The pageantry of President Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping was undercut Thursday by a series of physical confrontations behind the scenes, as Chinese officials clashed repeatedly with American journalists, Secret Service agents, and White House staff throughout the day.

In the first incident, an aggressive Chinese press pack charged into Trump’s morning bilateral meeting with Xi, knocking down and trampling a White House advance team member. The aide was bruised and shaken but not seriously injured. Her colleagues loudly protested the behavior.

The second confrontation came at the Temple of Heaven, where Chinese officials refused to admit a Secret Service agent accompanying the presidential press pool because he was carrying a firearm, which is standard practice for the agency. A standoff ensued, with the American delegation refusing to proceed without the agent and Chinese officials refusing to allow his weapon inside. After 30 minutes of arguments, a second agent who had already been cleared was brought in to escort reporters inside while the first stayed behind.

A third flashpoint erupted when Trump’s departure from the temple was held up after Chinese officials refused to allow American reporters to rejoin the presidential motorcade, prompting another round of loud confrontations. With Trump already waiting in the motorcade, a White House staffer finally announced “we are going”, the cue for the American contingent to push past Chinese officials and run for the cars. A fresh group of Chinese officials gave chase across the temple grounds with arms outstretched, but the Americans pressed through and reached the convoy.

Throughout the day, American journalists were also subjected to tight restrictions that included limited bathroom access and the confiscation of water bottles, with no alternative hydration provided despite temperatures topping 80 degrees in the Chinese capital.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

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President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday to reframe a reported comment by Chinese President Xi Jinping describing the United States as a nation in decline, arguing that Xi was referring to damage done under former President Joe Biden, not his own administration.

“When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump wrote, adding that Xi was “100% correct” about that period.

Trump’s post came during his visit to China, where he and Xi held their first formal meeting Wednesday. Trump greeted the Chinese leader warmly upon arrival, telling him, “It’s an honor to be your friend.” Talks continued Thursday, with Trump telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that Xi expressed willingness to help broker a deal between the U.S. and Iran, including the potential reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

In the same Truth Social post, Trump listed what he called the achievements of his administration, among them strong stock markets, job growth, and the U.S. military campaign against Iran, which he described as “to be continued” despite an ongoing ceasefire.

The backdrop to Trump’s post is a documented shift in Chinese official thinking. The New York Times reported that Chinese nationalists and state-linked commentators increasingly view Trump’s handling of U.S. affairs as validating Xi’s worldview of “the rise of the East and decline of the West.” A study cited in the piece found that official Chinese sources’ use of “American decline” language doubled last year.

Asia Group Chairman Kurt Campbell wrote in Foreign Affairs on Monday that Xi “believes firmly that China’s rise is a historical certainty and that the United States will continue its hurtling decline.”

Trump closed his post on an upbeat note. “Now, the United States is the hottest nation anywhere in the world,” he wrote, “and hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)  The shiniest block of cheese in the sample box looked almost wet under the light. The head of the cheese company had brought a small assortment of his products to the OU offices, hoping for certification on some of them. He saw Rabbi Avraham Gordimer reach toward the glossy one and stopped him.

“Rabbi, you don’t want to touch that one,” he said. “That cheese is coated with lard.”

The Gemara in Avodah Zarah 35b discusses the prohibition of non-kosher cheese. The gezeirah is two thousand years old. The product on the desk was being sold in American supermarkets last year.

Kosher cheese is one of the most labor-intensive certified products in the world. The reasons go back to the Mishnah in Avodah Zarah 29b, run through a centuries-old machlokes between the Rema and the Shach, and end with a mashgiach climbing a ladder at 2 in the morning in a Wisconsin factory to pour rennet into a vat the size of a small swimming pool. This is what is behind the price tag.

The Sticker Shock

At kosher supermarkets across the greater metropolitan area, eight ounces of aged Romano runs about $9.99. Pecorino can hit $31.99 a pound. Six ounces of kosher pepper jack is $5.99. And Cholov Yisrael cheeses can cost two to three times what mainstream cheese costs.

What’s pshat?

The OU’s own answer to the obvious question is short: sending rabbinic field representatives to distant factories to supervise hard-cheese production for days on end is expensive. Almost every domestic and European hard-cheese plant is non-kosher when it is not running a special kosher run. Those costs land on the consumer.

But the cost analysis is the second answer, not the first. The first answer is halachic.

Cheese Is Not Just Kosher Milk

Most people assume kosher cheese is simple and straightforward: take kosher milk, turn it into cheese.

It is anything but.

Cheese has its own separate category in Yoreh Deah, with its own gezeirah and its own rules. Yoreh Deah 115:2 codifies the prohibition of gevinas akum: cheese made without on-site Jewish supervision is non-kosher, full stop. Even if the milk was chalav Yisrael and even if every ingredient is verified kosher. They are two unrelated prohibitions and two unrelated supervisions. A person who drinks chalav stam still must eat only gevinas Yisrael.

The Gemara in Avodah Zarah 35a-b offers a number of reasons for the gezeirah. The reason accepted by the Rif, the Rambam (Hilchos Maachalos Asuros 3:13), and the Mechaber in Yoreh Deah 115:2 is the position of Shmuel. Rennet, the enzyme that coagulates milk into cheese, was traditionally obtained from the fourth stomach of a calf. If that calf was not properly shechted, the rennet itself was neveilah. Adding it to a vat of milk turned the entire vat into a non-kosher product. The Mishnah Berurah and other commentators note that the gezeirah was made even though the issue would only arise occasionally.

The lard concern from the Gemara is a separate reason. It is the one that walked into Rabbi Gordimer’s office.

The Machlokes That Drives the Price

Yoreh Deah 115:2 is where the price of kosher cheese is set. The Rema on the spot writes that the gezeirah is satisfied when a Yisrael is present and supervising the cheesemaking, verifying that the rennet used is kosher. Watching is sufficient.

The Shach, in s”k 20 on the same se’if, disagrees sharply.

He builds his position on the wording of the Mishnah itself: when the Mishnah discusses chalav akum it includes the qualification that a Yisrael may watch without it being prohibited, but when it discusses gevinas akum, no such qualification appears. From this the Shach concludes that mere observation does not work. A Yisrael must himself dose the rennet into the milk, or own the milk or the cheese outright. Watching alone leaves the product gevinas akum.

The Bi’ur HaGra (115:14) and Pischei Teshuvah (115:6) both side with the Shach. The Aruch HaShulchan (115:19) also leans this way. The Shach compares cheesemaking to pas akum and bishul akum, both of which are remedied through a Jew performing the act, not through observation.

Rav Moshe Feinstein in Igros Moshe YD 3:13 rules like the Rema mei’ikar ha’din, but writes that one should ideally satisfy the Shach as well. Most major American agencies — OU, OK, Star-K, cRc — follow the Shach as standard practice.

This is the chumra that costs money. A mashgiach watching is one job. A mashgiach pouring is a different job, one that cannot scale, cannot be remoted, and cannot be automated without the special closed-rennetting systems that some plants have built at considerable expense.

In some modern factories the mashgiach activates an electronic rennet feed for every vat, controlled by a switch he alone operates. This satisfies the Shach, since the Yisrael is functionally performing the act. But programming and coordinating such a system requires extra engineering work, and most kosher cheese in the world is still made the older way: a mashgiach with a pail, a ladder, and a vat of milk.

Microbial Rennet and Gezeirah Lo Plug

Almost all rennet used in OU-certified cheese today is microbial. The enzyme chymosin is produced by genetically modified microorganisms grown in fermentation tanks. There is no calf anywhere in the system. By Shmuel’s logic, the entire original concern should have evaporated.

Tosfos in Avodah Zarah 35a addressed a version of this question almost a thousand years ago. The chachamim of Narbonne held that in their region, where vegetable rennet was the norm rather than animal rennet, the gezeirah did not apply. The Rambam disagreed. The Mechaber in Yoreh Deah 115:2 ruled with the Rambam and added explicitly that even cheese known to be made without animal rennet — even if the manufacturer is known to use only herbs — remains gevinas akum. The Rema agreed.

Most rishonim, as Tosfos himself records, treat gevinas akum as a davar she’b’minyan: a rabbinic decree that retains its force even when the underlying reason no longer applies, until and unless a larger beis din rescinds it. No such beis din has ever convened. The decree stands.

Rav Moshe Feinstein addressed the modern version of the question explicitly. Even if a non-Jewish manufacturer were fully ne’eman to confirm that only microbial rennet was used, Rav Moshe wrote, the cheese would still be no better than the cheese of Narbonne. Microbial rennet does not solve the halachic problem.

Every wheel of kosher mozzarella, including one made in a facility that has not seen animal rennet in fifty years, still requires a mashgiach.

The Mashgichim Who Live at the Factory

Cheese factories are not generally located near Jewish communities. Most are tucked away in remote stretches of the Midwest or overseas. The kosher market is small relative to the overall cheese market. Most factories therefore run kosher production in short campaigns. A team of mashgichim travels in, koshers the equipment if needed, supervises a few days of kosher cheesemaking, and goes home. They might return once a month.

But some factories make kosher cheese full-time. These have a dedicated mashgiach apartment or house on or near the property. A rotating team lives there. Two mashgichim on site at all times. One sleeps, the other supervises. Shifts run around the clock.

They live there year-round and Yom Tov too. Some factories keep a sukkah ready for the chag and a shofar on hand for Rosh Hashanah. The cheese line runs 24/7, and a mashgiach is there for every vat.

A Mashgiach Story From Northern Denmark

Mashgichim deal with all the regular headaches of constant travel: finding kosher food, locating minyanim, figuring out zmanim in unfamiliar places. Rabbi Gordimer shared a story from his early years at the OU in a recent interview on Youtube released by the OU.

He was sent to inspect four cheese plants in Denmark. One was in the far north. The trip fell in June, near the longest day of the year. He came off an overseas flight exhausted, checked into a hotel, and tried to sleep. There were no zmanim apps. He calculated by hand. Alos hashachar was around 11:30 at night. Netz hachama was around 3 in the morning. He set an old alarm clock, got maybe two hours of sleep, and went out for shacharis before sunrise.

“Not recommended,” he said. “But I had to do it.”

Mashgichim talk about plant odor sometimes. Hot vats of mozzarella whey cooker water put off a smell. Long shifts on overnight production runs are difficult work. Most of the public image of a mashgiach involves clean white coats and clipboards. The reality involves a lot of ladders, a lot of valves, and a lot of fatigue.

How American Kosher Cheese Came to Be

Before 1923, there was no organized kosher certification system in America. There were individual rabbis giving individual hechsherim, often in contested and overlapping arrangements. New York State had passed laws in 1915, strengthened in 1920, against fraudulent kosher representation. The constitutionality of those laws was defended all the way to the United States Supreme Court by attorney Samuel Hofstadter, later a judge, on behalf of New York State. But there was no national agency.

In 1923, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America established what would become OU Kosher. The first director was Abraham Goldstein, a chemist by training, which gave him an unusual grasp of the food additives entering the modern industrial supply chain. The first OU-certified product was Heinz vegetarian beans.

By the mid-1930s, about two dozen companies, including a few national brands, carried OU certification.

Dairy followed. A 1932 letter from the OU Women’s Branch announced that Borden cream cheese was now kosher for Passover, and pledged that the Women’s Branch would do everything in its power to make Borden’s kosher cream cheese popular among Orthodox consumers. Cream cheese is acid-set, which made it the easier first conquest.

Hard cheese (warning: pun forthcoming) was harder. For decades, kosher hard cheese in America came from a small number of facilities, often with mashgichim sent in for short campaigns. The economics were brutal. The Shach’s standard made automation impossible. Many projects simply did not survive.

Two things changed the landscape.

The first was the migration of major brands into kosher production. In 2015, a major mainstream string-cheese producer began producing OU-certified kosher string cheese, undercutting the smaller kosher specialists significantly on price. Wisconsin’s Lake Country Dairy now produces millions of pounds of kosher Italian-style Parmesan, Asiago, Romano, and mascarpone each year. Economies of scale at the largest companies mean kosher prices can sometimes approach non-kosher prices.

The second was the artisanal kosher cheese movement.

Producers partner with traditional cheesemakers in places like Sardinia, where a mashgiach sleeps in the barn for a full week during the kosher run. The kosher market now has Pecorino Romano aged eighteen months, blue cheese, Manchego, brie, camembert. Cheeses that did not exist on the kosher shelf a generation ago.

The OU’s arc, from a Borden cream cheese promotion letter to a mashgiach in a Sardinian barn, mirrors the larger story of how American kashrus turned a chaotic and contested practice into an industrial supervision system that now spans the globe.

How Cheese Is Actually Made

Two basic categories.

Acid-set cheese is the older, simpler kind. Bacteria in the milk convert the lactose into lactic acid; the acid causes the casein to curdle into something like cottage cheese. Cream cheese, farmer cheese, and ricotta are all acid-set. Rav Moshe Feinstein in Igros Moshe YD 2:48 famously analyzed the cottage cheese question and inclined toward Rav Henkin’s position that acid-set cheese is not subject to the gezeirah of gevinas akum altogether, since the original concern was animal rennet. Rav Moshe stopped short of a clear heter, writing that the leniency should not be publicized. The Chochmas Adam (53:38) and the Aruch HaShulchan (YD 115:16) take the stricter view that all cheeses are subject to the gezeirah. Most American agencies, including the OU, follow Rav Henkin and certify acid-set cheese with yotzei v’nichnas spot-check supervision rather than mashgiach temidi.

Rennet-set cheese is what most people think of when they think of cheese: cheddar, mozzarella, provolone, swiss, parmesan, munster, romano. This is the cheese fully subject to the strict halachos of gevinas akum, including the Shach’s requirement of nesi’ah.

To make rennet-set cheese, the factory starts with milk delivered in tanker trucks. The trucks pick up raw milk from many farms — sometimes a dozen on a single route — and unload at the plant’s silos.

From there the milk is pumped into huge round vats called double-O vats. The vats are large enough that workers climb a ladder to look inside. Culture, which is bacterial culture or acid, is added first. Then the rennet. Rennet is extraordinarily potent. A tiny amount sets tens of thousands of pounds of milk.

Within minutes the milk curdles. Small gelatinous pellets form. These are the curds. The leftover liquid is whey. Roughly 90 percent of the vat becomes whey, 10 percent becomes curd. The curds are stirred, cut, drained, molded, and aged.

This author used to do a mini-type of cheese production in his 11th grade Kashrus class.  Recently, it was requested again.

The Italian Cheese Twist

Mozzarella and provolone go through an additional step called pasta filata. After the curds form, they are placed in a cooker filled with hot water at about 160 to 175 degrees. Mechanical augers stretch and pull the curd in the hot water. That stretching aligns the protein matrix and gives the cheese the elastic texture that pulls into long strings on a pizza slice.

Roughly a third of all cheese produced in America is mozzarella. Most of it is on its way to pizza shops.

And the Cheddar Twist

Cheddar gets its character from a different process — not pasta filata but cheddaring.

