NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul for another term, giving the governor support from a prominent progressive figure as she confronts a primary challenge from the left in her race for a second full term.

Writing in an op-ed published by The Nation, Mamdani, a Democrat, acknowledged his disagreements with Hochul but said he has “come to trust Governor Hochul as someone willing to engage in an honest dialogue that leads to results.”

The endorsement underscores an unlikely partnership between two Democrats who represent different wings of the party, with Mamdani a young democratic socialist who campaigned on sweeping change and Hochul a centrist, self-described “mom governor” from Buffalo.

Hochul had previously backed Mamdani in his mayoral run, providing him with establishment support, and the two have aligned on issues such as affordability and child care. At the same time, the governor has distanced herself from parts of Mamdani’s platform, including his push to raise taxes on the wealthy, casting herself as a moderating influence on his new administration.

In a statement responding to the endorsement, Hochul thanked Mamdani for his cooperation, saying, “I know that he’ll stand strong alongside me as we fight against Donald Trump’s attacks on this state.”

Mamdani’s support could help Hochul blunt criticism from the left ahead of the June Democratic primary. Her lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, is challenging her with a progressive campaign that mirrors Mamdani’s approach and seeks to channel the energy that helped propel the mayor to office and national attention.

Following Mamdani’s endorsement, Delgado issued a statement accusing Hochul of falling short on key commitments, saying she “has broken a lot of promises” and has not embraced tax hikes on the wealthy or other progressive priorities. He added that he is the “partner for any leader who also values these critical measures.”

Republicans and other critics on the right are expected to use the endorsement to argue that Democrats have veered too far left. Bruce Blakeman, a Long Island county official running for governor, has already signaled that line of attack.

“New Yorkers who want a check on Mamdani and Hochul’s radicalism have one choice: elect Bruce Blakeman Governor in November and vote Republican at all levels of government,” said David Laska, a spokesperson for the NYGOP.

Hochul previously served as lieutenant governor under Andrew Cuomo and stepped into the governor’s office in 2021 after Cuomo resigned amid multiple sexual harassment allegations and the near certainty of impeachment. She went on to become the first woman elected governor of New York the following year, defeating Lee Zeldin, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, in a closely fought contest that tightened as Zeldin focused on public safety issues.

{Matzav.com}

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina and the United States said they reached an expansive trade deal on Thursday, boosting Argentine President Javier Milei as he moves to open up the South American nation’s notoriously protectionist economy and reflecting the close alliance between the radical libertarian and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Argentina’s foreign minister, Pablo Quirno, posted a selfie on social media showing him and several Argentine diplomats beaming after emerging from a meeting in Washington where he said they’d signed the pact.

“Congratulations to our team and thanks to the U.S. Trade Representative’s team for building this great agreement together,” Quirno wrote. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative also confirmed the deal.

The countries announced a framework for the agreement last November, saying Argentina would ease restrictions on a range of American imports, including cattle, dairy products, medicines, chemicals, machinery, medical devices and vehicles. Those were key concessions for Argentina, where local industries long protected by steep tariffs have expressed concern about their ability to compete with American manufacturers.

The U.S., for its part, would remove reciprocal tariffs on imports of “certain unavailable natural resources” and ingredients for pharmaceutical goods from Argentina, according to the framework.

At the time, the White House reached similar frameworks with Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador — part of what it described as an effort to improve the ability of American firms to sell industrial and agricultural products in Latin American countries and bring down food prices for U.S. consumers.

Officials did not immediately offer details about the final version of the U.S.-Argentina deal signed Thursday.

The agreement marks the latest development in the close alliance between Trump and Milei, who has reshaped Argentine foreign policy to align with the U.S., earned Trump’s praise for stabilizing his nation’s crisis-prone economy and traveled to the U.S. more than a dozen times in the last two years. Milei is next scheduled to appear at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club next week to speak at a gala.

Trump supported Milei’s fiscal program last year with a $20 billion credit line that succeeded in calming markets and boosting Milei’s prospects in a crucial midterm election last October. The U.S. Treasury also directly purchased U.S. dollar-denominated Argentine bonds that ratings agencies were classifying as “junk” at the time and snapped up the volatile local currency that Argentines were dumping in droves.

The extraordinary intervention drew backlash from across the U.S. political spectrum.

Trump’s MAGA base questioned the need to bail out a far-flung country that’s not only of little importance to the U.S. but also directly competes with its exports of corn, wheat, meat and oil.

Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage that Trump was staking taxpayer money on a political gift to an ideological soulmate.

That criticism has continued, with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, on Thursday appealing to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to end the $20 billion lifeline.

In a letter, she wrote that even though the Treasury promised its credit line for Argentina “was for an acute, short-term, and urgent purpose, it appears … to have left open the possibility of continued use.”

NEW YORK — Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind is warning that antisemitism in New York City has reached a critical point, citing recent political decisions, increasing violence, and what he describes as a growing leadership vacuum.

Hikind, who represented Brooklyn for more than 30 years, highlighted early actions by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office just over a month ago and quickly nullified an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism for city agencies. The definition has been widely used internationally to identify contemporary antisemitism, including expressions tied to hostility toward Israel.

Within weeks of that decision, reported anti-Jewish incidents surged. NYPD data show antisemitic hate crimes jumped 182 percent in January, with Jews accounting for more than half of all hate-crime victims citywide. The rise included a car-ramming attack near the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, which narrowly avoided what could have been a mass-casualty event.

Hikind said the spike reflects the real-world consequences of political rhetoric. “He is the mayor, and he is acting exactly as he said he would,” Hikind said. “This is not someone who moderated his views after the election.”

Hikind also expressed concern about antisemitism spreading within government culture, particularly among progressive and Democratic Socialist circles, while noting that hostility toward Jews is appearing across both the far left and far right. He described a heightened sense of fear among Jewish New Yorkers, including reluctance to wear visible symbols of faith or report threats to authorities.

Drawing on his personal history as the son of Holocaust survivors, Hikind said, “This is how fear spreads. And when fear spreads, the entire community becomes vulnerable.”

He criticized Jewish institutions and leadership for failing to develop an effective response, noting that educational and advocacy efforts have not prevented the rise in antisemitic incidents.

Hikind urged the community to respond with strength, unity, and visibility. “We are Jews. We are not going anywhere. The question is how we respond,” he said.

Developing.

Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange prisoners as the warring parties pressed ahead with “detailed and productive” negotiations to end the four-year conflict, according to President Donald Trump’s special envoy.

The two sides will swap 314 prisoners in the first such exchange in five months, Steve Witkoff said in a post on platform X on Thursday. He cited progress in three-way discussions in Abu Dhabi, with results expected “in the coming weeks.”

“This outcome was achieved from peace talks that have been detailed and productive,” Witkoff, who was joined in the United Arab Emirates by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, said. “While significant work remains, steps like this demonstrate that sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this week called the negotiating round a test of the Kremlin’s commitment to the process after Russian forces unleashed the biggest missile-and-drone attack on Kyiv this year, plunging the capital further into darkness.

The assaults on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have left large swathes of the country without heating, power and water as temperatures fell to -25C (-13F) this week.

The head of Ukraine’s delegation, national security chief Rustem Umerov, called the talks in Abu Dhabi “meaningful and productive” late Wednesday. Discussions were ongoing as of noon Thursday, according to an Umerov aide.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday said the discussions had not yet yielded a conclusion.

Negotiations zeroed in on the issue that’s proved the most implacable in the talks: territory. Russia has insisted on seizing control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, including parts that its forces have failed to take since fighting there began in 2014.

(c) 2026, Bloomberg · Daryna Krasnolutska

A recording published by Channel 14 News revealed a shocking conversation between former prime minister Ehud Barak and his friend, convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, in which Barak speaks disparagingly about Sephardi Jews and outlines his vision to improve Israel by carrying out “mass conversions” and creating “more quality” Israelis.

The conversation took place during a working meeting between Epstein, Larry Summers, and Barak in 2013—when Barak was nearing the end of his term as defense minister.

In the recording, Barak is heard saying, “I believe we have to break the monopoly of the Orthodox Rabbanut on marriage and, in a sophisticated, subtle manner, open the gates for massive conversion into Judaism. And we can control the quality much more effectively than Israel’s founding fathers, who took anyone who came in order to save people from North Africa and from the Arab world. Now we can be selective.”

He added: “With a much more open mind about ‘Who’s a Jew?’ we can absorb another million.

Barak added that if Israel accepts “Jews” from Eastern Europe, “many handsome and tall girls will come.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement in response, stating, “A shocking revelation about Ehud Barak was exposed in the recordings of his pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein. Ehud Barak proposes carrying out a selection among Jews and ‘importing’ the ‘right’ Jews’ to Israel—those who are not Mizrachi nor right-wing.”

“When the left and its messiah Ehud Barak fail to win at the ballot box—they try to replace the people. And if that is not enough, they can always rely on the alliance of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who will again join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri stated, “Ehud Barak, as you know, is the intellectual leader—the ‘chief of the Kaplan tribe’ and the head of the left-wing elite—and he said terrible things: ‘We need to take control of the Rabbanut and the conversion process to bring in a mass movement of non-Jews—but not like the founding fathers who brought Jews from Middle Eastern countries—they had no choice. We must bring migrants from Europe, from places that will allow us to control the country.’”

Deri continued: “Barak knows that Jews of Middle Eastern descent—Sephardim—who have a simple, pure emunah in the Borei Olam, can’t be manipulated. With them, you can’t win; you can’t turn Israel into a secular state. Just imagine if Netanyahu had said such things—how would people like Bennett, Eisenkot, and Channel 12 react? The headlines would scream: ‘Netanyahu the racist—look how he talks about Mizrachi Jews!’”

“And imagine if I, Aryeh Deri, had said such things about immigration from the former Soviet Union. What would [Avigdor] Liberman, [Maaviv reporter] Ben Caspit, and all the others say about racism then? But now everyone is silent, not a word about Ehud Barak or his racist comments.”

Deri concluded, “But you, people of the right—know the truth and don’t be afraid of them. B’ezrat Hashem, we will prevail. We will continue to protect Eretz Yisrael, Torat Yisrael, and Am Yisrael.”

Channel 14 also released a recording of Barak conveying the same message at a conference of the Association of Tel Aviv Journalists:

Your browser does not support the video tag.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of Phylisa Wisdom to lead the city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism has drawn sharp criticism from Jewish leaders, who question her record and ability to address rising antisemitic incidents.

Wisdom, who previously led the progressive advocacy group New York Jewish Agenda, has been critical of Israel and opposed certain practices in Orthodox Jewish education. Her past work with YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education), which advocates increased oversight of Hasidic and haredi yeshivas, has also drawn scrutiny from Orthodox leaders.

Mayor Mamdani chose a woman to "combat Antisemitism" who's on record being opposed to yeshiva education, critical of Israel and rejects the IHRA definition of Antisemitism.

It's almost as if he was looking for someone to provide cover for every Antisemitic thing he says or does. pic.twitter.com/8yPTUaiK6l

— Joel M. Petlin (@Joelmpetlin) February 5, 2026

Joel M. Petlin, superintendent of the Kiryas Joel School District, said Wisdom’s opposition to yeshiva oversight reforms and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism raises “serious concerns” about her ability to protect all Jewish New Yorkers.

Councilman Simcha Felder called the appointment a “shanda,” saying her background could undermine trust in the office.

Rabbi Marc Schneier added that the leader of the office must understand that “Israel cannot be bifurcated from Judaism,” noting that Wisdom’s opposition to the IHRA definition — adopted by 50 nations and 37 U.S. states — puts that understanding in question.

Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein raised further concern, posting a 2009 tweet in which Wisdom acknowledged she did not observe Yom Kippur. Eichenstein questioned whether her personal observance of Jewish tradition qualifies her to lead the city’s antisemitism office.

The qualification to head Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism?

This⬇️ https://t.co/nsCvEJqLzy pic.twitter.com/iCQiLbdNBI

— Simcha Eichenstein (@SEichenstein) February 5, 2026

In a 2014 article, Wisdom wrote: “My relationship with Judaism in recent years has waxed and waned, but consistently centered around ritual and community rather than observance or devotion to Torah.”

The Office to Combat Antisemitism was created amid a surge in attacks targeting Jewish communities, including vandalism, assaults, and threats. While Wisdom’s supporters say her experience in advocacy could help engage diverse communities, critics warn her record may limit her effectiveness in Orthodox neighborhoods.

City Hall defended the appointment, saying Wisdom’s leadership reflects a commitment to confronting antisemitism citywide. Critics argue the decision risks increasing tensions at a time when many Jewish New Yorkers are already concerned about personal safety.

JERUSALEM (VINnews) – Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Thursday they plan to sit for an interview following sharp public criticism exchanged online after Carlson released a video from the Middle East targeting Huckabee.

The proposed interview emerged after Carlson published footage filmed in Israel and Jordan in which he criticized Huckabee’s record and accused him of failing to advocate for Christians in the region.

Hey @TuckerCarlson instead of talking ABOUT me, why don’t you come talk TO me? You seem to be generating a lot of heat about the Middle East. Why be afraid of the light? https://t.co/iQZBEI72m6

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) February 5, 2026

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, Baptist minister and longtime supporter of Israel, responded on the social media platform X, challenging Carlson to address the claims directly.

“Instead of talking ABOUT me, why don’t you come talk TO me?” Huckabee wrote early Thursday. He added, “You seem to be generating a lot of heat about the Middle East. Why be afraid of the light?”

Look forward to the conversation @TuckerCarlson . Thanks for responding. We are talking to your team to get it set up. https://t.co/rP5da6HqDr

— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) February 5, 2026

Carlson, a former Fox News host who now runs an independent podcast, replied about an hour later, “I’d love to.”

“Look forward to the conversation,” Huckabee responded.

Carlson’s recent commentary on Israel and U.S. policy in the region has drawn criticism from Jewish organizations and pro-Israel conservatives, particularly for remarks targeting what he describes as “Christian Zionists.” Huckabee, a former Fox News contributor and Carlson’s onetime colleague, is widely associated with that movement.

Details of when or where the interview will take place were not immediately announced.

Iran’s Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the Iranian government, reported that the Khorramshahr-4 missile has been stationed for the first time inside underground IRGC installations known in Iran as “missile cities.” The report described the move as a significant step aimed at boosting the effectiveness and preparedness of Iran’s ballistic missile forces, noting that the missile is among the most advanced and powerful in the country’s inventory.

Fars claimed the missile is capable of reaching speeds of up to 16 times the speed of sound, translating to tens of thousands of kilometers per hour outside the atmosphere and roughly Mach 8 while flying within it. Based on those figures, the agency said the missile’s flight time to targets in Israel would be approximately 10 to 12 minutes after launch.

https://twitter.com/i/status/2019414551402631402

The Khorramshahr-4, which was first publicly unveiled in May 2023 and is also referred to as “Kheiber,” is categorized as a medium-range ballistic missile. Open-source assessments describe it as a single-stage, liquid-fueled system with a declared operational range of about 2,000 kilometers, putting much of the Middle East within its reach.

According to the report, the missile is also designed to carry a particularly heavy payload, with estimates placing the warhead weight between 1.5 and 1.8 tons.

The decision to house the missile in fortified underground complexes is intended to provide the Revolutionary Guards with a “second strike” capability and improve survivability should Iran’s nuclear or missile infrastructure come under a preemptive attack.

{Matzav.com}

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu briefed the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee behind closed doors on Thursday on security and diplomatic matters, but the discussion quickly devolved into a tense showdown with opposition lawmakers.

In the course of the session, Netanyahu disclosed that at 5:15 a.m. on October 7, 2023, the Shin Bet (ISA) circulated a formal document summarizing all alerts received overnight from the Gaza Strip. He said the paper did not reach his office until 9:47 a.m., more than four hours after it had been issued.

Netanyahu asserted that the original version of the document contained no directive to notify the Prime Minister. He said that only in more recent Shin Bet submissions did an instruction to inform him suddenly appear, alleging that the agency retroactively inserted that directive. The document bears the signature of then–Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

The Prime Minister added that he forwarded these findings to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman as part of the ongoing probes into the October 7 events, saying Englman was “amazed” by what he saw. Members of the committee were also described as reacting with disbelief.

Earlier in the briefing, Netanyahu read aloud excerpts from previous Cabinet meeting protocols and argued that former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had repeatedly prevented large-scale operations in the Gaza Strip.

“Bennett always opposed the occupation of Gaza,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying as he cited the protocols.

The atmosphere deteriorated further when several opposition lawmakers walked out of the meeting, voicing sharp criticism. “Is this why we came to the session? To hear Bibi reading us protocols from the Cabinet against Bennett, [Gadi] Eisenkot, and [Benny] Gantz?”

“Does he think we’re stupid? They didn’t even let us ask a single question.”

{Matzav.com}

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday was presented with a draft provisional constitution for the proposed “State of Palestine,” a move that advances the Palestinian leadership’s ongoing campaign to lay the groundwork for independent statehood.

The effort traces back to August, when Abbas approved the creation of a panel of legal and policy experts charged with drafting a constitutional framework. The proposed document is designed to serve as the legal foundation for a transition from the existing Palestinian Authority to the institutions of a sovereign state.

Those involved in drafting the text say it is rooted in the 1988 Palestinian declaration of independence and sets out core principles such as the right of return, commitment to international law, United Nations resolutions, global human rights conventions, and agreements concluded by the Palestine Liberation Organization or under the banner of the “State of Palestine.”

In the written authorization launching the initiative, Abbas said the provisional constitution is intended to anchor a democratic system based on the rule of law, a clear separation of powers, and safeguards for civil rights and personal freedoms.

Upon receiving the draft, Abbas proclaimed 2026 the “Year of Democracy,” outlining plans for a broad slate of elections throughout the year. These would include voting for the Palestinian National Council both within the Palestinian territories and among Palestinians abroad, local municipal elections, and the convening of the eighth congress of the Fatah movement.

Abbas instructed that the draft constitution first be distributed to members of the PLO Executive Committee for examination. After that review, the document will be released publicly to invite feedback and suggested revisions.

Officials say the push to advance a constitutional framework comes amid mounting international pressure on the Palestinian Authority. The United States and several European governments have urged sweeping institutional reforms, linking them to any future role the Authority might play in governing the Gaza Strip and in shaping political arrangements after the war concludes.

{Matzav.com}

Nearly two decades after a deadly terrorist attack in Nachal Telem, a military court in Judea on Thursday imposed three life sentences on terrorist Ali Dandis, bringing a measure of judicial closure to a case that has haunted the families of the victims for 19 years. Alongside the prison terms, the court ordered Dandis to pay an unprecedented 5.2 million shekels in compensation to the families of slain soldiers David Rubin and Achikam Amichai.

The ruling stems from a 2007 attack in which Rubin and Amichai, both off-duty IDF soldiers, were hiking in Nachal Telem in Judea when they were ambushed. The assault was carried out by a terrorist cell composed of members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, according to the indictment.

During the exchange of gunfire at the scene, one of the terrorists was killed, while Dandis and another accomplice managed to flee. The two later surrendered to the Palestinian Authority, where they were placed in what was described as “protective custody.”

Court documents revealed that this arrangement did not halt Dandis’s activities. Even while incarcerated in a Palestinian Authority prison, he continued to direct terrorist cells, procure weapons, and orchestrate additional attacks, including a shooting at a bus in the Hebron Hills, all while supposedly under official supervision.

Dandis remained beyond Israel’s reach for years and was apprehended only about a year ago, after leaving the PA facility, in a coordinated operation involving the Shin Bet, the Yamam, and the Israel Defense Forces. The court adopted the prosecution’s arguments in full, citing both the double murder and Dandis’s ongoing terror activity over two decades in handing down the severe sentence.

Attorney Chaim Bleicher of the Honenu organization, which represents and supports the bereaved families, responded sharply to the verdict: “Despite the verdict, the circle has not yet closed. There is another terrorist still in ‘protective custody’ under the Palestinian Authority who has yet to face justice. While the punishment of the terrorist is necessary, it is not enough to eradicate terrorism. The State of Israel must dry up the terrorist breeding ground – the Palestinian Authority, which continues to encourage terrorism, pay salaries to terrorists, and educate for terror. We await the day when the State of Israel will hold accountable and eliminate all terrorists and their handlers.”

{Matzav.com}

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pressing city prosecutors to abandon attempted murder charges against a man who was shot by police after allegedly advancing toward officers with a knife during what relatives describe as a severe mental health episode.

The incident unfolded on January 26 in a Queens residence, according to body camera footage released by the New York Police Department. Officers were dispatched following a 911 call from family members who said 22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty was in the midst of a psychiatric emergency and needed to be taken to a medical facility. During the call, a relative reported that Chakraborty had thrown a glass against a wall. When police arrived, they were allowed inside by a woman at the door, at which point Chakraborty appeared behind her holding a large kitchen knife. As the woman extended her arm in front of him, officers drew their weapons and issued commands.

Video from the encounter shows officers shutting the front door, placing it between themselves and Chakraborty. Despite the barrier, authorities say Chakraborty continued to press forward and attempt to push through the door, leading one of the officers to fire four shots.

Chakraborty was rushed to a hospital and remains in intensive care, where he is listed in stable but critical condition.

In the aftermath, the Queens District Attorney’s Office moved to pursue criminal charges against Chakraborty, who family members say has schizophrenia. Relatives have objected strongly, insisting they called for medical help, not law enforcement action, and arguing that police responses intensified an already fragile situation.

“Rather than de-escalate the situation, the officer instead further escalated by drawing his gun and yelling orders at Jabez,” the family wrote. “Within a minute of NYPD’s arrival, Jabez was shot multiple times and almost killed, while he was calmly eating food just minutes earlier.”

Mamdani, who centered his mayoral campaign on reforming how the city handles mental health emergencies, echoed the family’s objections and said prosecution is not the appropriate response in this case.

“In viewing this footage, it is clear to me that what Jabez needs is mental health treatment, not criminal prosecution from a district attorney, and we are talking about a family that is enduring the kind of pain that no family should and an individual that has lived with schizophrenia for many years,” Mamdani said.

“A person experiencing a mental health episode does not always have to be served first or exclusively by a police officer. It is important for us to have all of the options available,” Mamdani continued.

{Matzav.com}

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says it would be “up to the president” to decide whether or not to sue Kevin Warsh, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, if he fails to lower interest rates.

During remarks at a private black-tie dinner of the elite Alfalfa Club on Saturday night, Trump said he might sue his newly selected Fed chair nominee if he didn’t lower interest rates. Asked about it later that night by reporters, Trump said the remarks were made in jest. “It’s a roast,” Trump said. “It was all comedy.”

But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, pressed Bessent on Trump’s remarks during a committee hearing on Wednesday, which come after the unprecedented attacks and legal investigation his administration has aimed at the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell.

Trump nominated Powell in 2017, but turned against him when he raised interest rates the following year.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell since returning to the White House last year and last month, Powell revealed that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed the Fed as part of an investigation into Powell’s Senate testimony last June about the Fed’s $2.5 billion building renovation.

The investigation has raised concerns among some Senate Republicans about the Trump administration’s willingness to threaten the Fed’s longtime independence from day-to-day politics. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is retiring at the end of this year, has said he won’t vote to approve Warsh until the investigation into Powell is resolved. Without Tillis’ support, Warsh’s nomination could get held up in the committee.

At the hearing, Warren asked Bessent to commit that Warsh would not be sued or investigated by the Justice Department if he doesn’t cut interest rates.

“That is up to the president,” Bessent responded. The two began to argue over each other, as Bessent said the president was joking.

“That was supposed to be the softball!” Warren said in astonishment.

Later, when asked about Bessent’s remarks on Trump suing Warsh, Tillis said: “even stipulating that that could happen and that it’s not a bad idea is troubling to me.”

During the hearing, Tillis submitted a list of members of the committee who indicated they didn’t see criminal intent on the part of Powell.

“I was actually a witness at the alleged scene of the crime,” Tillis said during the hearing, and “we didn’t see a crime.”

On Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who leads the Senate Banking Committee, also broke ranks with the Trump administration and told Fox Business, “Ineptness or being incompetent is not a criminal act.”

It was the second consecutive day of hearings for Bessent about the annual report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

Bessent’s first hearing with the House Financial Services Committee devolved into insults as Bessent clashed with Democratic lawmakers over fiscal policy, the business dealings of the Trump family and other issues.

1[Video below.] The Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday sharply criticized comments made by Dr. Mehmet Oz in a recent interview, accusing him of promoting harmful stereotypes about Hasidic Jews and warning that such language can worsen the current climate of antisemitism. The organization circulated excerpts from a two-week-old appearance Oz made on Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders,” saying the remarks risk fueling discrimination.

The comments came as Oz, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, was speaking about investigations into healthcare fraud in Minnesota. In trying to show that fraud cases are not confined to a single state, Oz referenced the Hasidic community in New York in a manner the ADL said unfairly cast them in a negative light, suggesting they were “foreign, criminal, or ‘not real Americans.’”

“Casting Hasidic Jews as foreign, criminal, or ‘not real Americans’ is straight out of the antisemitic playbook,” the ADL wrote on X. “This kind of rhetoric fuels harmful stereotypes and discrimination. Falsely blaming New York’s Hasidic population directly contributes to the climate in which the city just reported a 182 % year-over-year spike in antisemitic hate crimes in January. Words matter, and public officials must do better.”

Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, a former Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, and a self-described secular Muslim, has taken on a more visible role in public policy discussions in recent years. Advocacy groups said that while he appeared to be drawing comparisons between states, his choice to single out New York’s Hasidic community drew particular concern.

Civil rights advocates have long warned that comments made by prominent figures about minority groups can shape public attitudes and, in some cases, contribute to discrimination or violence. The ADL said its response reflects broader concerns that even remarks made weeks earlier can take on renewed significance as antisemitic incidents continue to rise across the country.

WATCH:

Casting Hasidic Jews as foreign, criminal, or “not real Americans” is straight out of the antisemitic playbook. This kind of rhetoric fuels harmful stereotypes and discrimination. Falsely blaming New York’s Hasidic population directly contributes to the climate in which the city… pic.twitter.com/pD0t1bWRSN

— ADL (@ADL) February 5, 2026

(AP) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is relaxing rules that restrict when food companies can claim their products have no artificial colors.

The agency announced Thursday that food labels may claim to have “no artificial colors” when they are free of petroleum-based dyes, even when they contain dyes derived from natural sources such as plants. In the past, the FDA has allowed companies to make those claims only when products “had no added color whatsoever,” the agency said in a statement.

The move is another step toward the Trump administration’s aim to phase out synthetic dyes from the nation’s food supply.

In a joint statement, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said the move would encourage companies to switch to natural rather than synthetic colors if they can claim their products contain no artificial colors.

“We are taking away that hindrance and making it easier for companies to use these colors in the foods our families eat every day,” Makary said in a statement.

Kennedy and Makary have urged U.S. companies to voluntarily remove synthetic dyes from their products — and many food makers, such as PepsiCo and Nestle, have complied. In addition, some states have taken steps to ban artificial dyes from school meals.

The move drew praise from Consumer Brands, a trade group for packaged foods, which said “all natural ingredients should continue to follow a rigorous science and risk-based evaluation process.”

“This is a positive example of the FDA taking the lead on ingredient safety and transparency,” Sarah Gallo, the group’s senior vice president, said in a statement.

But the label change could mislead consumers, said Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group. It would allow a claim of “no artificial colors” for any color additive that is not a petroleum-based certified color, including potentially harmful additives such as titanium dioxide.

Also on Thursday, the FDA said it had approved a new natural dye, beetroot red, and expanded the use of spirulina extract, a color derived from algae that provides a blue hue in foods. The FDA currently allows roughly three dozen natural dyes in food products. The agency banned a controversial dye known as Red No. 3 last year and has proposed banning a rarely-used hue, Orange B.

The agency also recently said it would review the six remaining petroleum-based dyes frequently used in the U.S. food supply: Green No. 3, Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1 and Blue No. 2.

Health advocates have long called for the removal of artificial dyes from foods, citing inconclusive studies that found they could cause neurobehavioral problems, including hyperactivity and attention issues in some children. Other health experts have noted that bright synthetic colors are a key component of ultraprocessed foods marketed to children, increasing consumption of added sugar, fat and sodium that can lead to health problems.

