuel, he said, remains the single most critical need. “Fuel is the backbone of humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip,” Moreira da Silva said. Without it, hospitals cannot provide life-saving care, water and sanitation systems fail, food aid stalls and emergency responders lose the ability to operate.

While welcoming the announcement of a second phase of the Gaza peace plan as “the beginning of reconstruction,” the U.N. official cautioned that Gaza’s basic services must be restored immediately. He called for expanded humanitarian access, the opening of all crossings and corridors — including renewed aid delivery through the Jordan corridor — and the entry of so-called dual-use items that Israel restricts over concerns they could be repurposed by Hamas.

“It is long overdue to reach a political and diplomatic solution to the conflict so that Palestinians and Israelis can finally live in safety and dignity,” his statement concluded.

The remarks came a day after Donald Trump confirmed that Phase II of the Gaza peace plan has formally begun. In a Truth Social post, Trump said the United States is backing what he described as a newly appointed Palestinian technocratic governing body to administer Gaza during a transition period.

“With support of Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, we will secure a comprehensive demilitarization agreement with Hamas,” Trump wrote, framing the next phase as a pathway toward stability — even as U.N. officials warn that the physical and humanitarian toll of the war will shape Gaza’s future for years to come.

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The statement followed a court ruling Tuesday that lifted a block on the administration’s deportation push, reviving a case that has become a flashpoint in the broader national debate over campus activism, antisemitism and the limits of protected political speech.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that Khalil, an Algerian national and U.S. permanent resident, should be removed from the country on the grounds that his continued presence undermines U.S. efforts to combat antisemitism globally and protect Jewish students from harassment and violence on American campuses.

Khalil, who graduated from Columbia University last spring, was affiliated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student coalition that has drawn sharp scrutiny from lawmakers and Jewish organizations. The group has endorsed violence, called for “the total eradication of Western civilization,” praised the October 7 Hamas attack, promoted U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, distributed Hamas propaganda on campus and supported an activist imprisoned for assaulting Jewish students.

Khalil has since sought to distance himself from some of that rhetoric, saying he condemns the targeting of civilians, including during the October 7 attack. Federal officials, however, argue that his affiliations and activism place him squarely within a movement that crosses from protected speech into support for extremist causes.

The socialist Mamdani was an outspoken supporter of Khalil during the city’s recent mayoral race and has long aligned himself with pro-Palestinian activism. Jewish groups and centrist Democrats have accused Mamdani of tolerating and legitimizing antisemitic rhetoric and violent symbolism within his political coalition.

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Israeli Air Force chief Tomer Bar, a major general, ordered the establishment of a military investigative committee to examine the circumstances of the crash.

The helicopter involved was a UH-60 Black Hawk, known in the Israeli Air Force as the Yanshuf — Hebrew for “owl.” The aircraft type is a workhorse of the IAF fleet, used for routine transport missions as well as for inserting and extracting troops during military operations.

The incident comes as the Israeli military continues intensive operations across multiple fronts, placing sustained pressure on both air crews and equipment.

While no injuries were reported, the investigation is expected to focus on the recovery procedures and weather-related risks that led to the crash.

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Khatami, who was appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and sits on both Iran’s Assembly of Experts and its powerful Guardian Council, framed the unrest as a foreign-backed plot. He described protesters as “butlers” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “soldiers of Trump,” accusing them of seeking to “disintegrate the country.”

“They should wait for hard revenge from the system,” Khatami said, referring to Netanyahu and Trump. “Americans and Zionists should not expect peace.”

Beyond fiery denunciations, the cleric also delivered what appeared to be an official accounting of damage attributed to the protests. According to Khatami, 350 mosques, 126 prayer halls and 20 other holy sites were damaged, along with 80 homes belonging to Friday prayer leaders, a key pillar of Iran’s theocratic structure.

He further claimed that unrest had damaged 400 hospitals, 106 ambulances, 71 fire department vehicles and another 50 emergency response vehicles — figures that could not be independently verified.

As a senior public cleric with close ties to Iran’s ruling institutions, Khatami would likely have access to internal government data. His decision to disclose the figures during Friday prayers suggests the regime is using the pulpit as a proxy for official messaging, amplifying its justification for an uncompromising crackdown while avoiding a direct address from senior political leaders.

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Despite those appeals, Israeli officials reportedly believe that the United States could still carry out military action against Iran in the coming days, Axios notes.

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According to NYPD reports and employee accounts, the suspects—described as three men wearing masks and anime-themed backpacks—quickly took control of the situation. At least one displayed a handgun, pointing it at customers and employees to keep them in place, while others wielded hammers to smash open glass display cases. Surveillance footage captured the tense moments, showing robbers brandishing weapons, customers raising their hands in fear, and the rapid smashing and grabbing of items.

The entire heist lasted just three minutes. The thieves targeted high-value Pokémon cards (including graded ones reportedly worth thousands individually, such as a Pikachu card valued at $5,500), other sealed merchandise, a small amount of cash (around $1,000 from the register), and even a cellphone from one employee. They fled westbound on West 13th Street, and no one was physically injured during the ordeal.