The cheese began in the 12th century in the village of Cheddar in Somerset, in southwestern England. Today only one traditional dairy remains in the village itself, and most of the world’s cheddar is industrial. The name is not protected, which is why supermarket cheddars in different countries taste so different from each other.

Traditional cheddar starts with raw milk from grass-fed cows. A single Somerset pasture might carry 18 varieties of grasses and herbs, maturing at different times of year and contributing different flavor notes to the cheese. The milk is heated, acidified with a yogurt culture, and set with rennet. As the chymosin in the rennet cleaves the kappa-casein, the proteins unravel and link together, and the milk forms a gel of curd.

So far this is the same process as any other rennet-set cheese. What makes a cheddar a cheddar is what happens next.

After the curd is cut and most of the whey drained off, the cheesemaker takes slabs of curd and stacks them. Then he restacks them slightly higher. Then higher again. The weight of the stack presses moisture out of the slabs below. Each restacking also stretches the curd, aligning the protein matrix into a tight, layered sheet. By the end, what was pillowy curd has become a dense, slightly rubbery material with most of the residual moisture squeezed out.

That is cheddaring. It produces the compact, slightly crumbly texture that gets sharper and drier as the cheese ages. Factory cheddar made with standardized milk approximates the result. The traditional version varies from day to day depending on what the cows ate.

The wheel is then pressed into a round mold and aged on shelves in conditions designed to mimic the cool English caves where cheddar was originally aged. Twelve to eighteen months is standard for a serious cheddar. Some carry far longer.

That aging is what eventually pulls cheddar into the discussion of waiting after cheese before meat. The drying that gives the cheese its character is what makes it brittle, and the brittleness is what lodges between the teeth.

The Mashgiach Climbs the Ladder

In traditional kosher cheese plants, the mashgiach’s job is physical. He carries a pail of rennet diluted with water. He checks that the rennet came from a sealed container with a proper hashgacha. He climbs the small ladder to the top of the double-O vat. He pours the rennet directly into the milk and watches it enter the vat.

That fulfills the Shach. The Yisrael has performed the nesi’ah.

A new vat starts every 30 to 45 minutes. Some plants begin at midnight or 2 in the morning and run for many hours. Fifteen or twenty vats a shift is normal. The mashgiach is there for each one. After the run ends, the plant goes down for an hour or two of cleaning and sterilization, then the next run starts.

What About Kashering the Equipment?

Many factories make both kosher and non-kosher cheese. Does the equipment need to be koshered before each kosher run?

Most of the time, no. Most cheeses are made well below yad soledet bo. Cheddar is made in the upper 90s. Mozzarella around 104. None of these come close to the threshold at which non-kosher taste transfers into the metal. So koshering the vats is usually not necessary.

Some cheeses are made at higher temperatures, and in those cases the mashgiach kashers the vats. That is a long process, water-intensive, but it gets done.

Brine tanks are a separate problem. Many cheeses — swiss, feta, mozzarella — are salted by being submerged in brine tanks, sometimes for days. Plants typically use the same brine for months at a time, since brine actually becomes more valuable as it absorbs cheese flavor. The tanks are often made of fiberglass, which cannot be kashered. A kosher production at such a plant means bringing in fresh brine and dedicated molds. The expense lands on the cheese.

The Whey Question

Whey is what is left after the curds are removed. Since whey is the part of the milk that never became cheese, its halachic status is different. According to most opinions, whey does not require mashgiach temidi. Kosher ingredients and kosher equipment are sufficient. Whey can be certified at a plant that makes non-kosher cheese.

Two things complicate this. If the cheese vat is above yad soledet bo, the taste of the non-kosher cheese transfers into the whey, and the whey is now non-kosher. The more common problem is mozzarella. The hot water in the mozzarella cooker absorbs significant fat and salt from the cheese. Non-kosher plants sometimes funnel that cooker water back into the whey tank because it has commercial value. Once that happens the whey is non-kosher.

Certifying whey at a non-kosher cheese facility requires a hard pipe drain that sends the cooker water to the ground rather than into the whey. Without that, no certification.

Mah Rabu Maasecha

Milk should not behave the way it behaves.

Most biological fluids loaded with protein and minerals will coagulate readily under stress, including heat. Milk can be boiled for hours without curdling. Pour a glass and the protein does not settle to the bottom even after a long time. Something is holding it in suspension against forces that would otherwise pull it apart.

The main protein in milk is casein. Casein is arranged into spherical bundles called micelles, roughly 200 nanometers across. The outer surface of each micelle is coated with a variant of the protein called kappa-casein, whose chains extend outward from the surface like fine hairs about seven nanometers long. Under an electron microscope the surface looks furry. The technical term in the dairy literature is the hairy layer.

Two forces keep the micelles apart. The hairs themselves create steric repulsion — they physically push against the hairs of any neighboring micelle. They also carry a negative electric charge, which adds electrostatic repulsion on top of the steric one. Two systems, working together, keep the milk in even suspension.

That protective coating is meant to come off. It comes off in response to rennet.

Rennet — chymosin, in its biochemical name — acts as a very specific molecular scissors. Out of the kappa-casein chain, which contains hundreds of amino acid bonds, chymosin recognizes and cuts at one position: between the phenylalanine at position 105 and the methionine at position 106. Phe-Met 105-106. Nowhere else on the protein.

Cut that single bond and the protective hairs separate from the micelle. Steric repulsion is gone. The negatively charged piece drifts off into the whey. The micelles, now bare, do what they otherwise wanted to do all along: they aggregate. The whole vat changes state. What was milk becomes curd within minutes.

So cheese, in a sense, is not milk transformed. It is milk un-switched.

Hashem built a switch into the protein at position 105-106 and gave the calf a stomach lined with the precise enzyme that recognizes that one specific bond. The substrate and the enzyme fit each other. Two pieces of the same system designed to meet. Chazal made a gezeirah on this enzyme because of where it might have come from. Modern biochemistry has shown what the enzyme is actually doing in the milk.

Mah rabu maasecha Hashem.

Waiting After Cheese Before Eating Meat

Everyone knows about waiting after meat before dairy. Fewer people know that there are rules about waiting after certain cheeses before meat.

Before any dairy is followed by meat, a person washes his hands, rinses his mouth with a liquid, and either brushes his teeth or eats a pareve food that cleans the mouth (Shulchan Aruch YD 89:2).

Aged cheeses go further. The Rema in Yoreh Deah 89:2 writes that the minhag is not to eat meat, even poultry, after hard cheese, and that one should wait the same time period one waits after meat before dairy. Three hours, six hours, depending on minhag. The Mishnah Berurah confirms that this has become the accepted practice for Ashkenazic Jewry.

Two reasons appear in the rishonim. Rashi (on Chullin 105a) explains that meat — and, by analogy, hard cheese — releases fat that adheres to the mouth and produces a lingering taste. Mashichas ta’am. The Rambam in Hilchos Maachalos Asuros 9:28 explains the waiting after meat as being about basar bein hashinayim, pieces caught between the teeth. The Pri Chadash (89:2) applies the same reasoning to aged cheese: hard cheese, like meat, can park itself in the teeth and remain there for a while. The TaZ (89:4) cites Rashi’s mashichas ta’am reason. Most poskim consider both reasons to be operative.

Which cheeses qualify?

The Shach (89:15) and TaZ (89:4) say that hard cheese for this purpose means cheese aged approximately six months. The TaZ adds Swiss cheese to the list even without six months of aging — the holes from worms (in the original European production) were taken as a sign of pungency on their own. The Aruch HaShulchan (89:11) extends the rule to “Swiss and Hollander cheese, which have a lot of fat and their taste endures for a long time.”

Practically, this means aged cheddar, parmesan (which is aged at least 10 months by law), aged Romano, aged Asiago, aged Gouda, and any cheese with a notably pungent taste. Limburger qualifies even fresh, on pungency alone. Rav Belsky used six months as a general threshold.

Fettuccine Alfredo and the Cooked-In Cheese Question

The waiting rule sounds clean until one runs into Fettuccine Alfredo.

The dish was invented in Rome in 1914. A restaurant owner named Alfredo di Lellio had an expecting wife who could not hold down food. He invented a pasta dish he hoped she would tolerate: fettuccine tossed with butter, heavy cream, and Parmesan cheese. She kept it down. He added it to his menu. In 1927 the Hollywood actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford honeymooned in Rome, ate at the restaurant, and brought the dish home. It became world-famous.

And it raised a real halachic question. The dish is loaded with Parmesan, a hard cheese that under ordinary circumstances would trigger the six-hour wait. On a pizza, the Parmesan triggers the wait. Should it trigger the wait in a cooked pasta sauce as well?

Eight years before the dish was invented, in 1906, an av beis din named Rabbi Yehudah Leibish Landau in Sadigora published a commentary on the kashrus section of Yoreh Deah called Yad Yehudah. In 89:30 he writes that the stringency of waiting after hard cheese does not apply when the cheese has been melted into a tavshil shel gevina — a pareve dish into which the cheese has been melted indiscernibly. His reasoning follows the Pri Chadash. If the issue is brittle pieces lodging in the teeth, then cheese melted into a sauce no longer has the texture that creates the problem. The reason is gone; the chumra goes with it.

Most American va’adei kashrus follow the Yad Yehudah for cooked cheese dishes. Fettuccine Alfredo, baked ziti, broccoli kugel — these generally do not carry warning labels for six-hour cheese.

But the question is not closed. Rav Shraga Feivel Cohen zt”l, one of the leading American poskim of the past generation and the mechaber of Badei HaShulchan, who was niftar in November 2022, raised a substantive challenge in his treatment of Hilchos Basar VeChalav (perek 89, page 64 of the Biurim).

The Yad Yehudah’s heter depends on accepting the Pri Chadash’s reason for the chumra — pieces in the teeth. But Rashi and the TaZ explain it differently. They hold the issue is mashichas ta’am, lingering fatty taste. Cooking softens texture. It does not necessarily eliminate the taste. Rav Cohen concluded with tzarich iyun.

The OU’s own published position adopts a sharper reading of the Yad Yehudah. They limit his heter to cases where the cheese is melted into a dish and is no longer b’eyn — not visibly discernible. Pizza, where the cheese sits on top in clearly visible globs, would not qualify under the OU’s reading. Other poskim, including the Badei HaShulchan itself (89:3 in the Biurim, on the relevant phrase), read the Yad Yehudah more broadly and apply the heter to any melted aged cheese. The Mesorah Journal volume 20, page 92, surveys the debate at length.

A separate svara has been suggested: that mixing the Parmesan with butter, cream, and the rest of the sauce dilutes the cheese’s halachic identity. When this rationale was presented to Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt”l, he reportedly rejected it. Mixing hard cheese with other dairy ingredients does not mitigate its halachic status.

If Rav Elyashiv’s position is taken seriously, the implications reach further than pasta. Standard American processed cheese — the orange slices people picture when they hear the word “cheese” — contains real cheddar in its formulation. The orange color is not just food coloring on a generic dairy base. There is actual cheddar in the mix. If mixing does not mitigate, a long list of common kosher dairy products comes under scrutiny.

In practice, many a Vaad  Harabbonim follow the Yad Yehudah, particularly when the cooking and mixing factors are both present. As in every area of halacha, one’s own rav should be consulted on specific cases.

The Parmesan Shaker

What about the parmesan shaker on the table at the kosher pizza store?

Rav Belsky zt”l drew a distinction. Real grated parmesan — made by shredding actual aged parmesan into small pieces — is still aged cheese. The pieces are smaller, but they are the same brittle dried-out aged cheese that lodges in the teeth. A person must wait after it.

Many cheese powders used today in flavored snacks and shakers are not natural cheese in the same sense. They are made by melting cheese, blending it with a majority of water and other additives, and then spray-drying the mixture into a powder. The aged texture is gone. The fat content is diluted. Rav Belsky ruled that for these spray-dried cheese powders there is no need to wait. The strict waiting requirement was a chiddush of the poskim, and a chiddush is not extended to cases the original ruling did not clearly include.

So a flavored snack dusted with cheddar powder is in a different category than a chunk of aged cheddar.  The article was written in honor of the shalom zachar of the author’s new grandson (with the hope that the editor will not remove the dedication).

Halacha L’maaseh: Waiting After Cheese

Wait the full meat-to-milk interval (3 or 6 hours per minhag) after:

• Aged cheddar (aged 6 months or more)

• Parmesan (all parmesan is aged at least 10 months by law)

• Real shredded or grated parmesan

• Aged Romano, aged Asiago, aged Pecorino, aged Gouda

• Swiss cheese (TaZ 89:4)

• Limburger (pungency qualifies it even when fresh)

• Any cheese with a notably pungent taste

No waiting required after:

• Spray-dried cheese powder in flavored snacks (chips, crackers, popcorn seasonings)

• Powdered cheese in shaker form that is reconstituted from melted cheese plus water and additives

• Mild cheddar (aged less than 6 months)

• Soft cheeses: mozzarella, cream cheese, cottage cheese, ricotta, farmer cheese

Common practice based on the Yad Yehudah, though Badei HaShulchan raises tzarich iyun:

• Hard cheese melted into a cooked dish (Fettuccine Alfredo, baked ziti, lasagna, broccoli kugel)

• The OU’s position limits this leniency to cases where the cheese is no longer visibly discernible in the dish.

In all cases, a person must still wash hands, rinse the mouth, and either brush teeth or eat a pareve food before transitioning from dairy to meat. The above reflects the rulings of Rav Belsky zt”l as taught at the OU. A person’s own rav should be consulted for specific cases.

The Bottom Line

The kosher cheese in the shopping cart is the visible end of a long chain. A mashgiach on a ladder. A machlokes between the Rema and the Shach. A Mishnah in Avodah Zarah. And, written into the protein chain at position 105-106, a switch that flips on contact with one specific enzyme. The OU video can be seen here.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

LISTEN:

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Tefila4Life-Shiur-1084-From-Him-Vayevarech-Dovid.mp3

A shocking antisemitic incident unfolded Wednesday evening at New York University when a blue flag resembling the Israeli flag — featuring a Star of David flanked by two swastikas and the letters “NYU” — was raised atop the Steinhardt building overlooking Washington Square Park.

The disturbing display appeared shortly after 5 p.m. as hundreds of graduates and family members walked through West Fourth Street during NYU’s annual Grad Alley celebrations.

“We are shocked and deeply troubled that this hateful symbol expressing antisemitism was raised on a flagpole overlooking Washington Square Park,” NYU spokesperson Wiley Norvell said in a statement. “Campus Safety responded immediately to remove it and we are working closely with the NYPD to identify whoever is responsible.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also condemned the incident in a post on X.

“I am outraged that a swastika flag was raised overlooking Washington Square Park. This hateful antisemitic act was meant to spread fear among and intimidate Jewish New Yorkers. It has no place in our city,” Mamdani wrote.

“Our administration is committed to fighting antisemitism in all its forms and protecting the safety of Jewish New Yorkers,” he added, noting that the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating.

The university said the flag was removed within approximately 15 minutes.