Still, the FDA’s website on Thursday continued to acknowledge limited evidence for harms from artificial colors. “The totality of scientific evidence shows that most children have no adverse effects when consuming foods containing color additives, but some evidence suggests that certain children may be sensitive to them,” the site said.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday will launch TrumpRx, a website it says will help patients buy prescription drugs directly from manufacturers at a discounted rate at a time when health care and the cost of living are growing concerns for Americans.

The government-hosted website is not expected to be a platform for buying medication but instead set up as a facilitator, pointing Americans to drugmakers’ direct-to-consumer websites where they can make purchases.

The site’s unveiling, set for Thursday evening, was announced by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in a post on X called it “a state of the art website for Americans consumers to purchase low cost prescription drugs.”

She said President Donald Trump will make the announcement alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Joe Gebbia, director of Trump’s National Design Studio.

The president first teased TrumpRx in September while announcing the first of his more than 15 deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices to match the lowest price offered in other developed nations. He said in December the website would provide “massive discounts to all consumers” — though it’s unclear whether the prices available on drugmakers’ websites will routinely be any lower than what many consumers could get through their insurance coverage.

The website’s expected Thursday release comes after it faced multiple delays, for reasons the administration hasn’t publicly shared. Last fall, Oz told Trump the site would share prices for consumers before the end of the year. An expected launch in late January was also pushed back.

The president has spent the past several months seeking to spotlight his efforts to lower drug prices for Americans. He’s done that through deals with major pharmaceutical companies, including some of the biggest drugmakers like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Merck, which have agreed to lower prices of their Medicaid drugs to so-called “most favored nations” pricing. As part of the deals, many of the companies’ new drugs will also be launched at discounted rates for consumer markets through TrumpRx.

Many of the details of Trump’s deals with manufacturers remain unclear, and drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on many factors, including the competition a treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which shield them from much of the cost.

Trump’s administration also has negotiated lower prices for several prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, through a direct negotiation program created by a 2022 law.

Cocaine was distributed in both Lakewood and Toms River townships as part of a drug investigation that ultimately led to a guilty plea in Ocean County Superior Court.

Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer announced that on February 2, 2026, Shaun Anderson, 47, of Piscataway, pled guilty to Distribution of Over One-Half Ounce of Cocaine before the Honorable Guy P. Ryan, P.J.Cr.P. At the time of sentencing on March 27, 2026, the State will seek a term of ten years in New Jersey State Prison.

According to prosecutors, a January 2024 investigation conducted by the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office Narcotics Strike Force, in collaboration with the New Jersey State Police and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, revealed that Anderson was distributing cocaine throughout the Ocean County area. As part of the investigation, Anderson sold cocaine to law enforcement officers acting in an undercover capacity in both Lakewood and Toms River townships.

Anderson was taken into custody on March 21, 2024, by the New Jersey State Police. He was charged accordingly and served with the complaint via summons pending appearances in Ocean County Superior Court.

A group of Poskim, Dayanim, and Rabbanim in Israel have issued a Kol Koreh calling on the public to boycott the ANU Museum of the Jewish People (formerly known as Beit Hatfutzot) in Tel Aviv, Chareidim10 reported.

The p’sak was made in light of the persistent refusal of the management of the museum to comply with requests from the Yad L’Achim organization and remove exhibits recognizing intermarriage and other issues that constitute a Chillul Hashem.

The Kol Koreh states, “Reliable information has reached us from the directors of Yad L’Achim…regarding exhibits with kefirah that greet visitors at the ANU Museum (formerly Beit Hatfutzot) in the city of Tel Aviv—to the point of openly and publicly legitimizing intermarriage, rachmana litzlan, and other terrible matters that are difficult to even put into writing. Our souls are anguished at what our ears have heard.”

“We were also informed, and evidence was presented to us, that Yad L’Achim repeatedly appealed to the museum’s management, requesting and demanding that the exhibit be removed. To our great sorrow, all of their appeals were met with complete indifference and a hardened heart. Woe unto us that such things have come to pass in our days, precisely at a time when Am Hashem is in great need of a yeshuah.”

“We hereby urge the entire observant public not to set foot within the ANU Museum and not to approach it under any circumstances. As Chazal have said (Bamidbar Rabbah 21:4), ‘One who causes another to sin is worse than one who kills.’”

Yad L’Achim issued a statement along with the Kol Koreh, stating: “We will continue to use all legitimate means at our disposal and will not rest until the exhibit is removed. It is inconceivable that while Am Yisrael faces grave threats and plots by the worst of our enemies seeking our destruction, a state-recognized cultural institution in Israel would inflict such harm on Jewish identity. Around the world, Jews are fighting the scourge of assimilation, which is destroying Jewish souls day after day, while here in Tel Aviv, a sword is thrust into Jewish identity in the form of a malicious and immoral recognition of its disgraceful desecration. We will not despair and will not give up on this vital struggle.”

The museum’s portrayal of a Jewish family. (Yad L’Achim)

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Tens of thousands of New Yorkers were left without heat and hot water during a record-breaking cold snap in January, with residents reporting days without warmth as temperatures dropped into the teens.

According to city data tallied by The New York Post, the city received roughly 80,000 complaints to 311 about heating issues in January 2026, the highest monthly total on record. Since the start of the heating season on Oct. 1, more than 215,000 complaints have been logged, surpassing the 187,775 recorded during the same period last winter.

Residents in both private and public housing described freezing apartments, ice-cold showers, and overnight heating outages. Tenants at 491 Keap Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, reported weeks without hot water and days without heat. In Astoria, Queens, residents said building heating systems failed overnight during the coldest hours, forcing them to rely on space heaters, blankets, and improvised methods to stay warm.

Public housing tenants at NYCHA developments, including the Lehman Village Houses, also experienced extended outages. City data and tenant accounts show that some residents went weeks without heat or hot water, with temporary fixes such as boiling water on stoves. NYCHA has a reported $78 billion repair backlog, and officials said they operate a 24/7 heat desk and have invested hundreds of millions in heating infrastructure.

City officials have defended their response. Deputy Press Secretary Matt Rauschenbach said the administration is reviewing the Housing Maintenance Code and enforcement measures. The surge in complaints comes as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration promotes the appointment of housing activist Cea Weaver as tenant protection czar.

NYCHA residents and private tenants alike described harsh conditions exacerbated by absentee landlords and aging infrastructure. Some residents have resorted to temporary relocation or legal action, citing unlivable conditions and delayed responses.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan is refusing to voluntarily comply with a Justice Department investigation into a video she organized urging U.S. military members to resist “illegal orders” — escalating a dispute that President Donald Trump has publicly pushed.

In letters first obtained by The Associated Press, Slotkin’s lawyer informed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro that the senator would not agree to a voluntary interview about the video. Slotkin’s legal team also requested that Pirro preserve all documents related to the matter for “anticipated litigation.”

Slotkin’s lawyer separately wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, declining to sit for an FBI interview about the video and urging her to immediately terminate any inquiry.

The refusal marks a potential turning point in the standoff, shifting the burden onto the Justice Department to decide whether it will escalate an investigation into sitting members of Congress or retreat from an inquiry now being openly challenged.

“I did this to go on offense,” Slotkin said in an interview Wednesday. “And to put them in a position where they’re tap dancing. To put them in a position where they have to own their choices of using a U.S. attorney’s office to come after a senator.”

‘It’s not gonna stop unless I fight back’
Last November, Slotkin joined five other Democratic lawmakers — all of whom previously served in the military or at intelligence agencies — in posting a 90-second video urging U.S. service members to follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful.

The lawmakers said Trump’s Republican administration was “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens” and called on troops to “stand up for our laws.”

The video sparked a firestorm in Republican circles and soon drew the attention of Trump, who accused the lawmakers of sedition and said their actions were “punishable by death.”

The Pentagon later announced it had opened an investigation into Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot who appeared in the video. The FBI then contacted the lawmakers seeking interviews, signaling a broader Justice Department inquiry.

Slotkin said multiple legal advisers initially urged caution.

“Maybe if you keep quiet, this will all go away over Christmas,” Slotkin said she was told.

But in January, the matter flared again, with the lawmakers saying they were contacted by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile, security threats mounted. Slotkin said her farm in Michigan received a bomb threat, her brother was assigned a police detail due to threats and her parents were swatted in the middle of the night.

Her father, who died in January after a long battle with cancer, “could barely walk and he’s dealing with the cops in his home,” she said.

Slotkin said a “switch went off” in her and she became angry: “And I said, ‘It’s not gonna stop unless I fight back.’”

Democratic senators draw a line
The requests from the FBI and the Justice Department have been voluntary. Slotkin said that her legal team had communicated with prosecutors but that officials “keep asking for a personal interview.”

Slotkin’s lawyer, Preet Bharara, in the letter to Pirro declined the interview request and asked that she “immediately terminate any open investigation and cease any further inquiry concerning the video.” In the other letter, Bharara urged Bondi to use her authority to direct Pirro to close the inquiry.

Bharara wrote that Slotkin’s constitutional rights had been infringed and said litigation is being considered.

“All options are most definitely on the table,” Slotkin said. Asked whether she would comply with a subpoena, she paused before responding: “I’d take a hard look at it.”

Kelly has similarly pushed back, suing the Pentagon last month over attempts to punish him for the video. On Tuesday, a federal judge said that he knows of no U.S. Supreme Court precedent to justify the Pentagon’s censuring of Kelly as he weighed whether to intervene.

Slotkin said she’s in contact with the other lawmakers who appeared in the video, but she wouldn’t say what their plans were in the investigations.

A rising profile
Trump has frequently and consistently targeted his political opponents. In some cases, those attacks have had the unintended consequence of elevating their national standing.

In Kelly’s case, he raised more than $12.5 million in the final months of 2025 following the “illegal orders” video controversy, according to campaign finance filings.

Slotkin, like Kelly, has been mentioned among Democrats who could emerge as presidential contenders in 2028.

She previously represented one of the nation’s most competitive House districts before winning a Senate seat in Michigan in 2024, even as Trump carried the state.

Slotkin delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s address to Congress last year and has since urged her party to confront him more aggressively, saying Democrats had lost their “alpha energy” and calling on them to “go nuclear” against Trump’s redistricting push.

“If I’m encouraging other people to take risk, how can I not then accept risk myself?” Slotkin said. “I think you’ve got to show people that we’re not going to lay down and take it.”

Israeli military officials announced that an airstrike in Gaza City on Wednesday killed a senior Hamas terrorist accused of murdering captive soldier Noa Marciano hy”d, when she was being held hostage in late 2023.

The strike, carried out in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, killed Muhammad Issam Hassan al-Habil, a Hamas cell commander whom Israeli authorities say was directly involved in Marciano’s killing. The operation followed an overnight attack in northern Gaza in which Palestinian gunmen seriously wounded an Israeli reservist officer.

IDF officials said the strike was conducted using intelligence gathered by the Gaza Division, where Marciano had served as a surveillance soldier in the 414th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit before she was abducted.

According to the Shin Bet, interrogations of captured suspects revealed that al-Habil had “brutally murdered” Marciano while she was being held in Gaza. Israeli officials said the killing took place after she was wounded in an Israeli airstrike and taken to Shifa Hospital.

Marciano, 19, was kidnapped from the Nachal Oz military base during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel. The military recovered her body in November 2023, more than a month after her abduction, and she was buried in her hometown of Modi’in.

In the weeks following her capture, Hamas released a propaganda video showing Marciano speaking to the camera and identifying her family and hometown. The footage then cut to images of her body, drawing international condemnation.

At the time, then-IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said intelligence and forensic evidence showed that Marciano had survived an Israeli strike and was later killed inside Shifa Hospital, contradicting Hamas’s claims that she died from Israeli bombing.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

BAY RIDGE, N.Y. (VINnews) — Police have arrested a Staten Island woman in connection with multiple anti-Muslim assaults in the Bay Ridge neighborhood, including an attack on a 12-year-old girl.

Authorities said the suspect, identified as 34-year-old Megan Horne, allegedly targeted three women wearing hijabs at separate locations on Jan. 30. The incidents involved physical assaults, but no major injuries were reported.

Horne faces several charges, including hate crime assault and harassment, as well as assault of a minor. The investigation is ongoing.

State and city officials strongly condemned the attacks. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called the incidents “disgusting” and vowed to enforce laws against hate crimes. New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Council Speaker also denounced the assaults, emphasizing the need to protect Muslim residents and ensure community safety.

Local leaders highlighted the emotional impact of the attacks and said authorities would continue working with law enforcement and community organizations to prevent similar incidents in the future.

I am outraged by the despicable, cowardly attacks against Muslim New Yorkers in Bay Ridge last week—one of which was on a 12-year-old girl. This violence is unacceptable, and we know that all too often visibly Muslim, hijab-wearing women and girls bear the brunt of it.

Muslim…

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) February 5, 2026

Grateful to see an arrest made in the disgusting, Islamophobic attacks in Bay Ridge.

No New Yorker, especially a child, should ever be targeted because of their faith.

We will continue to crack down on hate crimes to the fullest extent of the law.

— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) February 5, 2026

This is despicable.

Assaulting New Yorkers and committing acts of Islamophobic hate will not be tolerated in our state.

Period.https://t.co/rjpl8DuYE1

— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) February 5, 2026

I am appalled, angry, and heartbroken by these disgusting acts of Islamophobia in Bay Ridge. No New Yorker should ever face violence or harassment because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship. These attacks targeted women wearing hijabs and a minor in Bay… https://t.co/z85vY3JCw1

— Speaker Julie Menin (@SpeakerMenin) February 5, 2026

Late last week, a woman in Bay Ridge attacked three Muslim neighbors in multiple apparent hate crimes blocks apart.

It's frustrating this even needs to be said, but it does: this type of Islamophobic behavior is disgusting and unacceptable in our community or anywhere else. pic.twitter.com/NQACzmD69Z

— State Senator Andrew Gounardes (@Sen_Gounardes) February 4, 2026

A veteran police officer in Livingston, New Jersey has sued the township, alleging that he was punished and sidelined after reporting repeated antisemitic remarks and discriminatory behavior within the department.

In a lawsuit filed in Essex County, New Jersey Superior Court, Officer Christopher Wagner claims that supervisors and township officials retaliated against him after he raised concerns about harassment and bias directed at Jewish officers and residents.

Wagner, who has served with the Livingston Police Department since 2005, alleges that several colleagues routinely made jokes and comments about Jewish people, creating a hostile work environment.

According to the complaint, during pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations in 2025, some officers told Wagner, “Your people are out there,” referring to demonstrators supporting Israel. When officers were assigned to manage traffic outside a local synagogue, some reportedly called the detail the “Hebrew 500,” a reference to the Daytona 500 auto race.

The lawsuit also alleges that one non-Jewish officer regularly referred to himself as “a cheap Jew” in front of Wagner and others. In November 2025, Wagner says he discovered a book titled The Jew placed on top of his locker, which he reported to a supervisor.

Wagner contends that he brought these incidents to both police leadership and township administrators but that officials “took no action” in response.

The case adds to a growing pattern of internal disputes within the department. Court records show that another Livingston officer filed a discrimination lawsuit in 2023, prompting an internal affairs investigation. Wagner says he was questioned as part of that inquiry and supported the other officer’s claims, which he alleges marked the start of retaliation against him.

According to the suit, shortly afterward, supervisors opened an internal affairs investigation based on a complaint from an 18-year-old drug dealer regarding Wagner’s demeanor, even though his sergeant had found the allegation unsubstantiated.

Months later, Wagner was served with disciplinary charges seeking a two-day unpaid suspension. Those charges remain unresolved, the complaint states.

Wagner also alleges that he was repeatedly passed over for promotion to sergeant despite strong performance on the written exam and positive evaluations. Township officials, he claims, promoted officers who had not filed complaints or engaged in “protected activity.”

In addition, the lawsuit says Wagner was denied an assignment to the department’s traffic unit, which instead went to less-qualified officers.

“Township officials, with retaliatory and discriminatory intent, have not promoted plaintiff despite his qualifications,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit alleges retaliation, discrimination, and violations of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, arguing that township leaders failed to intervene even after being alerted to alleged misconduct.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin said Thursday it regretted the expiration of the last remaining nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States that left no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century.

Arms control experts say the termination of the New START Treaty could set the stage for an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but U.S. President Donald Trump has been noncommittal about extending it. He has indicated that he wants China to be a part of a new pact — something Beijing has rebuffed.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that Trump has made clear “in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile.”

Putin discussed the pact’s expiration with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, noting the U.S. failure to respond to his proposal to extend its limits and saying that Russia “will act in a balanced and responsible manner based on thorough analysis of the security situation,” Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow views the treaty’s expiration Thursday “negatively” and regrets it. He said Russia will maintain its “responsible, thorough approach to stability when it comes to nuclear weapons,” adding that “of course, it will be guided primarily by its national interests.”

With the end of the treaty, Moscow “remains ready to take decisive military-technical measures to counter potential additional threats to the national security,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

“At the same time, our country remains open to seeking political-diplomatic ways to comprehensively stabilize the strategic situation on the basis of equal and mutually beneficial dialogue solutions, if the appropriate conditions for such cooperation are shaped,” it said in a statement issued late Wednesday.

Details of the pact
New START, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers — deployed and ready for use. It was originally supposed to expire in 2021 but was extended for five more years.

The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed.

In February 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies have openly declared Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal. At the same time, the Kremlin emphasized it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.

In offering in September to abide by New START’s limits for a year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement, Putin said the treaty’s expiration would be destabilizing and could fuel nuclear proliferation.

New START was the last remaining pact in a long series of agreements between Moscow and Washington to limit their nuclear arsenals, starting with the SALT I in 1972.

Trump wants China in a pact
Trump has indicated he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons but wants to involve China in a potential new treaty.

“I actually feel strongly that if we’re going to do it, I think China should be a member of the extension,” Trump told The New York Times last month. “China should be a part of the agreement.”

In his first term, Trump tried and failed to push for a three-way nuclear pact involving China. Beijing has balked at any restrictions on its smaller but growing nuclear arsenal, while urging the U.S. to resume nuclear talks with Russia.

“China’s nuclear forces are not at all on the same scale as those of the U.S. and Russia, and thus China will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at the current stage,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Thursday.

He said China regrets the expiration of New START, calls on the U.S. to resume nuclear dialogue with Russia soon, and respond positively to Moscow’s suggestion that the two sides continue observing the core limits of the treaty for now.

Peskov reaffirmed Thursday that Moscow respects Beijing’s position. He and other Russian officials have repeatedly argued that any attempt to negotiate a broader nuclear pact instead of a U.S.-Russian deal should also involve nuclear arsenals of NATO members France and the U.K.

Arms control advocates bemoaned the end of New START and warned of the imminent threat of a new arms race.

“If the Trump administration continues to stiff-arm nuclear arms control diplomacy with Russia and decides to increase the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. deployed strategic arsenal, it will only lead Russia to follow suit and encourage China to accelerate its ongoing strategic buildup in an attempt to maintain a strategic nuclear retaliatory strike capability vis-a-vis the United States,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. “Such a scenario could lead to a years-long, dangerous three-way nuclear arms buildup.”

TORONTO (AP) — Seven Toronto police officers and one retired officer have been arrested and charged in an organized crime investigation involving bribery, conspiracy to commit murder and drug trafficking, authorities said Thursday.

Police officials at a news conference said the officers had collected personal and private information unlawfully and distributed it to organized crime figures, in some cases for bribes, and that mobsters then carried out shootings and other violent crimes.

“This is a painful and unsettling moment,” Toronto Police Chief Myron Myron Demkiw said. “When organized penetrates the Toronto Police Service the harm goes far beyond the immediate wrongdoing.”

York Police Deputy Chief Ryan Hogan said the investigation began in June when police uncovered a murder plot involving a corrections management employee who was being targeted by mobsters. He said the suspects had passed information to the mobsters about the employee.

Several suspected mobsters went to the corrections manager’s home for the purpose of murdering him, but encountered a separate contingent of police officers who were protecting the employee and who arrested the suspected mobsters after they rammed a police car, Hogan said.

Demkiw said the officers who were suspected of wrongdoing have been suspended and that he’s seeking suspension without pay for at least four of them.

York Regional Police Chief Jim MacSween said it was a “deeply disappointing and sad day” for police.

“This investigation also underscores the insidious corrosive of organized crime. It highlights how these criminals find a way even the most well protected institutions across our society.”

A New Jersey appeals court has upheld local approval of the proposed plans for Bais Yaakov of Jackson (Bais Faiga), TLS has learned, rejecting a lawsuit filed by neighboring property owners who challenged the project on environmental, procedural, and ethics grounds.

In their 18-page decision, the Appellate Division, affirmed a lower-court ruling that the Jackson Township Planning Board acted properly when it approved a major site plan for Bais Yaakov of Jackson, Inc.

The project calls for construction of a four-building, all-girls school campus on roughly 38 acres, including an elementary school, two high schools, and a gymnasium designed to serve about 2,350 students and 250 staff members.

Neighbors who sued over the approval argued the board relied on flawed environmental information, improperly granted zoning relief related to parking and site design, failed to adequately address traffic and septic-system concerns, and allowed participation by a planning board chairman they claimed had a conflict of interest.

Both the trial court and appellate judges rejected those claims.

The appellate panel said courts must give substantial deference to municipal land-use decisions and found no evidence the board’s action was “arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable.”

The Judges also concluded that an environmental impact statement submitted by the applicant met township requirements and that a discrepancy involving state habitat-ranking maps for threatened or endangered species did not affect the outcome because the area in question would remain undisturbed.

The court further upheld a trial judge’s decision denying requests to expand the record to investigate an alleged conflict involving the planning board chairman and the applicant’s attorney, calling the connection “too remote” to demonstrate bias or impairment of judgment.

The ruling leaves intact the planning board’s approval, which remains subject to required permits and approvals from other government agencies.

Veteran composer Rav Hillel Paley delivered a sharp and emotional critique of contemporary wedding music in a rare radio interview, warning that celebrations in the frum community have veered far from their spiritual roots and, in many cases, have become deeply inappropriate.

Speaking with Reb Menachem Stein on the Sichat HaYom program on Israel’s Kol Chai Radio, Rav Paley said that weddings today often resemble “a disco of chaos,” arguing that much of the current music has lost any connection to Yiddishkeit or kedusha. “A wedding has become a nightmare,” he said. “People are just waiting for the music to stop so they can escape and go home.”

Rav Paley sharply criticized what he described as shallow hit songs that take pesukim from sacred texts and turn them into mockery. He said he is disturbed by scenes in which yeshiva bochurim remove their jackets and yarmulkas and engage in frenzied dancing that runs completely counter to the values they are supposed to represent. “This music is a desecration,” he said. “It would be better to sing about oranges than to turn holy pesukim into a joke.” He added that even in the broader public, many people prefer authentic Jewish melodies over what he called cheap imitations.

During the broadcast, Rabbi Stein cited guidance from Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, who advised bochurim to study mussar works for a few minutes before attending a wedding in order to remember their purpose and responsibility. Addressing drunkenness and unruly behavior on the dance floor, Rav Hirsch was quoted as saying, “A ben Torah must remember who he is and not behave like a wild, uncivilized person at a wedding celebration.”

Rabbi Stein reinforced Rav Paley’s message, noting that some roshei yeshiva refuse to enter wedding halls until what he termed “the wild singer” is removed from the stage. Together, they decried a situation in which parents spend enormous sums of money only to see their children’s weddings turned into what they called a circus. “Parents are paying a fortune so that someone can ruin the wedding and middlemen can take over the event,” they said, urging families to take responsibility and demand music that is appropriate, dignified, and worthy of the occasion.

In closing, Rav Paley issued a direct appeal to yeshiva students, calling on them to recognize their own value and stop chasing cheap trends that embarrass the Torah world. “When we truly understand our worth and the holiness of marriage,” he said, “this kind of music will naturally lose its appeal, and souls will once again know how to rejoice in a genuine way.”

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli court on Thursday indicted a brother of the chief of Israel’s security service for smuggling tens of thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes into war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

The indictment of Bezalel Zini is the latest in a burgeoning scandal implicating more than a dozen people, many of them Israeli reserve soldiers, of personally profiting from the Israel-Hamas war and delivering goods into Gaza that could potentially benefit the militant group.

His brother, Shin Bet chief David Zini, has not been implicated in the scandal.

According to the indictment and a prosecutors’ statement, Bezalel Zini pocketed some 365,000 shekels (about $117,000) in the scheme. At least 13 other people have also been indicted The men are charged with “aiding the enemy in wartime, financing terror activity, fraud and bribery.”

Zini’s lawyer, Assaf Klein, did not immediately comment after the indictment Thursday but had last week denied his client’s was involved in smuggling.

According to the indictment, at the time of the smuggling, Zini was serving as a military reservist in charge of logistics for the “Uriah” team, a unit that demolished buildings inside Gaza. The position gave him a special permit allowing him to bring vehicles into Gaza.

Zini is accused of smuggling some 14 cartons of cigarettes through the Sufa crossing between southern Gaza and Israel, which was closed to humanitarian supply traffic throughout the war. The indictment further claims that Hamas earned millions of dollars from cigarette smuggling throughout the war, and that Zini’s shipments could have aided the enemy.

“The defendants and their accomplices knew that the smuggled goods could reach terrorist elements, including Hamas,” said the prosecutor’s statement.

The smuggling began in summer of 2025. It is unclear how long it lasted, according to the indictment. The smuggling ring ferried cigarettes, tobacco, mobile phones and other goods into Gaza, and its members divided profits from the sales.

Coordinating with other suspects, the indictment alleges Zini used permits to smuggle the goods across the border by misleading soldiers by claiming they were for military and security purposes.

The prosecutor’s statement said its office has filed a request to seize the defendant’s property, including vehicles, real estate and money.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed David Zini, a former military general, as the Shin Bet chief in May 2025, after he moved to fire the agency’s former chief, Ronen Bar, blaming his agency for failures in the lead-up to Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

The agency is at the forefront of Israel’s battle against Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.

The price of bitcoin continued its monthslong slide Thursday, falling another 11% to $67,000, its lowest level in 15 months.

The original cryptocurrency, pitched as “digital gold,” has lost 46% of its value since Oct. 6, when it hit a record high of $126,210.50, according to crypto trading platform Coinbase. As of 10:30 a.m. EST Thursday, its price had dipped to $67,245.

After the election of President Donald Trump in November of 2024, Bitcoin prices chugged higher for the better part of a year, in part due to investors’ expectations of a more crypto-friendly administration in Washington.

Companies that enable investors to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, as well as the growing number of companies who have made investing in bitcoin their main business focus, have also been hit hard in the recent sell-off.

Coinbase Global fell 9.1% and online trading platform Robinhood Markets lost 8.1%. Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms dropped 10%.

Strategy, the biggest of the so-called crypto treasury companies that raises money just to buy bitcoin, tumbled 13%. The company, formerly called MicroStrategy, reports on its website holdings of 713,502 bitcoin. With the average purchase prices for those above $76,000, it means the company is under water on the investment. Thursday morning its bitcoin holdings were worth about $47.8 billion, less than the $54.3 billion Strategy says they cost.

American Bitcoin, in which Trump’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. hold a stake, fell 6.6% and is now down more than 80% since Oct. 7.

Other Trump-related crypto ventures have declined as well. The market value for the World Liberty Financial token, or $WLFI, has fallen to about $3.25 billion from above $6 billion in mid-September, according to coinmarketcap.com. And the price of a meme coin named for President Donald Trump, $TRUMP, is $3.93, a fraction of the $45 asking price just before his inauguration in January.

Iran’s military said Thursday that it is prepared for war if the United States chooses confrontation, raising the stakes ahead of high-level talks in Oman on Friday.

Speaking to Iran’s Student News Network, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Akraminia, the army’s spokesperson, said Tehran is ready for any military scenario, citing the recent addition of 1,000 drones to its arsenal.

“We have always announced that we are ready to confront any option,” Akraminia said. “If the enemy chooses the option of war, we are ready for any option in war conditions.”

His comments come as President Donald Trump has warned that “bad things” are likely if negotiations fail, intensifying a standoff marked by mutual threats, military deployments, and growing fears of escalation.

“He must choose between compromise or war,” Akraminia said of Trump, warning that any conflict would engulf U.S. bases across the region, from Israel to the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. “Our access to U.S. bases is easy, and this has increased their vulnerability.”

Adding to the volatility, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Thursday seized two foreign oil tankers in Gulf waters on accusations of fuel smuggling, according to Tasnim news agency. Officials did not immediately disclose the vessels’ flags or the nationalities of their crews.

The move is likely to further strain relations with Washington and its allies, who have accused Tehran of using maritime pressure as a political tool.