Store owner Courtney Chin expressed deep concern in statements to media outlets, emphasizing that the incident was about more than just financial loss. “It’s not even about the money—I wanted to create a safe place to enjoy a hobby, and not have 40 customers held at gunpoint,” she told reporters. Chin noted that the store is considering enhanced security measures, including the possibility of hiring an armed guard or doorman, as recommended by police and nearby businesses. She also confirmed that everyone inside was safe, though many were “very shaken up.”

This brazen robbery comes amid a recent wave of similar incidents targeting Pokémon card shops and collectibles across the country. In the past week alone, comparable armed thefts have been reported in cities like Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle, highlighting the rising value of rare Pokémon cards and merchandise in the secondary market.

As of January 15, 2026, the NYPD is actively investigating, with an urgent manhunt underway for the suspects. No arrests have been made, and authorities are urging anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.

The incident has sparked widespread discussion online and in the Pokémon community about safety at hobby events and the growing risks associated with high-value collectibles. For many fans, what should have been a fun, welcoming gathering turned into a terrifying ordeal. The Poké Court has since reopened, with the owner prioritizing the well-being of customers and staff as they recover.

Both bochurim were swept away by the current. One of them managed, with tremendous effort, to escape the water and climb onto the riverbank, shaken and terrified, and immediately called for help. Moshe, z’l, tried to fight the current and get out of the water, but he was swept away before his friend’s eyes and disappeared into the streambed.

His friend recounted to rescue forces how he saw Moshe struggling against the current, trying with all his strength to reach the shore, until he was carried away.

Upon receiving the report, large forces were dispatched to the scene, including police, fire and rescue services, special rescue units, fighters from the “Lahava” unit, MDA medical teams, and even a helicopter from the police air unit. The searches continued for many long hours along the course of the stream, in difficult terrain and dangerous currents, racing against time and continuing as darkness fell.

His father, Reb Tzvi Hershel Ludmir, a prominent member of the Boyaner kehilla in Beitar Illit and one of the leaders of the “Letaherenu” organization, who was with a family member abroad for medical care, rushed back to Israel when his son disappeared.

In a heartrending scene that left no one unmoved, Reb Ludmir arrived at the scene and stood facing the raging waters, thanked the security forces for their dedication, and began reciting Nishmas Kol Chai, pleading with the Borei Olam to return his son to him.

Yeshivos and Batei Medresh across the country shook with the thousands of tefillos for “Moshe ben Reizel,” hoping for an open miracle.

His friends describe him as a masmid with much yiras Shamayim, whose life was entirely devoted to Torah and Avodas Hashem. He had a close relationship with the Boyaner Rebbe.

תהא נשמתו צרורה בצרור החיים.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

תהא נשמתו צרורה בצרור החיים.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

“Two hundred years ago, General Lafayette gave Simón Bolívar a medal with George Washington’s face on it,” Machado said. “Bolívar kept that medal for the rest of his life. Actually, when you see his portraits, you can see the medal there. It was given by General Lafayette as a sign of the brotherhood between the United States and the people of Venezuela in their fight for freedom against tyranny.”

She added: “And 200 years on in history, the people of Bolívar are giving back to the heir of George Washington a medal — in this case a medal of the Nobel Peace Prize — as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.”

Trump later confirmed the gesture in a Truth Social post, calling it “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect” and describing Machado as “a wonderful woman who has been through so much.” He wrote that she presented him with “her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Thank you María!”

White House officials said Trump accepted and is keeping the medal, though the Norwegian Nobel Committee has emphasized that while the physical medal can change hands, the laureate title cannot be transferred or shared. Machado was awarded the prize last year for her efforts promoting democracy and human rights amid Venezuela’s political crisis.

The meeting comes amid ongoing U.S. involvement in Venezuela’s affairs, including a recent military operation that removed former President Nicolás Maduro from power. Machado, a prominent figure in the opposition, has sought to build ties with the Trump administration to influence the country’s political transition.

Machado also met with U.S. senators on Capitol Hill later Thursday, where supporters greeted her with chants and Venezuelan flags. The Nobel Institute reiterated its stance that the award itself remains with Machado.

🚨 After my last video exposing over $110 Million in fraud Tim Walz dropped his run for reelection and multiple federal investigations were launched to stop fraud across the country. In this 51 minute video David and I expose another $16 Million in fraud as Minnesota welfare… pic.twitter.com/p5r6BDXqsK

— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) January 14, 2026

🚨BREAKING: Man who previously lived in Minnesota has admitted to benefiting from Somali-linked healthcare fraud.

He says that about 15 years ago, while struggling with drug addiction, he was enrolled in taxpayer-funded MinnesotaCare. As part of the program, he received free… pic.twitter.com/fCscxZYu2p

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) January 6, 2026

The videos have created enough momentum that some local journalists, long aligned with pro-Democrat narratives, have begun acknowledging allegations of abuse they previously did not pursue. Critics argue that this silence stemmed from political and professional pressure tied to Democratic officials and activists who benefited from the Somali-managed system now under scrutiny.