The condemnation comes as Mamdani fails to confront escalating anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations across New York City. Many Jewish residents and community leaders pointed to this week’s protests in Flatbush, where demonstrators marched through heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods late at night, sparking fear and outrage among residents.

Critics noted that aside from social media posts and statements, Mamdani has done little to address the intimidation and unrest targeting Jewish communities across the city.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The IDF on Friday morning announced the death of Staff Sgt. Negev Dagan HY’D, 20, a soldier in the Golani Brigade’s 12th Battalion, who was killed overnight during operational activity in southern Lebanon.

According to the military, Dagan, a resident of the southern community of Dekel, was killed after Hezbollah terrorists launched mortar fire toward Israeli forces operating in the area.

The incident marks another deadly attack along Israel’s northern front, where IDF troops continue carrying out operations against Hezbollah infrastructure and terror activity in southern Lebanon amid ongoing tensions and repeated cross-border attacks.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)  A Nazi guard shot the Klausenberger Rebbe zt”l in the arm. They were in Auschwitz. It did not take ruach hakodesh for the Rebbe to know that the camp infirmary was a death sentence dressed up as medicine. Everyone pretty much knew that walking through that door meant never walking out.

So the Rebbe healed himself.

He plucked a leaf from a nearby tree and pressed it against the wound. He broke off a branch, tied it around his arm, and walked away. Three days later the wound was closed.

Standing there in the filth of Auschwitz, blood drying on his sleeve, the Rebbe made a vow. If he lived through this, he would build a hospital in Eretz Yisrael. Every patient would be treated with dignity. Every doctor and nurse would believe in a Creator. Healing a Jew, they would understand, is among the greatest mitzvos in the Torah.

Thirty-two years later. Union City, New Jersey. A modest yeshiva building. It is the spring of 1976, just after Purim, and the Rebbe is hosting a Shalom Zachar.

Not for his son. Not for a grandson. And not for any child of any chassid.

That week, the maternity ward at Laniado Hospital in Netanya had opened its doors. A boy had been born — the first child to enter the world in the Rebbe’s hospital. Someone in Netanya picked up a phone. They held the receiver up in the nursery so the Rebbe in New Jersey could hear the baby cry.

That cry tore through him.

The Nazis were gone. Klal Yisroel had survived. A new Jewish child had drawn his first breath in a hospital built on a vow made in Auschwitz.

How could the Rebbe not make a Shalom Zachar?

AFTER MAARIV THIS SHABBOS

Across the world this Shabbos, gabbaim will announce a Shalom Zachar at the home of a new father. The week was long. The couch looks inviting. Going out into the cold to nibble arbis at a stranger’s table is not what tired feet want.

But the emotion the Klausenberger felt that night a half century ago. in 1976 is the emotion behind every Shalom Zachar. A Jewish child is here. The chain held. Klal Yizroel continues

WHY KNOW THE REASONS

The Rambam writes that understanding the reasons behind mitzvos matters (Hilchos Me’ilah 8:8, and again in Moreh Nevuchim 3:31). The Zohar (Yisro 93b) says the same. So does Rabbeinu Yonah in Shaarei HaAvodah #54. The principle holds for minhagim as well. Three classical reasons are given for the Shalom Zachar. A fourth will be proposed here.

REASON ONE: GRATITUDE

The Terumas HaDeshen (Siman 269) calls it a seudas hoda’ah — a meal of thanks. Thanks for the safe passage of the child through the dangers of birth. He reads this into the Tosfos in Bava Kamma 80a (d“h Yeshua HaBen) citing Rabbeinu Tam.

A NEW ANGLE ON GRATITUDE

The Klausenberger’s Shalom Zachar in Union City opens a wider window. Perhaps the baby in the cradle stands for something larger than himself. Perhaps he stands for Klal Yisroel.

That infant survived the Rindfleisch massacres. He survived the Crusades. He survived Chmielnicki’s Tach VeTat. He survived the Russian pogroms. He survived Auschwitz. He survived October 7th. Every Jewish baby born today is a survivor of every catastrophe that came before him.

Hakaras hatov for that survival is not a small thing. It shapes a person. A Jew who feels gratitude — to Hashem and to the people around him — becomes a different kind of oveid Hashem than a Jew who does not.

REASON TWO: THE LOST TORAH

The TaZ cites the Drisha — Rav Yehoshua Falk (1555–1614), one of the towering Polish poskim of his generation. The Drisha builds on the Gemara in Niddah 30b. A child in the womb learns the entire Torah from a malach. At the moment of birth the malach strikes the baby on the mouth and the Torah is forgotten. The Shalom Zachar, says the Drisha, mourns that loss.

The implication is sharp. Torah is not a feature of Jewish life; Torah is life itself. “Ki heim chayeinu v’orech yameinu,” the Maariv quietly insists every night. The Drisha hears those words in the cry of a newborn.

REASON THREE: SHABBOS

The TaZ offers his own reason, rooted in the Midrash (VaYikra Rabba 27. The Midrash explains why a bris waits until the eighth day: a king’s subjects must first present themselves before the matronisa — the queen — before approaching the king himself.

Shabbos is that matronisa.

The TaZ extends the idea. The Shalom Zachar is held on Shabbos. Why? Because Shabbos is the gateway through which the new Jew enters.

The line is often quoted: more than the Jew has kept Shabbos, Shabbos has kept the Jew. Ahad Ha’am wrote it, and he was no shomer Shabbos, which makes the line stranger and somehow truer. Every Shalom Zachar is a small reminder of what Shabbos is doing for the people sitting around the table.

REASON FOUR: JEWISH CONTINUITY

Here is a reason not found explicitly in the early sources but written into the Klausenberger’s actions in Union City.

The Terumas HaDeshen says the meal thanks Hashem for saving the child from the dangers of birth. But perhaps we can stretch that thought outward.

Every Jewish birth is salvation from a danger larger than the labor room. The danger is historical. The danger is theological. Pharaoh tried to end this baby. Haman tried. Hadrian tried. Chmielnicki tried. Hitler tried. Hamas tried. Boruch hashem, none of them succeeded.

The Chasam Sofer read “od Yosef chai” as a statement about Jewish endurance against every odd. The Satmar Rav, walking through the smoking ruins of postwar Europe, said the rebuilding of frum life was the answer no historian could have predicted. Rav Hutner, in his letters, called the post-Churban generation a generation of revival written into the bones of broken survivors.

A Shalom Zachar is, on this reading, a quiet declaration.

THE OBVIOUS QUESTION: WHY NOT FOR GIRLS

Rav Yechezkel Landau of Prague pressed the question in his Dagul Mervavah on Yoreh Deah. If the Shalom Zachar thanks Hashem for the safe birth of a child, a daughter’s arrival is no less worthy of thanks. Where is her seudah?

The answer may be hiding in plain sight. Maseches Smachos (Aivel Rabbasi 2:3) refers to a meal called Shavuah HaBas — the parallel to the Shavuah HaBen mentioned in Bava Kamma. The kiddush thrown in shul when a girl is born may be the surviving form of that ancient seudah.

Some report that Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l advised single women still waiting for their shidduch to sponsor a kiddush in shul, framing it as a fulfillment of the Shavuah HaBas. Others dispute that this was actually his position. Either way, the textual basis for celebrating a daughter’s arrival publicly is older than most assume.

WHY THE NAME SHALOM ZACHAR

The Yaavetz in Migdol Oz writes that the name itself encodes the Drisha’s reason. Zachar means to remember. The seudah remembers the Torah the baby learned in the womb and lost on his way into the world. Shalom carries its own freight — the Mishnah in Uktzin closes by calling shalom the vessel that holds all blessing.

IS IT A SEUDAS MITZVAH

The Terumas HaDeshen rules yes, and brings a proof. The Gemara in Bava Kamma records that Rav attended a Yeshua HaBen — the older name for this gathering. The Gemara in Chullin 95b tells us Rav never ate at a seudas reshus. By elimination, the seudah he attended must have been a seudas mitzvah.

The Chavos Yair (Siman 70) is not convinced. Maybe Rav only stopped in. Maybe he did not eat. The question is left open. Most poskim follow the Terumas HaDeshen.

WHEN THE BRIS IS DELAYED

Sometimes a baby is jaundiced. Sometimes there is another medical reason to push off the bris. When the bris will not happen within the week, when does the Shalom Zachar take place? The Yaavetz and the Chochmas Adam (149:24) hold the seudah moves — it is held on the Shabbos before the eventual bris. The Zocher HaBris disagrees and says it is always on the Shabbos following the birth, full stop. The language of the Rama leans this way. Common practice today follows the birth, not the bris.

BORN ON FRIDAY NIGHT

A baby born after candle-lighting on Friday creates a logistics problem. The Pri Megadim (MZ YD 444:9) rules to hold the Shalom Zachar as close to the birth as possible — that Shabbos. The Chayei Adam rules the opposite: hold it as close to the bris as possible. Ask a rav.

PRACTICAL QUESTIONS WORTH KNOWING

What gets served. Arbis — chickpeas — are the iconic Shalom Zachar food. The Maharil already mentions them. The simple reason: chickpeas are a mourner’s food, and the seudah carries an element of mourning for the lost Torah. Other foods follow no fixed law; cake, fruit, herring, and kugel are normal.

Twins, both boys. Most poskim hold one Shalom Zachar suffices. Two seudos are not required and not customary.

Caesarean birth. A Shalom Zachar is held as usual. The mitzvah is the birth of the child, not the manner of delivery.

During the Nine Days, Sefirah, or while in aveilus. A Shalom Zachar is a seudas mitzvah and overrides these restrictions. Music and frivolity are scaled back; the seudah itself proceeds.

Divrei Torah. The minhag is to learn or speak something. The Niddah 30b sugya is the most traditional choice — a small return of what the baby just lost.

BACK TO UNION CITY

Picture the Rebbe in 1976 holding that phone to his ear. A baby he had never met, born in a hospital he built on a vow made under a Nazi guard’s rifle, was crying into the receiver. The Rebbe wept. Then he sat down and made a seudah.

The walk down the block on Friday night is short. The reason to go is not.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

It is with great sadness that Matzav.com reports the petirah of Rav Yosef Chaim Lieberman zt”l of Lakewood, formerly of Boro Park, who was niftar at the age of 98.

A remarkable survivor of the Churban Europe and a living link to the great dor of prewar Torah Jewry, Rav Yosef Chaim endured hunger, concentration camps, and unimaginable upheaval as a young child in Antwerp during the Holocaust, while clinging fiercely to Torah umitzvos under the harshest conditions.

Even as refugee children escaping war-torn Europe, the Lieberman siblings became known for their uncompromising insistence on kashrus and maintaining Yiddishkeit wherever they went.

After surviving the war years in Europe, Rav Yosef Chaim arrived in America as part of the famed Kindertransport aboard the Nyassa. He learned in Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin under Rav Yitzchok Hutner zt”l, spending Yomim Tovim in the rosh yeshiva‘s home and maintaining a close lifelong kesher to the yeshiva.

He later learned for seven years in Lakewood under Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l, with whom he shared a uniquely close kesher, and became close friends and chavrusos with Rav Dov Schwartzman zt”l for many years. His older brother was the noted talmid chochom Rav Dovid Moshe Lieberman zt”l, prominent rov in Antwerp.

Already as a bochur, Rav Yosef Chaim received semichah from Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l — something Rav Moshe rarely granted to younger talmidim.

For close to fifty years, Rav Yosef Chaim resided in Boro Park, where he was among the founding members of the Lakewood Minyan.

For the last twenty years, he lived in Lakewood, where he became a fixture at Bais Medrash Kol Shimshon, spending his days immersed in learning with remarkable hasmadah and consistency well into his later years.

Rav Yosef Chaim was zocheh to raise a family of eleven children, all bnei and bnos Torah, continuing the legacy of Torah and emunah that defined his life.

Yehi zichro baruch.

President Trump said Thursday that China is preparing to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into companies led by top American executives who accompanied him during his meetings this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Speaking in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that aired Thursday night, Trump said the business leaders traveling with him were focused on securing major economic agreements and bringing jobs back to the United States.

“Those business people are here to make deals and to bring back jobs,” Trump said of the dozens of executives and entrepreneurs that accompanied him on his historic trip to Beijing.

“China’s going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars with those people that were in that room today,” the president told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview that aired Thursday night. “That’s why they came.”

Trump also disclosed that several prominent executives — including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook — were not originally expected to participate in the formal meeting between the American delegation and Xi at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

“I suggested that before we start the meeting, ‘I’d like to introduce them to you,’” Trump said, “and they were surprised, because it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t scheduled.”

According to Trump, Chinese officials eventually embraced the unexpected addition to the meeting despite the last-minute change in protocol.

Trump said Chinese leadership “really had a good time” once they “got used to the fact that we’re a little off schedule here.”

“They did fantastically well,” he said of the businesspeople. “It was really good.”

“Xi actually said that was very good. That was a good idea, but it was very different from what the schedule had.”

The Hannity interview was recorded Wednesday following Trump’s lengthy meeting with Xi at the Great Hall of the People, which lasted more than two hours.

So far, both leaders have projected a cooperative tone, particularly regarding Iran and the broader state of U.S.-China relations.

A White House summary of the summit said “both countries agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump also claimed Xi expressed willingness to help de-escalate tensions involving Iran.

“President Xi would like to see a deal made, he would, he would like to see a deal made. And he did offer. He said, ‘If I can be of any help at all, I would like to be of help,’” Trump told Hannity.

“He’d like to see the Hormuz Strait open. He said, ‘If I could be of any help whatsoever, I would like to help,’” the president added, noting that Xi intends to continue purchasing oil from the regime and “didn’t like the fact that they are charging tolls.”

Trump further stated that Xi committed not to provide military assistance to Tehran.

“He said he’s not going to give military equipment, that’s a big statement,” Trump said.

At a formal state banquet honoring Trump on Wednesday, Xi emphasized the importance of maintaining stable ties between Washington and Beijing.

“We must make it work, and never mess it up.”

Xi also referenced Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan while speaking optimistically about future relations between the two powers.

“achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand,”

Trump and Xi were scheduled to meet again Thursday evening at Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, the headquarters compound of the Chinese Communist Party and the location of Xi’s main official residence.

The two leaders planned to continue discussions over tea and lunch, with talks expected to cover Iran, trade, investment, and Taiwan.

Following the working lunch, Trump was expected to depart Beijing and conclude his fast-moving three-day visit to China.

{Matzav.com}

ANN ARBOR  (VINnews) – Elie Kligman, a catcher for the University of Michigan baseball team, has made history as the first Orthodox Jew to compete in NCAA Division I baseball.

Kligman, a graduate student from Las Vegas, Nevada, balances elite athletics with strict religious observance. From sundown Friday until nightfall Saturday, he is unavailable to play or practice due to his observance of Shabbos.

His teammates and coaches have fully embraced his commitment, viewing it as an inspiration rather than an obstacle.

“Thank G-d we have him,” one team member said, reflecting the program’s supportive stance toward Kligman’s dedication to his faith.