Meanwhile, Israel signaled that it is preparing for potential fallout.

Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, chief of the Israel Air Force, said Thursday that Israeli forces are strengthening both defensive and offensive capabilities.

“Every day, we continue to strengthen preparedness,” Bar told reservists at an Iron Dome battery in northern Israel. “You are required to maintain a high level of readiness.”

Tehran has repeatedly warned that it would unleash its ballistic missiles if its security is threatened, targeting Israel and U.S. bases alike.

Iranian and American officials are scheduled to meet Friday in Oman for mediated talks, seen as a last-ditch effort to contain the crisis.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that Ankara is working to prevent the dispute from dragging the region into chaos.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that any agreement must address Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, its support for terrorist groups, and its domestic human rights record.

Iran, however, has indicated that it is only willing to discuss its nuclear program — and not on Washington’s terms. Despite insisting its program is peaceful, Tehran has enriched uranium to levels close to weapons-grade and maintains sensitive facilities such as the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility.

In June, the United States joined Israel in striking Iranian nuclear targets at the tail end of a 12-day war, with Israeli officials citing an “existential threat.”

Since then, Iran says it has rebuilt its missile stockpiles and fortified key sites.

Washington has responded with a major military buildup, dispatching thousands of troops, warships, and aircraft to the region, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

On Thursday, U.S Central Command released footage showing fighter jets launching from the carrier’s deck in the Arabian Sea, underscoring American readiness.

“The flight deck may look chaotic,” CENTCOM said, “but it is a well-orchestrated routine.”

The carrier was repositioned after Trump threatened military action in response to Iran’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests last month, the deadliest since the 1979 revolution.

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(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Arad Mayor Yair Maayan ignited a major political and communal storm in a blunt radio interview in which he said the city has no interest in welcoming additional chassidic groups beyond the existing Gerer community, while also exposing what he described as severe anti-chareidi hostility within the city.

Speaking on the Bonim Atid program on Kol Chai Radio with hosts Chanoch Rapoport and Yisrael Melman, Maayan addressed Arad’s rapid development, tensions between different populations, and his long-term vision for the city. During the interview, he recounted disturbing incidents of hatred directed at chareidim. “Today someone sent me a message saying there are cockroaches everywhere,” he said. “I asked, where? He told me, no, I’m calling the religious people cockroaches. That’s horrific antisemitism. It’s a disgrace and a shame.”

Maayan, who was elected about two years ago, said he deliberately changed the city’s approach toward the Gerer community, the largest and most established chassidic group in Arad. He sharply criticized previous municipal leadership, accusing them of racism and illegal discrimination. “The prior administration acted with racism and unlawful discrimination and diverted funds away from chareidi education,” he charged. To address housing needs and reduce friction in mixed neighborhoods, Maayan announced plans for a new chareidi neighborhood comprising roughly 2,000 housing units.

Addressing claims surrounding a recent land tender won by developers identified with Ger, Maayan rejected allegations of improper coordination. “I assume that in the chassidus, many miracles happen,” he said sarcastically. “So it turned out that no one competed with anyone else over the same plot.”

Asked whether Arad plans to open its doors to additional chareidi communities, Maayan delivered his most controversial statement of the interview. “Here in Arad, we’re satisfied with Ger,” he said. “We don’t want any other chassidic groups here. Other communities should go to Kesif.”

Beyond the chareidi issue, Maayan outlined an ambitious plan to double Arad’s population to 50,000 residents within five years through large-scale residential construction involving thousands of housing units. He also announced plans for an advanced medical center in the city and said the government is expected to approve the construction of a new airport in the Negev region near Beit Kama as early as Sunday.

Maayan concluded the interview with a sharp message aimed at residents he accused of inciting hatred against chareidim. “People like that — antisemites — don’t belong living in the Land of Israel at all,” he said. “We hope their hatred will push them to leave the city and the country.”

{Matzav.com}

TEL AVIV (AP) — An Orthodox Jewish athlete is set to make Olympic history this winter, leading Israel’s first-ever bobsled team into the Milan–Cortina Games in a debut that blends unlikely athletic paths with a charged political backdrop.

AJ Edelman, an American-Israeli from Massachusetts, is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to compete in the Winter Olympics. He heads a newly assembled Israeli bobsled team whose members include athletes drawn from track and field, rugby and other sports — most of whom had never sat in a sled before this season.

The team’s emergence comes as Israel faces growing diplomatic isolation in international sports, with calls for boycotts and restrictions tied to the war in Gaza. Still, the athletes say they see their participation as a point of pride and a foundation for the future of Israeli winter sports.

“We’re building something from nothing,” Edelman said in an interview from Italy, where the team has been training. “With the structure that’s now in place, Israel can eventually be competitive in this sport.”

Edelman’s path to the Games has been unconventional. Years ago, a talent scout dismissed him as physically unsuited for sliding sports, citing scoliosis and balance issues. Undeterred, Edelman taught himself skeleton racing through online videos and qualified for the 2018 Winter Games, finishing near the back of the field. He later shifted his focus to assembling a bobsled team, a project he describes as equal parts persistence and improvisation.

One of the original recruits was Ward Fawarseh, a rugby player from the Druze town of Majd al-Krum in northern Israel. If he competes, Fawarseh would be the first Druze Olympian. He initially assumed Edelman’s outreach was a hoax.

“I didn’t even realize there was a Winter Olympics,” Fawarseh said. “Then suddenly I’m being asked to race down an ice track at full speed.”

The original lineup narrowly missed qualifying for the Beijing Games and regrouped with an eye toward 2026. Plans were upended again after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and led to the mobilization of many reserve soldiers — including members of the bobsled team.

Edelman and Fawarseh restarted recruitment, bringing in Israeli shot putter Menachem Chen, sprinter Omer Katz and pole vaulter Uri Zisman. CrossFit athlete Itamar Shprinz joined as coach, despite limited familiarity with the sport.

“I knew it involved sleds and ice — that was about it,” Shprinz said. His first ride, in Canada, ended with him briefly losing consciousness. “It’s brutal,” he said.

The team secured its Olympic berth last month at Lake Placid, one of the sport’s most storied venues.

Israel will send several other athletes to the Games, including figure skater Maria Seniuk, alpine skiers Noa Szollos and Barnabas Szollos, cross-country skier Atila Mihaly Kertesz and skeleton racer Jared Firestone.

Their participation comes amid international criticism and comparisons to Russia’s Olympic sanctions. Some activists have argued Israeli athletes should compete without national symbols. The International Olympic Committee has rejected those calls, saying the legal criteria applied to Russia do not apply in Israel’s case.

Despite security concerns and political tension, team members say they are determined to compete openly as Israelis.

“We know there are people who don’t want us there,” Edelman said. “But we’re not hiding who we are.”

Zisman echoed that sentiment, saying concerns from family members about wearing Israeli symbols have only strengthened his resolve.

“That’s exactly why we do it,” he said. “To represent our country the best way we can.”

A late-night fire in a residential yard in the Roosevelt City section of Manchester Township is under investigation following an emergency response on Tuesday, February 4, 2026.

At approximately 9:40 p.m., emergency crews were dispatched for a reported large open burn. Upon arrival, responders confirmed an active fire involving an outdoor dog kennel in the yard.

During the response, one dog was safely removed from the kennel, while a second dog was rescued during the initial knockdown of the fire. Firefighters extinguished the remaining flames and secured the scene.

The incident was subsequently turned over to the Manchester Township Police Department and the Ocean County Fire Marshal’s Office for investigation. No injuries were reported to responding personnel, the homeowners, or the animals involved.

President Donald Trump used his address at the 74th National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning to argue that his presidency has strengthened religion’s role in American public life, telling attendees that no previous president has done more for people of faith. Speaking to a packed audience at the Washington Hilton, Trump praised religious freedom, highlighted policy achievements, and accused Democrats of pushing faith to the margins.

Calling the event a cherished national custom, Trump told the crowd, “This is a beautiful American tradition, and it’s a true honor to be back,” noting that he has participated in the breakfast nearly every year.

He described the gathering as a rare pause from the demands of office, saying it offers a moment to reflect amid constant pressure, and quipped that he needs “all the help I can get.”

In remarks broadcast live on Newsmax, Trump declared that religion in the United States is experiencing a resurgence, saying it is “back now, hotter than ever before,” and credited his administration’s policies with bringing faith back into the public square.

While conceding personal imperfections, Trump said his record shows tangible achievements for religious Americans after what he described as years of being overlooked.

“I’ve done more for religion than any other president,” Trump said, arguing that many modern presidents have effectively “bailed out” on faith, opting for neutrality or even opposition.

He went further in his criticism of the opposition party, stating bluntly, “The Democrats are against [religion],” and questioned how “a person of faith can vote for a Democrat.”

As an example, Trump pointed to voter ID laws, which he said enjoy overwhelming support among Americans of all backgrounds, including religious voters.

Referring to polling data, he said support for such laws exceeds 90 percent and framed the requirement as basic common sense.

“When you go to the polls, you show who you are,” Trump said.

“They don’t want to approve it. Everyone’s trying to figure out why.”

He accused Democrats of blocking voter ID measures for political reasons, despite broad public backing.

Trump also used the speech to praise congressional Republicans, singling out House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and GOP lawmakers for pushing conservative goals through a closely divided Congress.

Joking about placing late-night calls to persuade hesitant members, Trump said Republicans eventually come together and “always get there.”

Turning briefly to other topics, Trump cited achievements beyond religious policy, including rebuilding the military, expanding domestic energy production, and restoring American influence abroad.

He described the current economic climate as one of historic investment and momentum, calling it a “tremendous success.”

In closing, Trump thanked the bipartisan leaders of the National Prayer Breakfast and stressed the importance of keeping faith central to the nation’s character.

“We have a great country,” he said. “And when you put religion back where it belongs, everything else gets stronger.”

The National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Washington tradition, brings together elected officials, religious leaders, and public figures for reflection and prayer—an event Trump said continues to play a vital role in the country’s future.

{Matzav.com}

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul for reelection on Thursday, offering the moderate governor some progressive heft as she faces a challenge from her political left in her campaign for a second full term in office.

In an op-ed in The Nation, Mamdani, a democratic socialist, noted his political differences with the governor, but wrote that he’s “come to trust Governor Hochul as someone willing to engage in an honest dialogue that leads to results.”

The endorsement further solidifies the alliance between two leaders positioned at opposite ends of the Democratic political spectrum, with Mamdani a young progressive who rode into office promising transformative change and Hochul a centrist, self-described “mom governor” from Buffalo.

The governor supported Mamdani for mayor, lending him some establishment credibility during his campaign, and has found common ground with him on shared priorities of affordability and child care. But she’s broken with the mayor on other elements of his agenda, including his calls to raise taxes on the wealthy, while positioning herself as a moderate check on his budding administration.

Hochul expressed gratitude for Mamdani’s partnership. “I know that he’ll stand strong alongside me as we fight against Donald Trump’s attacks on this state,” her statement said.

Mamdani’s endorsement could help Hochul shore up her left flank in June’s Democratic primary. Her own lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, is challenging her with a progressive campaign styled in the mold of Mamdani, seeking to harness the energy that propelled the mayor to office and national political stardom.

Delgado’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.

At the same time, Hochul’s critics on the right, including Republican candidate for governor Bruce Blakeman, a county official on Long Island, seized on the endorsement as evidence that the Democratic Party that has moved too far to the left.

“New Yorkers who want a check on Mamdani and Hochul’s radicalism have one choice: elect Bruce Blakeman Governor in November and vote Republican at all levels of government,” David Laska, a spokesperson for the NYGOP, said in a statement after Mamdani’s op-ed.

Hochul served as lieutenant governor under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, assuming the top job in 2021 after Cuomo resigned following a barrage of sexual harassment allegations and the almost certain prospect of impeachment. She became the first woman elected to the role the following year, defeating former congressman and current Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, in a competitive race that narrowed as Zeldin seized on public safety concerns.

Shiva for Mrs. Sara Rivka Shapiro A”H is taking place at 17 Goldcrest Drive, Lakewood.

Sitting:

Thursday from 2:00 PM until Sunday at 5:00 PM

Getting up:

Monday morning, 2/09/26

Aveilim:

• R’ Moshe Possick – Father

• Mrs. Jenny Possick – Mother

• Mrs. Brochie Rothchild – Sister

• R’ Yuddy Possick – Brother

• R’ Tzvi Possick – Brother

• Mrs. Chany Munk – Sister

• Mrs. Miriam Rosenberg – Sister

• R’ Ahron Dovid Possick – Brother

• Mrs. Nechama Greenwald – Sister

Note, her husband and children are sitting Shiva in Baltimore, at 6802 Williamson, Baltimore, MD 21215. Additional parking available at Baltimore Community Kollel, 3800 Labyrinth.

Minyanim (Baltimore):
Shacharis: 8:00 AM
Mincha/Maariv: 5:00 PM

Baruch Dayan Ha’emes.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The U.S. and Russia agreed on Thursday to reestablish high level military-to-military dialogue following a meeting between senior Russian and American military officials in Abu Dhabi, the United States European Command said in a statement.

The agreement was reached following meetings between Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the Commander of U.S. European Command — who is also NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe — and senior Russian and Ukrainian military officials, the statement said.

The channel “will provide a consistent military-to-military contact as the parties continue to work towards a lasting peace,” the statement said. High level military communication was suspended in 2021, just before Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Grynkewich was in the capital of the United Arab Emirates where talks between American, Russian and Ukrainian officials on ending the war in Ukraine entered a second day and as Moscow escalated its attacks on Ukraine’s power grid.

Russia continues to target Ukraine’s electricity network, aiming to deny civilians power and weaken their appetite for the fight, while fighting continues along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line snaking along eastern and southern parts of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that 55,000 Ukrainian troops have died since Russia’s invasion almost four years ago. “And there is a large number of people whom Ukraine considers missing,” he added in an interview broadcast by French TV channel France 2 late Wednesday.

The last time Zelenskyy gave a figure for battlefield deaths, in early 2025, he said 46,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.

The delegations from Moscow and Kyiv were joined Thursday in the capital of the United Arab Emirates by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council chief, who was present at the meeting.

They were also at last month’s talks in the same place as the Trump administration tries to steer the two countries toward a settlement. At the time, Zelenskyy described the issue of who would control the Donbas industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine as “key.”

Officials have provided no information about any progress in the discussions.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said his country needs security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe to deter any postwar Russian attacks.

Ukrainians must feel that there is genuine progress toward peace and “not toward a scenario in which the Russians exploit everything to their advantage and continue their strikes,” Zelenskyy said on social media late Wednesday.

Last year saw a 31% increase in Ukrainian civilian casualties compared with 2024, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a report published Wednesday.

Almost 15,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and just over 40,000 injured since the start of the war through last December, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrived in Kyiv on an official visit Thursday.

Two people were injured in the Ukrainian capital as a result of overnight Russian drone strikes, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. In the wider Kyiv region, a man suffered a shrapnel chest wound, authorities said.

Russia fired 183 drones and two ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force.

Russian air defenses downed 95 Ukrainian drones overnight over several regions, the Azov Sea and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2016, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.

A Jewish woman who, as a young girl, refused to present flowers to Adolf Hitler during the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics has passed away at the age of 102. Mrs. Yocheved Gold a”h, sister of two prominent rabbonim from the Neuwirth family, passed away after a life that spanned Nazi Germany, the Holocaust era, and the entire history of the State of Israel.

Yocheved was 13 years old when she entered Berlin’s Olympic Stadium in August 1936 to watch the opening ceremony of the Games. Because she looked German, she was asked to join a group of children selected to hand flowers to Hitler, who had been appointed chancellor of Germany three years earlier. She refused.

“I saw him face to face and I was a little afraid,” she later recalled. “That I, a Jew, should give Hitler flowers? I refused.”

By the time of the 1936 Olympics, Germany under Hitler had already enacted sweeping legal discrimination against Jews, effectively pushing them out of public life. The passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 stripped Jews of German citizenship, barred them from most professions, and isolated them socially and economically.

Yocheved was born in 1923 in the town of Halberstadt in central Germany. Her father, Rabbi Dr. Aharon Neuwirth, served as a rov and dayan in several communities, including Mainz, Halberstadt, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Her mother was Mrs. Sara Chaya Neuwirth.

In 1938, when Yocheved was about 15, she witnessed the destruction of shuls during Kristallnacht. A year later, at the age of 16, she fled to Haifa in Mandatory Palestine, leaving her parents behind in Europe.

She managed to maintain correspondence with her parents until the final year of World War II, when their letters suddenly stopped. “I was sure they had been killed,” she later said. Unexpectedly, her parents survived the war and the Holocaust.

According to Yocheved’s own testimony in interviews and accounts recorded in the sefer Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasa, written by her brother Hagaon Rav Yehoshua Neuwirth, her parents were saved through a series of extraordinary events. One such incident occurred when her father went to a pharmacy for treatment. Because it was Shabbos, he refrained from taking the medication that night. The substance later turned out to be rat poison.

Rav Yehoshua Neuwirth, who headed Yeshivas Chochmat Shlomo, was niftar in 2013. He was widely known as the author of the aformentioned Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasah, a foundational and widely used work on the halachos of Shabbos.

Another brother, Rav Reuven Yosef Raphael Neuwirth, was renowned for running one of the most prominent free-loan funds in the chareidi world. He passed away nine months ago at the age of 94.

Yocheved spent the rest of her life in Israel. She was among the founding members of Kibbutz Sa’ad, located near the Gaza border. In 1942, she married Shmuel Gold, one of the kibbutz’s founders. He died in 1961 at the age of 40.

Over the course of decades, Yocheved worked in a wide range of administrative and organizational roles at the kibbutz. She was eventually appointed as the kibbutz nurse, despite lacking formal medical training, and held the position for approximately 40 years before retiring at age 69.

Remarkably, she lived through every major war fought by Israel since its founding, including the War of Independence and later conflicts in Gaza. On October 7, 2023, she spent 30 hours in a fortified safe room with her son during the Hamas attack. She was later evacuated to a hotel near the Dead Sea but insisted on returning home.

“I’m not willing to die in a hotel,” she told her family. “Take me back home. If I die, I will die there.”

She returned to Kibbutz Sa’ad at the age of 100. She passed away at 102, leaving behind children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

Yehi zichrah boruch.

{Matzav.com}

By Yisroel R.

New York City drivers can expect a noticeable shift in traffic enforcement beginning this month, February 2026, as updated state policies change how driving violations are penalized and how quickly license suspensions can occur.

While New York law has always treated any speed over the posted limit as a violation, enforcement in practice has often been more lenient. In many cases, officers historically refrained from issuing speeding tickets unless a driver was driving 10 miles per hour or more above the limit. Officials say that the approach is now beginning to tighten as part of a broader effort to crackdown on dangerous driving. Under the new policy officers will issue violations to drivers exceeding the speed limit even by one mile per hour.

The most significant change involves the driver point system administered by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. Under the updated policy, drivers will face license suspension after accumulating 10 points within a 24-month period, replacing the previous threshold of 11 points within 18 months. The longer window means violations will remain active on a driver’s record for a greater period of time, allowing points to add up more easily.

Point values for several common violations will also increase. Speeding 1 to 10 miles per hour over the limit will now carry 4 points, up from 3. Using a handheld cellphone while driving will result in 6 points, failure to yield to a pedestrian will rise to 5 points, and reckless driving or illegally passing a stopped school bus will carry 8 points.

LIVINGSTON, N.J. — A veteran New Jersey police officer has filed a lawsuit against his department and township, alleging he was disciplined, denied promotions and sidelined professionally after reporting antisemitic remarks and conduct by fellow officers.

Officer Christopher Wagner, who has served with the Livingston Police Department since 2005, says he repeatedly raised concerns about comments and actions he believed targeted Jewish people. According to the complaint, filed Jan. 30 in Essex County, those reports were ignored and followed by retaliatory measures.

The lawsuit alleges that during pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the township in 2025, officers made remarks to Wagner such as “your people are out there” when referring to demonstrators supporting Israel. Wagner is Jewish.

The complaint also cites comments made during assignments outside a local synagogue, where officers allegedly referred to traffic duty as the “Hebrew 500.” Another officer, who is not Jewish, is accused of repeatedly describing himself as “a cheap Jew” in front of colleagues.

In November, Wagner says he found a book titled “The Jew” placed on top of his locker and reported it to a supervisor. He alleges township officials and department leadership took no corrective action.

The lawsuit further claims that retaliation intensified after Wagner supported allegations made by another Livingston officer who filed a separate discrimination lawsuit against the township in 2023. Wagner says internal affairs investigations were opened against him shortly afterward.

In one instance cited in the complaint, an 18-year-old drug suspect complained about Wagner’s demeanor. Although a supervising sergeant found the complaint lacked merit, internal affairs opened an investigation the next day. Months later, Wagner was served with disciplinary charges seeking an unpaid suspension, which remain pending.

Wagner also alleges he was passed over for promotion to sergeant despite strong test performance and was denied a specialized traffic unit assignment in favor of less-qualified officers. The lawsuit claims officers who did not engage in protected reporting were promoted instead.

The complaint alleges violations of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination and describes what Wagner says was a hostile work environment.

Livingston township and police officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case comes amid heightened national attention on antisemitism and discrimination within public institutions, including law enforcement agencies.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday participated in a closed-door briefing of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

According to an Arutz Sheva report, during the discussion, Netanyahu revealed that on the morning of October 7, 2023, at 5:15 a.m., the Shin Bet issued an official document summarizing all of the warnings received overnight from the Gaza Strip. He said the document reached his office only at 9:47 a.m., over four hours after its initial distribution.

Netanyahu added that the original document included no instruction to update the prime minister, but that a more recent version submitted later suddenly contained such a directive. He said that the Shin Bet allegedly forged the document, retroactively adding the directive. The document bears the signature of former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

Netanyahu added that he forwarded the findings to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman as part of the investigations into the October 7 failures and said that Englman was stunned by the information. Members of the Foreign Affairs committee also reacted with shock to the revelation.

Netanyahu added that he thinks that it’s not a “coincidence” that after Englman obtained some of the classified material, a petition was filed to the Supreme Court demanding that Englman be barred from continuing his investigation into the October 7 failures.

Englman’s investigation into the October 7 massacre was suspended by the Supreme Court, a move that experts say places Israelis’ lives at risk. The suspension was based on the opinion of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who accepted the arguments of two petitions against the probe, one submitted by the corrupt leftist Movement for Quality Government and the other on behalf of the Military Defense Counsel, which seeks to “protect the rights of officers.” During Bar’s tenure, Baharav-Miara worked in cahoots with him and fiercely opposed his dismissal.

The first part of the session turned into a direct confrontation with opposition members as Netanyahu read minutes from past cabinet meetings, quoting Naftali Bennett, Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon, former Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman, and other senior defense officials—saying that none of them foresaw or considered the possibility of a catastrophe like October 7.

Netanyahu said Bennett had repeatedly opposed large-scale military action in Gaza. “Bennett always opposed occupying Gaza,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying as he read from the minutes. He added, “The Israeli public deserves to know these protocols.”

Channel 14 reported that Netanyahu also cited a Shin Bet assessment submitted by Ronen Bar three days before October 7, which stated: “Calm has returned to the fence.”

When asked about rumors of “treason,” Netanyahu said, “There was a grave intelligence failure, but no treason.”

The revelations reportedly surprised even coalition members. One committee participant told Channel 14: “We were stunned. The same people who tried to undermine him for years are now the ones attacking him.”

Opposition members left the meeting in anger, complaining they were not allowed to ask questions. “Is this why we came—to hear Bibi read transcripts criticizing Bennett, Eisenkot, and Gantz?” one said.

Yisrael Beiteinu MK Sharon Nir criticized Netanyahu’s remarks but faced harsh responses from coalition lawmakers. Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said he was not surprised, noting he had already heard the same details in the intelligence subcommittee.

MK Boaz Bismuth also disputed Nir’s comments, saying she had attended the same briefings and was familiar with the material.

Ohana added that about two and a half months before the attack, a subcommittee meeting with the IDF Chief of Staff and the head of Military Intelligence’s research division had focused solely on Hezbollah and Iran.

“I asked whether there was any concern about Gaza,” Ohana recalled. “The Chief of Staff told me, ‘No, there’s no problem.’”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

JERUSALEM — (VINnews) – Renowned composer Rabbi Hillel Paley delivered a sharp rebuke of contemporary wedding music in the religious sector, warning that many celebrations have drifted far from their spiritual foundations and turned into what he described as a chaotic spectacle.

Listen below to the full interview in Hebrew:

https://vinnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/פלאי-שטיין.mp3

In a rare and pointed interview with Rabbi Menachem Stein on Kol Chai radio’s Torah-focused program, Paley said weddings have become a “disco of wildness,” with modern music severed from Judaism and holiness. He said the atmosphere at many events has become so overwhelming that guests simply wait for the music to stop so they can leave. “A wedding turns into a nightmare,” Paley said. “People are just waiting for the music to end so they can run home.”

Paley spoke out against what he called shallow hit songs that lift verses from the Torah and turn them into mockery. He said he was shocked by music that fuels frenzied dancing, leading yeshiva students to remove their jackets and kippot in ways he said contradict the spirit of the yeshiva world.

“This music is a desecration of holiness,” Paley said. “Better they should sing about oranges than turn sacred verses into a joke.” He added that even among the general public, there is a preference for authentic traditional Jewish melodies over what he described as cheap modern imitations.

The broadcast also featured strong remarks from the head of the Slabodka Yeshiva, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, who has advised students to spend five minutes studying Mesillat Yesharim before attending a wedding, as a reminder of purpose and proper conduct. Addressing drunkenness and unruly behavior on dance floors, Hirsch was quoted as saying that a ben Torah must remember his stature and not behave wildly at a wedding celebration.

Rabbi Stein reinforced those criticisms, noting that some roshei yeshiva refuse to enter a wedding hall until an overly exuberant performer leaves the stage. He and Paley criticized what they described as a system in which parents pay large sums only to see weddings transformed into what they called a circus, taken over by “machers” rather than guided by meaning and dignity.

The two called on parents to take responsibility by demanding music from bands and singers that is appropriate, balanced and consistent with religious values, arguing that families deserve a celebration that reflects the sanctity of marriage.

In closing, Paley urged yeshiva students to recognize their true worth and resist fleeting trends that, he said, embarrass the Torah world. When the holiness of marriage and personal value are fully appreciated, he said, such music will naturally lose its appeal. “Then,” Paley said, “souls will return to truly rejoicing.”

Three kedoshei elyon had one common concept when it came to learning Torah – they were the Ohr Hachaim Hakadosh (Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar 1696-1743) when he came to Eretz Yisroel; the Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto 1707-1746) when he lived in Padua, Italy;  and Hagaon, Harav Chaim Volozhiner, (1749-1821) the famous talmid of the Gaon of Vilna.

They each had a yeshiva with ‘around-the-clock’ Torah learning, 24-hours a day, so that there would be no minute when the sound of Torah learning would not be heard in this world. The 24-hour period would be divided into shifts, and as one ended the next would begin.

Torah-24

A “Torah-24” Center has been opened in Yerushalayim and the Nasi is Maran Sar Hatorah, Harav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l.

Under ONE ROOF, from 6:00 am – 6:00 am, 10 kollelim fill successive learning shifts. Each kollel focuses on a specific area of in-depth Torah study. The “Torah-24” Kollelim include: Boker (Gemora), Yerushalmi, Bavli, Zeraim-Taharot, Dalet Chelkei Shulchan Aruch, Erev (Gemora), Chatzos- Zohar/Kabbolah, Erev Shabbos (Chumash / Medrash b’iyun).

Already there are 52 avreichim metzuyonim, and a large number of candidates are vying for the remaining slots in the kollelim. All the avreichim are required to take rigorous monthly tests.

Endorsements & Letters

Endorsements include Maranan Hagaonim shlit”a: Harav Gershon Edelstein, Harav Berel Povarsky, Harav Shimon Badani, Harav Dovid Cohen, Harav Boruch Mordechai Ezrachi, Harav Chaim Feinstein, Harav Shimon Galai, Harav Shraga Shteinman.

Letters of support-encouragement have been received from Maranan Hagaonim, shlit”a: Hamekubal Harav David Bazri, Hamashpia Hagadol Reb Elimelech Biderman, Hamekubal Harav Yaakov Meir Schechter, Harav Moishe Sternbuch, Harav Yitzchak Tuvia Weiss.