Shirley’s latest reporting zeroes in on Somali-run transportation companies that receive government payments to shuttle patients and clients to hospitals, government offices, stores, and residences. He argues that these firms are central to a broader web of abuse involving multiple publicly funded services.

“These transportation companies are what hold all the [aid and welfare] fraud together,” Shirley says in the video, adding: “You have the daycare centers working with the transportation companies, the adult daycare centers working with the transportation companies, the healthcare companies working with the transportation companies …. [to] make it look like [services are being provided] here inside of Minnesota.”

According to Shirley and his collaborator, David Hoch, public exposure has left those involved with little response. “We’re shining the light on the fraud, and they have no defense,” Hoch said.

The online attention has also encouraged others to speak publicly about what they say they witnessed. In one TikTok video, a former drug addict claimed he was able to purchase narcotics using cash paid to him by Somali drivers in exchange for signing fraudulent transportation receipts that were later used to obtain government reimbursements.

As Shirley’s video circulated, Minnesota’s largest newspaper began conceding that the Medicaid transportation program has long been vulnerable to abuse. “A transportation service that pays for people’s rides to medical appointments is among the Medicaid-funded programs facing new scrutiny for its vulnerability to fraud,” the Minnesota Star Tribune wrote. The paper quoted industry insiders who said concerns have existed for years.

People working in nonemergency medical transportation “have been ringing the fraud bell for quite some time,” said Scott Isaacson, president of the Minnesota R-80 Transportation Coalition, which represents many providers. He shared a list with the Minnesota Star Tribune of the 10 most prevalent forms of fraud in the program that he and others in the field are aware of.

State data cited by the paper shows that spending on nonemergency medical transportation has risen sharply. Providers billed roughly $80 million in 2018, with the figure climbing to more than $115 million by 2024 before dropping to about $88 million last year.

The Star Tribune also acknowledged that oversight problems predate the current controversy by more than a decade and are linked to other government-funded services, including translation programs. It cited a report from Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor issued over 15 years ago warning that the Department of Human Services “provides little statewide oversight of the program.”

In another case highlighted by prosecutors, one provider allowed trips of up to 60 miles for specialty care without prior authorization. Interpreters allegedly recruited patients in Faribault and scheduled appointments with providers nearly an hour away in the Twin Cities—despite the existence of closer providers, some of whom spoke the patients’ language.

At the same time, the newspaper pushed back on some of Shirley’s specific claims, noting: “The transportation providers Shirley highlights in his video are not listed as having received reimbursements from the state in Medicaid claims data provided by the Department of Human Services.”

Federal officials under President Donald Trump, however, suggest the investigation may extend far beyond a handful of companies. Trump administration sources indicate preparations are underway for a sweeping case involving fraud, kickbacks, and racketeering that could target figures tied to Minnesota’s Democratic political establishment.

“My personal motto, and the Treasury motto, is move deliberately and fix things,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told conservative activist Christopher Rufo on a podcast on January 12, adding: “You’re not going to see headlines tomorrow. You’re not going to see them next week, but in a month, [or a] quarter, once we get people in the bear trap, they’re not getting out because we will have conclusive evidence to present. I think that they will have to make plea deals … to turn in higher-ups to help us map out how this happened.”

Bessent said the approach used in Minnesota would not be limited to one state. “We’re going to take this Minnesota [strategy] map to the other 49 states,” he added.

{Matzav.com}

Speaking about the rescue, Shimi’s father, R’ Binyamin Rosenblatt—an askan from Beit Shemesh and a member of the Boyaner community—shared a remarkable account linking the incident to events that took place just days earlier.

According to R’ Binyamin, last Friday afternoon, as he does every Erev Shabbos, he went to the Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok mikveh in Beit Shemesh. Before entering, he stopped briefly at the small shop near the mikveh to purchase something.

At one point, a box of candies accidentally fell from another customer’s hands, spilling across the floor. The man became visibly flustered and embarrassed, unsure how to react as the candies scattered.

R’ Binyamin immediately intervened. “It’s my fault,” he said without hesitation. “I did it, and I’ll pay for everything.” He added with a smile, “These things happen—even to people over fifty.” He then approached the shopkeeper and paid for the spilled candies in full.

The yungerman involved tried to reimburse him, but R’ Binyamin firmly refused. “Absolutely not,” he told him. “I already paid.” The man thanked him warmly and they parted ways.

R’ Binyamin then entered the mikveh, returned home, and lay down to rest before Shabbos. During his sleep, he experienced a disturbing dream. He saw himself trapped in a raging stream, being swept away by powerful waters. Four times he tried to lift his head above the surface, unsuccessfully. In the dream, he began to say Shema Yisroel, and at that moment, he awoke.

Several days later, on Tuesday afternoon, that very image became reality, this time involving his son. Shimi was swept into the waters of the Modiin stream and found himself in grave danger. Through what the family describes as open nissim and tremendous siyata diShmaya, he managed to escape alive.

Reflecting on the events, R’ Binyamin said the story carries a profound lesson about the power of even a small act of chesed, especially when it spares another person from embarrassment. “Helping someone in a moment of busha,” he said, “has a כח far greater than we realize.”

{Matzav.com}