Kligman, listed at 6-foot, 202 pounds, bats switch and throws right-handed. He joined the Wolverines this season after previous stops at Sacramento State and other programs, continuing a trailblazing path that includes being drafted in the 20th round by the Washington Nationals in 2021.

Michigan Baseball highlighted his arrival, stating he is “making history.” The program and broader Jewish community have celebrated the milestone, with leaders like Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League offering congratulations for breaking barriers and paving the way for future Orthodox Jewish athletes.

Kligman’s journey highlights the challenges and triumphs of maintaining religious principles at the highest levels of college sports. His story has resonated widely, demonstrating how faith and athletics can coexist with mutual respect and accommodation.

New controversy is erupting around New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji after reports surfaced linking her to a Spotify account featuring anti Israel playlists and songs with vulgar lyrics targeting the Jewish state.

One playlist allegedly tied to Duwaji was titled “hungry but sexy for Palestine” and included songs promoting “Intifada” along with tracks containing inflammatory anti Israel lyrics.

One song reportedly repeated lines including “Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch” and “No shalom bitch.” Another track accused “prophets” of seeking “profit.”

A second playlist allegedly titled “p2P Palestine 2 Pree DC protest trip” was reportedly created ahead of the March on Washington for Gaza in January 2024. The playlist allegedly included the song “FREE PALESTINE,” which repeatedly chants vulgar anti Israel lyrics including “F_ck Israel, Israel a bitch,” according to the report.

The reported Spotify account also allegedly featured a playlist titled “ACAB,” short for “All Cops Are Bastards,” created during the George Floyd protests in 2020.

After reporters contacted City Hall this week seeking comment about the playlists and lyrics, the Spotify account was reportedly switched to private.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has consistently defended his wife, describing her as a private citizen who should not face intense public scrutiny over her online activity. City Hall declined to comment on the latest revelations.

Duwaji has already come under fire in recent months over resurfaced social media activity connected to anti Israel content following the October 7 Hamas massacre. She was previously accused of liking celebratory posts after the attacks and interacting with content claiming reports of Hamas sexual violence against Israelis were fabricated.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 1: Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as New York City’s 112th mayor by New York Attorney General Letitia James, left, alongside his wife Rama Duwaji, right, in the former City Hall subway station on January 1, 2026 in New York City. Mamdani’s term as mayor begins immediately in the new year, and a public inauguration will also take place in the afternoon at City Hall. (Photo by Amir Hamja-Pool/Getty Images)

Additional old posts attributed to Duwaji also resurfaced online, including a 2015 comment reportedly stating that Tel Aviv “shouldn’t exist in the first place” while referring to Israelis as “occupiers.” Separate posts containing racial slurs from her teenage years also triggered backlash.

In April, Duwaji apologized for the “hurt” caused by some of her past online activity, though critics pointed out she did not directly apologize for anti Israel remarks.

The growing controversy is intensifying tensions between Mayor Mamdani’s administration and many in New York City’s Jewish community at a time when antisemitism remains a major concern following October 7 and the ongoing war in Gaza.

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Pro-Israel demonstrators gathered Thursday outside the Manhattan offices of The New York Times to protest a recent opinion piece alleging abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli authorities.

"Fire Kristof!" – Pro-Israel protesters gathered outside of the New York Times accusing the paper of "Blood Libel" and demanding the firing of journalist Nicholas Kristof

Video by @yyeeaahhhboiii2 | Licensing [email protected] pic.twitter.com/ggFH6huMmk

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) May 14, 2026

The rally drew hundreds of participants carrying Israeli flags and signs criticizing the newspaper’s coverage of Israel and the ongoing war with Hamas. Protesters chanted slogans accusing the publication of spreading false or misleading claims about Israel.

The demonstration was organized by several Jewish and pro-Israel activist groups.

The protest followed publication of a column by Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof discussing allegations of mistreatment and sexual abuse involving Palestinian detainees held by Israel. Israeli officials and supporters of Israel sharply rejected the allegations and accused the newspaper of promoting biased reporting.

Some protesters said they believed media organizations have devoted insufficient attention to documented atrocities committed during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

The demonstration reflected continuing tensions surrounding media coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict and divisions over how the war is portrayed internationally.

MELVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — A large sinkhole that suddenly opened on the Long Island Expressway Thursday afternoon caused major traffic disruptions in Suffolk County and left one vehicle partially trapped in the damaged roadway, authorities said.

The collapse occurred on the westbound side of the highway near Exit 49 in Melville shortly after 1 p.m., according to police. Officials said the hole stretched several feet across and deep enough to partially swallow the front end of a passing vehicle.

No injuries were reported.

Emergency crews shut down multiple lanes while transportation workers began repairs and inspected the roadway for additional damage. Traffic remained backed up for miles during the evening commute as drivers were diverted through limited open lanes.

State transportation officials urged motorists to avoid the area if possible while repairs continued overnight.

.

A CIA whistleblower told senators that internal intelligence assessments pointing to a lab leak as the most likely origin of COVID-19 were repeatedly sidelined by the Biden administration, raising new questions about how the government handled early conclusions about the pandemic.

Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, James Erdman III — a veteran CIA officer with more than 20 years of experience — alleged that key findings from agency scientists were excluded from official reports and never shared with Congress.

Committee Chairman Sen. Rand Paul said Erdman came forward despite significant personal risk, emphasizing the importance of transparency.

“According to his testimony, CIA scientific analysts concluded multiple times between 2021 and 2023 that a lab leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19,” Paul said in his opening statement. “Yet those conclusions never shaped the official narrative, never made the intelligence report. Congress was never told.”

Paul further claimed that the timing of a later CIA assessment raised concerns about political motivations.

“It was not until after the 2024 election that the outgoing Biden administration directed the CIA to issue an assessment, not because of new intelligence, but so officials could walk out of the door claiming there was nothing left to find,” he said. “That is not analysis. That is a cleanup operation.”

Erdman appeared publicly despite objections from the CIA, which criticized the hearing as politically driven. Agency spokeswoman Liz Lyons said lawmakers acted improperly in compelling the testimony.

“The witness testifying today is not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuit of the truth, but instead in response to the subpoena issued by Chairman Paul,” Lyons said.

Erdman’s attorney, Carol Thompson, said her client had concerns about possible retaliation but declined to elaborate further.

During the hearing, Erdman also pointed to the role of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci in shaping internal discussions about the virus’s origins.

“It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci, injecting himself into the IC [intelligence community],” Erdman said when asked whether the CIA minimized the possibility of a lab leak.

His testimony prompted calls from several Republican lawmakers for criminal action against Fauci.

“We just heard testimony that he intervened behind the scenes to try and get our own intelligence agency, CIA, FBI to change their assessment of the lab leak,” Sen. Josh Hawley said. “Why? Because he helped fund the Wuhan lab. He supported and funded gain-of-function research, and then he tried to cover it up, and then he worked to cover it up from the American people.”

“I hope he’s indicted,” Hawley added.

The hearing came shortly after the statute of limitations for certain potential charges related to Fauci’s prior testimony expired, though Paul signaled he intends to continue pursuing the matter.

“I’ve sent several criminal referrals on Anthony Fauci to the Justice Department,” Paul said. “And I hope they will be pursued at this time.”

Paul has long argued that Fauci misled Congress regarding research connected to Wuhan, an allegation Fauci has denied.

Former President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Fauci near the end of his term, though President Donald Trump has said the pardon is invalid due to how it was signed. That claim has not yet been tested in court.

Separately, a former Fauci adviser, Dr. David Morens, was recently indicted by a federal grand jury on allegations tied to concealing information about the origins of the pandemic.

Tensions also flared between Republican senators and the CIA during the hearing, particularly over the agency’s characterization of the proceedings.

“This proceeding amounts to nothing more than dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing,” Lyons said in a statement.

Sen. Ron Johnson sharply rejected that assessment.

“This is not political theater,” Johnson said. “I have years and years and years of built-up frustration of agencies like the CIA, Department of Justice, the FBI, HHS snubbing our oversight, giving us the big middle finger.”

Paul also defended holding the hearing in public, arguing transparency is essential.

“Closed-door testimony doesn’t provide oversight. Public testimony provides oversight,” he said.

Democratic members of the committee did not attend the hearing, drawing criticism from Republicans who said the absence undermined the seriousness of the issue.

“Nothing shocks me anymore with our colleagues from the other side of the aisle, but I’m shocked that not one of them showed up here,” Johnson said.

“This is serious oversight work,” he added. “This is what the American people need to see. And I just wish our Democrat colleagues had any level of curiosity about what’s happening inside the deep state.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno argued that Democrats avoided the hearing to sidestep accountability for pandemic-era decisions.

“This isn’t about politics, but somehow it’s become about politics because the Democrats don’t even want to hear the conversation about what obviously was a grave error that this country made during COVID,” Moreno said. “There’s never been a situation, certainly not in my lifetime, where you had decisions made that affected generations of Americans, kids that were absolutely deprived of their childhood, businesses that were destroyed, families that were torn apart, memories that you’ll never get back, trillions of dollars of economic loss.”

Erdman also accused the CIA of obstructing the investigation into COVID-19’s origins and retaliating against those involved.

“The CIA did not comply with lawful oversight during the DIG’s investigation,” he testified. “The CIA refused to provide information necessary to understand why analytic standards at the CIA were violated.”

He further alleged that agency officials monitored communications involving investigators and whistleblowers.

“These were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president and under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence,” Erdman said.

According to his testimony, at least one contractor who cooperated with the investigation was dismissed.

Thompson said she hopes the public testimony will encourage others to come forward.

“There has been obstruction by those intelligence agencies, precluding those individuals from being able to conduct the investigation,” she said.

Hawley echoed those concerns, warning about broader implications.

“We have basically a systematic effort to violate the laws of Congress, to lie to the American people, to mislead the American people. And it’s still going on,” he said. “If you’ve got people who will just not follow the laws of Congress and lie openly to the American people, I don’t know how you can hope to preserve our country.”

{Matzav.com}

Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voiced support for President Donald Trump’s recent remarks prioritizing stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, even as those comments drew attention for downplaying concerns about Americans’ financial struggles.

In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Fetterman said Trump’s statement had been taken out of context and that the president’s core message was centered on preventing a nuclear-armed Iran.

“He said something that got clipped … saying, ‘I’m not thinking about [the] American people financially,’ but what he really was saying — he did say, is, ‘I’m really thinking that we can’t ever let Iran [build] a bomb,’” Fetterman told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“That’s the essence of what that is, and to hold that line,” the Pennsylvania Democrat continued. “I mean, how could we just walk away and … let that happen?”

Fetterman, who ran as a liberal during his 2022 campaign, has in recent months found common ground with Trump on several major issues, including the conflict with Iran, border enforcement, and even plans related to the White House.

Despite that alignment on certain policies, Fetterman made clear he is not changing his political affiliation. Writing last week in a Washington Post opinion column, he said he would remain a Democrat, explaining that he would “be a terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.”

Trump’s original comments came before his departure for Beijing earlier this week, when he was asked whether Americans’ financial conditions influenced his approach to negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

“Not even a little bit,” he told reporters when asked about motivations.

“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he added. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situations. I don’t think about anybody.”

“I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

The ongoing conflict with Iran, which began following U.S. and Israeli strikes on February 28, has had economic repercussions at home, particularly in rising fuel prices linked to instability in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for global oil shipments.

As of Thursday, the national average price for regular gasoline has climbed above $4.53 per gallon, according to AAA. Just two days before the conflict began, prices were below $3 per gallon.

Inflation has also ticked upward, with consumer prices rising 0.6 percent between March and April, pushing the annual inflation rate to 3.8 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That marks a 1.4 percentage point increase since February.

Although a temporary ceasefire between the United States and Iran remains in place, no final agreement has been reached to bring a permanent end to the hostilities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend that significant threats still remain despite the pause in fighting.

“It’s not over, because there’s still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran,” he told Major Garrett on CBS News’s “60 Minutes.”

“There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled,” Netanyahu added. “There are still proxies that Iran supports. There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now, we’ve degraded a lot of it. But all that is still there, and there’s work to be done.”

Meanwhile, Trump is in Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. During his appearance with Hannity, Fetterman argued that China, along with other global powers, should join the effort to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

“The whole world should join us, stand with us. China … Europe, all these other countries should say, ‘We should demand Iran end their nuclear ambitions, and now we can all get back to building up all of our nation and parts of the world,’” the senator told Hannity.

{Matzav.com}

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said that marijuana use may be more widespread among lawmakers than publicly acknowledged, as she also renewed calls for broader legalization nationwide.

Speaking to TMZ in Washington, D.C., Omar — who serves as co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus — addressed ongoing discussions surrounding medical and recreational marijuana research. When asked whether it was surprising that no members of Congress openly identify as regular marijuana users, she suggested that advocacy and personal use are not necessarily connected.

“I will say –– advocacy for legalizing doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a user, so everybody can be an advocate to legalizing it because we understand that it is not OK for us to spend the billions of dollars we do now in incarcerating people for smoking a joint,” she said.

Pressed further on whether lawmakers themselves use cannabis, Omar laughed and indicated she believes such behavior is not uncommon on Capitol Hill.

“I think there are a lot of people who smoke cannabis in Congress,” she said, flashing a peace sign before ending the exchange.

Omar also argued that federal law should catch up with state-level changes, noting that many states have already legalized marijuana in some form. She pointed to President Donald Trump’s role in shifting Republican attitudes on drug policy and encouraging more dialogue within the party.

“I think any step forward is a good step, but we need to go farther than where we are yet,” she said. “We need to continue building the coalition, we need to continue to have people speak to the president. He has the power, Congress has the power, and it’s time for us to come together and get this done.”

Recent actions by the Trump administration reflect a broader shift in federal policy toward marijuana and psychedelic drugs. Last month, Trump signed an executive order easing restrictions on research into psychedelic substances, particularly for treating conditions such as depression and substance abuse.

The order also instructed the Food and Drug Administration to accelerate its review process, leading to approvals for certain psychedelic-based treatments. Several Republican lawmakers, including Reps. Morgan Luttrell of Texas and Jack Bergman of Michigan, have advocated for making such treatments available to veterans.

Shortly afterward, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche directed that state-approved medical marijuana be reclassified as less dangerous, aligning with what officials described as the president’s “promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options.”

The move reduced regulatory burdens on medical marijuana and introduced tax benefits for licensed providers.

“These actions will enable more targeted, rigorous research into marijuana’s safety and efficacy, expanding patients’ access to treatments and empowering doctors to make better-informed healthcare decisions,” Blanche said in his announcement at the time, posted to the social platform X.

While these developments have not significantly altered the legal status of recreational marijuana at the federal level, they represent a notable departure from the strict enforcement approach that defined the decades-long “war on drugs” launched during the Nixon administration.

{Matzav.com}

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Kash Patel visited Hawaii last summer, the FBI took pains to note the director was not on vacation, highlighting his walking tour of the bureau’s Honolulu field office and meetings with local law enforcement.