For more “Torah-24” information click on: www.torah-24.com or call 718-766-5022

A moving discovery has come to light at the Satmar yeshiva in Komemiyus, revealing a poignant detail from the final hours of a 17-year-old bochur who was killed earlier this month in a tragic accident.

Naftali Tzvi Kramer z”l was struck and killed by a bus on the second day of Shevat near Komemiyus as he was returning with fellow talmidim from a protest opposing post-mortem examinations. In the hours before the accident, he approached the person responsible for the yeshiva otzar haseforim and asked that the otzar haseforim purchase a newly released sefer titled Shema Shlomo, a collection of teachings from Rav Shlomo of Karlin, who was killed al kiddush hashem.

The demonstration Naftali attended had been organized by members of the Badatz of the HaEdah HaChareidis following the horrific daycare tragedy in Yerushalayim in which two young children lost their lives. Talmidim from the yeshiva traveled to protest in defense of kavod hameis. As the group was returning to Komemiyus, a bus drove into them at high speed near the moshav. Naftali was killed at the scene, in front of his stunned friends.

The sefer Naftali had requested, Shema Shlomo, was recently republished in an expanded and elegant edition. It brings together the teachings, minhagim, and accounts of the life of Rav Shlomo Halevi of Karlin, one of the foremost disciples of the Maggid of Mezeritch and a foundational figure in the early Chassidic movement.

Rav Shlomo of Karlin himself was murdered al kiddush hashem on the 22nd of Tammuz in the year 1792, during the Polish-Russian war. A Cossack shot him through the window of a shul in Ludmir while he was wrapped in his tallis and deeply immersed in davening. He succumbed to his wounds several days later. Since then, he has been revered as a kadosh, and thousands visit his kever each year on the yahrtzeit.

Only after Naftali’s petirah did fellow talmidim learn of his quiet request to acquire the sefer. In retrospect, it took on an especially haunting meaning. Talmidim spoke emotionally of the striking parallel: a young man drawn, in his final hours, to the teachings of a tzaddik who gave his life for his faith, before himself being taken while returning from a protest conducted to defend the honor of the deceased.

The revelation sparked a powerful wave of chizuk throughout the yeshiva. Talmidim quickly fulfilled Naftali’s request, purchasing the sefer and placing it in the yeshiva otzar haseforim in his memory.

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Prof. Yigal Talmi, a founding figure of nuclear physics and a leading member of the country’s first generation of scientific pioneers, died Wednesday, days after his 101st birthday. His death came less than two weeks after the passing of his wife of 77 years, Hannah Talmi, who died at age 100.

Talmi was among the physicists who helped decipher the structure of the atomic nucleus, and theories and computational methods he developed remain in use today. During his doctoral studies, completed in 1951 under Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Talmi developed a method that greatly simplified calculations in the nuclear shell model, which describes the structure of atomic nuclei.

After completing his doctorate, Talmi conducted postdoctoral research at Princeton University under another Nobel laureate, physicist Eugene Wigner. He returned in 1954 and joined the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he was among the founders of the country’s first nuclear physics department.

In 1963, Talmi and Prof. Amos de-Shalit published Nuclear Shell Theory, a book that gained wide international recognition and became a foundational text in the field. A later book, Simple Models of Complex Nuclei: The Shell Model and the Interacting Boson Model, was published in 1993.

Over his career, Talmi received wide recognition at home and abroad for his contributions to nuclear physics. He served as a visiting professor at institutions including MIT, Yale and Princeton. Until his retirement in 1995, he was a professor at the Weizmann Institute and also served as head of the nuclear physics department, dean of the faculty of physics and chair of the institute’s professors committee.
Ad

Talmi was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission and its research subcommittee and was elected to the national academy of sciences in 1963. His awards included the Weizmann Prize in 1962, the Israel Prize for exact sciences in 1965, the Rothschild Prize in 1971, the Hans Bethe Prize of the American Physical Society in 2000 and the EMET Prize in 2003.

Talmi was born in Ukraine in 1925 and immigrated as a toddler with his parents and older sister in the same year after Soviet authorities closed Hebrew schools. The family settled in Kfar Yehezkel in the Jezreel Valley, where his father ran the local school. As a child, Talmi developed a deep love of nature, exploring the surrounding landscape and collecting butterflies with his close friend Tuvia Kushnir, who was later killed during the War of Independence.

Talmi initially dreamed of studying biology but turned to physics after discovering, through self-study, that natural phenomena could be described mathematically. During World War II, his parents initially kept him from traveling to study in Tel Aviv, fearing the dangers of the time. He later enrolled at Herzliya Gymnasium and graduated in 1942.

That year, Talmi volunteered for the Palmach but was released in 1943 for health reasons. He went on to study physics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he formed close ties with fellow students who would later become key figures in the establishment of nuclear physics at the Weizmann Institute.

During the War of Independence, Talmi fought in the battles of Ramat Rachel and Neve Yaakov before being transferred to the Science Corps. Along with colleagues, he later helped shape a vision under which young scientists would study abroad and return to build a strong scientific base at home. Despite the young state’s economic hardships, several members of the group were sent overseas for advanced studies, including Talmi, who traveled with his wife to Switzerland to study under Pauli.

After returning, Talmi and his colleagues became central figures in shaping the scientific culture of the Weizmann Institute. They encouraged students to take part in research at early stages, breaking with hierarchical European academic traditions and laying the groundwork for a more collaborative and innovative scientific environment.

In later years, Talmi returned to his lifelong love of nature, taking up birdwatching during walks with his eldest son. He is survived by two children: Prof. Yoav Talmi, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and Prof. Tamar Dayan, a zoologist and founding chair of the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University.

FLORIDA (VINnews/Editorial) – James Fishback, the Republican candidate for Florida governor, has increasingly become a political figure defined not by policy proposals or accomplishments, but by his repeated, troubling use of antisemitic tropes. Time and again, Fishback drags Jewish people into political events, as if invoking them guarantees votes—a tactic that should alarm every Floridian, far beyond partisan lines.

At nearly every public appearance, Fishback injects references to Jews or Judaism, framing them as outsiders, financiers, or conspirators. Just last night, at a local event, he mocked efforts to bring quality education to Florida schools, using the slang “GOYSLOP” in a context clearly meant to belittle. These remarks are not accidental gaffes; they are calculated, designed to play on prejudice for political gain.

James Fishback, candidate for Florida Governor at UCF:

“If you wanted to set our kids up for failure, you would feed them the absolute GOY SLOP in our cafeterias.” pic.twitter.com/9GS06oFvEf

— Joan (@joanfromdc) February 5, 2026

Fishback’s rhetoric goes beyond mere dog whistles. It taps into centuries-old stereotypes and manipulates fear and resentment for personal advantage. While some politicians have occasionally been forced to apologize for offhand remarks, Fishback appears to embrace his role, signaling that bigotry is acceptable if it helps him climb the political ladder. This is not normal campaigning—it is a political stunt that normalizes antisemitism, and it is far more dangerous than most voters realize.

The moral and civic responsibility of political leaders is clear: condemn antisemitism, not exploit it. Fishback’s repeated invocation of Jewish communities to score points undermines the very fabric of civil discourse and emboldens extremists who see such language as permission to act. His actions demonstrate a calculated disregard for truth, ethics, and decency.

It is past time for political peers, party leaders, and media outlets to call out Fishback for what he is: a politician willing to weaponize prejudice for personal gain. He should be removed from polite political circles and placed alongside figures whose bigoted behavior is widely recognized, rather than celebrated. Allowing Fishback to continue without consequence only signals that antisemitic rhetoric is a winning strategy—a message that is dangerous for Florida and for America.

In an era when political correctness is too often dismissed, and vile, non-factual statements are met with laughter and applause, Fishback’s campaign is a warning. Big mouths and political opportunists must be held accountable. Silence is complicity, and the stakes are far too high for passivity.

As the Lakewood region endures record cold weather for an extended period of time, there have been many reported incidents of frozen and/or busted pipes, some resulting in flooding and extensive water damage.

The Lakewood Township Municipal Utilities Authority (MUA) and New Jersey American Water (NJAW) urge residents and property owners to take simple, precautionary measures to prevent frozen and busted pipes; and appropriately respond if these do occur. This will prevent an inestimable amount of stress and monetary loss:

• Maintain a warm temperature (minimum 55 degrees) indoors 24/7, even when no one is home.
• Identify any pipes or water lines in unheated areas (garage, exterior walls, basement, etc.) and wrap with insulation or heat tape.
• Leave faucets on in sinks (as well as tub spouts and showerheads, if possible) that are not going to be used on a regular basis, especially during freezing temperature conditions. Even a slight, consistent drip of water can prevent frozen pipes.
• Identify the water main shut-off valve inside your home, so that you can promptly access it if necessary.
• In the event of a frozen and/or busted pipe, immediately shut the main water shutoff valve inside your home; or, if possible, the shutoff valves that control the affected plumbing. Contact a professional plumber to safely restore functionality and/or repair damage.

“Running some drops of water and other cheap, easy solutions – now – can prevent thousands of dollars or more of damage later on,” says Justin Flancbaum, Executive Director of the MUA. “We thank our residents for their cooperation and proactivity during this rough winter season.”

“Frozen pipes are one of the most common — and most preventable — winter water emergencies,” explains Chelsea Kulp, Director of Communications and External Affairs for NJAW. “We’re grateful to Lakewood Township for helping guide residents on how to prevent damage and keep the water flowing all season.”

P.S. NJAW has provided a free printable tag for indoor main water shut off valves, so that they can be easily identified and operated when necessary.

photos: Achim Lanchevsky

What is being described as an “urgent asifah” will take place today at Bais Medrash Govoah in Lakewood, NJ to address the challenges posed by AI, or artificial intelligence.

Signs posted at the yeshiva call the gathering an “asifa nechutzah (urgent gathering) and kinnus chizuk.”

The gathering will be addressed by Rav Malkiel Kotler; Rav Dovid Breslauer, rosh kollel at Yeshivas Zichron Moshe of South Fallsburg; and Rav Efraim Glassman, menahel at Mesivta Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn.

The asifah is scheduled to take place at 6:15 p.m. at the Beren Dining Room of the yeshiva.

{Bais Medrash Govoah}

NEW YORK (VINnews/Rabbi Yair Hoffman) – Steven Spielberg, upon learning of Jan Zwartendijk’s story, reportedly said that had he known about this Dutch hero, he would have filmed his story instead of “Schindler’s List.” It is a remarkable statement, but the facts do bear the sentiment.

Jan Zwartendijk saved more Jewish lives than Oskar Schindler – yet for decades, the world knew almost nothing about him. The refugees he rescued knew him only by his nickname: “Mr. Philips Radio.”

He was the driving force behind getting the visas that saved the entire Mir Yeshiva, as well as so many others, from the Nazi beasts that roamed Europe and veritably destroyed European Jewry. Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l was also a recipient of one of these visas, though he was able to avoid Shanghai and travelled directly to America from Japan.

In the summer of 1940, during a frantic period of roughly two weeks, a Dutch businessman with no diplomatic training and no official authorization issued over 2,345 life-saving “visas” to Jewish refugees trapped in Lithuania – refugees who included the entire Mir Yeshiva, 79 rabbanim, 341 yeshiva students, and thousands of other Jews desperate to flee both Soviet and Nazi terror.

None of these visas were genuine.

None of their holders ever reached Curaçao, the Caribbean island listed as their supposed destination. And yet, approximately 95 percent of those who received a Zwartendijk visa survived the war.

This is one of the greatest rescue operations of the Holocaust – accomplished by a man who considered himself thoroughly ordinary, who never spoke of what he had done, and who went to his grave not knowing whether a single one of his refugees had survived.

Early Life and Background

Jan Zwartendijk was born on July 29, 1896, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He grew up in a middle-class Dutch Protestant family and received a solid education. He was not a man of grand ambitions nor ideological fervor.

His biographer, the celebrated Dutch author Jan Brokken, described him as a man who lacked personal ambition and was perplexed by abstract definitions of virtue – and yet, when the moment demanded it, he acted with a moral clarity that puts many of history’s great figures to shame.

Zwartendijk joined Philips, the Dutch electronics giant known worldwide for its radios and light bulbs, and rose through its ranks as a dependable company man. His career with Philips took him to various postings, including Hamburg, Germany, where during the 1930s he witnessed firsthand the deteriorating conditions for Jews under rising Nazi antisemitism.

This exposure to the cruelty of the Nazi regime left a deep impression on him and would later play a role in shaping his response when Jewish refugees came knocking at his door.

In 1939, Zwartendijk was appointed director of the Lithuanian branch of Philips, overseeing the company’s radio and lightbulb operations in Kaunas (Kovno), then the capital of Lithuania. His wife Erna and their two older children, Edith and Jan Jr., joined him in Kaunas  in May of 1939. A third child, Robert, was born in Kaunas in September 1939, just as the Second World War was erupting. The family settled into their new life, with Zwartendijk becoming known locally as “Ponas Radija” – “Mr. Radio” – for the Philips products he sold from his shop on Laisvės Alėja, Kaunas’s grand tree-lined boulevard.

The Storm Gathers: Historical Context

To appreciate the magnitude of Zwartendijk’s deed, one must understand the desperate conditions that prevailed in Lithuania in the summer of 1940.

In September 1939, the Nazis overran western Poland, while the Soviets occupied the eastern half. More than 10,000 Polish Jewish refugees fled eastward into Lithuania, which at the time was still a neutral country.

Among these refugees were thousands of rabbanim and yeshiva bochurim – the crème de la crème of Eastern European Torah scholarship. They included the talmidim and rebbeim of the Mir Yeshiva, the Telshe Yeshiva, and numerous other storied institutions of Torah learning. As the historian David Kranzler wrote, these refugees from Poland’s cultural centers “truly comprised an elite of East European Jewry, in all its partisan divisions.”

For roughly ten months, Kaunas functioned as a kind of “Casablanca of the North” – a nest of spies, diplomats, and refugees, a last free city in a region being swallowed by totalitarian powers. But this fragile freedom was shattered on June 15, 1940, when over 200,000 Soviet soldiers crossed into Lithuania and began incorporating it into the Soviet Union.

For the Jewish refugees, Soviet occupation was terrifying on multiple levels. The Communists would not permit the observance of religion and would actively persecute those who tried to maintain it.

The refugees sensed, correctly, that far worse was coming.

Lithuania was caught between two murderous regimes: the Soviets now, and the Nazis almost certainly in the near future. Indeed, in mid-1941, the Nazis would overrun Lithuania and begin the mass killing of its Jews. More than 90 percent of Lithuania’s 200,000 Jews would perish – the worst proportional loss in any European country during the Holocaust.

The refugees were trapped. Sweden, the only accessible neutral country in the region, refused to accept them. Most consulates in Kaunas were closing. Country after country had adopted strict immigration quotas designed specifically to limit Jewish immigration. Every possible avenue of escape seemed sealed. Rav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, the Rosh Yeshiva of Mir, expressed the anguish of the moment: “This is so horrible. The entire world is closed to us, and the storms raging over Europe are arriving here.”

On August 23, 1939, Russia and Germany had signed a secret protocol to their ten-year non-aggression pact, in which Russia would immediately invade the eastern part of Poland after the German invasion. Poland was to be split between the two countries. The aftershocks of this diabolical agreement rippled through every Jewish community caught between the two powers.

In 1939, after Sukkos, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky zt”l requested that all yeshivaleit come to the Vilna vicinity to take advantage of Vilna’s new independent status. Unbeknownst to all, this new status was part of a secret Russian plan, but the Mirrer Yeshiva took advantage of this and relocated to a small town in Vilna Province called Kehdan.

An Accidental Consul

On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. The Dutch government fled to London, establishing a government-in-exile. In the Baltic States, the Dutch Ambassador, L.P.J. de Decker, who was based in Riga, Latvia, promptly fired the official Dutch consul in Lithuania because of the pro-Nazi sympathies of the consul’s German wife.

De Decker needed a replacement – someone trustworthy, someone who was not a Nazi sympathizer. He turned to the reliable Philips director in Kaunas: Jan Zwartendijk.

Jan, known to be highly intelligent and responsible, was installed as acting consul to Lithuania, a part-time position he filled concurrently to his work running the Philips plant. He was officially appointed on June 14, 1940 – just one day before the Soviet invasion of Lithuania.

Zwartendijk had no diplomatic training whatsoever. He had no experience with consular affairs. He accepted the position expecting that his duties would be negligible – perhaps helping a handful of Dutch citizens with paperwork. He could not have imagined what his brief diplomatic career would bring.

There was a critical detail: the Netherlands and the Soviet Union did not have formal diplomatic relations. This meant that Zwartendijk, as Dutch consul, had no diplomatic immunity. If the Soviets disapproved of his activities, he could be arrested without any legal protection. He knew that if the authorities found out what he was doing, he could be killed without even a trial. The danger did not deter him. The risks became chillingly real when Zwartendijk’s own landlord – a Lithuanian professor of history – came to say farewell, together with his tearful wife and five-year-old daughter. They were being deported to Siberia on short notice, with nothing but a single small valise.

The Curaçao Visa Scheme: How It Began

The genesis of the Curaçao visa scheme involved several individuals whose quick thinking and persistence set the rescue in motion.

Pessla “Peppy” Lewin – Nat Lewin’s Mother Saves the Day

Pessla (Peppy) Sternheim was born in Amsterdam in 1911. An intelligent and cultured woman, she studied at the University of Berlin and spoke fluent Dutch and German. In the 1930s, she married Rabbi Dr. Isaac Lewin, a Polish citizen, and thereby lost her Dutch citizenship under the laws of the time. The couple settled in Lodz, Poland, where Dr. Lewin was elected to the city council. Their son Nathan was born in 1936. Nathan Lewin would grow up to become one of the most prominent constitutional lawyers in Washington, D.C., and his daughter Alyssa Lewin also became a prominent and respected lawyer.

When war broke out in September 1939, the Lewin family fled to Lithuania. But Peppy Lewin sensed that Lithuania was only a temporary haven. As a former Dutch citizen, she sought out the Dutch consul in Kovno, asking whether her family could travel to Java in the Dutch East Indies. Zwartendijk told her this was not possible. She then wrote directly to Ambassador de Decker in Riga, who confirmed that visas to the Dutch East Indies were no longer being issued.

But Peppy Lewin was not a woman who gave up easily.

She wrote to de Decker again, asking if he could simply note in her passport that visas to Curaçao and Surinam were “not necessary” – since technically, no visa was required for those Dutch Caribbean territories. She had no intention of actually going to Curaçao; she simply needed a document showing a destination. De Decker, in what would prove to be one of the most consequential decisions of the war, agreed. He wrote in her passport, in French: “The Consulate of the Netherlands, Riga, hereby declares that for the admission into Surinam, Curaçao, and other possessions of the Netherlands in the Americas, no entry visa is required.”

Critically, de Decker omitted the second half of the standard diplomatic text, which stated that “permission of the Governor of Curaçao is required” – permission that was almost never granted.

The notation was technically accurate but deliberately incomplete: it made it appear that the holder had a valid destination, when in reality Curaçao’s governor would almost certainly refuse entry. Zwartendijk promptly issued the same permit to Dr. Isaac Lewin. The Lewins did not have any way to reach Curaçao, and Jan connected them with another diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Lithuania. Sugihara stamped the Lewins’ permits with the words “TRANSIT VISA,” which enabled them to travel through Japan.

Nathan Gutwirth and the Expansion

Around the same time, a 23-year-old Dutch citizen named Nathan Gutwirth, who was studying at the Telshe Yeshiva in Lithuania, was also searching for an escape route. Gutwirth actually knew Zwartendijk personally; the two shared a common interest in Dutch football and would occasionally exchange newspapers and soccer reports. In Kovno, Reb Leizer Portnoy met this bochur from Telzhe who was a Dutch citizen. When Nosson wanted to escape to Holland, he was told by the Dutch consulate that he would be unable to go there, since the Nazis controlled most of Western Europe by now. Instead, he was told to go to the Caribbean island of Curaçao, which was a Dutch colony. One did not require a visa to enter, but permission from the governor was still required. Nosson, remarkably, had gotten the Dutch consulate to inscribe into his passport the words “no visa to Curaçao necessary.”

But Gutwirth did not think only of himself. He asked Zwartendijk if his non-Dutch friends – fellow yeshiva bochurim, Polish and Lithuanian Jews with no Dutch connection – could receive the same notation. Gutwirth then sought the advice of Zerach Warhaftig, the son of a talmid of Rav Chaim Volozhin, who had been a leader of the Mizrachi movement in Warsaw and would later become Israel’s longtime Minister of Religious Affairs. Warhaftig immediately grasped the magnitude of what was possible. He told Gutwirth to go back to Zwartendijk and ask if he would be willing to issue the notation to anyone who applied for it – and to add a consular stamp to make it look more official.

Gutwirth returned to Zwartendijk with this bold request. Zwartendijk took only a few minutes to consider. De Decker, he noted, had not set a limit on the number of visas to be issued. He would not set one either. Whoever wanted a Curaçao visa could have one.

Warhaftig, in touch with Mrs. Lewin, then approached Rav Laizer Yudel Finkel, who was in Keidan teaching his talmidim, and told him in demanding words that he and his entire yeshiva should escape. He told Rav Leizer Yudel that the Dutch diplomat in Kovno could help Jews leave the country. Warhaftig then spread the word throughout the refugee communities and traveled all over Lithuania to persuade skeptical refugees to obtain the visas and attempt the escape. The result was an explosion. Within hours, dozens of panic-stricken Jews were lined up outside Zwartendijk’s office. Within days, hundreds more were coming from Vilna and other cities. Soon hundreds of Jews were descending on Jan’s office. As Nathan Gutwirth recalled decades later with deep satisfaction in his old voice: “It was all a scam.”

Two Weeks That Saved Thousands

What followed was one of the most extraordinary episodes of the entire Holocaust.

Beginning around July 22, 1940, and continuing until August 3, when the Soviets closed all foreign consulates and embassies in Kaunas, Jan Zwartendijk worked at a furious pace issuing his Curaçao “visas.” At first, he wrote and signed each one by hand, inscribing the French text into each passport or travel document individually. In the first four days alone (July 24–27), he wrote approximately 1,300 visas entirely by hand.

Realizing he could not keep up with the overwhelming demand, Zwartendijk had a rubber stamp made bearing the text “No Visa to Curaçao Necessary.” With this stamp, the process accelerated dramatically. Over the next five working days (July 29–August 2), he issued at least another 1,050 visas. The highest-numbered surviving visa known is No. 2,345, issued on August 2 to Eliasz Kupinski and his family.

Long lines of desperate refugees stood outside his office on Laisvės Alėja. Zwartendijk’s “real” work for Philips had already ground to a halt – the Soviets had nationalized banks and commercial activities were at a standstill. He devoted himself entirely to the visa operation. He knew perfectly well that the visas were a fiction. He knew that the Governor of Curaçao would almost certainly refuse entry to anyone who actually showed up. But the visas were not meant to get anyone to the Caribbean. They were meant to provide a piece of paper – a “destination visa” – that could serve as the key to obtaining the next piece of paper in an improvised chain of documents that might just lead to freedom.

According to accounts from the Philips Museum in Eindhoven, Zwartendijk even continued issuing visas secretly after the Soviets officially closed his consulate on August 3 – putting his own life at additional risk.

The Sugihara Connection: An Unplanned Partnership

The Curaçao visas alone were not sufficient for escape. The only feasible route out of Soviet-occupied Lithuania led eastward: across the vast expanse of the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, and from there by ship to Japan. For this route to work, the refugees needed two additional documents: a transit visa from the Japanese consul, and an exit visa from the Soviet authorities.

This is where Chiune Sugihara enters the story. Sugihara was the Japanese consul in Kaunas, a career intelligence officer who spoke fluent Russian and had been stationed there to monitor German and Soviet military activity. When refugees began appearing at his door bearing Zwartendijk’s Curaçao visas and requesting Japanese transit visas, Sugihara cabled Tokyo for authorization. Tokyo denied the request. Sugihara decided to disobey.

In a remarkable coincidence, two men who had never met and had no prior coordination found themselves working as an unplanned, unofficial team. Zwartendijk issued the “destination visas”; Sugihara issued the transit visas. They worked at top speed, each in his own office. According to some sources, they spoke on the telephone only once – when Sugihara called Zwartendijk to ask him to slow down, because Sugihara, who had to write each transit visa by hand, could not keep up with Zwartendijk’s pace.

Reb Moshe Zupnik zt”l: The Bochur Who Stamped the Visas

One of the most heroic people who took part in this amazing story of Hashgacha Pratis was Reb Moshe Zupnik (1918–2010) zt”l. His role in the rescue operation has never received the attention it deserves.

From Germany to Baranovitch to Mir

Rav Avrohom Menachem Zupnik, Reb Moshe’s father, was a Boyaner chassid and a businessman in Germany. He had three sons who all went from Germany to Lithuania and Poland to study Torah. They were what can be called “Auslanders,” and the yeshivos accommodated them greatly.

In 1933, Reb Moshe left home at the age of 15 to study with Rav Elchonon Wasserman hy”d in Yeshiva Ohel Torah in Baranovitch. It was located in the second republic of Poland – newly independent from Russia. Originally, the yeshiva was established in 1906 by the Alter of Novardok, Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz zt”l, but after the disarray of World War One it was left without a Rosh Yeshiva. The Chofetz Chaim instructed his talmid, Rav Elchonon Wasserman zt”l, to become its Rosh Yeshiva.

Reb Moshe carried with him a letter of recommendation from a talmid chochom in Frankfurt, Rav Ben Tzion Greenfus zt”l. The letter stated: “I am sending you a bochur from Germany to learn in your yeshiva. Place him in proper lodging, amongst good bochurim, and please look after him.” Rav Elchonon personally went outside, crossed the street, and made sure to personally find him suitable lodging. Reb Moshe’s einekel related that Reb Moshe even remembered how Rav Elchonon climbed up a plank of wood for him. Reb Moshe always considered Rav Elchonon to be his rebbi. A picture of Rav Elchonon was always prominently displayed in the Zupnik dining room.

Reb Moshe zt”l recalled that at the chanukas habayis of the yeshiva’s new dining room, Rav Elchonon, beaming, gave a piece of cake and a drink to each bochur, and said with warmth: “Ersht ah mezonos, un noch dem a shehakol” (“First a mezonos and then a shehakol”).

In early 1936, Reb Moshe went on to learn in the Mirrer Yeshiva. He heard Mussar from Rav Yeruchem Levovitz, and after Rav Yeruchem’s passing on the 18th of Sivan 5696 (June 8, 1936), became very close to Rav Chatzkel Levenstein zt”l, the new Mashgiach. He also heard shiurim from Rav Laizer Yudel, the Mir Rosh Yeshiva and son of the Alter of Slabodka. These shiurim were written up later by his grandson-in-law, Rav Nachum Partzovitz zt”l, in a two-volume sefer entitled Divrei Eliezer. Reb Moshe had a very close relationship with the Mashgiach, Rav Chatzkel, first in Mir and then in Shanghai.

Rav Chatzkel had a daughter, Yocheved, who required medical attention, and Reb Moshe’s fluency in German helped significantly with the doctors. Through this involvement, he became a ben bayis by Rav Chatzkel and even had the privilege of being his guest for the Pesach sedorim in Shanghai.

Return to Germany and the Gathering Storm

In 1938, five years after the rise of Hitler yimach shmo, a 20-year-old Reb Moshe returned from the Mir to help his parents and sister in Germany. Then on October 27, 1938, all Jewish Polish citizens were thrown out of Germany with few possessions and were now in Poland in dire need of sustenance. The German Foreign Ministry had handed over the whole affair to the Gestapo, who started forcibly deporting Polish Jews over the Polish border. In all, approximately 17,000 people were expelled in this way. The Polish authorities refused to accept them, and so most of them had to live for many long weeks in no man’s land or the Polish border area. This was the event that precipitated Hershel Grynspan’s shooting of a German diplomat – which “inspired” the events of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938.

Finally, the Polish authorities permitted the arrival of the family members of Jews expelled at the end of October 1938. Fortunately, a mechutan of the Zupnik family agreed to support the family if Reb Moshe would go around selling his goods. Reb Moshe then found himself in Eastern Poland, separated from his family, when Germany invaded at the start of World War II on September 1, 1939.

Shortly after this, Reb Moshe “chanced” upon Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel, who told him that since he was stuck on the Russian side of Poland and was unable to help his parents, he should return to Mir to learn in the meantime. It was all, of course, part of Hashem’s plan.

Reb Moshe at the Japanese Consulate

Upon hearing about the Curaçao visa scheme, Rav Leib Malin, the future Rosh Yeshiva of Beis HaTalmud, sent five bochurim, among them Reb Moshe, to obtain the Curaçao stamps for everyone in the yeshiva. Reb Moshe related that he heard the consulate staff laughing and saying, “We can’t even get out of here ourselves and they think that they will get out,” but they gave it to them nonetheless.

Rav Leib then decided to send Reb Moshe, whom he believed was well suited, to apply for Japanese transit visas. Due to the war conditions, only one bochur, Rav Binyomin Zeilberger zt”l (1921–2005) – a fellow “Auslander” from Germany and also a future Rosh Yeshiva of Beis HaTalmud – had a presentable suit. Reb Moshe borrowed it.

After failing to gain entry on the first day, he went back with Yaakov Ederman, who spoke Polish, and got in by bribing the Polish doorman. As per standard procedure, he approached the secretary, a German national by the name of Wolfgang Gudze. Reb Moshe requested 300 transit visas to get to Curaçao. Gudze replied, bemusedly, “The consul has issued visas to some individuals, but will never consent to issue for an entire community, especially here in Russia. You can’t make it out. It’s impossible.”

Not taking no for an answer, Reb Moshe asked to see the consul himself, Chiune Sugihara. After his unusual request was granted, he repeated his request, stating that he was a representative of the Mirrer Yeshiva. Sugihara was astonished. He wanted to know why he should grant them these visas without knowing if they would really leave Japan for Curaçao and how. “It’s wartime,” he said. “How will you get money and ships?”

Reb Moshe would later recount that he dared to say the things he said only because he was youthful and spontaneous. He replied, “We have an office in the United States run by Rabbi Kalmanowitz, and he assured us money and ships when we get to Japan. So, don’t worry about it. We just want to go through Japan.” Sugihara looked at Reb Moshe and said, “Show me proof.”

At a loss, Reb Moshe said to him, “We are rabbinical students, enemies of the Russian government. We don’t believe in communism. Because of this, everything we do is done in secrecy and all communication with Rabbi Kalmanowitz is in codes and therefore useless proof. Rest assured, we will leave Japan within two weeks.”

With tremendous siyata diShmaya, the consul agreed to the request. However, he only agreed for the visa to explicitly state that it was for the purpose of traveling to Curaçao. He therefore needed a second stamp stating this.

Lucky Strikes and a Nazi Secretary

It took a few days to make the new rubber stamp. In the meantime, people started lining up in front of the consulate. Upon Reb Moshe’s return to the consulate, he heard the consul’s secretary, Lithuanian-born German and Hitler admirer Wolfgang Gudze, complaining about the enormous workload from the three hundred passports, and by now, the many more at the door. At that point, Reb Moshe approached Gudze and said, “You know what? I will help you.” Gudze, taken aback, conferred with Sugihara and said, “He wants to help me!” Sugihara looked at Reb Moshe, then told Gudze, “Let him help you.”

That is how Reb Moshe came to sit in the consulate every day for the next two weeks, processing these visas together with a German secretary. Here we had a young Mir Yeshiva student who was allowed to join the consular staff, together with a German, without them having any prior knowledge about him, basically for the task of saving Jewish lives. Over two thousand Yidden came to bring their passports to Reb Moshe to stamp and process, and they actually passed them to him through the window. Among these were many chashuvim, including the Amshinover Rebbe and many yeshiva bochurim from numerous yeshivos besides the Mir.

Reb Moshe related that the German told him he was a Nazi who was loyal to “the Fuehrer” and agreed with his philosophy of world domination. The one thing that he disagreed with him about, he said, was the Jews. He once had a Jewish acquaintance and the Jews in her neighborhood in Kovno had made a good impression on him, especially the Orthodox Jews. Every day during those two weeks, for good will, Reb Moshe brought a pack of cigarettes to Wolfgang Gudze.

With pressure from the Russians, this last remaining consulate closed its doors after those fateful two weeks during which they were still stamping visas. Parting from this secretary, Reb Moshe asked, “How can I thank you?” The secretary replied, “You don’t have to thank me, but I do want to say this: The world is a rad – a wheel. Today Hitler’s on top, tomorrow he might be down. Don’t forget what I did for you.” After that, Gudze said that he was going to Germany to fight for the Fatherland. Reb Moshe looked for him after the war, but could not find him.

Opposition, and Rav Chatzkel’s Response

During those two weeks, the Russians threw the Mirrer Yeshiva out of Kehdan and split it up into four different towns. When Reb Moshe returned with the visas, not everyone was happy about it. There was much opposition to these provocations. It was preferred to mollify the Russians and stay alive. The sentiment of the olam was, categorically, that this was a radical plan. Prominent people even let Reb Moshe know that they felt that the trouble they were facing from the Russians was a direct result of his visas.

Faced with such strong opposition, Reb Moshe, totally flustered, ran to the Mashgiach, Rav Chatzkel. “What should I do? Should I stop what I’m doing?” he asked. Rav Chatzkel said that since his daughter was sick and it would be very hard for him to travel, he therefore has negios and cannot pasken.

He then came upon two of his friends, Rav Simcha Scheps (1908–1998) and Rav Henach Fishman. After explaining his predicament, Rav Simcha grabbed him by the arm and said, “Ven mefanket un a zach endeked men” (“One should finish what he began”). Reb Moshe continued his precious work.

The Forty Extra Passports

There were forty bochurim who didn’t take the visas, so Reb Moshe held onto them at great personal risk. Years later, a grandson of Reb Moshe, who was close to Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, was told by Rav Shmuel that he had special hakoras hatov to his grandfather. It turned out that Rav Shmuel, along with Rav Shmuel Brudny and Rav Nochum Partzovitz, was among those 40 bochurim. In fact, one night, Reb Moshe got a tip that the NKVD might be raiding. A friend said to him, “Are you crazy? Do you know what can happen to you if you get caught with forty passports?” Reb Moshe refused to listen and convinced his friend, Rav Feivel Hollander, to take the passports for a week.

Blank Visas in Sugihara’s Drawer

One amazing episode was first revealed only after Reb Moshe’s passing. Rav Shaya Shimanowitz, a former talmid of the Mir who was learning in the Kovno Kollel, was faced with a serious problem. He had visas for himself and his wife, but not for his baby daughter. They were already resigned to the fact that they would have to stay in Kovno, because the Japanese consulate was already closed. When Reb Moshe heard about this, he said to Rav Shaya, “Let’s go to the consulate together and see what we can do.”

Arriving at the consulate to find the place empty and all packed up, Rav Shaya didn’t think there was anything that could be done. Reb Moshe was not ready to give up and said that he would go inside and see what he could do. Rav Shaya said to him, “Mach zich nisht nurish. There’s nothing left to do.” Reb Moshe insisted, “I know the place. I am going in to see.”

Rummaging through the drawers of Sugihara’s office, he found ten blank visas containing the Dutch Curaçao stamp on them. He filled them out and stamped them all with the proper stamps which he also found in that drawer. One of those visas was used for Rav Shaya’s baby, and eight more were subsequently used to save other desperate Yidden. This story was related to the Zupnik family by the Shimanowitzes at the shivah. This was yet another example of how Reb Moshe never publicized his gallant actions.

The Escape Route: From Kovno to Kobe

Despite all this, these Japanese transit visas and the Curaçao stamp were as of yet totally worthless, because the Russians would not let anyone leave. It would be three more months before something happened. The Soviets, for some unfathomable reason, announced that any foreign citizen who had a visa – something that was illegal until then – could leave.

The audacity of the Russians was such that the fee for the journey on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which would take them across the entire USSR to the east coast near Japan, had to be paid for in American dollars – which were also illegal to possess. One had to purchase tickets from the corresponding government agency, since the railroad was constructed by the Soviets, ostensibly for tourists. So by going to the agency to buy tickets, they would, in effect, be registering their emigration with the government. The fact that they had to do so with illegal money made them highly suspicious.

With the help of Rav Avrohom Kalmanowitz zt”l, Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l, Reb Shraga Feivel Mendelevitch a”h, and Mr. Irving Bunim a”h, money was sent from America. The tickets were purchased! The bochurim were in constant fear that the entire trip was some diabolical trick or trap by the Russians.

Once in Vladivostok, they managed, with difficulty, to secure ships to Japan. In Kobe, Japan, they found adequate lodgings and even a bais medrash, with the help of a tiny Sefardic community some twenty-five years old, and they stayed there for the next eight months. Early on, they found out that they weren’t going to Curaçao after all. The governor had no intention of letting in Jews.

More than half of the refugees managed to travel onward from Japan to the United States, Palestine, and other safe destinations before December 7, 1941, when Japan entered the war. The Japanese, not knowing what to do with the remaining refugees, then sent them to the international section of the city of Shanghai, China. There, in difficult but livable conditions, they survived the war.

A Frightening Proof of the Visa’s Power

A frightening episode in March 1941 demonstrated just how critical Zwartendijk’s visa was. That month, 74 refugees arrived at the Japanese port of Tsuruga holding Sugihara transit visas but no Zwartendijk destination visas. They were refused entry into Japan and sent back to the Soviet Union, where they faced almost certain deportation to a Gulag labor camp.

Nathan Gutwirth, who had been in Japan since December 1940, heard about the disaster. He immediately contacted Niek de Voogd, the Dutch consul in Kobe, and persuaded him to issue Curaçao visas for all 74 stranded refugees. It worked. They were allowed to return from Vladivostok and enter Japan. Without the Curaçao visa – without the fiction that Jan Zwartendijk had created – these 74 souls would have vanished into the Soviet labor camp system.

Return to Holland and a Lifetime of Silence

When the Soviets closed the Dutch consulate and nationalized the Philips office in early August 1940, Zwartendijk knew it was time to leave. Before departing, he destroyed the consulate archives – a prudent act, since any record of his visa-issuing activities could have endangered both him and the refugees.

Zwartendijk returned with his family to the German-occupied Netherlands in September 1940. The reasons for secrecy were obvious: any revelation of his activities could have led to his arrest by the Nazis. He resumed work at Philips’ headquarters in Eindhoven and, for four years, lived in constant fear that the Nazis would discover what he had done in Lithuania.

But even after the war ended, Zwartendijk never spoke about his rescue work. He lived quietly in Eindhoven, working at Philips until his retirement. His children knew almost nothing about what he had done. He did not consider himself a hero. He truly believed that any person in his position would have done the same thing. “Do what you think is right and then keep quiet,” was the principle he lived by. His biographer Jan Brokken, who searched extensively for political or religious motivations, found none. Zwartendijk was simply a decent man with a strong sense of right and wrong who believed that when strangers knock at your door and are in danger, you must help them.

What tormented Zwartendijk was not what he had done, but what he did not know. For decades, he was haunted by uncertainty about the fate of the thousands of people to whom he had issued his visas. His son Jan Jr. believed his father feared that most of the refugees had perished – that he had unknowingly sent them to their deaths in Siberia. “He must have thought that most of these people perished,” Jan Jr. later said. “He must have been worried that he sent them to their deaths.”

Many of the Jews saved by Jan Zwartendijk never learned their rescuer’s name; they knew him only as “Mr. Philips Radio.” After decades of searching, they finally identified Jan as their savior.

A Hero Reprimanded

In 1964, a newspaper report surfaced about the mysterious “Angel of Curaçao” who had saved Jews during the war. Rather than receiving praise, Zwartendijk was called in by Joseph Luns, then the Dutch Foreign Minister (who would later become the head of NATO), and given a dressing-down for having “broken consular rules” by issuing unauthorized visas. After the war, he was reprimanded by Minister Luns for falsifying visas – to enter Curaçao one needed permission from the governor, and Zwartendijk had cleverly omitted that phrase. The ministry also intervened to prevent Zwartendijk from being knighted for his distinguished career at Philips, apparently in retaliation for his wartime actions.

Zwartendijk was deeply offended by this treatment. His biographer Jan Brokken suggests that Zwartendijk’s heroism may have shamed his contemporaries in the Dutch government, many of whom had done nothing to help Jews during the war. Brokken wrote that Zwartendijk had been “optimistic with an open mind, but after that moment, he was a troubled figure. He had trauma.”

As Dutch lawmaker Sjoerd Sjoerdsma would later put it: “Jan Zwartendijk deserved a statue, not a reprimand.”

A Heartbreaking Irony

On September 14, 1976, Jan Zwartendijk passed away in Eindhoven. He was 80 years old. He went to his death without ever learning the answer to the question that had haunted him for 36 years.

A few days later, as his coffin was being carried out of the house, a letter arrived. It was from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the Holocaust Research Centre. According to their research, 95 percent of the Jewish refugees who had received visas from Zwartendijk in Kovno had survived the war.

He never got to read it.

The letter confirmed that among those rescued were 79 rabbanim and 341 yeshiva students, including the entire Mir Yeshiva. The names of at least 3,080 survivors were known. The Wiesenthal Centre calculated that at least 6,000 Jews had been saved thanks to Zwartendijk’s visas. Jan Brokken estimates the total may have been as high as 10,000 when family members and those who used copied or forged visas are included.

Posthumous Recognition – A Long Road to Honor

Recognition came slowly for Zwartendijk, but eventually it came in abundance.

In 1996, Boys Town Jerusalem honored Zwartendijk at a tribute dinner in New York City and established the Jan Zwartendijk Award for Humanitarian Ethics and Values. In 1997, Yad Vashem posthumously recognized him as Righteous Among the Nations. That same year, the city of Albany, New York, erected a plaque honoring him in Raoul Wallenberg Park.

In September 2012, Lithuania awarded Zwartendijk the Life Saving Cross of the Republic of Lithuania. In June 2018, in a deeply moving ceremony, a striking memorial was unveiled on Laisvės Alėja in Kaunas – the very boulevard where Zwartendijk had issued his visas. The memorial, consisting of approximately 2,000 LED rods connected into a seven-meter-diameter spiral, symbolizes the lives he saved. The unveiling was attended by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė. “I am very proud to light the installation for the silent hero who had never boasted that he saved people,” Grybauskaitė said.

Zwartendijk’s son Rob, who attended the ceremony, said his father never spoke about his role in saving Jews, insisting that his actions were “not special.” At the ceremony, Rob and his wife Edith sat together with Marcel Weijland, a Holocaust survivor who had been just twelve years old when his family received their life-saving visa from Zwartendijk. They held hands, and the deep gratitude between them was palpable.

Also in 2018, Jan Brokken published his landmark biography, “De Rechtvaardigen” (“The Just”), which was later translated into English and multiple other languages. The book prompted the Dutch government to issue a formal apology to the Zwartendijk family, with Foreign Minister Stef Blok calling the 1964 reprimand “completely inappropriate” and praising Zwartendijk’s “brave behavior.”

In 2022, another monument – “Loom Light,” created by artist Titia Ex – was unveiled in Eindhoven. And on September 14, 2023, exactly 47 years after Zwartendijk’s death, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte posthumously awarded him the Medal for Acts of Humanity in Gold (Erepenning voor Menslievend Hulpbetoon), the highest non-military honor the Netherlands can bestow. The medal was presented to Zwartendijk’s two surviving children: Edith, then 96 years old, and Rob, then 85. Their eldest brother, Jan Jr., had already passed away.

Rav Chatzkel’s Tribute

It wasn’t until after the war that people were fully able to appreciate what had transpired. At that point, all began to acknowledge the great neis of the Sugihara–Curaçao visas, and Reb Moshe’s role in it.

This is evident from the following encounter that Rav Menachem Zupnik had with Rav Chatzkel Levenstein in Eretz Yisroel in 1969. After asking him his name, Rav Chatzkel looked at him and said: “Du vaist, mir zenen em alleh shuldig” – “You should know, all of us are indebted to Reb Moshe.”

Shortly after arriving in America in San Francisco aboard the General M.C. Meigs on July 18, 1946, Reb Moshe married his aishes chayil, Chana Meyer. He studied in Beis HaTalmud and afterward went into business. She was his life partner and made it possible for him to lead the Torahdike life that he chose. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen on March 10, 1953. The levaya in America was held in his yeshiva, Bais HaTalmud, and in Eretz Yisroel at the Mir in Yerushalayim.

Lessons and Legacy

The Zwartendijk story offers lessons that resonate deeply within Torah Judaism.

The Talmud teaches (Sanhedrin 37a) that whoever saves a single life, it is as if he has saved an entire world. Jan Zwartendijk saved not one life but thousands – and among them, the bearers of Torah learning whose descendants fill the batei midrash of Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Lakewood, and communities across the globe. The Mir Yeshiva that survived because of Zwartendijk’s visas has produced generations of talmidei chachamim, roshei yeshiva, and poskim. The ripple effect of his actions is incalculable.

There is also a profound lesson in the nature of Zwartendijk’s heroism. He was not a soldier or a spy. He was not a man of wealth or political power. He was a radio salesman from Rotterdam who happened to be in the right place at the right time – and who, when the moment came, chose to act. He had no master plan, no prior experience with rescue operations. He made a snap decision based on simple human decency: that when desperate people come to your door, you help them.

Jan Brokken, who spent years researching Zwartendijk’s life, found no grand ideology behind the decision. “He truly believed that every human being who had the possibility to do what he did would do the same thing,” Brokken wrote. “You and I know that isn’t true, but he believed it.”

And then there is Reb Moshe Zupnik zt”l – the young bochur in a borrowed suit who talked his way into a consulate, sat side by side with a Nazi secretary, and stamped the visas that saved an entire yeshiva. His story is a reminder that Hashgacha Pratis works through human beings – through their courage, their chutzpah, and their refusal to accept that nothing can be done.

Hakaras ha’tov – gratitude – demands that we remember the righteous gentiles who risked their own safety to help Klal Yisrael in its darkest hour, and the heroes within our own ranks who seized opportunities that others dismissed as impossible.

Jan Zwartendijk, the Angel of Curaçao, “Mr. Philips Radio,” deserves to be counted among the greatest of the righteous. And Reb Moshe Zupnik, the bochur who would not take no for an answer, deserves to be remembered as one of the unsung heroes of the Mir’s survival. Their stories should be told and retold, not only as a historical record but as a testament to what one person of conscience can accomplish in a world gone mad.

Jan Zwartendijk passed away without ever knowing what became of the people he saved. But his children know. His grandchildren know. And now, thanks to growing awareness of his story, the world is beginning to know as well. The letter that arrived the day his coffin was carried out of the house contained the most powerful eulogy ever written for the humble businessman from Rotterdam: 95 percent of them survived.

Yehi zichram baruch.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The Jewish woman who, as a teenager, refused to give Adolf Hitler flowers at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany has died at the age of 102.

Yocheved Gold managed to enter Berlin’s Olympic Stadium in August 1936 to watch the opening ceremony. Then 13 years old and appearing outwardly “German,” she was asked to join a procession of children presenting flowers to Hitler, who had been appointed Chancellor of Germany three years earlier.

“I saw him face to face and was a little afraid,” she recalled later in life. “That I, a Jewish girl, should give Hitler flowers? I refused.”

By the time of the 1936 Olympics, Germany under Hitler had already implemented a broad system of legal discrimination against Jews, effectively excluding them from public life.

With the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Jews were stripped of German citizenship, barred from most professions, and socially and economically isolated.

Gold was born in the town of Halberstadt in central Germany in 1923. Her father, the esteemed rabbi Dr. Aharon Neuwirth, served as a rabbi and halachic authority in the communities of Mainz, Halberstadt, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Her mother was Sarah Chaya.

In 1938, when Gold was about 15, she witnessed the destruction of synagogues during Kristallnacht. At age 16, she fled to Haifa in Mandatory Palestine, while her parents remained in Europe.

She managed to maintain correspondence with her parents until the last year of the war, when their letters suddenly stopped. “I was sure they had been killed,” she said. Surprisingly, however, her parents survived both the war and the Holocaust.

According to Gold’s own testimony in interviews and in the book Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah, written by her brother Rabbi Yehoshua Neuwirth, her parents were saved through a series of unusual events.

One such incident occurred when her righteous father went to a pharmacy for treatment, but because it was Shabbat he refrained from taking the medication that night. According to the account in the book, the substance later turned out to be rat poison.

Her brother, Rabbi Yehoshua Yeshaya Neuwirth, head of Yeshivat Chochmat Shlomo, passed away in 2013. He is widely known for his halachic work Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah, a major guide to the laws of Shabbat and festivals that addresses many modern-era issues.

Another brother, Rabbi Reuven Yosef Raphael Neuwirth, who ran one of the most well-known free-loan funds in the Haredi world, passed away at the age of 94 about nine months ago.

Gold lived the rest of her life in Israel. She was among the founding members of Kibbutz Sa’ad, near the Gaza border. She married one of the kibbutz founders, Shmuel Gold, in 1942; he died in 1961 at just 40 years old.

She worked on the kibbutz for decades, holding various organizational and administrative roles before being appointed the kibbutz nurse, despite having no formal medical training. She served in that role for about four decades before retiring at age 69.

Remarkably, she survived all of Israel’s wars since the state’s founding, including the War of Independence and the Gaza war. On October 7, 2023, she spent 30 hours in a safe room with her son. She was later evacuated to a hotel near the Dead Sea but insisted on returning to her beloved community.

“I’m not prepared to die in a hotel,” she told her family. “Take me home. If I die, I’ll die there.” She returned to Sa’ad at age 100, and last month passed away at 102. She is survived by children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits jumped last week but remains in the same historically low range of the past few years.

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

The four-week average of jobless claims, which balances out some of the week-to-week gyrations, rose by 6,000 to 212,250.

The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the previous week ending Jan. 24 grew by 25,000 to 1.84 million, the government said.

Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that President Donald Trump is maintaining flexibility in dealing with Iran, including the possibility of military action if diplomatic efforts do not succeed.

In an interview with Megyn Kelly on SiriusXM, Vance said the president alone will determine the next steps in confronting Tehran, noting that Trump “will ultimately decide how we handle this particular Iranian situation, just like he decided on Operation Midnight Hammer.”

Vance said Trump’s position on Iran’s nuclear ambitions has remained unchanged for years, emphasizing that the president has repeatedly drawn a firm line against Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons. “What he has been very clear on, if you go back to 2015, 2016, 2021, 2025, the President has said consistently we can’t let these people have a nuclear weapon. Now, why? Why does that matter to America? Number one, [Iran is] the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Vance said.

He warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would dramatically raise the stakes for global security, arguing that such a development would increase the risk of catastrophic attacks and spark a regional arms race. “You think it’s bad when we have a domestic terror attack where a couple of people die, and you’re right. What happens when the same people who are shooting up a mall or driving airplanes into buildings have a nuclear weapon? That is unacceptable. And it’s not just them, because if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, you know who gets a nuclear weapon the next day? The Saudi Arabians. And then somebody else in the Gulf Arab state. And so you have nuclear proliferation on a global scale. The biggest threat to security in the world is a lot of people having nuclear weapons. So what the president has said is Iran’s not going to get a nuclear weapon,” the Vice President stated.

Vance reiterated that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is a central pillar of the administration’s policy, while acknowledging criticism from both sides of the political spectrum over Trump’s tone and tactics. “Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. That is the stated policy goal of the president of the United States. It’s so funny. Sometimes you have people who are saying, ‘Well, the president’s too belligerent.’ And then sometimes you have people who say, ‘Well, the president, he’s talking about diplomacy and he’s talking about negotiating with the Iranians. We shouldn’t negotiate. We should just bomb them.’”

Describing how Trump approaches foreign policy decisions, Vance said the president prefers to exhaust non-military avenues before turning to force, but will not rule out any option. “What the president’s going to do is he’s going to keep his options open. He’s going to talk to everybody. He’s going to try to accomplish what he can through non-military means. And if he feels like the military is the only option, then he’s ultimately going to choose that option.”

{Matzav.com}

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter responding to assist officers with an active shooter situation crashed, killing both the pilot and a trooper who was a paramedic on board, authorities said.

A Ranger helicopter crew responded to assist the Flagstaff Police Department and other law enforcement agencies on Wednesday night, Sgt. Kameron Lee of the department said in a statement.

“Tragically, during the incident, the helicopter crashed, killing both the pilot and the trooper/paramedic on board,” Lee said.

Two Arizona Department of Public Safety crew members died Wednesday evening when their helicopter crashed while providing air support during an active shooter incident in Flagstaff. https://t.co/vP7wT5VSQg pic.twitter.com/7ATmfgRGw8

— ABC15 Arizona (@abc15) February 5, 2026

The names of the trooper and pilot have not been released.

The Bell 407 helicopter crashed near Flagstaff about 10:15 p.m. and there was a fire afterward, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. A search of the registration number showed the helicopter was manufactured in 2004.

KTVK-TV showed a map indicating that the crash happened northeast of the shooting scene.

The FAA said it will assist the National Transportation Safety Board in the crash investigation. An email seeking information was sent to the NTSB early Thursday.

The state Department of Public Safety’s Air Rescue Unit is trained for various high-risk situations, including mountain and water rescues.

The suspect in the shooting suffered non-fatal gunshot wounds and was taken into custody, Lee said. No one else was injured.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer apologized Thursday to victims of Jeffrey Epstein for appointing Peter Mandelson as the U.K.’s ambassador to Washington despite his ties to the disgraced financier.

The prime minister said Mandelson had lied and “portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew.”

To the victims, he said: “I am sorry, sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him and sorry that even now you’re forced to watch this story unfold in public once again.”

Starmer appointed Mandelson, a veteran politician, as ambassador to the U.S. in 2024. The prime minister fired him in September after emails were published showing that he maintained a friendship with Epstein following the late financier’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses involving a minor. Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019, while awaiting trial on U.S. federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing dozens of girls.

Starmer never met Epstein and is not accused of any wrongdoing. But the prime minister is under intense pressure over the appointment after newly released documents revealed fresh details of Mandelson’s close relationship with Epstein.

“I was lied to,” Starmer said. “It had been publicly known for some time that Mandelson knew Epstein, but none of us knew the depth and the darkness of that relationship.”

British police are investigating Mandelson over potential misconduct in public office. He is not accused of any sexual offenses.

Documents published last week by the U.S. Department of Justice contain new revelations, including papers suggesting Mandelson shared sensitive government information with Epstein after the 2008 global financial crisis. There are also scores of chatty, jokey messages pointing to a much closer relationship than Mandelson had previously disclosed.

The newly released files also suggest that in 2003 to 2004, Epstein sent three payments totaling $75,000 to accounts linked to Mandelson or his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva, now his husband.

Mandelson, 72, has been a major, and contentious, figure in the Labour Party since the 1990s. He twice had to resign from senior posts in previous administrations because of scandals over money or ethics.

He was chosen as ambassador because his trade expertise, network of contents and mastery of the political “dark arts” were considered assets in dealing with President Donald Trump’s administration.

Critics say Mandelson’s ties with Epstein made his appointment too risky and Starmer was, at best, naive.

“I think the prime minister has shown that his judgment is questionable,” Labour lawmaker Paula Barker said. “I think he has questions to answer. I think he has a very long way to go to rebuild trust and confidence with the public, and trust and confidence within our party.”

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Carnegie Mellon University’s relationship with Qatar has come under scrutiny in a federal lawsuit, according to a report by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.

Qatar’s financial contributions to the university have been spotlighted as part of a 2023 lawsuit filed by Yael Canaan, a former CMU School of Architecture student who is alleging that she was subjected to “pervasive anti-Jewish discrimination” during her time at the university. Canaan claims that at least some of that discrimination is related to the school’s relationship with Qatar. A federal judge has now averred that the Middle Eastern nation may be exerting influence on the university.

In a 30-page opinion issued in December, United States District Judge W. Scott Hardy wrote that “Qatar and its affiliates could be a source of antisemitic influence upon CMU. Indeed, the largess of Qatari funds supplied to CMU may permit a reasonable juror to infer, in light of logic and common experience, that significant amounts of money and the reliance on such funds serves to motivate CMU to abide by expectations and wishes of its generous donors.”

CMU receives the third highest amount of foreign investment of all U.S. universities — more than $2.9 billion annually — surpassed only by Harvard and Cornell, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Gift and Contract Public Transparency Dashboard.

Qatar invests the most money of all foreign countries in American universities, nearly $6.6 billion. CMU, the lawsuit alleges, has received more than $5.9 billion between the years 2004 to 2019 and has a campus in Doha, Qatar.