Left out of the FBI’s news releases was an exclusive excursion that Patel took days later when he participated in what government officials described as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona in an outing coordinated by the military. The sunken battleship entombs more than 900 sailors and Marines at Pearl Harbor.

The swim, revealed in government emails obtained by The Associated Press, comes to light amid criticism of Patel’s use of the FBI plane and his global travel, which have blurred professional responsibilities with leisure activities. The FBI did not disclose the snorkeling session or that Patel had returned to Hawaii for two days after his initial stopover on the island.

“It fits a pattern of Director Patel getting tangled up in unseemly distractions — this time at a site commemorating the second deadliest attack in U.S. history — instead of staying laser-focused on keeping Americans safe,” said Stacey Young, who founded Justice Connection, a network of former federal prosecutors and agents who advocate for the Department of Justice’s independence.

With few exceptions, snorkeling and diving are off-limits around the USS Arizona. The battleship, now a military cemetery reachable only by boat, has stood as one of the nation’s most hallowed sites since Japan bombed and sank it in 1941. Marine archaeologists and crews from the National Park Service make occasional dives at the memorial to survey the condition of the wreck. Other dives have been conducted to inter the remains of Arizona survivors who wanted to rest eternally with their former shipmates.

Still, since at least the Obama administration, the Navy and the park service have quietly allowed a handful of dignitaries, including military and government officials responsible for management of the memorial, to swim at the site. The Navy and park service declined to provide details of those permitted to take such excursions.

Former FBI directors have visited Pearl Harbor on official business, but none going back to at least 1993 has gone snorkeling at the memorial, according to those familiar with their activities and a former government diver who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The diver said it was unusual for a director or anyone not connected to the memorial to be granted such access because the swims come with physical risks and present security, safety and logistical challenges.

Patel has faced scrutiny over his leadership for the past year, with his use of government resources emerging as a recurring storyline of his tenure. The issue flared in February when video surfaced of Patel partying in the locker room with members of the U.S. men’s hockey team after their gold medal win at the Winter Olympics in Milan. Patel defended the trip as recently as this week as “purposely planned” in connection with a cybercrime investigation involving the Italian authorities.

Unanswered questions about exclusive outing
Patel’s excursion was in August as he spent two days in Hawaii on his return to the United States from official visits to Australia and New Zealand. On his way to those countries, he stopped in Hawaii to visit the Honolulu field office. An FBI spokesman did not answer questions about the snorkeling session.

The FBI said in a statement that top regional commanders hosted Patel at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam “as they commonly do with US government officials on official travel.” The Pearl Harbor visit, the spokesman said, “was part of the Director’s public national security engagements last August with counterparts in New Zealand, Australia, our Honolulu Field Office, and the Department of War.”

It was not clear how Patel’s snorkeling session was arranged. A Navy spokesperson, Capt. Jodie Cornell, confirmed the outing but said the service was not able to track down who initiated it.

Participants in Patel’s swim were told “not to touch/come into contact with” the sunken ship in any way, Cornell said. She added that the snorkelers were also briefed about “the historic significance of the Memorial as the final resting place/tomb for hundreds of service members.”

A ‘VIP Snorkel’
Government emails obtained by the AP through a public records request show military officials coordinated logistics and personnel for the “VIP Snorkel.”

The National Park Service, which administers the site in coordination with the Navy, told AP it was not involved in Patel’s swim and declined to comment on the excursion. It also declined to answer questions about any other such outings.

Among those afforded invitations to snorkel have been Navy admirals and secretaries of defense and the interior, according to the former government diver. The diver added that the swims were intended to provide officials with insights into the memorial and its operations.

The Navy declined to provide examples or numbers showing how frequently it organizes such excursions. It described Patel’s outing as “not an anomaly.”

Hack Albertson, a Marine veteran, is part of a select group from the Paralyzed Veterans of America trained to dive on the Arizona annually to check on the condition of the wreck. He said it was inappropriate for Patel and other political figures to snorkel or dive at the memorial.

“It’s like having a bachelor party at a church. It’s hallowed ground,” he said. “It needs to be treated with the solemnity it deserves.”

Some family members don’t object to snorkeling
Some family members of Pearl Harbor survivors said they were not bothered by such official excursions, though some expressed a desire to also be permitted to snorkel at the site. They said they have not been permitted to do so.

“I have not heard of anyone who would object to these visits as they are very rare and there aren’t any survivors of the Arizona left alive,” Deidre Kelley, national president of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, wrote in an email. “Their children might have some objections but I haven’t heard any.”

Patel visited Pearl Harbor several years ago during a trip he made to Hawaii while serving as chief of staff to Christopher Miller, then the acting secretary of defense, according to the former government diver.

Miller said he snorkeled over the Arizona during an official visit to the base, but Patel was not present for that excursion. Miller said he was invited to snorkel by regional military officials and was told such a tour was for “special occasions and for special visitors, of which you’re one.” He called it a “meaningful” experience.

“It was a very somber and meaningful event,” Miller said in an interview. “It was a historical tour. It wasn’t a recreational thing.”

FBI will not discuss Patel’s return to Hawaii
Beyond the snorkeling excursion, it is not clear what else Patel did during his second stop in Hawaii.

Flight tracking data for the Gulfstream G550 typically used by the FBI director show the jet remained on the island two nights during that stay before flying on to Las Vegas, Patel’s adopted hometown. The jet has a published range of about 7,700 miles (12,391 kilometers), meaning the plane would have needed to refuel somewhere between New Zealand and Washington.

The snorkeling session happened one day after Patel stopped in Wellington to open the FBI’s first standalone office in New Zealand. The visit sparked controversy after the AP revealed that Patel had gifted that country’s police and spy bosses inoperable 3D-printed replica pistols that were illegal to possess under local gun laws.

Cuba’s government acknowledged Wednesday that the country has exhausted its fuel reserves, with officials warning that worsening shortages are crippling the national power grid and deepening unrest across the island.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said Cuba has completely run out of both oil and diesel, blaming the crisis on ongoing U.S. sanctions and disruptions to foreign fuel deliveries.

“We have absolutely no fuel, and absolutely no diesel,” Vicente de la O Levy said on state media, according to The Guardian. “We have no reserves.”

The minister said the country’s electrical infrastructure has entered a “critical” phase, with residents in some parts of Havana now enduring rolling blackouts lasting as long as 22 hours each day.

Cuba relies heavily on imported Venezuelan crude, but officials said the island has received just one shipment of oil since January. United Press International separately reported that de la O Levy said a 730,000-barrel shipment delivered by a Russian-flagged tanker had already been depleted. According to officials, Cuba’s power grid is now being sustained only through locally produced crude oil, natural gas, and renewable energy sources.

Cuban authorities pointed to U.S. economic pressure following this year’s American military operation in Venezuela as a major cause of the deepening energy emergency. President Trump has also publicly warned foreign nations against maintaining commercial ties with Cuba.

“This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote in a Wednesday post on the social platform X.

“It is a perverse design whose main objective is the suffering of the entire people, to hold them hostage and turn them against the Government,” he added.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly signaled support for political change in Cuba. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has previously indicated that Washington could reconsider parts of its economic campaign if Cuba were to install new leadership.

Rubio, whose family emigrated from Cuba, has long taken a hard line against the communist government. One of his earliest actions after taking office last year was reinstating sanctions targeting entities tied to Cuba’s military and government. Last week, the State Department announced additional sanctions against two Cuban organizations and one individual accused of supporting the regime.

“Cubans leave Cuba, they go to other countries and become successful,” Rubio said during an interview with Fox News aboard Air Force One this week. “The only place in the world where Cubans can’t seem to prosper and succeed is in Cuba.”

As fuel shortages worsen alongside an expanding humanitarian crisis, demonstrations have begun erupting in the capital. Reuters reported that hundreds of Cubans gathered in Havana on Wednesday night, blocking roads, banging pots and pans, and demanding electricity.

Reuters noted that police officers were deployed heavily around the protest areas, though authorities reportedly avoided major confrontations with demonstrators.

De la O Levy said Cuba continues trying to secure imported fuel supplies, but global energy markets have become increasingly unstable because of the conflict involving Iran and the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, which has driven up both oil and shipping costs.

“Cuba is open to anyone that wants to sell us fuel,” he said, per Reuters.

President Trump also referenced possible communication with Cuban officials in a Truth Social post Tuesday, ahead of a state visit to China.

“No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba, which is a failed country and only heading in one direction – down! Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!!” he wrote ahead of a state visit to China.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that an investigation lasting more than a year concluded that Yale School of Medicine unlawfully considered race in its admissions decisions, despite the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling prohibiting race-conscious admissions policies in higher education.

In a statement released by the department’s Civil Rights Division, federal officials accused Yale administrators of deliberately factoring race into admissions choices and attempting to rely on what the department described as “racial proxies” in order to work around the Supreme Court’s decision.

Investigators said admissions records indicated that Black and Hispanic applicants were accepted at higher rates than white and Asian applicants who posted similar academic credentials and test scores.

“Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement.

“This Department will continue to shed light on these illegal practices, and demand that institutions of higher education comply with federal law.”

Federal officials also said their review found that Black and Hispanic applicants were “admitted with consistently lower academic qualifications” than white and Asian applicants, which the department said constituted intentional discrimination prohibited under federal law.

The findings represent another step in the Trump administration’s broader campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at colleges and universities across the country.

Following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, conservative legal organizations and federal authorities have intensified scrutiny of admissions procedures at universities, including medical and professional schools.

The Justice Department emphasized that institutions receiving taxpayer funding are obligated to follow federal anti-discrimination laws while educating future doctors.

“Medical schools use substantial federal financial assistance to train the next generation of doctors,” the department said.

“The Department is continuing its focus on eradicating illegal race politics from admissions at medical schools, where quality and excellence are vitally important to public safety.”

Although the department did not announce any immediate penalties or lawsuits against Yale, officials said efforts would continue to ensure colleges and universities comply with federal civil rights requirements.

Yale did not immediately issue a response Thursday after being asked for comment.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling struck down admissions systems used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, with the justices determining that race-based admissions practices violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

That decision prompted schools across the nation to overhaul longstanding admissions policies that had considered race as one factor in evaluating applicants.

{Matzav.com}

Israel’s Chief Rabbi, HaRav Kalman Ber, published a special letter marking Yom Yerushalayim, which begins on Thursday evening, offering an extensive Torah-based view on the significance of the day.

At the opening of his remarks, the rabbi writes that Jerusalem Day is “a day established by the Chief Rabbanut as a day of thanksgiving and praise for generations over the nissim of salvation and deliverance during the Six-Day War. On this day, we thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu for His great kindness in returning our holy land, foremost among them Jerusalem, our holy and glorious city, the makom Hamikdash, the Kosel, and the other holy places.”

“The members of that generation vividly remember the days of fear that preceded the war, when the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael stood under grave threat, and their hearts were filled with tefillah and anticipation for yeshua. And through much chasdei Shamayim, the fear was transformed into great yeshua, and we merited a wondrous victory and the return to Yerushalayim and the Kosel,” he adds.

“In a sichah delivered in those days, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir, HaRavi Chaim Shmuelevitz, z’tl, recalled the words of the Vilna Gaon, who wrote to his mother on his journey to Eretz Yisrael: ‘If I’m zocheh to stand at the Shaarei Shamayim, I will daven for you, adding that the Gra did not reach Eretz Yisrael, while we are zocheh to stand in that holy place and daven on behalf of Klal Yisrael.

“This zechus should by no means be taken for granted, and it is our obligation to thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu for the great kindness He bestowed upon us by allowing us to return to those holy places for which many generations longed,” Rav Ber emphasized.

“Yerushalayim is the heart and center of Eretz Yisrael, and its condition reflects, to a large extent, the condition of Klal Yisrael in their land. Rav Betzalel Ashkenazi, zl’l, already said (שו”ת סימן ט”ו): ‘And if there is no Jerusalem, chas v’chalilah, there is no Chevron.’ HaRav Avraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, z’tl, explained (Igrot HaRe’iyah, Vol. 1, Letter 39) that Jerusalem is the center of kedushah in Eretz Yisrael and its vitality extends to all parts of the land. Therefore, the building and honor of Jerusalem serve as a barometer of the situation of Klal Yisrael in the land, and the more its kedusha and our hold upon it are strengthened, the more the entire land is blessed and established.

“Indeed, the story of Jerusalem’s revival is, to a large extent, the story of the revival of Am Yisrael in their land. In the year 1267, when the Ramban arrived in Jerusalem, he described the city’s difficult condition in chilling terms in a letter to his son: ‘For the abandonment is great and the desolation immense,’ and he added: ‘The more kadosh the place, the greater its desolation. Jerusalem is the most desolate of all…’

“How greatly things have changed from the days of the Ramban until our own time,” Rav Ber continued. “Since our nation began returning to its land, and especially after the reunification of Jerusalem, the renewal and ongoing rebuilding of the holy city are visible before our eyes. Anyone who walks through its streets can tangibly feel that the words of the Navi are being fulfilled before us. Its bustling streets, filled with elderly men and women alongside boys and girls, seem to bring to life Zechariah’s nevuah: ‘Old men and old women shall yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem… and the streets of the city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets’ (Zechariah 8:4–5). Likewise, its renewed construction, with neighborhoods constantly expanding, fulfills the words of consolation: ‘Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land’ (Yirmiyahu 32:15). And the multitudes of Beis Yisrael who flock during the Chagim to the Kosel appear to realize the words of Yechezkel: ‘Like holy flocks… so shall the ruined cities be filled with flocks of people’ (Yechezkel 36:37–38).

“And great is the stature of Jerusalem, for every Jew has a share and connection to it, since Jerusalem was not divided among the shevatim (Yoma 12b; Sotah 45b). Great is Jerusalem’s power to unite hearts, as stated in the Yerushalmi (Chagigah 3:6) on the passuk ‘Jerusalem, built as a city joined together’ — ‘a city that makes all of Yisrael into friends.’ During these days, Jerusalem is the broadest common denominator uniting all parts of the nation. And from Jerusalem’s blessing flow all brachos and goodness to Yisrael, as Chazal taught (Vayikra Rabbah 24:4), that yeshuah, bracha, life, and Torah all emerge from Tzion.”

“We conclude with a tefillah that Hashem will soon grant us the zechus to see Jerusalem rebuilt in its completeness: ‘You shall arise and have mercy upon Tzion, for it is time to favor her, for the appointed time has come. For Your servants cherish her stones and favor her dust’ (Tehillim 102). And as written in the Kuzari (Maamar 5, 27), that the awakening of hearts and longing for the holy place is what brings Geulah: ‘For Jerusalem will indeed be rebuilt when Bnei Yisrael yearn for it with the utmost longing.’

“Let us renew our bris with the holy city, and daven that we merit speedily in our days the rebuilding of the Beis Hamikdash and the Geulah sheleimah. Amen and Amen.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri said that the appointment of Rav Yitzchak Edelstein as chief rabbi of Ramat Hasharon fulfilled a personal commitment he made years ago to the new rov‘s father and uncle, two of the most prominent gedolim of the previous generation.