The lawsuit alleges that an agreement between the university and Qatar limits CMU’s “full operational control” and requires it to “recruit at least two-thirds of the Doha faculty from CMU’s Main Campus to serve in Qatar for terms of at least three consecutive years.”

Canaan’s case centers around School of Architecture professor and associate head for design fundamentals, Mary-Lou Arscott, who, the lawsuit alleges, spent professional time in Qatar, although the suit doesn’t specify if Arscott was at CMU’s Doha campus.

The alleged abuse began when Arscott purportedly denied Canaan a homework assignment extension so she could attend an Oct. 29, 2018, memorial service for the victims of the Oct. 27 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

The complaint further alleges that in 2022, Arscott commented on a project Canaan was working on, saying it looked like the wall Israel uses “to barricade Palestinians out of Israel.” The professor, Canaan contends, told the student that she should focus on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”

Canaan claims she reported Arscott’s behavior to her studio professor, who told her not to worry because Arscott wouldn’t be grading her.

According to the complaint, Arscott sent Canaan a link to a “violently antisemitic blog,” called The Funambulist, and copied Elizabeth Rosemeyer, CMU’s chief diversity officer and the vice provost of diversity, equity and inclusion and Title IX coordinator, on the email.

When Canaan complained, she said, other professors turned on the student, telling her to stop “acting like a victim” and that they would not “be an advocate for the Jews.”

The lawsuit details the reports Canaan allegedly made to various school administrators, who either ignored her pleas, failed to take any action to protect her or punish her abusers, or in the case of Rosemeyer, “aggressively discouraged Canaan from filing a formal complaint which would have triggered an investigation of Arscott, the DEI’s failure to address the misconduct and the systematic culture of antisemitism.”

As a result of the behavior, Canaan has brought six claims against CMU, including three counts of violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act; breach of contract; and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

In December 2024, the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania denied CMU’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

As part of the proceedings, Canaan filed a motion seeking discovery on information concerning CMU’s relationship with Qatar, the Qatar Investment Authority and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, leading to Hardy’s opinion.

The Chronicle contacted CMU seeking an interview with a university official. CMU’s media relations department responded with a written statement saying, “Antisemitism and other forms of discrimination have no place at our university. Carnegie Mellon University is committed to the safety and security of our Jewish faculty, staff and students and our friends and neighbors who are part of Pittsburgh’s vibrant Jewish community.”

Further, the university said it was aware of a Jan. 28, 2026, Wall Street Journal opinion piece written after Hardy’s opinion was released, examining the school’s relationship with Qatar. CMU said it took issue with several aspects of the piece, including that fact that the writer, Kenneth L. Marcus, didn’t seek a comment from the university.

The university also said it has operated a campus in Qatar, at the invitation of the Qatar Foundation, for more than two decades and is in “full compliance with all applicable U.S. laws.”

The relationship, CMU said, is part on an effort by the Qatar Foundation to bring leading global universities to Qatar and that it was encouraged by the U.S government.

Qatar, the school’s statement continued, reimburses CMU for Qatar-related work performed by CMU staff based in Pittsburgh. It does not, however, grant them “the right to approve or consult on the hiring of individuals who perform that work.”

“Simply put,” CMU said, “the University was not required to consult, and did not consult, on the hiring of the individual [Rosemeyer] referred to in the opinion piece.”

CMU, the statement concluded, “looks forward to an opportunity to refute these allegations through the judicial process, where we will present the full facts.”

Israel’s leading expert on Iran, Eliyahu Yossian, told Kol Chai Radio that at least 43,000 people have been killed by the regime in Iran since the protests began.

Yossian said Iran’s aggressive actions at sea do not necessarily indicate a desire for war but are rather efforts to project strength and negotiate under fire.

“The Iranians don’t want to remain indebted to Trump and want to end the confrontation without going to war, but they aren’t willing to accept such an outcome publicly,” he said. “On one hand, they’re flexing their muscles; on the other, they’re negotiating. For them, national honor, both domestically and internationally, is crucial and forms an integral part of the rules of the game. The story isn’t only about what they achieve, but also how they achieve it in the eyes of the public.”

Yossian also described the deep rift between the Iranian people and the regime, accompanied by extreme “anti-Islamic” trends among protesters, including the rejection of religious symbols, as a form of resistance to the ayatollahs.

“Some actually want to take this antagonistic approach. For example, many of those killed left a will requesting that no prayers in Arabic be said at their funerals and that the Quran not be recited. It’s part of the anti-Islamic trends among those opposing the regime, who want to show the extent of their hatred toward the type of Islam imposed in Iran. Some have reached a point where they hate religion and choose not to pray in Arabic or to play music at the funerals of those killed as a form of protest.”

Yossian also revealed shocking data regarding the number of people killed during the unrest in Iran, which has even been officially reported by regime-controlled outlets.

“According to data from the Iranian regime’s own broadcasting authority, 43,000 citizens were killed in these riots—and the real number is likely much higher,” he said.

Yossian was born in Iran in 1980 and made aliyah in 2003. He served in the IDF 8200 intelligence unit and was later awarded the Israel Defense Award.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

DICKSON CITY, Pa. — A massive fire late Wednesday forced the evacuation of 77 patients and all staff from Lehigh Valley Hospital in Dickson City after flames erupted on the roof of an attached building, authorities said.

Emergency responders were called to the hospital around 9:40 p.m. after a fire broke out on the roof of the original Scranton Orthopedics structure, which is connected to the main hospital complex, according to the Dickson City Fire Department.

Officials said the fire did not spread into patient care areas but caused smoke and water damage. Firefighters brought the blaze under control shortly before midnight.

Six intensive care patients were evacuated first, with hospital staff, local police, emergency medical services, the Lackawanna County Emergency Management Agency and Pennsylvania State Police assisting in the evacuation. No injuries were reported.

“All four floors of the hospital and the emergency department were evacuated,” Fire Chief Rich Chowanec said. “Everyone is safe.”

Chowanec said a firewall separating the orthopedic center from the main hospital prevented the fire from spreading further, limiting damage. Electricity to the building was shut off as a precaution.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro praised first responders for their rapid response, thanking them for protecting patients and staff.

State Rep. Bridget Kosierowski described the response as an “all-hands-on-deck” effort, noting that many patients were asleep when the evacuation began.

The Pennsylvania State Police Fire Marshal Unit is investigating the cause of the fire.

A dramatic last-minute move by Shas chairman Aryeh Deri late last night halted a planned vote on Israel’s Arrangements Law, sharply increasing pressure on Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and throwing the coalition’s legislative timetable into uncertainty.

After dozens of hours of marathon discussions in the Knesset House Committee on splitting sections of the Arrangements Law and assigning them to various committees, the vote was expected to proceed. However, moments before it was to be held, Deri instructed Shas lawmakers not to allow the vote to take place. As a result, the committee dispersed without a decision, and the vote was postponed — for now — until next week, contingent on Shas agreeing to cooperate with advancing the budget and the Arrangements Law.

Behind the scenes, Deri’s move reflects growing chareidi anger over continued delays in legislating a new draft law and formally regulating the status of yeshiva students. The frustration has been compounded by ongoing disputes between the chareidi parties and the Knesset’s legal advisers regarding the framework of the proposed legislation.

Because of last night’s maneuver, the Arrangements Law is now considered to be in real jeopardy. The coalition has less than 30 days remaining to pass the 2026 state budget and the accompanying Arrangements Law. The legislation includes several major economic measures, among them a dairy market reform promoted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has previously warned that failure to pass the reform would lead him to push for the immediate dissolution of the Knesset.

While Shas lawmakers deliberately stayed away from the committee discussions in order to avoid voting directly against the coalition, Housing and Construction Minister Yitzchok Goldknopf did attend the debates and voted against the proposals alongside opposition members.

A Shas Knesset member said this morning: “From the very first moment, we said we would not allow the budget to pass without regulating the status of yeshiva students, and that remains our position. We agreed to support the first reading in order to give a few more days to advance the draft law, but unfortunately, that did not happen.”

{Matzav.com}

The Anti-Defamation League slammed comments by Dr. Mehmet Oz, accusing the Trump administration official of reinforcing antisemitic stereotypes and contributing to a climate of rising hostility toward Jewish communities.

In a statement and series of posts on X, the ADL highlighted excerpts from a two-week-old interview Oz gave to The Epoch Times program “American Thought Leaders,” in which he discussed healthcare fraud investigations in Minnesota. While attempting to argue that fraud is not confined to any single state, Oz singled out New York’s Chasidic Jewish community as an example.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

“Casting Hasidic Jews as foreign, criminal, or ‘not real Americans’ is straight out of the antisemitic playbook,” the organization wrote. “This kind of rhetoric fuels harmful stereotypes and discrimination.”

Oz, who currently serves as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, made the remarks while discussing enforcement efforts against healthcare fraud. The ADL said that rather than offering a neutral comparison, Oz’s comments portrayed the Hasidic community in a prejudicial way, echoing long-standing tropes that depict religious Jews as outsiders or lawbreakers.

The civil rights group warned that such language carries real-world consequences, pointing to New York City’s reported 182 percent year-over-year increase in antisemitic hate crimes in January.

“Falsely blaming New York’s Hasidic population directly contributes to the climate in which antisemitic attacks are rising,” the ADL said. “Words matter, and public officials must do better.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The U.N. human rights chief said Thursday that his office is in “survival mode” as he presented an appeal for $400 million to meet its estimated needs this year, after funding cuts last year hurt its work in 17 countries including Colombia, Myanmar and Chad.

Volker Türk laid out his office’s needs after the United States and some other traditional top donors in the West cut back their outlays for humanitarian aid and many U.N.-related organizations in 2025, warning of damage to its monitoring of rights worldwide.

“These cuts and reductions untie perpetrators’ hands everywhere, leaving them to do whatever they please,” he told diplomats at his office’s headquarters overlooking Lake Geneva. “With crises mounting, we cannot afford a human rights system in crisis.”

“I am thankful to our 113 funding partners — including governments, private, and multilateral donors — for their vital contributions,” Türk said. “But we are currently in survival mode, delivering under strain.”

His office receives money through the regular U.N. budget, but traditionally gets most of its funding through voluntary contributions from member countries. It is seeking $400 million in voluntary funding this year.

Last year, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had initially appealed for $500 million in voluntary contributions, but received nearly $258 million. It received $191 million through the regular budget, some $55 million less than initially approved.

The United States, under the Trump administration, halted its contributions in 2025; A year earlier, the U.S. under the Biden administration was the top single donor of voluntary contributions, with $36 million.

A U.N. rights office tally also showed France, for example, did not provide any voluntary funding last year, after contributing more than $5 million in 2024. Britain also lowered its outlay last year. Donors like Sweden, Germany and the European Union raised their contributions from 2024, however.

Citing the impact, Türk said his office last year undertook fewer than half the monitoring missions it did in 2024; pared down its “engagement” in the peace process in Colombia, where three of its eight country offices are closed; faced cuts of 60% to its Myanmar program; and reduced its advocacy and assistance for nearly 600 detainees in Chad.

“At a time of escalating gender backlash, our work to prevent gender-based violence and protect the rights of LGBTIQ+ people has suffered cuts of up to 75%,” he added.

The rights chief trumpeted his office’s work in places like Ukraine, where its monitoring mission has kept tabs on civilian casualties since 2014; in Palestinian areas, where it has trained over 320 staffers to identify people in need; and in Colombia, where it worked with the Defense Ministry to establish codes of conduct and training.

(AP)

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The Jerusalem District Court sentenced Bet Shemesh resident Elimelech Stern on Thursday morning to three years in prison. He was convicted last September of contact with a foreign agent and conspiracy to make threats, after carrying out assignments for Iranian operatives. He was also fined and given a suspended sentence.

Judge Hanna Lomp said in her ruling: “The activity he carried out was not at the highest level. This is a normative individual who fell into personal and financial distress. I took into account his personal circumstances and the fact that he was a very positive member of his community. On the other hand, these offenses were committed during wartime and are part of a very widespread phenomenon. Therefore I set the sentence as detailed. The bottom line is that the heart aches that such a yeshiva student fell from a great height to a deep pit.”

The judge added: “The prosecution also submitted an opinion outlining the scope and danger of the phenomenon. There are dozens of people and dozens of indictments in similar activity connected to Iran. The difference is that he did not know it was Iran and that he turned a blind eye to the fact that this was a foreign agent and foreign entity, and therefore his level of culpability is lower than that of other defendants.”

Despite the growing number of exposed cases, Stern is the first person involved in Iranian espionage affairs to be sentenced outside of a plea bargain.

Stern was 21 years old at the time of his arrest. According to the verdict, he was in contact via Telegram with a woman whose true identity is unknown and who went by the name “Anna” or “ANNA ELENA.” As part of this relationship, Stern carried out various assignments she gave him in Israel in exchange for payment in cryptocurrency. From early on he suspected she was a foreign agent, and this suspicion grew stronger as the assignments became more severe and clearly security-related.

Among the tasks he carried out: printing and posting notices in Tel Aviv with security-nationalist messages, including a poster showing a bloodstained hand with the English text, “It will be written in history that children were killed, let’s stand on the right side of history”; hiding money at various locations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; collecting a mobile phone as instructed by the agent; and delivering packages that included an animal’s severed head or a decapitated doll, a knife, and a threatening message, intended to be left at the doorsteps of Israeli civilians. Stern refused to carry out a murder and a mission to set a forest on fire, but cooperated with the other instructions.

To carry out the assignments, Stern recruited two additional Israeli citizens, who were paid for their participation. One of them was recruited to hang the posters, filmed himself doing so, and sent the photos to Stern, who forwarded them to “ANNA ELENA.”

The prosecution noted that since Stern’s indictment, more than thirty additional indictments have been filed for similar offenses, and that this reflects a broad and expanding phenomenon of Iranian recruitment inside Israel that crosses sectors and does not distinguish between different populations. According to the prosecution, the growing number of cases and their becoming commonplace show that there is insufficient deterrence, and that exposing the cases and prosecuting those involved is not enough, as harsher punishment is needed for deterrence.

The prosecution also noted that the defendant chose to conduct a full trial and did not take responsibility for his actions, and therefore requested a sentence of seven years in prison along with additional penalties.

The court, as stated, sentenced the defendant to three years in prison along with additional penalties. The court ruled that: “When dealing with the offense of which the defendant was convicted, special importance must be given to considerations of general deterrence, in light of the importance of protecting state security, the enormous potential harm inherent in these offenses, and in order to prevent their being carried out.”

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz

Everyone needs to step away now and then. When winter tightens its grip, many northerners head south to Florida, searching for warmth and escape. Nothing against that. When I feel the need to breathe again, though, I go to Eretz Yisroel, to Yerushalayim.

That is where I feel most like myself, where the noise fades and something steadier takes its place. I don’t need much there. Even though every time I go, I make time to see a place I’ve never visited before, it is enough for me to walk Yerushalayim’s streets, worn smooth by thousands of footsteps, and watch its people go about their lives. I can do that for hours, until my feet give out and my thoughts quiet.

Last week, I returned once more. Just by standing at the Kosel, at the place from which the Shechinah has never departed, I felt recharged and was reminded why I had come. My tefillos slowed and sharpened, each word carrying more weight.

I traveled to Eretz Yisroel for what was meant to be a short visit. The plan was to spend Shabbos with my beloved mother-in-law and return on Sunday to produce the paper. Hashem had other plans, and thanks to the interference of the huge snowstorm, I did not make it back until Monday night.

Of course, everything Hashem does is for the good, and an extra, unplanned day in Yerushalayim was a gift.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of seeing much of what Yerushalayim has to offer. I have stood among the remnants of the churban haBayis, gazing at the massive stones toppled near the Kosel and the scorched city wall burned by the Romans. I have walked the very paths taken by the Bnei Yisroel in the days of the Bais Hamikdosh as they came up from Chevron and points south to be oleh regel. I have recited Tashlich at the Mayan Hashiloach, from where water was drawn for the nisuch hamayim of Sukkos and mayim chaim for parah adumah. I have stood where Dovid Hamelech is believed to have lived, moments that bring Tanach vividly to life.

Those experiences are very touching. Walking on the same path as our ancestors as they went to fulfill their obligations gives the neshomah a tingle and causes the heart to skip a few beats.

Seeing those huge stones, which comprised a strong defensive wall in the times of Nach that we study with much reverence, makes everything come alive, as does viewing the stalls that catered to the olei regel. Your imagination begins to stir as you envision millions of people standing in this very spot.

Seeing what is thought to have been the palace of Dovid Hamelech is another manifestation of bringing Dovid Hamelech alive and making everything about him so real that you can almost touch it.

And of course, there is the Kosel. Standing at the place from which the Shechinah has never departed, uttering the holy words written by Dovid Hamelech in tefillah, is always profoundly moving. As you daven Shemoneh Esrei before those eternal stones, distractions fall away and kavonah comes naturally, as it has for thousands of years.

As you daven, you feel the Shechinah nearby, and you know that He is listening to your tefillos at this special place.

All of that is deeply meaningful, but it is not what this piece is about.

This time, beyond the stones and the streets that always leave such a deep impression, the extra day afforded me the opportunity to take up an offer from my friends. Yitzchok Pindrus and Yehuda Soloveitchik took us to visit a place that, in its quiet way, embodied the same holiness and continuity I feel in Yerushalayim’s ancient walls.

We arrived at Har Tzion and learned about the extraordinary history of the area, and of the Diaspora Yeshiva located there, a yeshiva deeply tied to the Jewish presence in that part of Yerushalayim. We visited the yeshiva, which is headed by Rav Pindrus, and were given a guided tour by Rav Yitzchok Goldstein, who heads the Diaspora Yeshiva. Rav Yitzchok is a fascinating person whose life revolves around Torah and continuing the mission his father began when he took over the site after the Six Day War.

The yeshiva also maintains a Holocaust museum, the Marteif HaShoah, a place I had never visited and barely knew existed. Established by Holocaust survivors, it contains deeply moving artifacts, including the shofar that the Klausenberger Rebbe blew in the concentration camp, Sifrei Torah stained with the blood of kedoshim who were shot while holding them, and many other sacred remnants of a shattered world.

The Marteif HaShoah also contains memorial plaques, crafted like matzeivos, for the residents of 1,200 Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis. Survivors would gather there on the yahrtzeits of their towns to say Kaddish and remember. Talmidei chachomim, including Maran Harav Shach, would learn there as a zechus for the neshamos of the martyrs. It is a hallowed place, well worth visiting when in Yerushalayim.

From there, we walked through the beauty of Har Tzion toward the Zilberman Cheder, the famous school known for its unique and remarkable method of learning based on the educational concepts of the Maharal and the Vilna Gaon.

We observed a class of five-year-old boys learning Parshas Vayeira. They were reading aloud with their rebbi, with full trup. Five-year-olds. Every boy was able to read, follow, and understand. But more than that, they knew all the pesukim from Bereishis bora until the parsha they were learning that day by heart, and they understood their meaning. They answered questions with clarity and confidence, living the words of Chazal: Ben chomeish l’mikra.

For whatever reason, most of our schools do not learn this way. Seeing it in action was astonishing, a living demonstration that children, even at a young age, are capable of absorbing and retaining Torah at a remarkably high level.

Rav Yosef Zilberman told me that the classes are not composed of geniuses. The student body reflects the same spectrum found everywhere: some very bright, some smart and some who aren’t, some average, and some weaker. But children are hungry for knowledge and are able to absorb much more than people think.

We observed older grades as well and saw the same success: boys who know Shishah Sidrei Mishnah by heart, and older ones who have learned sedorim of Shas and retain them.

It was a beautiful sight to see Bnei Yerushalayim so attached to Torah. Everyone there, from the rabbeim on down, carried a special look of satisfaction and geshmak.

The Brisker Rov would say that the true chein of Yerushalayim is not its buildings, but its children. On my “extra” day there, I felt that truth with complete clarity.

I am certain that children in chadorim throughout Yerushalayim are also blessed with tremendous chein and yedios, but this is the place we happened to see. In fact, at the home of Rav Dovid Cohen, I met my old friend, Rav Avrohom Pinzel, who heads Chochmas Shlomo, the largest cheder in Yerushalayim. He invited me to visit his school as well, something I hope to do during a future trip.

From the moment we entered the Zilberman Cheder, I was struck by the dedication, warmth, and energy that filled every corner. Walking the halls and watching children learn Torah with such enthusiasm, I felt a different kind of tingle — not the kind that comes from ancient stones, but the kind that comes from witnessing a living, breathing commitment to the future.

Here was the spirit of Yerushalayim, alive in a new generation, shaping hearts and minds in real time. It was inspiring, humbling, and deeply moving. It was a reminder that the holiness of Yerushalayim does not only live in its past, but is unfolding every day, in places like this unique yeshiva.

We traveled to the ancient city of Shiloh, where the Mishkon stood for 369 years. With the parshiyos of the Mishkon approaching, it felt like the right time to be there. I had visited once before, some fifteen years ago, before it had been developed into a formal site. Even then, it was powerful. Now, standing again on that ground, it was impossible not to feel the weight of what once stood there.

This is the place where the Mishkon itself is believed to have been situated. And nearby was the sha’ar — the gate — where Eli Hakohein is said to have been sitting when he heard the devastating words: ki nishbah Aron HaElokim — that the Pelishtim had captured the Aron. Upon hearing the news, he fell backward and was niftar.

The Novi tells us in Sefer Shmuel Alef (4) that the Bnei Yisroel were at war with the Pelishtim, and the battle was going badly. In desperation, the ziknei Yisroel sent for the Aron to be brought from Shiloh to the battlefield. It was a tragic mistake. Chofni and Pinchos, the sons of Eli who carried it, were killed, along with thirty thousand Jews. And when Eli heard what had happened, sitting at the gate opposite the Mishkon, his heart could not bear it.

To stand there — to see the site of the Mishkon and the place where Eli sat — is to feel the long, trembling story of Am Yisroel beneath your feet. The stones do not speak, but somehow they remember.

You can almost hear Shmuel Hanovi calling out across the centuries, repeating his nevuah urging the people to do teshuvah and abandon their avodah zarah. They believed they were righteous. They refused to listen. And they were punished. The war was lost and the Aron was taken.

Standing there, I found myself wondering what Shmuel would say if he were alive today. What would his message be to us? What would he be admonishing us about? What would he be urging us to fix, to strengthen and to change in order to bring the geulah closer?

We are no longer blessed with nevi’im. But we still have their words. We have Nach. We have our rabbeim. We have the sifrei mussar and machshovah written over centuries, offering us guidance, perspective, and a Torah lens through which to view our lives and our responsibilities.

In just a few weeks, we will be learning the measurements of the Mishkon. And there in Shiloh, on an ancient mountain, stands a flat area, preserved and marked, measuring one hundred amos by fifty amos, the exact size of the Mishkon. You stand there and try to imagine it: the yerios, the two mizbeichos, the crowds lining up with their korbanos, the smoke rising to the heavens in a rei’ach nichoach, the kohanim moving swiftly, purposefully, immersed in avodah. And suddenly, you realize how much we are missing in golus.

But then you look down.

Scattered everywhere are shards of pottery, fragments of the very vessels in which people once ate their korbanos, vessels that became assur b’hana’ah because of the kedusha they had absorbed. They have been lying there for thousands of years, silent witnesses to the kedusha and taharah of Yidden, exactly as Chazal depicted and described.

And in that moment, something shifts. The Mishnayos we hureved over are no longer abstract. They are no longer theoretical. They are real. Alive. Tangible. What a chizuk in emunah.

You can bend down, pick up a broken piece of clay, and suddenly, history is not something you learn.

It is something you touch.

There is so much happening in the world today — in the wider world and in our own. Some of it is good. Much of it is not. People feel unsettled, unsure of what the future holds. Anti-Semitism is rising. The specter of war with Iran hovers.

For many frum families, simply making ends meet has become an ever-growing challenge: housing, tuition, clothing, food, insurance — the basic obligations of life weigh heavier each year. Beneath it all, there is a quiet sense of division and discontent that we struggle to mend.

Where will it all lead? How will it end?

There are opportunities for chizuk all around us, and in our daily lives we can often sense Hashem’s steady hand guiding us, sustaining us, carrying us forward. But sometimes, we need a change of scenery to see it. To step outside ourselves. To be reminded — not intellectually, but viscerally — of who we are and where we come from.

Walking among ancient shards of pottery in Shiloh, standing on the stones once trodden by the olei regel, facing the remaining walls of the Bais Hamikdosh, and watching Yerushalayim’s zekeinim and ne’arim move through its streets — all of it speaks quietly but powerfully. It tells the story of eternity. It reminds us that despite everything our people have endured, we are still here. Alive. Learning. Building. Dreaming.

We walk through the streets of the Eternal City and see before our eyes the living fulfillment of the nevuah of Zechariah Hanovi: “Od yeishvu zekeinim uzekeinos b’rechovos Yerushalayim… Urechovos ha’ir yimale’u yeladim v’yelados mesachakim b’rechovoseha.”

We stand in a city that was destroyed, emptied, burned and mourned, and now we see old people sitting peacefully along the streets and children playing in them.

And in that vision, we find our answer. Not to every question, but to the deepest one of all. We are not a people of endings. We are a people of continuity.

Other nations write histories that conclude with a rise and a fall, with glory followed by disappearance. Our story is quite different. For us, Am Yisroel, destruction is never the final word. Golus is never the last chapter. The dark moments become bridges to something good that follows each time.

That is what Yerushalayim teaches us when we walk its streets.

Am Yisroel exists in a story whose final word has not yet been written. And the story won’t end, as most stories do, with “The End,” but rather with “The Geulah.”

May we merit to see and experience it speedily in our days. Amein.

by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Channel 13’s reporter on charedi affairs, Yoeli Brim, revealed that the new IDF orders regarding charedim serving in the military were formalized in consultation with the Belzer and Karliner rebbes. Brim wrote that despite denials of his report by the Belz chasidic group, a senior member of the group will be coordinating with the rabbinic advisors in order to supervise the implementation of the new orders within the IDF.

I24’s Ari Kalman also reported that an external committee of prominent rabbis and Hasidic rebbes, operating under the authority of the Defense Establishment Comptroller, will oversee the implementation of accommodations for charedi service members in the IDF. Kalman added that the committee will provide responses to questions from Haredi leadership regarding religious lifestyle matters during military service.

Despite these developments, the mainstream Lithuanian roshei yeshiva continue to express their opposition to any cooperation with the IDF. Brim brought recordings from Rabbi Chaim Peretz Berman (Ponovezh) and Rabbi Avigdor Pilz (Tifrach) in which they dismissed the new regulations as “stuff and nonsense” and claimed that “They will change the rules so that boys and girls will be together, you don’t let the cat guard the cheese.”

The new IDF orders divided charedi units into three categories: The David track is the most stringent, with closed units that are fully gender-separated at every stage, from basic training through command and officer roles. All soldiers in this framework must come from the charedi community and commit to a strict religious lifestyle (only kosher phones), and commanders are required to live at least a fully religious life, with preference for charedi officers. The Cherev track also maintains full gender separation in a designated compound and is reserved for charedi soldiers, particularly in combat settings where commanders are expected to live a charedi or religious lifestyle. The Magen track is aimed at non-combat roles, organizing soldiers into gender-separate teams that function as a distinct “capsule” within broader units.

Eligibility will be based on a recruit’s actual charedi way of life, assessed through interviews and formal approval by authorized officials. Soldiers who no longer meet the criteria will be moved into standard service frameworks. The directive also reiterates existing accommodations, including structured prayer times, higher kosher standards, and the option to make a declaration of allegiance instead of a traditional oath, signaling an effort to expand participation while maintaining religious integrity for observant recruits.

The State Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday filed charges against Bezalel Zini, the brother of Shin Bet chief David Zini, and two other defendants on charges of trafficking cigarettes into the Gaza Strip as part of a large-scale smuggling operation.

All three suspects face charges of aiding the enemy during wartime, a crime that can carry the death penalty or life imprisonment, along with fraud, bribery, and prohibited dealings of property for terror purposes.

Zini is accused of three smuggling runs involving about fourteen cartons of cigarettes through the Sufa Crossing, for which he received approximately 365,000 shekels. The second defendant allegedly led five smuggling runs, earning around 4.3 million shekels, and the third defendant was accused of five runs as well, receiving about 815,000 shekels

Zini, a 50-year-old reserve soldier, served as the logistics coordinator for the IDF’s Uriah Force and held entry permits for vehicle convoys entering the Gaza Strip. The second defendant was a reservist in the same unit, and the third was an acquaintance.