Speaking to close associates after the selection, Deri described the moment as the culmination of a long-awaited pledge. “Thank G-d that I merited to fulfill the promise I made to his father, Rav Yaakov Edelstein, and to his uncle, Rav Gershon Edelstein. This was their special request to me, and for years I waited to carry out this wish. Thank G-d we worked toward his election, and today he was chosen.”

The story behind the commitment dates back to the final days of Rav Yaakov Edelstein, the longtime rov of Ramat Hasharon. While on his deathbed, he asked Deri to come see him and personally requested that he do everything in his power to ensure that his son, Rav Yitzchak Edelstein, would succeed him as the city’s rov. According to those close to Deri, he gave his word at that time that he would work to make it happen.

Ramat Hasharon Mayor Yitzchak Rochberger also praised Deri’s efforts, saying the outcome would not have been achieved without his involvement. “If not for Rabbi Aryeh Deri, who acted and stood like a rock for the election of Rav Edelstein, we would not have reached this day.”

The pledge was strengthened further during the shivah period following Rav Yaakov Edelstein’s passing. Deri came to comfort the family, and Rav Gershon Edelstein was also present. After offering condolences, Rav Gershon asked to speak privately with Deri in his car, where he again urged him to work toward appointing his nephew, Rav Yitzchak Edelstein, as rov of Ramat Hasharon in order to continue his father’s legacy and the spiritual transformation he led in the city. Deri again assured him that he would act on the request.

Sources within Shas said that throughout the recent round of rabbinic appointments across the country, the Ramat Hasharon position was effectively reserved for Rav Yitzchak Edelstein. According to those familiar with the matter, Deri worked together with former minister Michael Malkieli and Religious Services Ministry Director-General Yehuda Avidan to advance the process and secure his appointment.

After the results were announced, Rav Yitzchak Edelstein held an emotional conversation with Deri, thanking him sincerely for his efforts and for honoring the wishes of his father and uncle.

📸: Spotted at BMG in Lakewood, NJ

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UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE BAIS HORAAH OF LAKEWOOD”

A controversial proposal to tax luxury second homes in New York City may end up affecting far more homeowners than initially expected, after Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office unveiled a plan that lowers the threshold for some properties from $5 million to just $1 million in assessed value.

New details released Thursday by Hochul’s office outlined a complicated two-part framework for the proposed pied-à-terre tax, developed alongside Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The proposal could eventually reshape major aspects of New York City’s long-criticized property tax structure.

Under the proposal, the tax would apply to second homes in condos and co-ops assessed above $1 million, while one-, two-, and three-family homes would only qualify if assessed at more than $5 million.

The proposal, first reported by the New York Times, also caught lawmakers by surprise even as Albany continues prolonged budget negotiations requiring legislative approval for the measure.

“This budget process is broken. It needs to be fixed,” an exasperated state Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-Queens) said, griping that lawmakers learned the proposal from the media instead of the governor.

“We should know these things. It shows a level of disrespect.”

The latest proposal represents another concession by Hochul to Mamdani and progressive allies who have pushed aggressively for higher taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

The pied-à-terre concept gained traction after Mamdani’s broader proposal to tax millionaires lost momentum, largely due to opposition from Hochul.

Instead, the governor agreed to support a targeted tax on luxury second residences, originally describing it as a levy aimed at homes valued at $5 million or more — approximately 13,000 properties citywide, according to her office.

Hochul and Mamdani estimated the tax would generate roughly $500 million annually, though city Comptroller Mark Levine disputed those projections, estimating revenue would likely fall between $340 million and $380 million.

Real estate experts warned that implementing the tax would be extraordinarily complicated because of New York City’s notoriously confusing property tax system and the challenge of determining which residences qualify as second homes.

The framework released Thursday appeared to be an attempt to address those concerns.

Under the proposal, second homes classified as one-, two-, or three-family residences would still only be taxed if their assessed value exceeds $5 million.

Homes assessed between $5 million and $15 million would face a surcharge of 0.8%.

The surcharge would rise to 1.05% for properties valued between $15 million and $25 million, while homes at the highest tier would face a 1.3% rate.

Officials estimated that a part-time city resident with a single-family home assessed at $11.5 million would owe approximately $92,000 annually under the tax.

The proposal takes a far more aggressive approach toward condos and co-ops, aligning with Mamdani’s campaign promise to target “richer and whiter neighborhoods.”

According to the plan, condos and co-ops with a Department of Finance “market value” of at least $1 million would immediately be subject to the surcharge during the first two years.

Hochul’s office argued that because of the city’s unusual assessment formulas, a property carrying a $1 million assessed value may actually sell for around $5 million in the real market.

During the initial phase, properties with assessed market values between $1 million and $3 million would pay a 4% surcharge.

Units assessed at $5 million or higher would face a 6.5% surcharge, according to the proposal.

“For example, a condo selling for $18.5 million may have a (Department of Finance) assessed market value of only $1.1 million,” the proposal states. “In the first two years, it would pay a surcharge of $45,115, or 4% of its current assessed market value.”

After the first two years, officials hope to replace the temporary structure with an entirely redesigned valuation system for condos and co-ops that would align their taxation more closely with single-family homes.

Under that revised model, officials said the same $18.5 million condo would eventually owe $194,250 annually.

Hochul’s office estimated that the updated tax plan would impact between 8,000 and 10,000 properties.

The release of the proposal came only hours after legislative leaders acknowledged that negotiations over the tax were still unresolved.

“I don’t have any final details. I have an idea of it, but I don’t have the exact details,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) told reporters Thursday.

At the time, Heastie noted that lawmakers were still debating whether the surcharge should be based on assessed value or the more difficult-to-determine market value.

Real estate attorneys predicted the proposal would trigger a surge of legal challenges from property owners disputing their tax bills, according to Erik Zaratin, a partner at Goldberg Weprin Finkel Goldstein LLP.

“There will be more property owners filing grievances,” he said.

James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, sharply criticized the plan, warning it would place additional financial burdens on residents already facing some of the nation’s heaviest tax loads.

“On the back of $500 million in a new second-home tax, putting even more costs on home buyers and sellers will further discourage transactions and threaten existing revenue collected by the State, City, and MTA,” he said.

Bloomberg separately reported Thursday that Hochul and state lawmakers had also agreed to another previously undisclosed tax measure — a surcharge targeting cash purchases of homes valued above $1 million.

{Matzav.com}

In a welcome development for thousands of chassidishe families planning to spend Shavuos in Yerushalayim, the Dushinsky kehillah has introduced a formal set of guidelines aimed at curbing the soaring rental prices in the Shmuel Hanavi area and surrounding neighborhoods.

With large numbers expected to travel to Yerushalayim for Zman Mattan Toraseinu to be in the presence of the Rebbe and daven in the Dushinsky beis medrash, askanim in Dushinsky have stepped in to establish a structured pricing system for apartments being rented over Yom Tov.

This initiative follows a similar takanah first put in place during the past month of Tishrei, when prices had risen sharply without justification. At that time, the kehillah emphasized that since Dushinsky is the primary chassidus in the Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood—without the presence of other large chassidishe courts nearby, aside from areas like Arzei Habira and Eretz Chefetz—the tzibbur has the ability, through achdus, to bring prices back down. With a united effort, they expressed confidence that the situation could be corrected.

It has now been learned that the updated regulations were distributed this week among chassidim and posted throughout the Shmuel Hanavi area. According to the official price list, the cost for a two-day stay covering Shavuos and Shabbos will be 1,000 shekel per housing unit, with an additional 100 shekel for each extra bed. A three-room apartment will be capped at 2,350 shekel, while a four-room apartment will go for 2,600 shekel.

The move was carried out with the full backing of the rabbanim and dayanim of the kehillah, following extensive discussions and meetings led by the askanim. It is noted that during Tishrei, a similar effort by Dushinsky successfully brought down rental prices in neighborhoods such as Beis Yisroel and nearby areas, where demand is typically high due to the presence of other chassidic groups including Slonim and Toldos Aharon. Despite the heavy demand, the initiative was widely regarded as a success.

Lakewood Township continues to be among the fastest-growing municipalities in the state of New Jersey and remains closely followed by several neighboring communities, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to newly released Census estimates, Lakewood’s population reached 143,765 residents as of July 1, 2025, an increase of approximately 8,607 residents, or 6.4%, since the April 2020 Census count of 135,158.

The updated figures further cement Lakewood’s status as one of New Jersey’s fastest-growing municipalities and the fourth-largest municipality in the state, ahead of Elizabeth, which has an estimated population of roughly 141,000 residents.

Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson remain the three most populous municipalities in the state.

Lakewood’s explosive growth — fueled largely by the thousands of births recorded annually in the township — also appears to be contributing to rising populations in neighboring municipalities.

Among surrounding communities, Toms River now has an estimated population of 100,899, reflecting 5.7% growth since 2020. Jackson Township saw its population increase by 4.6% to 61,281 residents, while Howell Township grew by 3.2% to 55,156 residents. Manchester Township experienced 3.1% growth, bringing its estimated population to 46,556.

The latest figures build on the dramatic population surge revealed by the 2020 Census, which showed Lakewood’s population skyrocketed by 46% between 2010 and 2020, growing from 92,843 residents to 135,158.

A special gathering took place yesterday in Nes Ziona as the Yenukah, Rav Shlomo Yehuda Be’eri, celebrated the bris of his newborn son, drawing an extraordinary mix of rabbonim, dayanim, marbitzei Torah, public officials, and members of the broader public who came to take part in the simcha.

The event, held in the Amara halls, brought together a diverse crowd, reflecting the unique reach and influence of the Yenukah.

at the bris, the Yenukah himself served as sandek for his son, who was given the name Yoel Menachem.

The convergence of such a broad spectrum of participants — from the world of Torah to the corridors of influence — created an atmosphere that was both elevated and striking.

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{Matzav.com}

The top American military commander in the Middle East told lawmakers Thursday that US strikes have left Iran a shadow of its former self militarily, but that Tehran can still rattle global shipping through words alone.

“Iran has a significantly degraded threat, and they no longer threaten regional partners, or the United States, in ways that they were able to do before, across every domain,” Adm. Brad Cooper, who heads US Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “They’ve been significantly degraded.”

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Cooper said Iran’s armed proxies had launched more than 350 attacks on US troops and diplomats in the 30 months before the recent war, killing four American soldiers. That picture, he said, has fundamentally changed.

“Today, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are all cut off from Iran’s weapons supply and support,” Cooper said. “This result was not foreordained.”

Iran, he added, now has only 10 percent of its drone stockpile remaining. Cooper also said American forces have shifted away from using expensive high-end munitions to shoot down Iranian drones, and are now deploying lower-cost alternatives.

Cooper: “U.S. Central Command was created in direct response to the threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has terrorized the region and made hostility to the U.S. a core tenet of its rule. In less than 40 days, CENTCOM forces achieved our military objectives. With 90% of its defense industrial base destroyed, Iran won’t be able to reconstitute those weapons for years.”

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Yet Cooper cautioned that Iran’s diminished arsenal has not stripped it of influence. “Their voice is very loud, and the threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and the insurance industry,” he said, noting that Tehran can still disrupt commercial shipping through rhetoric alone. The US military retains the ability to escort vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and has a wide range of contingencies prepared, he said, but deferred to policymakers on next steps given what he described as a “time of sensitive negotiations.”

Despite the battlefield damage, Cooper told the committee that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains deeply entrenched inside Iran. Asked by Sen. Angus King (I-ME) who is running the country, Cooper said the IRGC is still “exercising significant authority,” while declining to address whether the paramilitary force is part of ongoing peace talks — referring that question to diplomats and negotiators.

Cooper also highlighted an unexpected beneficiary of the conflict: American military doctrine. He told the committee that US forces have adopted battlefield lessons from Ukraine, particularly in countering drone swarms — the same tactic Iran used against American troops.

“We adopted a large number of tactics, techniques and procedures that the Ukrainians have passed us that have helped us defend Americans,” Cooper said.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

MIAMI (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas urged Americans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of independence not with fireworks or empty platitudes, but by standing up for their deeply held beliefs, with the comforting knowledge that the U.S. Constitution protects free speech and serves as a common bedrock in a society otherwise beset by deep divisions.

“We can disagree on all sorts of things, but we’ve got to have something in common or we don’t have a country,” Thomas said at a judicial conference near Miami. “These documents, our founding documents, our founding history, whether we think it’s perfect or it shouldn’t be amended, or we might disagree about how far it goes, but we can say this is something that we all treasure.”

Thomas’ remarks came in response to an interview with one of his former Supreme Court clerks, Kasdin Mitchell, who was nominated this month by President Donald Trump to serve on the federal bench in Dallas.

Thomas — who recently became the second longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history — looked back on his upbringing in the segregated South and his more than three decades on the high court.

But he gave no indication that, at age 77, he is looking to retire anytime soon and give President Trump the opportunity to further cement his influence on the Supreme Court and nominate his fourth justice, the most of any president in almost a century.

“Justice Marshall said you take a job for life, you do it for life,” referring to Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s first African American justice, who Thomas replaced on the high court.

But he said his long tenure had given him a unique perspective on the cynicism that pervades so much of society and contributes to Americans’ distrust in government.

He spoke about the example set by his grandfather, the son of a freed slave with barely any formal education, to describe his judicial philosophy in a limited form of government.

“One of the rods in this society versus so many of the others where the rights are parceled down by a government is that we were taught from the cradle that we were equal in God’s eyes, that was self-evident,” said Thomas. “If you look at Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln, they all speak in terms of these transcendent rights beyond the ability of man to take away even though man had the power to infringe upon them.”

Antisemitic vandals struck multiple Holocaust memorials and residential buildings across Berlin in recent weeks, including a Tuesday evening attack on a monument commemorating 32,000 Jews deported to Nazi concentration and death camps.

Graffiti tags were spray-painted on the Deportation Monument at the Putlitz Bridge, which marks the site where Jews were loaded onto trains from the Moabit station during the Holocaust. Berlin Police confirmed the defacement.

The incident was one of several. Last Tuesday, a stele at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was found covered in green graffiti with inflammatory content. On April 26, antisemitic graffiti appeared on apartment buildings in the Berlin-Pankow borough, including the phrases “Kill all Jews” and “Only a dead Jew is a good Jew,” along with a swastika, according to Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor and the Judische Allgemeine.

The Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism Berlin, known as RIAS Berlin, said it considers such attacks “targeted antisemitic property damage” that go beyond defacement.

“Such incidents are directed against the memorial sites themselves, but also deliberately disrupt the commemoration and remembrance of the victims of the Shoah,” the organization said.

The Putlitz Bridge monument has been a repeated target. It was splashed with white paint and covered in parcel tape in August, and in November 2024 a memorial wreath was thrown over a railway railing and candles were destroyed. A bomb damaged the site in 1992; it was restored the following year.

RIAS Berlin, set to release its annual antisemitism report next Wednesday, recorded 89 incidents at memorial sites in 2024 and 61 so far in 2025.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

(JNS) – The Israel parade on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue this year is slated to have a Muslim group marching alongside Jewish organizations in what is believed to be a first time in the parade’s 61-year history.