The indictment alleges that the defendants—along with several others—worked in various teams to smuggle cigarettes into Gaza and divided the profits. They allegedly deceived inspection officers at crossing points by posing as soldiers carrying out official security missions.

The indictment states that the defendants were aware that the smuggled goods could reach terror groups, including Hamas, and could be used to strengthen and finance their activities.

Defense lawyers for the suspects argued that the charge of aiding the enemy during wartime is unfounded, arguing that the case concerns the smuggling of cigarettes only and not weapons, ammunition, or military equipment.

They said the goods involved cannot reasonably be viewed as direct support for terrorist activity and that the prosecution’s effort to frame the alleged conduct as assistance to Hamas is exaggerated and lacks a solid legal basis.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

A fierce political confrontation has broken out within Israel’s governing coalition following the election of a new local rov in Savion, ending an 11-year vacancy and igniting an unusually public war of words between United Torah Judaism and Shas.

After more than a decade without a serving rov, Rabbi Uri Sadan was elected on Tuesday as rabbi of the Savion Local Council. Rabbi Sadan, who leads the Oz VeHadar community in Petach Tikva and previously served as Savion’s chief rabbi, won in a landslide, receiving 16 votes compared to just three for the Shas-backed candidate, Rabbi Shlomo Meir Amor.

The decisive outcome followed the collapse of a political arrangement forged by Shas with the head of the local council, which ultimately failed at the ballot box. That breakdown paved the way for Rabbi Sadan’s victory. He is identified with the Tzohar rabbinic network, a fact that gave the result broader political significance far beyond the local appointment. The position had been closely watched for years and was widely considered a coveted post.

The results immediately sparked an open and acrimonious dispute between coalition partners. Knesset member Moshe Gafni, chairman of Degel HaTorah, launched a sharp attack on Shas, accusing the party of sabotaging a unified chareidi effort.

“Due to Shas’s insistence on not supporting Degel HaTorah’s candidate for the Savion rabbinate, and after their own candidate received a total of only three votes, neither a Shas candidate nor a Degel HaTorah candidate was elected — and instead a Tzohar candidate was chosen,” Gafni said. “Anyone who follows their conduct in religious services and rabbinic appointments knows that this is their way.”

Shas responded swiftly and aggressively, rejecting Gafni’s claims and accusing him of focusing on political patronage at a time of existential challenges for the chareidi community. In a statement, the party said it was “fully occupied with the critical struggle to save the Torah world and prevent the arrest of yeshiva students,” and expressed dismay that Degel HaTorah’s leader was, in their words, “choosing to deal with jobs instead of the real challenges of the hour.”

Shas further sought to undermine Gafni’s argument by pointing to the vote totals themselves. According to the party, Degel HaTorah’s own candidate — a Savion native — ran and received zero votes. “Zero,” the statement emphasized. “How exactly did Shas’s three votes prevent his election? How long will Moshe Gafni continue to mislead the public and blame others for his own failures?”

The exchange escalated further when Gafni’s office fired back with a blunt rebuttal, accusing Shas of refusing to cooperate while insisting its candidate would win. “You refused to unite forces and claimed your candidate would prevail,” the statement read. “Your jobs enterprise has suffered a crushing failure.”

While the chareidi parties traded accusations, the national-religious political camp celebrated the outcome. Leaders in that sector framed Rabbi Sadan’s appointment as a significant achievement. Religious Zionism chairman and cabinet minister Bezalel Smotrich congratulated Rabbi Sadan publicly, praising the religious-Zionist yeshiva world for producing talmidei chachomim who “combine deep learning with public engagement and active involvement in Israeli society.”

{Matzav.com}

WATCH:

JERUSALEM (VINnews)-The commander of the Israeli Air Force, Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, visited an Iron Dome battery in northern Israel and emphasized the military’s ongoing efforts to bolster both defensive and offensive capabilities amid heightened regional tensions with Iran.

“The air force, and you in particular, are required to continue maintaining a high level of readiness. Every day, we continue to strengthen preparedness and capabilities in both defense and offense,” Bar said, according to remarks published by the Israel Defense Forces.

The visit comes as Israel faces persistent threats from Iran and its proxies, with the Iron Dome system serving as a critical component of the country’s multi-layered air defense network, primarily intercepting short-range rockets and missiles.

Bar’s comments highlight the IAF’s dual focus on robust defense — exemplified by systems like Iron Dome — and potent offensive operations capable of striking deep into enemy territory.

The IDF has frequently highlighted the air defense array’s success in intercepting thousands of threats since the onset of recent conflicts, highlighting its role in protecting the Israeli home front.

WATCH:

Australian police have charged an Australian teenager for allegedly making online death threats against President Isaac Herzog ahead of his visit to Australia.

Herzog is scheduled to arrive in Australia on Sunday for a five-day visit after receiving an invitation from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre.

The Australian Federal Police said that the defendant, 19, was charged over alleged threats made last month on a social media platform “towards a foreign head of state and internationally protected person.” The offense carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The police statement did not identify the target of the threats, but it was widely reported in Australian media outlets that the threats were directed at Herzog.

The teen also made threats against US President Donald Trump, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Pro-Palestine groups in Australia, who are infuriated over Herzog’s visit, are planning to hold protests across the country during his stay.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

LISTEN:

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Bitachon4Life-Shiur-1699-Chikuy-Part-99-Machseh.mp3

​​For more info, email bitachon4life@gmail.com.

Elimelech Stern, a 22-year-old Chassidish resident of Beit Shemesh, was sentenced Thursday morning by the Jerusalem District Court to three years in prison after he was convicted two months ago of maintaining contact with a foreign agent and carrying out missions for them in exchange for cryptocurrency payments.

The days Stern has already spent in custody will be deducted from his sentence. In addition, he was given a one-year suspended sentence and a fine of 10,000 shekels.

Stern is the first of those involved in the Iranian espionage affairs to be sentenced outside a plea bargain.

Judge Miriam Lomp wrote in the verdict: “His actions were not at the highest level of severity. This was a normal individual who found himself in a personal and financial crisis. I took his circumstances into account, as well as the fact that he had been a very positive figure in the community. On the other hand, these offenses were committed during wartime and are part of a very widespread phenomenon. That is why I set the punishment as I did—the bottom line is that it’s heartbreaking that such an avreich fell from such a high place to a deep pit.”

She further wrote: “The prosecution also submitted an expert opinion showing the scope and danger of this phenomenon. There are dozens of people and dozens of indictments involving similar activity connected to Iran. The difference is that he didn’t know his handler was from Iran. He willfully ignored the fact that he was dealing with a foreign agent, and therefore, his level of culpability is lower than that of other defendants.”

According to reports, Stern carried out the missions due to his financial pressures and not for ideological reasons.

Despite the large number of similar cases, Stern is the first among those involved in Iranian espionage operations to be sentenced without a plea bargain.

The prosecutors, who sought a seven-year prison sentence, noted that since Stern’s indictment, more than 30 additional indictments have been filed for similar offenses, describing Iran’s expanding efforts to recruit and operate agents within Israel across all sectors of society. Prosecutors argued that the growing number of incidents demonstrates insufficient deterrence and that harsher punishment is required to counter the threat.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Elimelech Stern, a 22-year-old Chassidish resident of Beit Shemesh, was sentenced Thursday morning by the Jerusalem District Court to three years in prison after he was convicted two months ago of maintaining contact with a foreign agent and carrying out missions for them in exchange for cryptocurrency payments.

The days Stern has already spent in custody will be deducted from his sentence. In addition, he was given a one-year suspended sentence and a fine of 10,000 shekels.

Stern is the first of those involved in the Iranian espionage affairs to be sentenced outside a plea bargain.

Judge Miriam Lomp wrote in the verdict: “His actions were not at the highest level of severity. This was a normal individual who found himself in a personal and financial crisis. I took his circumstances into account, as well as the fact that he had been a very positive figure in the community. On the other hand, these offenses were committed during wartime and are part of a very widespread phenomenon. That is why I set the punishment as I did—the bottom line is that it’s heartbreaking that such an avreich fell from such a high place to a deep pit.”

She further wrote: “The prosecution also submitted an expert opinion showing the scope and danger of this phenomenon. There are dozens of people and dozens of indictments involving similar activity connected to Iran. The difference is that he didn’t know his handler was from Iran. He willfully ignored the fact that he was dealing with a foreign agent, and therefore, his level of culpability is lower than that of other defendants.”

According to reports, Stern carried out the missions due to his financial pressures and not for ideological reasons.

Despite the large number of similar cases, Stern is the first among those involved in Iranian espionage operations to be sentenced without a plea bargain.

The prosecutors, who sought a seven-year prison sentence, noted that since Stern’s indictment, more than 30 additional indictments have been filed for similar offenses, describing Iran’s expanding efforts to recruit and operate agents within Israel across all sectors of society. Prosecutors argued that the growing number of incidents demonstrates insufficient deterrence and that harsher punishment is required to counter the threat.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

LISTEN:

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Stories4Life-Shiur-535-Tzibbur-R-Dovid-Soloveichik.mp3

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

The year was 1946, and the war was over. But for Rav Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz zt“l and the remnants of the Mir Yeshiva, the ordeal was far from finished.

The bulk of the Mir Yeshiva students in Europe were now in Shanghai, China – a teeming, sweltering port city that had served as their improbable refuge for more than five years. They had arrived there by way of one of the most extraordinary escape routes in Jewish history: from the town of Mir to Vilna, then through the frozen expanse of Soviet Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, on to Kobe, Japan, and finally to Shanghai – the only major city in the world that required no visa to enter. In all of Jewish history, no other yeshiva had survived the war intact. The Mir was the sole exception, and the man most responsible for holding it together on foreign soil was Rav Chaim Shmulevitz.

Now China itself was descending into chaos. The fragile truce between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government and Mao Zedong’s Communist forces had collapsed. On June 26, 1946, full-scale civil war erupted.

My own mother-in-law had barely escaped that war. Encouraged to attend Rebbitzen Kaplan’s Bais Yaakov in Brooklyn by the talmidim in the Mir Yeshiva, she journeyed to the Unted States along with a number of the Mir talmidim.

In the meantime, the Soviets were arming and encouraging the Communist takeover in the north, while hyperinflation was devastating the Chinese economy. One historian noted that in 1946, 100 yuan could buy merely an egg, where just a year earlier it had purchased a fish. The streets of Shanghai, already ravaged by years of Japanese occupation, were now plagued by armed skirmishes, desperate refugees, and a collapsing social order. The other Yeshiva refugees needed to leave, but where could they go?

The British had previously imposed the White Papers, and the difficulties involved in entering Eretz Yisroel were well near impossible. The future pointed to America, and numerous Mir Talmidim had applied for visas to the US.

Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz zt“l (1902-1979) remained in Shanghai and looked after his orphaned Talmidim to ensure that they each had a visa to exit China. This was not the first time he had placed his students’ welfare above his own. Earlier in the war, shortly after arriving in Shanghai, Rav Chaim had received American visas for himself and his family. He refused them, declaring that he would leave only when all the students had received their visas. This breathtaking act of selflessness ultimately meant remaining in Shanghai for five and a half years.

The burden he carried during those years was staggering. With his father-in-law Rav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel zt“l stranded in Eretz Yisroel – having gone there to obtain visas and found himself unable to return – the entire responsibility for running the Yeshiva fell upon Rav Chaim and the Mashgiach, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein zt“l.

But Rav Chaim’s responsibilities extended far beyond the Mir. He took upon himself the financial needs of all the Jewish learning institutions in Shanghai – including contingents from the famed yeshivos of Kamenetz, Kletzk, Lubavitch, and Lublin. Exchanging foreign currency in Shanghai was a criminal offense fraught with danger, and Rav Chaim lived with a perpetual danger of being apprehended by the authorities. Yet he never wavered.

His wife, Rebbetzin Chana Miriam Shmuelevitz – a daughter of Reb Lazer Yudel Finkel zt“l and a granddaughter of the Alter of Slabodka – stood with him through it all, raising their children Ettel, Refoel, and young Gita amid the squalor of wartime Shanghai.

Unfortunately, by 1946, Rav Chaim Shmulevitz could now no longer get a visa for himself and his family.

During the war, Rav Avrohom Kalmanovitz zt“l was essentially responsible for saving the Mir Yeshiva bochurim. This extraordinary Gadol – born in Delyatichi and formerly the Rav of Tiktin – had arrived in America in 1940 with a US passport, and immediately threw all of his vast energies into rescue work. He secured the funds and papers to transport the entire Mir Yeshiva to Kobe and then to Shanghai, and provided for its upkeep for five years.

When the Joint Distribution Committee was prohibited from sending money to Japanese-controlled Shanghai after Pearl Harbor, Rav Kalmanovitz arranged to meet Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.  During the meeting, he “fainted” from the overwhelming anguish of his plea. That “collapse” broke the ice; Morgenthau found the means to allow funds out of America through neutral Switzerland.

When FBI agents later confronted him about transferring money to a hostile territory, Rav Kalmanovitz cried out, “These are my children! Yes, I have sent them money and I will continue to send it.” He unbuttoned his shirt and continued.  “Shoot me now!  Do what you like with me, but I will not stop helping my children.” The agents sheepishly turned around and left without another word.

Rav Kalmanovitz was given permission to establish a branch of the Mir Yeshiva in America. He and Rabbi Yechezkel Kahane (father of Rabbi Meir Kahane) established the American branch of the Mir Yeshiva – first in Far Rockaway, New York, in 1946. He had procured a former Coast Guard base in the Rockaways to host the arriving refugees. It was Rav Kalmanovitz’s yeshiva, even though Rav Chaim Shmulevitz was the son-in-law of Reb Lazer Yudel Finkel zt“l.  Rav Nachum Partowitz was then a talmid of the Mir in Far Rockaway.

It was at this desperate juncture that an unlikely chapter in yeshiva history unfolded – one that could have changed the landscape of the Torah world in America forever.

Rav Chaim Shmulevitz entered into discussions with Rav Henach Leibowitz zt“l to become a Ram there, at the Rabbinical Seminary of America/Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim – then located at 135 South Ninth Street, in Williamsburg, New York.

Rav Henoch Leibowitz was himself a remarkable figure. Born in 1916 in Salcininkai, Lithuania, he was the only son of Rav Dovid Leibowitz zt“l, a great-nephew of the Chofetz Chaim himself, who had founded the Yeshiva in 1933 after his great-uncle’s passing.

The Chofetz Chaim had given Rav Dovid a parting message before he left for America: “The Torah was given in a midbar; go to America and the Torah will be given there.” When Rav Dovid suddenly passed away on December 7, 1941 – the same day as Pearl Harbor – his son Rav Henoch, barely in his twenties, assumed the helm of the fledgling yeshiva. He was young, but his vision was enormous.

A contract was written, and Rav Leibowitz made his best effort to obtain a visa for Rav Shmulevitz and his family.

This chapter in yeshiva history was genuine.  Rav Leibowitz wrote to the Consul General in Shanghai.

The letter is addressed to Monnett Bain Davis (1893-1953), the American Consul General in Shanghai. Davis was a career diplomat born in Greencastle, Indiana, and a World War I veteran who had served in the American Expeditionary Force before entering the Foreign Service. He had previously served as Consul General in Shanghai from 1935-36, and was now back for a second tour during 1946-47 – tasked with managing American interests in a city spiraling toward chaos.

Davis would eventually become the United States Ambassador to Panama and then the second Ambassador of the United States to the State of Israel, where he would die in his sleep at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv in 1953 and be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. It was written by Rav Henoch Leibowitz zt“l on Erev Shabbos, August 2nd, 1946.

Honorable Sir:

This Seminary entered into a contract with Rabbi Chaim Leib Szmilowicz, who is presently in Shanghai, China. The contract provides that Rabbi Szmilowicz be engaged as a professor of Talmud in our Seminary at a salary of $4,150 per year. [in 2021 dollars this amounts to $57,822 yh]

We wish to advise you that our graduates are in an ever increasing demand in all parts of the United States as well as in Canada, Mexico, and South American countries. We are compelled to increase our facilities. But there is a definite lack of qualified instructors in the United States and we must invite Rabbinical authorities from other countries to take up a post in our Seminary.

We further wish to advise you that Rabbi Szmulowicz is a distinguished Rabbinical authority. Before the war, he served in the capacity of Professor of Talmud in the Yeshiva of Mir, Poland. He is a man of letters and renown in his field.

We will be most grateful to you if you expedite the issuance of a visa to Rabbi Szmilowicz that he, who is accompanied by his wife and children, could arrive at our seminary at the earliest possible moment.

Respectfully yours,

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz

Chairman Board of Trustees

One can only imagine what went through the mind of Consul General Davis as he read this letter. Here was a request from a rabbinical seminary in Brooklyn asking him to expedite a visa for a “professor of Talmud” – a discipline utterly foreign to the world of American diplomacy. The careful, formal English of the letter belies the desperate urgency behind it. Rav Leibowitz knew that a man’s life and the future of Torah learning hung in the balance.

It is worth pausing to consider the remarkable act of achrayus and ahavas Yisroel embodied in this letter. Rav Henoch Leibowitz was binding himself contractually to a salary obligation and staking the reputation of his young institution on a man he knew only by his towering reputation. He was twenty-eight years old, leading a yeshiva from a modest walk-up in Williamsburg, and he was reaching across the world to try to save one of the greatest Talmudic minds of the generation.

Eventually, Rav Shmulevitz obtained a visa to France. Yad Vashem archives preserve a photograph of Rebbetzin Chana Miriam Shmuelevitz and their daughter Gita standing on the deck of the Marshal Joffre, sailing from Shanghai to Marseilles in December 1946. From France, Rav Chaim was able to join his illustrious father-in-law in the re-established Mir Yeshiva in Yerushalayim’s Beis Yisroel neighborhood. This was, undoubtedly, with the bracha of Rav Leibowitz zt“l.

One cannot help but wonder: What if Rav Chaim had come to America? What if he had taken that position at 135 South Ninth Street in Williamsburg? The Mashgiach at the time was Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg zt“l, and the temporary Rosh Yeshiva was Rav Mordechai Shulman zt“l, a son-in-law of Rav Yitzchok Isaac Sher zt“l.

Imagine the combination of Rav Chaim Shmulevitz’s legendary shiurim – those sweeping, breathtaking discourses that drew on twenty or thirty Talmudic sources in a single session – paired with Rav Scheinberg’s meticulous approach to halacha and Rav Leibowitz’s Slabodka-inspired emphasis on building the whole person.

It would have been an unprecedented convergence of Litvishe gadlus in one small building in Brooklyn.

Many of the Mir Talmidim who came from Europe continued learning at the Mir branch which had moved from Far Rockaway to Brownsville and eventually to Flatbush. Others learned at a new Yeshiva called Bais HaTalmud, established by some of the Mir’s oldest and most respected students as a continuation of the original yeshiva that went to Shanghai.

But undoubtedly some would have learned under Rav Chaim Shmulevitz had he taken the position in Chofetz Chaim.

Yet Hashgacha Pratis had other plans. Rav Chaim Shmulevitz was destined for Yerushalayim, where he would spend the next thirty-two years teaching, guiding, and inspiring thousands of talmidim, becoming one of the greatest Roshei Yeshiva of the twentieth century. His Sichos Mussar would move generations. His shiurim would reshape the way Talmud was studied across the world. His legendary compassion – the same compassion that had kept him in Shanghai until every last student had a visa, including two boys who had become mentally unbalanced from the trauma of war, whom he personally escorted to the consulate and somehow convinced the officials they were fit to travel – would define what it meant to be a Rosh Yeshiva.

And Rav Henoch Leibowitz?

He would go on to build Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim into one of the most influential Torah institutions in America. In 1955, the Yeshiva relocated from Williamsburg to Forest Hills, Queens, and his talmidim would eventually open more than forty branches across the United States and beyond – from Miami to Los Angeles, from Rochester to Vancouver. Entire Torah communities sprang up around these Chofetz Chaim branches. Rav Mordechai Shulman zt“l, who had intimate knowledge of the original Slabodka Yeshiva, once remarked: “Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim is Slabodka.” It was the highest compliment one could pay.

This letter, written on an Erev Shabbos in the summer of 1946, is a window into a world of mesiras nefesh and mutual responsibility that bound together Torah leaders across oceans and continents. It tells us that even in the darkest hour, when the infrastructure of the Torah world lay in ruins, there were men who refused to give up on one another – who wrote letters and drew up contracts and knocked on the doors of consulates.

May the memory of both Rav Chaim Shmulevitz zt“l and Rav Henoch Leibowitz zt“l be a blessing.

The author can be reached at [email protected].

The author welcomes input from anyone who has more information or documents.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A moment of concern occurred Wednesday evening at the 45th Worldwide Siyum HaRambam when the Sanz-Klausenberger Rebbe, Harav Shmuel Dovid Halberstam of Borough Park, fainted during his address to the assembled crowd.

The Rebbe, son of the late Sanz-Klausenberger leader Harav Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, was leading the official celebration marking the completion of the Rambam study cycle. Thousands of attendees filled the Crown Heights venue for the event, which featured multiple speakers and musical performances.

While speaking about the dedication of Jewish leaders to communities worldwide, the Rebbe became unwell and collapsed in front of the audience. Emergency responders from Hatzalah quickly assisted him, and he gradually recovered.

After stabilizing, the Rebbe returned to the stage, seated, and completed his remarks. He asked that the incident not overshadow the celebration and offered words of encouragement to those gathered.

His gabbai noted that the Rebbe rarely speaks publicly due to health concerns and that this appearance was a rare exception made in honor of the occasion. The last time he addressed a large audience was nearly a decade ago.

The Siyum HaRambam is a significant communal event, drawing participants from around the world to celebrate the completion of a cycle of Torah study.

By BoroPark24 Staff

A moment of concern briefly interrupted the Siyum HaRambam celebration held this evening at the Crown Heights Armory, when the Sanz-Klausenburg Rebbe collapsed during his address before thousands in attendance.

The Rebbe had been delivering his speech for approximately half an hour when he suddenly collapsed at the dais. Members of Hatzolah were immediately called and rushed to assist him. The swift response brought calm to the scene as medical personnel attended to the Rebbe on site. After receiving care, the Rebbe regained his strength and remained seated, reassuring attendants that he was feeling well.

This isn't the first time the Rebbe collapsed during a public speech and the incident was might be related to the Rebbe’s frequent fasting. 

After a short pause, the Rebbe indicated his desire to continue his speech. Before resuming his address, he requested that music be played and that the crowd engage in singing and dancing, emphasizing the importance of maintaining an atmosphere of simcha befitting the occasion. The Rebbe himself stood up to dance for a few minutes, joining the crowd. 

Seated at the microphone, the Rebbe addressed the audience in both Yiddish and English, apologizing for the concern he had caused. He stated that, thank G-d, he was feeling well and urged the assembled crowd to continue the celebration with joy and uplifted spirits.

The Rebbe then completed his divrei Torah amid visible enthusiasm and warmth, bringing the Siyum HaRambam to a powerful and joyous conclusion.

NEW YORK — The Anti‑Defamation League on Wednesday condemned comments by Dr. Mehmet Oz about Hasidic Jews, sharing excerpts from a two-week-old interview with Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders.” The ADL said the remarks “fuel harmful stereotypes and discrimination” and could contribute to rising antisemitism.

In the video clips, Oz Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, was discussing healthcare fraud investigations in Minnesota and sought to illustrate that the issue is not unique to one state. However, he referenced the Hasidic community in New York in a way the ADL said was prejudicial, portraying them as “foreign, criminal, or ‘not real Americans.’”

Casting Hasidic Jews as foreign, criminal, or “not real Americans” is straight out of the antisemitic playbook. This kind of rhetoric fuels harmful stereotypes and discrimination. Falsely blaming New York’s Hasidic population directly contributes to the climate in which the city… pic.twitter.com/pD0t1bWRSN

— ADL (@ADL) February 5, 2026

“Casting Hasidic Jews as foreign, criminal, or ‘not real Americans’ is straight out of the antisemitic playbook,” the ADL wrote on X. “This kind of rhetoric fuels harmful stereotypes and discrimination. Falsely blaming New York’s Hasidic population directly contributes to the climate in which the city just reported a 182 % year-over-year spike in antisemitic hate crimes in January. Words matter, and public officials must do better.”

Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, former Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, and self-described secular Muslim, has increasingly engaged in political commentary. While attempting to compare fraud cases across states, his remarks singled out New York’s Hasidic community, prompting criticism from advocacy groups.

Civil rights leaders have emphasized that statements from public figures about minority communities can shape social climates and influence discrimination or violence. The ADL’s action underscores how even past remarks, once widely circulated or discovered, can be scrutinized amid rising antisemitic incidents nationwide.

The daughter of the Vizhnitzer Rebbe of Bnei Brak, Rav Yisroel hager, offered a candid and emotional update on her father’s medical condition, urging continued tefillah and kabbalos, while stressing that despite outward appearances, the situation remains serious.

In a special and strengthening message delivered over the internal information line for women of the Vizhnitzer chassidus, the Rebbe’s daughter, Rebbetzin Tzipporah Teitelbaum, spoke openly about the health challenges facing her father, who continues to lead his kehillah with extraordinary inner strength. She called on women to persist in their tefillos and good resolutions, emphasizing that much rachamei Shomayim is still needed.

At the outset of her remarks, the Rebbetzin expressed deep gratitude to women of the chassidus across Eretz Yisroel and around the world for their overwhelming response and personal commitments undertaken on behalf of the Rebbe’s recovery. “First of all, I must express my gratitude to every woman and girl, in Eretz Yisroel and around the world,” she said. “Such mesirus nefesh in the resolutions, and all the good deeds being done for the recovery of my father, Rav Yisrael ben Leah Esther, that he should be healthy and come out of this.” She described how moving the response has been, adding, “You don’t know how much this warms the heart, how much strength it gives and how uplifting it is.”

She then turned to the Rebbe’s medical condition and appealed for intensified tefillah. “I simply wanted to ask that you continue with all the bruen (the passion), because truly, it’s already not normal,” she said. She explained that her father is still in the midst of a prolonged series of treatments that have not yet concluded. “He is going through so many treatments and still hasn’t finished, and hopefully he will already finish.”

The Rebbetzin sought to clarify the reality behind the Rebbe’s outward composure. “It’s true that he’s getting through it… and he ‘lies,’” she said painfully, referring to how he conceals his suffering. “Because he walks around happy, and from the outside everything looks normal, everything looks good, business as usual. But between us,” she emphasized, “the situation is not simple, and we still need a lot of rachamei Shamayim and tefillos.” She added with heartfelt pleading, “He really needs to already be after all the treatments. Enough, enough that it should end.”

In her remarks, she also shared a teaching she heard from her father on the posuk “Yom l’yom yabi’a omer,” explaining that the word yabi’a is an acronym for “Yesh Borei Olam Yesh — There is a Creator of the world.” “That is his essence,” she said. She further cited a well-known teaching in the name of the Yeshuos Moshe on the posuk of “Ivdu es Hashem b’simchah,” explaining its meaning as: “Serve — that is serving Hashem with joy. That alone is avodas Hashem: when it comes from inner depth and true, genuine inner joy.”

She concluded with a tefillah and brachah, expressing hope that in the merit of all the resolutions and good deeds being done, and through the strength of the chassidim and chassidos — “who are only good and constantly bring joy” — the community will soon merit seeing the Rebbe return to leading his holy flock “with physical and emotional strength, and to be in a constant state of recovery, because that is his vitality.”

{Matzav.com}

Federal authorities are scrambling to solve what investigators now describe as a late-night kidnapping in the foothills north of Tucson, Arizona, after the 84-year-old mother of longtime NBC host Savannah Guthrie vanished from her home under violent and unexplained circumstances.

Nancy Guthrie disappeared from her residence in the Catalina Foothills late Saturday night, Jan. 31. Nearly a week later, law enforcement officials say they still do not know who took her, where she is being held, or whether she is alive.

What began as a local missing-persons report has since drawn in multiple federal agencies and even the White House. One reason is Guthrie’s connection to public life: she is the mother of Savannah Guthrie, a longtime co-host of NBC’s Today show and one of the most recognizable faces in American morning television. That link has helped thrust the case into the national spotlight.

According to investigators, Guthrie spent Saturday evening with family members before being dropped off at her home near East Skyline Drive and North Campbell Avenue around 9:30 p.m. There were no signs of trouble. Relatives say she was in good spirits and gave no indication that she felt unsafe.

By Sunday morning, she had vanished.