Another first will be the first time in memory that New York City’s mayor will not participate in the parade, which shows support for the Jewish state. The annual event, scheduled this year for May 31, typically has thousands of participants, with groups marching from Jewish day schools, yeshivas and organizations.

Anila Ali, board chair and president of the nonprofit American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council, intends to lead group that she expects will include about 30 people in the annual event, which takes place on New York’s iconic Fifth Avenue, alongside Central Park.

In an exclusive interview with JNS, Ali said that the anti-Israel protesters, who have recently whipped up angry crowds in Jewish neighborhoods and fomented fear, do not represent all Muslims.

She and many others support the Jewish community and Israel’s right to exist, she told JNS.

“After 9/11, the first faith community that reached out to us were the Jewish people,” she said, of the time after Islamist terrorists attacked the World Trade Centers and other sites, killing closing to 3,000 people, and Muslims became afraid of retaliation.

“As the largest Muslim women’s civil rights organization standing against bigotry within and without, we had a very close relationship based on trust that we shared common heritage,” she told JNS.

Now, at a time when Jewish people are being targeted by anti-Israel, antisemitic protesters, she wants to return that support, she said.

JNS asked if she is worried about what will happen when she marches in the Israel parade.

“A lot of people are afraid, but we are not,” Ali, who is Pakistan-born, told JNS.

Sources at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which runs the parade, were unable to confirm that no other Muslim groups have participated in years past. The sources also said that, as a matter of security policy, the organization does not comment on participating groups.

Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York City, has made his belief clear since he was a college student that he does not think that the State of Israel has a right to exist.

As a member of the New York state Assembly, before becoming mayor, Mamdani introduced the “Not On Our Dime” Act in 2023, seeking to prohibit New York nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria or be stripped of their nonprofit status.

Although re-introduced in 2025, the bill was roundly opposed in the Assembly and never came to a vote.

The mayor has also said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in New York City.

New York City is home to about 1 million Jews, which is the largest population of any place outside of Israel.

Nevertheless, immediately upon being sworn into office on Jan. 1, Mamdani revoked many of his predecessor’s executive orders, including those providing legal protections against antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

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Britain’s King Charles III visited Golders Green today to reaffirm his support for the Jewish community following a series of antisemitic attacks in the area.

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During his visit to the Jewish Care centre in Northwest London, the King met with victims of the recent knife attack that took place on April 29, 2026, offering words of comfort and solidarity.

His Majesty also met members of Shomrim, the volunteer Jewish community patrol group that helped respond during the attacks alongside local law enforcement.

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The visit comes amid growing concerns over rising antisemitism across the United Kingdom, with Jewish leaders calling for stronger protections and support for the community.

A subway security guard assigned to curb fare evasion has been accused of doing the opposite, after investigators say she was caught accepting cash from riders and letting them through the turnstiles using a student-issued OMNY card, the NY Post reports.

According to a report released Thursday by MTA Inspector General Daniel Cort, the guard was seen on surveillance footage allowing passengers into a Brooklyn station by tapping them through with a Department of Education OMNY card that had been stolen.

The report did not name the employee, who was taken off subway duty after a commuter at the Eighth Avenue station in Brooklyn reported the alleged scheme last year.

“The gate guards are paid to deter farebeating and provide a sense of security to the riding public, not to improperly sell subway system entry and pocket the cash,” Cort said in a statement.

“I am grateful to the rider who reported this misconduct and appreciate NYC Transit’s thorough response, which led to the guard’s removal from working in the subway system.”

The guard, described as a “gate security guard,” was working for Allied Security Services, a contractor hired by the MTA to help reduce fare evasion.

The incident is the latest in a series involving Allied Security personnel accused of enabling free rides rather than preventing them.

In May of last year, Allied Universal Security Services guards were observed at the Herald Square station opening emergency exit doors on multiple occasions, allowing groups of fare evaders to enter without paying.

The guard at the center of the latest case began working on June 3, 2024, and was stationed at the Eighth Avenue stop, the report said. She told investigators she had received no formal training and had no prior background in the role.

After a tip was received in July, investigators reviewed surveillance footage that showed her, on at least five occasions between July 14 and July 18, taking cash from riders through the security barrier and then using the card to grant them entry.

The report noted that in three separate instances — twice on July 17 and once on July 18 — she appeared to return money to riders after initially taking it.

When questioned, the guard first said she was using her own OMNY card. After being told the card was linked to a student account, she claimed she had found it on the street.

“The Security Guard improperly accepted cash from customers for her personal gain, and by doing so, she stole money from NYC Transit,” the report said.

Investigators concluded that her actions violated Allied Security’s Code of Ethics and “would likely constitute the criminal offense of petit larceny,” though they did not pursue criminal charges due to the relatively small amount involved.

“This guard will never work on MTA property again,” said MTA Chief Security Officer Michael Kemper. “Taking cash to illegally swipe riders into the subway is the exact conduct this person was assigned to prevent.”

The MTA stopped accepting cash payments for fares in April 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 shutdown, shifting to a fully cashless system that relies on OMNY cards, bank cards, or similar methods.

As a result, access to the subway now requires an OMNY card, a MetroCard, or a contactless payment option.

Fare evasion continues to cost the transit system heavily, with the MTA estimating losses of about $900 million annually across its bus and subway networks.

{Matzav.com}

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials including Raul Castro’s grandson during a high-level visit to the island Thursday, Cuban and U.S. officials said.

Ratcliffe met with Raulito Rodriguez Castro, Ministry of Interior Lazaro Alvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services and discussed intelligence cooperation, economic stability and security issues. A CIA official confirmed the meetings to the AP.

Ratcliffe was there “to personally deliver President Donald Trump’s message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes. According to official reports, the meeting served as a platform for Cuba to present evidence asserting that the nation poses no threat to U.S. national security,” the CIA official said.

An official statement from Cuba’s government noted the meeting “took place Thursday, May 14, against a backdrop of complex bilateral relations.”

While the U.S. stressed the Cuba cannot continue to be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere,” the Cuban delegation insisted that the island presents no threat to U.S. security. Cuban officials also took issue with the nation’s continued inclusion on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Thursday’s meeting comes weeks after the Cuban government confirmed that it had recently met with U.S. officials on the island as tensions between the two sides remain high over the U.S. energy blockade of the Caribbean country and as Cuba’s power grid has collapsed and energy to its eastern provinces has been cut. The U.S. blockade of fuel to the island has heightened its economic woes, with reduced work hours and food spoilage as refrigerators stop working.

Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department reiterated that the U.S. will provide Cuba with $100 in humanitarian assistance and support for satellite internet “if the Cuban regime will permit it.”

In late January, U.S. Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba. Though Trump also has threatened to intervene in the country, and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said recently that his country was prepared to fight if that should happen, source told the AP earlier this month that military action is not imminent.

(AP)

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — Two people inside a small plane were found dead Thursday after it crashed into a house in Ohio and exploded into flames, the Akron Fire Department said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries inside the home after the crash shortly before 4 p.m., the department said in a news release. The home and another house had to be evacuated.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in an email the plane was a Piper PA-28.

Video circulating on X appeared to show a large plume of thick black smoke rising above a residential neighborhood after the crash. The aircraft itself is not visible in the footage, but flames can be seen at the base of the smoke as it rises into the sky above nearby homes.

The head of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency tasked with securing the nation’s frontiers and increasingly tapped by the Trump administration for immigration operations in American cities, announced his resignation Thursday.

Michael Banks’ decision, announced in a Fox News interview and later confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, is the latest leadership shake-up of officials implementing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and comes as the Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to its centerpiece policy of mass deportations.

“It’s just time,” Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website, which said the resignation was effective immediately. “I feel like I got the ship back on course,” he said, referring to what he described as previous chaos at the southern border. Banks said it was “time to enjoy the family and life.”

In a statement, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Rodney Scott, thanked Banks for his service “during one of the most challenging periods for border security.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was not clear who will replace Banks. He led an agency at the forefront of Trump’s high-profile immigration enforcement efforts but kept a lower profile than some other officials such as Gregory Bovino, a now-retired commander who became a public face of the immigration crackdown.

Border Patrol participated in immigration enforcement operation in US cities

CBP is one of the federal agencies that participated since last year in a series of immigration enforcement operations, carried out primarily in cities governed by Democrats — an effort that triggered a spike in arrests and led to the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis this year at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Banks’ resignation takes place two months after Markwayne Mullin, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma, became homeland security secretary. DHS oversees CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE.

Banks is stepping down at the same time that ICE is also going through a leadership transition. Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director, is leaving later this month and will be replaced by David Venturella, who worked for years for private contractors before returning to government service.

CBP was established in 2003 and handles customs, immigration, and agricultural regulations to secure U.S. borders. It has a workforce of over 20,000 agents assigned to patrol the more than 6,000 miles of land borders, and an operating budget of $1.4 billion, according to information from its website.

As head of CBP, Banks became a pivotal figure in the Trump administration’s hardline policy to reconfigure immigration law enforcement in the United States. He oversaw the expansion of prosecutions for illegal border crossings, intensified coordination between the Border Patrol and ICE, and supervised the implementation of broader internal enforcement operations within the country’s borders.

Banks had a long career at Border Patrol

Banks returned to the Border Patrol last year after a long agency career that had never landed him in its senior ranks. His star had risen as border czar to Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, during a period when illegal crossings reached record highs and the state launched a multibillion-dollar enforcement surge that led to turf battles with the Biden administration.

Banks kept a relatively low public profile as arrests for illegal crossings that have plunged to their lowest levels since the mid-1960s, a trend that began toward the end of that Democratic administration.

Banks did not appear publicly at the Border Security Expo this month in Phoenix, an annual conference at which government officials update contractors on the state of the border. Scott, who was Banks’ supervisor, is a close ally of Trump border czar Tom Homan and has acted more as the agency’s public face.

Banks, who grew up in a small town in Warner Robins, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, Georgia, has said his first job was picking peaches at an orchard when he was 14 years old. He worked with migrant farm workers and learned “compassion and humility,” he said, in an interview published last year on the CBP website.

Banks, in the interview, said he was “honored” to have returned to the agency.

“The United States Border Patrol will be unapologetic in its enforcement of our nation’s laws,” he said.

(AP)

(AP) – A federal jury has awarded $49.5 million to the family of a 24-year-old global nonprofit worker killed in the 2019 crash of a Boeing 737 Max jet in Ethiopia while traveling to her first major assignment.

The verdict, reached Wednesday after a trial in federal court in Chicago, resolves one of the last remaining wrongful death lawsuits filed in connection with the disaster that killed all 157 people aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.

Samya Stumo, who grew up in Sheffield, Massachusetts, had recently joined a nonprofit focused on strengthening health systems in developing countries. A 2015 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she was traveling to Uganda for what would have been her first major project with the organization when the plane crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019.

A spokesperson for UMass after the crash described her as someone known “for engaging others by earning their respect, friendship and trust.”

Jurors awarded $21 million for the pain and suffering and emotional distress that Stumo experienced aboard the doomed flight, $16.5 million for the loss of companionship suffered by her family and $12 million for their grief, according to attorneys representing her estate.

“We are gratified for the opportunity to try the compensatory damages case,” attorneys Shanin Specter and Elizabeth Crawford said in a statement Wednesday evening announcing the verdict.

It is the second verdict tied to the crash. Boeing has reached confidential pre-trial settlements in most of the dozens of wrongful death lawsuits filed in connection with the Ethiopian Airlines disaster and a similar 737 Max crash five months earlier off the coast of Indonesia that together killed 346 people.

The fatal crashes became a defining crisis for Boeing and the 737 Max program. Investigators found that a flight-control system repeatedly forced the nose of the then-new planes downward based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and pilots in both crashes were unable to regain control.

The verdict follows a November 2025 jury award of $28.45 million to the family of Shikha Garg, a United Nations environmental consultant who also died in the 2019 crash. That case marked the first civil jury trial stemming from the disaster, with jurors similarly tasked only with calculating damages because Boeing has accepted liability.

“We are deeply sorry to all who lost loved ones on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. While we have resolved nearly all of these claims through settlements, families are entitled to pursue their claims through the court process, and we respect their right to do so,” a Boeing spokesperson said Thursday in a statement.

The Ethiopian Airlines crash prompted a worldwide grounding of the 737 Max that lasted more than a year and triggered multiple investigations into Boeing’s safety culture and regulatory oversight.

Federal prosecutors later charged Boeing with misleading regulators about the Max’s flight-control system, though in November, the federal judge in Texas overseeing the long-running criminal case approved a Justice Department request to dismiss it. Prosecutors reached an agreement with Boeing, requiring the company to invest an additional $1 billion in fines, family compensation and safety improvements.

Stumo’s family has been among the most outspoken relatives seeking accountability from Boeing and changes to federal aviation oversight. Her father, Michael Stumo, has publicly pressed Boeing, regulators and Congress over what families viewed as failures that allowed the 737 Max to keep flying after the first crash off the coast of Indonesia.

Dear Klal Yisroel,

An unprecedented opportunity has just fallen to us in an extremely unexpected way. Yes, everyone is talking about it, but I’m not sure people are fully aware of the significance. I would like to discuss two tremendous ideas that we can capitalize on at this time, and we need to act fast, as time is running out.

President Trump declared that, in honor of the two hundred and fiftieth year of this country, American Jewry should celebrate by keeping the Shabbos before Shavuos, which is this Shabbos.

Now, obviously, we frum Yidden will not keep Shabbos for this reason. However, as the Baalei Mussar tell us, everything that happens in this world is a message for us, especially when the message is as blatant and straightforward as this one.

So before we discuss what more we can do for others, let’s not forget about ourselves. This coming Shabbos, we should give it all we’ve got, both in keeping all the halachos and maintaining the kedushas Shabbos. For starters, we should add on to Shabbos as much as we can [within the proper parameters of halacha].

However, we need to realize that each week that we are enjoying the day of Shabbos, there are millions of our lost brothers who are being mechallel Shabbos. We can only imagine how much pain this gives to our Loving Father in Shomayim. As Yidden who are part of the Jewish nation, we should have an immense desire that all Hashem’s children should keep Shabbos.

So here is a huge opportunity that just fell into our laps. Imagine if another few million people light the Shabbos candles and abstain from driving and some other forbidden melachos. We can only imagine what a nachas ruach they would bring to our Father in Heaven. Let us not squander such an enormous opportunity.

Now, some people may wonder, and perhaps argue, that since they don’t know all its laws, they will inevitably transgress different melachos, so what’s the point? However, such an argument is obviously coming from our greatest and most dangerous enemy, the yetzer hara. We need to do what we can to get things started. There are many stories that show the chashivus of holding back even one drop.

Story: I would like to share a powerful story that happened this year during the “Twelve-Day War.” Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson relates an unbelievable story that his brother told him. He knows a fellow who is religious, but interestingly, he plays and sings for non-Jewish people in a different state, and this is his parnassah.