Concern first arose when Guthrie failed to appear at church, something friends and family describe as highly unusual. Members of her congregation contacted relatives, who went to her home shortly before noon. When they arrived, the house was empty.

Sheriff’s deputies were called to the scene and quickly determined that this was not a routine disappearance. Investigators found signs of forced entry and evidence of a struggle inside the home. Drops of blood were discovered near the entrance. Guthrie’s cellphone, wallet, and car were still inside.

Within hours, authorities reclassified the case as a suspected abduction.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has repeatedly stressed that Guthrie could not have left on her own. She has severe mobility limitations and requires assistance to walk more than short distances. Police say it would have been physically impossible for her to simply walk away in the middle of the night.

“We know she didn’t just walk out,” Nanos said at a briefing. “She did not leave on her own. This is an abduction.”

Forensic teams have spent days processing the home, collecting DNA samples, searching for fingerprints, and examining every possible point of entry. Some laboratory results have returned, officials say, but none have yet led to a suspect. Investigators believe Guthrie may have been taken while she was asleep.

As the physical investigation unfolded, a digital mystery emerged. Several media organizations reported receiving electronic messages from individuals claiming responsibility for Guthrie’s disappearance. The communications reportedly demanded a large ransom payment in Bitcoin in exchange for her safe return.

Law enforcement officials have not confirmed whether the messages are genuine, but say they are being analyzed by federal cybercrime specialists. The FBI has urged the public and the media to avoid spreading unverified information, warning that false claims could complicate negotiations or put Guthrie at further risk.

The stakes are particularly high considering Guthrie’s medical conditions. She relies on daily prescription medication to manage chronic health problems. By Wednesday night, she had been without her medication for more than four days.

“If she is alive, those medications are vital,” Nanos said. “This is life or death.”

Authorities have repeatedly appealed directly to whoever may be holding her, urging them to release her so she can receive medical treatment.

Savannah Guthrie has remained in Arizona since her mother went missing, stepping away from professional obligations to stay with her family. NBC News announced that she would temporarily suspend her on-air duties, including covering the upcoming Winter Olympics.

On social media, Guthrie has posted emotional messages asking for prayers and information. In a video released Wednesday, she appeared alongside her siblings and addressed her mother’s captors directly.

“We are ready to talk,” she said. “We just want her home.”

Your browser does not support the video tag.

President Donald Trump confirmed Wednesday that he had spoken with Savannah Guthrie and directed federal agencies to assist local authorities.

The FBI, Homeland Security, and Customs and Border Protection have all assigned personnel to the case. Officials say specialized units are helping analyze data, track financial activity, and review travel records.

At the center of the investigation is a fundamental question: why was Nancy Guthrie taken?  Detectives are examining whether the crime was financially motivated, whether it was a random but unusually organized home invasion, or whether it was connected in some way to her daughter’s public profile. So far, authorities say there is no definitive evidence pointing to any single theory.

Authorities are now focused on reviewing surveillance footage from homes and traffic intersections, analyzing cell phone data from nearby towers, tracing possible cryptocurrency activity, and conducting extensive interviews with neighbors, service workers, and recent visitors. Every vehicle and digital device detected near the home during the critical overnight hours is being scrutinized.

“This case is solvable,” Sheriff Nanos said. “But we need information.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Sen. Bernie Sanders said that the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has shocked the nation, accusing the agency of extraordinary racism and violence during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source.”

Speaking with host Kaitlan Collins, Sanders argued that the actions attributed to ICE run counter to American values and have alarmed a broad swath of the public. “I surely hope so. I think the overwhelming majority of the American people are shocked by what they are seeing. This is the United States of America. You’ve seen guys in masks paid by federal tax laws knocking on doors, sending five year old kids into detention centers, shooting several people, occupying an entire city, intimidating city. In fact, it was a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota who dropped out of the race. And he said, you know, I can’t defend what the Republican National Party is doing. You know, driving while Asian, driving while Latino is not unconstitutional. So the racism and the, violence is extraordinary. And I think the American people are saying enough is enough.”

Collins pressed Sanders on whether new accountability measures would ease concerns, asking, “Does it reassure you at all that they are sending body cameras to these federal agents?”

Sanders dismissed that step as insufficient and pointed to his own legislative efforts. “That’s small, you know, look, I in my own view and I brought forth an amendment as you may know, the other day, as part of that legislation —”

Collins interjected to clarify the proposal, saying, “You wanted to repeal the $75 billion.”

Sanders confirmed the goal and expanded on his criticism of the agency’s role and funding. “Exactly over a four year period. I mean, they are now not Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but they are a domestic Trump’s domestic army extraordinarily well funded. And I was pleased that every Democrat voted with me. And we had two Republicans got 49 votes to say, do away with that 75 billion over four year period. For I said put that money, by the way, into Medicaid.”

SYDNEY — An Australian teenager accused of posting online threats to kill Israeli President Isaac Herzog has been granted bail under strict conditions ahead of Herzog’s planned visit to Australia, local media reported.

The teen, identified in court as Darcy Tinning, allegedly made the threat in January in a social media post that referenced the use of a firearm and included antisemitic language calling for violence against the Jewish community, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The post also allegedly targeted U.S. President Donald Trump.

Australian Federal Police and New South Wales Police searched the teen’s family home in Sydney this week and seized his mobile phone, which investigators say contained screenshots of the alleged threats. He was charged with using a carriage service to make a death threat, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Police also reported seizing a small amount of cannabis during the search.

Prosecutors opposed bail, arguing the teen posed a serious risk with Herzog’s arrival imminent. Defense lawyers said he had no access to firearms, no history of violence and no links to extremist groups.

A magistrate ruled that while the allegations were serious and security concerns were heightened, strict bail conditions could mitigate the risk. The teen was released on house arrest and may leave his home only with his parents. He is barred from contacting Herzog or Trump, prohibited from using social media, limited to one mobile phone, and required to surrender his passport. He is also banned from entering international airports.

The case is due to return to court in April.

Authorities said the investigation was led by the Australian Federal Police’s national security unit amid a recent rise in antisemitic incidents. Protests against Herzog’s visit are planned in Sydney and other cities, prompting police to impose restrictions on demonstrations for public safety reasons.

Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, is expected to visit Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra during his stay, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — NBC “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie said Wednesday that her family is ready to talk to people holding their 84-year-old mother, but they want to see proof that she is alive.

Guthrie said in a recorded video posted on social media that her family has heard media reports about a ransom letter for Nancy Guthrie, who authorities believe was taken from her home in Arizona against her will.

“We are ready to talk. However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated,” Savannah Guthrie said while reading from a prepared statement. “We need to know without a doubt that she is alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you and we are ready to listen. Please reach out to us.”

The family posted the message after police conducted a search in and around Nancy Guthrie’s home for several hours in the late afternoon and early evening.

She was last seen Saturday around 9:45 p.m. when she was dropped off at home by family after having dinner with them, the sheriff’s department said. She was reported missing midday Sunday after she didn’t appear at a church.

Multiple media organizations reported receiving purported ransom notes Tuesday that they handed over to investigators. The sheriff’s department had said it was taking the notes and other tips seriously but declined to comment further.

Savannah Guthrie was at times emotional during the recording. Her voice cracked when she addressed her mother directly, saying that they were praying for her and that people were looking for her.

“Mommy, if you are hearing this, you are a strong woman. You are God’s precious daughter,” she said.

Authorities on Wednesday offered no detailed update on their search. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos’ office said detectives still were speaking with anyone who had contact with Nancy Guthrie last weekend but that no suspect or person of interest had been identified.

Nanos suggested there was video from some cameras, though he didn’t elaborate, adding: “That’s all been submitted and we’re doing our best with the companies that own those cameras or built those cameras.”

There were signs of forced entry at the home in the Catalina Foothills neighborhood. Guthrie has limited mobility, and officials do not believe she left on her own. A sheriff’s dispatcher talking to deputies during a search Sunday indicated that she has high blood pressure, a pacemaker and heart issues, according to audio from broadcastify.com.

Jim Mason, longtime commander of a search-and-rescue posse in Maricopa County, isn’t involved in the search for Guthrie but said desert terrain can make looking for missing people difficult. He said it can be hard to peer into areas that are dense with mesquite trees, cholla cactus and other desert brush.

“Some of it is so thick you can’t drive through it,” Mason said.

On the other side of the country, Victory Church in Albany, New York, said it’s offering a $25,000 reward for information that leads to finding Nancy Guthrie.

“Me and my wife, we watch Savannah every single morning. We’ve heard of her faith. We’ve heard of her mom’s faith. And she’s got such a sweet spirit,” Pastor Charlie Muller said.

The White House said President Donald Trump called and spoke with Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday.

“I spoke with Savannah Guthrie, and let her know that I am directing ALL Federal Law Enforcement to be at the family’s, and Local Law Enforcement’s, complete disposal, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We are deploying all resources to get her mother home safely.”

For a third day, “Today” opened with Guthrie’s disappearance, but Savannah Guthrie was not at the anchor’s desk. NBC Sports said Tuesday that she will not be covering the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics “as she focuses on being with her family during this difficult time.”

The “Today” host grew up in Tucson, graduated from the University of Arizona and previously worked as a reporter and anchor at Tucson television station KVOA. Her parents settled in Tucson in the 1970s when she was a young child. The youngest of three siblings, she credits her mom with holding their family together after her father died of a heart attack at 49, when Savannah was just 16.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he held what he described as a highly successful phone conversation with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, calling it a constructive exchange ahead of his anticipated April trip to Beijing.

According to Trump, the wide-ranging discussion touched on a number of major international and bilateral issues, including trade relations, military matters, Taiwan, Iran, the war between Russia and Ukraine, and increased Chinese purchases of American energy and agricultural goods.

The call took place only hours after Xi participated in a virtual meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding geopolitical significance to the timing of the conversation.

Trump later characterized the exchange in a post on Truth Social as productive and focused on the future.

“Many important subjects were discussed, including Trade, Military, the April trip that I will be making to China (which I very much look forward to!), Taiwan, the War between Russia/Ukraine, the current situation with Iran, the purchase of Oil and Gas by China from the United States, the consideration by China of the purchase of additional Agricultural products,” Trump wrote.

Trump said Xi committed to sharply increasing China’s imports of American soybeans, boosting purchases to 20 million tons this season, up from 12 million previously. Trump described the move as a significant victory for U.S. farmers.

“All very positive,” Trump wrote. “The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one, and we both realize how important it is to keep it that way.”

The president also voiced confidence that relations between Washington and Beijing would continue to yield tangible benefits during his time in office.

“I believe that there will be many positive results achieved over the next three years of my Presidency having to do with President Xi, and the People’s Republic of China!” he said.

China’s government issued its own readout of the call, confirming that the two leaders discussed major global issues as well as a series of international summits both countries are expected to host in the coming year. Those gatherings, Beijing noted, could provide opportunities for additional meetings between the two leaders.

The Chinese statement did not mention Trump’s expected April visit to China.

Beijing also used the opportunity to restate its long-standing position on Taiwan, underscoring that it has no intention of relinquishing its objective of reunifying with the self-governing democratic island.

“China will never allow Taiwan to be split,” the Chinese statement said.

{Matzav.com}

by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

(AP) – Minute Maid helped make orange juice a year-round morning staple in 1946, when it started shipping cans of frozen juice around the U.S.

But 80 years later, the brand’s parent company is halting sales of frozen juice concentrates in the U.S. and Canada, saying it wants to focus on the fresh juices that customers now prefer.

“We are discontinuing our frozen products and exiting the frozen can category in response to shifting consumer preferences,” The Coca-Cola Co., which owns Minute Maid, said Wednesday in a statement.

Minute Maid’s frozen juices – including several varieties of orange juice, lemonade and limeade – will be discontinued by April, with inventory available while supplies last, Coca-Cola said.

For generations, Americans who wanted orange juice without the work of squeezing fresh fruit cracked open a can and watched a cylinder of frozen juice go ker-plunk into a pitcher. The concentrated juice was mixed with water to make it ready for drinking.

In 1946, Vacuum Foods Corp. became the first U.S. company to ship frozen orange juice across the country, according to Coca-Cola. It named the product Minute Maid; Vacuum Foods eventually changed its name to Minute Maid as well. Rival Tropicana, which still sells frozen canned juice, was founded in 1947.

Coca-Cola acquired Minute Maid in 1960, and 13 years later, Minute Maid introduced ready-to-drink orange juice, which was sold in the refrigerated case instead of the freezer and let consumers skip the step of mixing it up. Minute Maid added lemonade and fruit punch to its lineup in 1980.

In recent years, orange juice has struggled as other options, like energy drinks and protein smoothies, have flooded the market. Skyrocketing prices due to poor weather conditions in Brazil and Florida haven’t helped; a 12-ounce can of frozen orange juice cost an average of $4.82 in December, up 13% from the prior year, according to U.S. government data.

Consumers also increasingly questioned the added sugar in juices. Minute Maid launched Zero Sugar versions of its fresh juices in 2020. But its frozen juices have languished along with the broader frozen juice category.

U.S. sales of frozen beverages fell nearly 8% in the 52 weeks ending Jan. 24, according to the market research firm NielsenIQ.

A quiet but far-reaching transformation is underway inside the world’s largest yeshiva. After decades of fragmented stipends, fluctuating bonuses, and multiple monthly payments, Mir Yeshiva has adopted a new, unified financial model that is already changing daily life for thousands of avreichim.

Anyone familiar with the inner workings of Mir knows that even a minor administrative adjustment quickly becomes the talk of the Beis Yisrael neighborhood. What has taken place over the past three months, however, goes well beyond a technical tweak. It is a fundamental overhaul that directly affects the financial stability and peace of mind of the yeshiva’s avreichim and their families.

For many years, the stipend system at Mir was built in layers. There was a basic allowance, supplemented by an extensive web of incentives: special programs, chaburos, group learning tracks, bonuses for tests, and rewards for consistency. While these additions increased overall support, they often arrived separately and unpredictably. Payments were sometimes delayed, making it difficult for families to plan ahead or even know how much money would ultimately come in at the end of the month.

In advance of the yeshiva’s upcoming historic Adirei-like gathering scheduled for Rosh Chodesh Adar, the hanhalah approved what insiders are calling a “revolution of order.” The goal was clear: transparency, stability, and kavod haTorah. Under the new system, all bonuses and supplements—previously issued as separate payments—are consolidated into a single, fixed monthly check.

The result is a dramatic increase in clarity and consistency. Instead of a base stipend followed by scattered additions, the entire package is now paid at once. The new monthly amount exceeds 2,000 shekels, with many avreichim receiving between 2,000 and 2,200 shekels, depending on seniority and learning track.

“Until now, the money came in drip by drip,” one Mir yungerman explained. “You’d get the base amount, then wait to see when the chaburah supplement would arrive, and later the bonus from a learning program. Today, I receive one respectable check. It’s almost double what used to be considered a standard stipend. It gives you stability, peace of mind to focus on learning, and a real sense that the yeshiva values our effort in a dignified way.”

Those involved in implementing the change emphasize that this is not merely a financial adjustment, but a shift in attitude toward those who devote their lives to limud haTorah. “We realized that the real revolution isn’t only about raising funds,” one official said, “but about how that support is delivered. A single, unified check creates order and wellbeing. When an avreich knows exactly how much he is receiving—and that the amount meaningfully reflects all the programs and achievements that are now built into the stipend—it changes how he experiences his avodah.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new kind of pill sharply reduced artery-clogging cholesterol in people who remain at high risk of heart attacks despite taking statins, researchers reported Wednesday.

It’s still experimental but the pill helps rid the body of cholesterol in a way that today can be done only with injected medicines. If approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the pill, named enlicitide, could offer an easier-to-use option for millions of people.

Statins block some of the liver’s production of cholesterol and are the cornerstone of treatment. But even taking the highest doses, many people need additional help lowering their LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol enough to meet medical guidelines.

In a major study, more than 2,900 high-risk patients were randomly assigned to add a daily enlicitide pill or a dummy drug to their standard treatment. The enlicitide users saw their LDL cholesterol drop by as much as 60% over six months, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

There are other pills that patients can add to their statins “but none come close to the degree of LDL cholesterol lowering that we see with enlicitide,” said study lead author Dr. Ann Marie Navar, a cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

That benefit dropped only slightly over a year, and there was no safety difference between those taking the pill or placebo, researchers found. One caveat: The pill must be taken on an empty stomach.

Heart disease is the nation’s leading cause of death and high LDL cholesterol, which causes plaque to build up in arteries, is a top risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. While an LDL level of 100 is considered fine for healthy people, doctors recommend lowering it to at least 70 once people develop high cholesterol or heart disease — and even lower for those at very high risk.

Statin pills like Lipitor and Crestor, or their cheap generic equivalents, are highly effective at lowering LDL. For additional help, some powerful injected drugs work differently, blocking a liver protein named PCSK9 that limits the body’s ability to clear cholesterol from blood. Yet only a small fraction of people who could benefit from PCSK9 inhibitors use them. While prices for the costly shots have dropped recently, patients still may dislike administering shots and Navar said they’re more complex for doctors to prescribe.

Merck funded Wednesday’s study, which provides some of the final data needed to seek FDA approval of enlicitide. The FDA has added the drug to a program promising ultra-fast reviews.

The research offers “compelling evidence” that the new pill lowers cholesterol about as much as those PCSK9 shots, Dr. William Boden of Boston University and the VA New England Healthcare System, who wasn’t involved with the study, wrote in the journal.

Boden cautioned there’s no data yet showing the pill’s cholesterol-reduction translates into fewer heart attacks, strokes and death. That takes much longer than a year to prove. Merck has a study of more than 14,000 patients underway to tell.

Mayor Kuhn and the Jackson Township Council extend their gratitude to the first responders who acted swiftly and professionally during last night’s structure fire at the Club at Jackson development on Mantoloking Drive.

We are grateful to Fire District 4 and the additional Jackson fire districts that responded, as well as Freehold Independent Fire Company and the Joint Base Fire Department, whose assistance helped ensure continued coverage throughout the township while crews remained committed at the scene. Their coordination and experience were critical in bringing a complex fire under control under challenging conditions.

We also recognize the Jackson Police Department, including our new Police Chief Nelson who was on scene, for their prompt and thorough efforts to evacuate residents and secure the area. Our thanks extend to Jackson EMS, Jackson OEM, Hatzalah, and Chaverim for their vital support to residents and responders throughout the incident.

This response reflects the strength of agencies working together with focus and professionalism.

Mayor Kuhn also extends her appreciation, on behalf of the Jackson 21 community, the HOA, and all Jackson residents, to every firefighter, Jackon Police Department, EMT, and volunteers who answered the call.

Jackson is safer because of your service, and we are grateful for it.

Mayor Jennifer Kuhn and the Jackson Township Council

Kaplan Medical Center reported today that the condition of a 35-year-old chosson who collapsed earlier this week has shown marked improvement.

As reported here on Matzav.com, the chosson collapsed during his wedding at Kibbutz Hulda and received immediate medical attention from medics and paramedics of Magen David Adom (MDA) and United Hatzalah who were present at the simcha.

Hospital officials said Wednesday morning that the chosson has regained consciousness and is now able to communicate with those around him. Doctors noted that he is no longer considered to be in immediate life-threatening danger.

Dr. Natalia Kaufman, Director of the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Kaplan Medical Center, said: “There has been significant improvement in the condition of the patient who arrived from the event hall in the Shephelah region. After intensive treatment by the medical team, the patient has regained consciousness and is communicating with those around him. At this stage, we can say he is no longer in immediate danger.”

She added: “He still requires ongoing supervision and close monitoring in the cardiac ICU to ensure his stability. The medical team continues to investigate the cause of the incident.”

Ben Sinai, a United Hatzalah volunteer who was attending the wedding, described the dramatic moments following the collapse. “I was in the hall as one of the guests at the wedding when I suddenly saw a commotion and heard cries for help. I noticed that the chosson had collapsed and was in cardiac arrest. I immediately called for assistance and began resuscitation efforts with the help of additional medics, including the use of the event hall’s defibrillator. After prolonged CPR and, thank God, his heart started beating again. He was taken to the hospital, and at this stage his condition is serious.”

{Matzav.com}

NEW YORK (AP) — Elon Musk vowed this week to upend another industry just as he did with cars and rockets — and once again he’s taking on long odds.

The world’s richest man said he wants to put as many as a million satellites into orbit to form vast, solar-powered data centers in space — a move to allow expanded use of artificial intelligence and chatbots without triggering blackouts and sending utility bills soaring.

To finance that effort, Musk combined SpaceX with his AI business on Monday and plans a big initial public offering of the combined company.

“Space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk wrote on SpaceX’s website Monday, adding about his solar ambitions, “It’s always sunny in space!”

But scientists and industry experts say even Musk — who outsmarted Detroit to turn Tesla into the world’s most valuable automaker — faces formidable technical, financial and environmental obstacles.

Here’s a look:

Feeling the heat
Capturing the sun’s energy from space to run chatbots and other AI tools would ease pressure on power grids and cut demand for sprawling computing warehouses that are consuming farms and forests and vast amounts of water to cool.

But space presents its own set of problems.

Data centers generate enormous heat. Space seems to offer a solution because it is cold. But it is also a vacuum, trapping heat inside objects in the same way that a Thermos keeps coffee hot using double walls with no air between them.

“An uncooled computer chip in space would overheat and melt much faster than one on Earth,” said Josep Jornet, a computer and electrical engineering professor at Northeastern University.

One fix is to build giant radiator panels that glow in infrared light to push the heat “out into the dark void,” says Jornet, noting that the technology has worked on a small scale, including on the International Space Station. But for Musk’s data centers, he says, it would require an array of “massive, fragile structures that have never been built before.”

Floating debris
Then there is space junk.

A single malfunctioning satellite breaking down or losing orbit could trigger a cascade of collisions, potentially disrupting emergency communications, weather forecasting and other services.

Musk noted in a recent regulatory filing that he has had only one “low-velocity debris generating event” in seven years running Starlink, his satellite communications network. Starlink has operated about 10,000 satellites — but that’s a fraction of the million or so he now plans to put in space.

“We could reach a tipping point where the chance of collision is going to be too great,” said University at Buffalo’s John Crassidis, a former NASA engineer. “And these objects are going fast — 17,500 miles per hour. There could be very violent collisions.”

No repair crews
Even without collisions, satellites fail, chips degrade, parts break.

Special GPU graphics chips used by AI companies, for instance, can become damaged and need to be replaced.

“On Earth, what you would do is send someone down to the data center,” said Baiju Bhatt, CEO of Aetherflux, a space-based solar energy company. “You replace the server, you replace the GPU, you’d do some surgery on that thing and you’d slide it back in.”

But no such repair crew exists in orbit, and those GPUs in space could get damaged due to their exposure to high-energy particles from the sun.

Bhatt says one workaround is to overprovision the satellite with extra chips to replace the ones that fail. But that’s an expensive proposition given they are likely to cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and current Starlink satellites only have a lifespan of about five years.

Competition — and leverage
Musk is not alone trying to solve these problems.

A company in Redmond, Washington, called Starcloud, launched a satellite in November carrying a single Nvidia-made AI computer chip to test out how it would fare in space. Google is exploring orbital data centers in a venture it calls Project Suncatcher. And Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin announced plans in January for a constellation of more than 5,000 satellites to start launching late next year, though its focus has been more on communications than AI.

Still, Musk has an edge: He’s got rockets.

Starcloud had to use one of his Falcon rockets to put its chip in space last year. Aetherflux plans to send a set of chips it calls a Galactic Brain to space on a SpaceX rocket later this year. And Google may also need to turn to Musk to get its first two planned prototype satellites off the ground by early next year.

Pierre Lionnet, a research director at the trade association Eurospace, says Musk routinely charges rivals far more than he charges himself —- as much as $20,000 per kilo of payload versus $2,000 internally.

He said Musk’s announcements this week signal that he plans to use that advantage to win this new space race.

“When he says we are going to put these data centers in space, it’s a way of telling the others we will keep these low launch costs for myself,” said Lionnet. “It’s a kind of powerplay.”

Residents of the city of Beitar Illit have become accustomed to the fact that every week, the gates of the city are closed before Shabbos to prevent Chillul Shabbos.

But most residents weren’t aware of the story of emunah and mesiras nefesh behind the closing of gates, a story that ended this week with tears of joy.

The story began about a year and two months ago, when an emergency kenes of the city’s Rabbanim was held, led by the Rav of Beitar, HaGaon HaRav Chaim Weiss. At that gathering, it was decided to launch a special initiative to ensure the gates of the city were closed 20 minutes before Shekiah to avoid the issue of residents arriving at the city at the very last minute before Shabbos and then speeding through the streets of the city to their destinations.

After the kenes, a Boyaner chassid who had been married for ten years without children approached Rav Weiss, who told him that if he takes a shift to ensure the gates of the city are closed before Shabbos, he’ll be zocheh to a yeshuah.

From that point onward, the avreich became Beitar’s “gatekeeper.” Every week, he stood at the gate, amid heavy traffic and stressed drivers who arrived late, and repeatedly reminded the guards to close the gates before Shabbos. More than once, he endured shouts from people who arrived after the Zeman Hadlakas Neiros and were forced to park outside the city and walk long distances home. Despite the hardships and the humiliations he sometimes suffered, he didn’t abandon his post for even a single Shabbos.

This week, on Tu B’Shvat, the joyful news finally arrived. Eleven years after his wedding, the avreich was blessed with a baby boy.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

(AP) – A newborn baby died from a listeria infection likely linked to the child’s mother drinking raw milk during pregnancy, health officials said.

New Mexico officials this week warned people to avoid consuming unpasteurized dairy products following the death. Interest in and sales of raw milk have been rising in recent years, fueled by social media and growing support from the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement.

State officials provided few details about the newborn, citing privacy restrictions. While investigators said they could not determine the exact cause of the baby’s death, “the most likely source of infection was unpasteurized milk.” That conclusion was based on information gathered during the investigation, including the timing of the infection and reports that the mother drank raw milk during pregnancy, an official said.

Raw milk can contain several disease-causing germs, including listeria. That is a type of bacteria that can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, preterm birth, or fatal infections in newborns, even if the mother is only mildly ill.

Pasteurization — the process of heating milk to a high enough temperature to kill germs — can prevent infections from listeria as well as other types of bacteria as well as viruses. Raw milk can contain germs that cause infections from avian influenza, brucella, tuberculosis, salmonella, campylobacter, cryptosporidium and E. coli. Many of those infections are particularly dangerous to young children, people older than 65 and those with weakened immune systems.

This week, the city of Beitar Illit has been abuzz with a remarkable story of faith, perseverance, and reward. An avreich from the Boyaner community, who for more than a decade after his wedding had not merited children, welcomed a firstborn son—after taking upon himself a quiet but demanding commitment to protect the sanctity of Shabbos.

The yungerman, Reb Chaim Yosef Brandwein, a member of the Boyaner kehillah, had endured over eleven years without zera shel kayama. During that time, he received a promise from the city’s rav, Rav Chaim Weiss: If he would ensure that the city’s entrance gates were closed before shkiah on Friday afternoon, he would merit children.

In Beitar Illit, following rabbinic directive, the city gates are closed twenty minutes before shkiah to prevent last-minute vehicle traffic that can lead to chillul Shabbos. Cars arriving at the final moments often rush through at high speed in an attempt to beat the onset of Shabbos, creating both spiritual and physical risk.

Heeding the rov’s guidance, Reb Chaim Yosef took it upon himself to be present at the city entrance each Friday afternoon. He reminded the guards to close the gates on time and stood his ground despite harassment, verbal abuse, and at times even physical aggression from fringe youths and others angered by being turned away and forced to enter the city on foot.

Those who pass the city gates on Friday afternoon have grown accustomed to the sight: Reb Chaim Yosef standing there in full Shabbos attire, wearing a shtreimel, quietly and steadfastly ensuring that the gates are closed and the sanctity of Shabbos is preserved.

Only recently, he suffered a personal loss with the passing of his father, Reb Yisrael Mordechai Brandwein, a prominent member of the Boyaner community, who was niftar this past Elul. He continued his weekly vigil undeterred.

This week, on Tu B’Shevat, eleven years after his wedding, Reb Chaim Yosef and his wife were blessed with a baby boy, b’chasdei Shomayim. The shalom zachar is scheduled to take place this coming Shabbos, Parshas Yisro at the Boyaner kloiz on Rechov Rabi Akiva in Beitar Illit.

{Matzav.com}