On the night that Israel attacked Iran, he was in the middle of a performance when, all of a sudden, he got an urgent text that Israel had just attacked Iran. When he saw this message, he turned pale, and he stopped playing. He called out emotionally to his crowd that at this time, they needed to stop what they were doing and pray to G-d, in their own words, for peace — and that’s exactly what they did.

A week later, this man had a dream in which his Rebbe’s gabbai told him that it was because of his speech that a Jewish woman lit Shabbos candles for the first time in her life. These candles went a long way, as they gave great protection to Eretz Yisroel during the war. When the man awoke, he dismissed the dream — until he got a phone call from a woman who called to thank him, saying that it was because of him that she lit Shabbos candles for the very first time.

My friends, can we fathom how much protection [which we need now more than ever] we will receive when hundreds of thousands, and hopefully millions, of Yidden light the Shabbos candles this Shabbos? Moreover, can we fathom what a nachas ruach this will bring Hashem Yisbarach?

However, we need to realize that there is something even bigger that this can lead to, and that is the ultimate redemption. Many of us are familiar with the song, “Just one Shabbos and we will all be free.” This is not merely a song; it’s the words of our holy sages, who tell us that “if Klal Yisroel were to keep even one Shabbos, we would be redeemed immediately.” Who knows if this is the opportunity that Hashem is giving us? Let’s utilize this opportunity.

I personally know people who are sending candles to secular Yidden around the U.S., accompanied by the wording of the bracha of Lehadlik. There is lots we can do to spread the word throughout the U.S. If one has neighbors or employees who aren’t religious, tell them about this American Jewish initiative. Perhaps go a step further and invite them for Shabbos. There are organizations that are working on this, but they need everyone’s help.

Spreading to Eretz Yisroel: I just heard that the fire of Shabbos is spreading to the secular community in Eretz Yisroel as well. Chacham David Yosef, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, urged Netanyahu to encourage the secular public in Eretz Yisroel to join in the national week of keeping Shabbos.

Words of caution: If you are dealing with a person who is liberal, then don’t bring the president into the equation, as it will only make things worse. Just say that Jews all over the country are going to try to keep this Sabbath. Then you can tell him a few vital halachos that would be tremendous if he could stick to them. Ideally, it would be great to invite secular Yidden for Shabbos so that they can keep Shabbos properly and get a taste of Shabbos as well.

Conclusion: The Shibolei Haleket, one of the Rishonim [and others say this as well], says that the Shabbos before Shavuos is also called “Shabbos Hagadol.” There are reasons given for this, but I would like to add two more of my own.

Firstly, if the entire Klal Yisroel will keep this Shabbos, then the name Shabbos Hagadol cannot be a better description for this Shabbos. So hopefully, this coming Shabbos, Klal Yisroel will make it a tremendous Shabbos like never before.

Secondly, the Maharal writes that the reason why the Shabbos before Pesach is called Shabbos Hagadol is because, as Chazal tell us, the night of Pesach [and Pesach in general] is the ideal time for the redemption, which is known as the “Yom Hagadol.” Therefore, the Shabbos before it — which has the power of the coming week, as the seforim teach us — contains within it the power of Pesach, which is geulah.

Similarly, we can add that the Zohar says that on Shavuos we will leave exile. In other words, Shavuos is also an unbelievable eis ratzon for Moshiach. If that’s the case, we can say that this is another reason why this Shabbos is called Shabbos Hagadol [in addition to its other names].

Let’s be zoche that, in the merit of keeping this Shabbos with all our heart and soul, and at the same time helping others see the light of Shabbos, we should be zoche to be oleh regel this year on Shavuos 5786. Amein!

Get involved!

Pinchas Halevi Doppelt

Catskills Hatzalah held a comprehensive pre-summer coordination meeting today with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies from across the Catskill region in preparation for the upcoming summer season.

As thousands of families begin relocating to the Catskills for the summer months, agencies came together to discuss public safety operations, emergency response coordination, traffic management, communication protocols, and interagency collaboration to help ensure a safe and successful season for all residents and visitors.

The meeting brought together representatives from numerous law enforcement and emergency service agencies, reinforcing the strong partnerships and ongoing cooperation between Catskills Hatzalah and the agencies that work tirelessly to protect the community throughout the busy summer season.

Catskills Hatzalah extends its appreciation to all participating agencies and looks forward to continuing this critical coordination effort over the coming months.

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(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

photos: D. H. Kerem

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi David Yosef delivered a fiery speech during Jerusalem Day celebrations at Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, sharply criticizing Israel’s Supreme Court and declaring that the Western Wall “does not belong to the Reform movement.”

Addressing a large crowd gathered at the Jerusalem yeshiva, Rabbi Yosef said ongoing legal disputes surrounding the administration and status of the Western Wall were the result of judicial intervention.

“Enough is enough. It shall not happen — the Western Wall is ours,” the chief rabbi said.

He told attendees that he had previously submitted a detailed halachic opinion regarding the sanctity and history of the site to Israel’s Supreme Court through attorneys representing the Chief Rabbinate.

Rabbi Yosef also accused the court of showing contempt toward halacha and the rabbinate, saying judges should refrain from interfering in matters related to the holy site.

“The Western Wall does not belong to the Reform movement, the Wall does not belong to the Supreme Court,” he said, calling on judges to “remove your hands from the Western Wall.”

Disputes over prayer arrangements and religious authority at the Western Wall have long fueled tensions between Israel’s Orthodox religious establishment and non-Orthodox Jewish movements, particularly regarding egalitarian prayer spaces and recognition of Reform and Conservative Judaism at the site.

A second man has been charged in connection with the arson of a former shul in east London, police announced Thursday, as a broader wave of antisemitic attacks across the capital shows little sign of abating.

Dominique Charles-Turner, 31, of Leyton, was charged with arson with intent to endanger life for last Tuesday’s attack on the former East London Central Synagogue in Tower Hamlets. He had been arrested earlier that day. Moses Edwards, a Wanstead resident, was charged Tuesday for his alleged role in the same attack. A 52-year-old woman arrested alongside Edwards was released on bail.

The fire caused only minor damage to the building’s gates and no injuries were reported. The shul had been in the process of being sold to a local Somali Muslim organization, with auction house Acuitus listing the property as sold in February.

Charles-Turner is the tenth person charged in connection with the broader wave of attacks, of whom one has already been convicted. A total of 33 people have been arrested.

Counter Terrorism Policing London head Commander Helen Flanagan said investigators are “working at pace to arrest all those suspected of being involved in the arson attack on the former synagogue.”

The string of attacks began March 23 with ambulance arsons in Golders Green. On April 15, suspects attempted to torch the Finchley Reform Synagogue. That same day, a burning container was thrown into the parking lot of opposition-linked Iranian news outlet Iran International. Two days later, three bottles containing accelerants were placed against a building formerly used by a Jewish organization and set alight, causing minor shopfront damage, and Iran International’s parking lot was targeted again.

On April 19, the Kenton United Synagogue was firebombed, causing minor smoke damage. On April 27, arsonists struck the Golders Green memorial wall for Iranian protesters.

Most of the attacks have been claimed by the group Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia. The most serious incident to date came last Wednesday, when a 45-year-old Somali-born attacker stabbed two people in Golders Green before being subdued by police and Shomrim volunteers.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Rudy Giuliani said he underwent a profound spiritual moment while seriously ill with pneumonia earlier this month, describing a vivid experience that occurred while he was unconscious and fighting for his life.

Speaking Wednesday during his return broadcast of “America’s Mayor Live!” following his hospitalization, the 81-year-old former New York City mayor recounted what he described as a deeply personal encounter involving his late friend and longtime associate, Peter J. Powers.

“I also had a very, very significant spiritual experience at a time in which I was in a state of like … out of it,” Giuliani described.

He went on to explain that in this vision, Powers appeared to him in what he characterized as a meaningful and impactful moment.

“There was a very significant intervention by my Peter, I have my own Peter … Peter J. Powers, my friend of my lifetime,” he said.

According to Giuliani, the exchange left a lasting impression, prompting him to document it shortly after regaining consciousness. He said his son Andrew recorded part of his account while he was still recovering in a hospital bed in Florida.

“Peter said some very significant words, and I made sure, as soon as I woke up, I started telling people and recorded it in part,” he added, noting his son, Andrew, recorded his retelling of the dream by his bedside in Florida.

Giuliani indicated that he intends to share further details of the experience at a later time.

Powers, who had known Giuliani since their youth, played a central role throughout his career, serving as a trusted advisor, campaign manager, and deputy mayor. He passed away in 2016 at the age of 72 following complications from lung cancer.

The health emergency that led to Giuliani’s hospitalization began on May 3, when he was admitted in critical condition with viral pneumonia. The illness was believed to be connected to lingering respiratory issues stemming from exposure during the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Sources close to Giuliani later said he briefly fell into a coma during the ordeal, though his condition steadily improved afterward.

In a separate appearance Wednesday on “The Rudy Giuliani Show” on Lindell TV, Giuliani said he is now feeling significantly better and continuing to recover.

“It is very nice to be back … I’ve been away about a week and a few days. I had pneumonia, I was in the hospital. I’m going to tell you all about it, not all right away,” Giuliani said.

He described his recovery as ongoing but encouraging, noting that he has resumed physical activity.

“I’m in the middle of making a very, very full and complete recovery. Today, I did physical exercise, walked up and down stairs, and walked all around. I feel 100 percent, but I’m probably not,” he added.

Giuliani also spoke about the support he received during his hospitalization, singling out President Trump for staying in close contact throughout the episode.

“Of course, I have to thank the president, of whom I had a very good conversation after I got into the hospital,” Giuliani recalled.

His spokesman, Ted Goodman, said that Trump’s team remained in regular communication, checking frequently on Giuliani’s condition.

“He was just terrific,” the former mayor said of Trump. “He’s just a godsend to this country.”

{Matzav.com}

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu announced Thursday that Israel plans to take legal action against The New York Times over what he described as a deeply offensive and misleading article accusing Israeli soldiers and military dogs of sexually abusing Palestinian detainees.

The decision follows the publication of a column by Nicholas Kristof in the newspaper, which alleged widespread sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli guards and soldiers.

“They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers,” Netanyahu said as he vowed harsh legal action against the paper.

“Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent. We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed it is preparing a defamation lawsuit, calling the report “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”

The controversial piece, based on testimony from 14 former Palestinian detainees, claimed that sexual abuse was systematically embedded within Israeli military practices.

It also alleged that Israeli forces trained dogs to assault prisoners.

The article quickly spread online and triggered strong reactions, with critics — including some analysts and Jewish organizations — condemning it as anti-Jewish propaganda and labeling it a “blood libel.”

The timing of the report also drew attention, as it appeared one day before the release of findings from a two-year investigation into widespread sexual violence committed against Israeli civilians during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.

The New York Times stood by its reporter as criticism intensified.

“Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported on sexual violence for decades and is widely regarded as one of the world’s best on-the-ground reporters documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse experienced by women and men in war and conflict zones,” a Times spokesperson said.

“He traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of the Palestinians who suffered abuse, and his article collects accounts in the victims’ own words, backed by independent studies.”

{Matzav.com}

As Israel heads toward early elections, the government is working to push through a sweeping five-year plan that would funnel hundreds of millions of shekels to the chareidi community, according to reports from Hebrew-language media.

The plan, as reported by Kan public broadcaster, would allocate 25 percent of the Education Ministry’s construction budget to the chareidi education system. An additional 44 million shekel annual budget would be set aside for programs aimed at keeping yungeleit in yeshiva and out of the IDF draft, along with tens of millions more each year for professional training programs and chareidi tourism initiatives.

The government is reportedly pushing to finalize the plan before elections are called.

The announcement comes amid fast-moving political developments in the Knesset. Netanyahu’s coalition submitted a bill Wednesday to dissolve the Knesset and trigger new elections, following an ultimatum from Degel HaTorah, which had threatened to push for early elections if the coalition failed to pass a draft exemption law for yeshiva bochurim. If the dissolution bill passes, elections would be held within five months, meaning no later than late October, with the chareidi parties reportedly pushing for an early September date.

The new funding plan is the latest in a series of major government allocations to chareidi mosdos. In recent months, Netanyahu’s government has directed billions of shekels toward chareidi education, drawing fierce opposition from secular parties and legal challenges from the High Court of Justice. Last month, the Knesset Finance Committee approved nearly NIS 100 million in additional funding for chareidi schools, part of a larger NIS 1 billion transfer that the High Court had frozen in December.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

In an effort to make the consequences of government shutdowns more tangible for elected officials, the Senate has unanimously approved a resolution that would suspend senators’ pay during any future funding lapses.

The measure, passed by the upper chamber without opposition, is designed to discourage shutdowns by ensuring lawmakers personally feel the financial impact that federal employees have endured multiple times in recent months.

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who championed the proposal, said the move represents a “shared sacrifice” following periods in which tens of thousands of government workers were left without pay during two shutdowns since last year.

“Last October, we shut down the government for 43 days. That is the longest shutdown in history. And we had FBI agents, national park rangers, CDC scientists, our staff here in Congress — nobody was getting paid,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor.

“And then, three months later, after we finally got out of that 43-day shutdown, we shut down the Department of Homeland Security. It was shut down for 76 days. This is all in one year,” he continued. “We ought to hide our heads in a bag. It’s got to stop.”

Those shutdowns had widespread effects, particularly for travelers, as Transportation Security Administration workers continued reporting to airports without pay during both extended funding gaps.

Under Kennedy’s plan, which applies solely to senators, the secretary of the Senate would be required to hold back lawmakers’ salaries while a shutdown is in effect. Instead of receiving their paychecks, the funds would be placed in escrow until an agreement is reached to reopen the government.

Once federal operations resume, those withheld wages would be released.

Currently, rank-and-file senators earn an annual salary of $174,000, while party leaders receive more than $193,000.

The resolution is one of several steps lawmakers have pursued in response to the recent shutdowns, either to make such standoffs politically painful or to prevent them altogether.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has introduced legislation, supported by federal labor unions, that would guarantee pay for government employees during shutdowns. Meanwhile, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma has proposed a bill that would avoid shutdowns entirely by automatically extending government funding in two-week increments.

For decades, shutting down the government was viewed as a last-resort option. However, recent events have suggested a shift, with Senate Democrats increasingly willing to use the tactic as a political weapon.

Even with the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Republicans remain skeptical that Democrats will refrain from triggering another shutdown ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

Notably, the new resolution would not take effect until after the November election cycle, meaning lawmakers will not face the loss of pay during any shutdowns that occur before then.

{Matzav.com}

JERUSALEM (VINnews) – The Israel Defense Forces have received 158,000 square meters of mesh netting to protect against Hezbollah’s first-person view drones, with plans to procure another 188,000 square meters, the military said Thursday.

The netting already supplied, plus the additional amount being acquired, totals the equivalent of some 20 soccer fields, according to the IDF. The protective material is being deployed on military vehicles and at forward positions to counter the threat of explosive-laden FPV drones used by the Iran-backed terrorist group.

Photos released by the IDF show soldiers installing the netting over vehicles and structures. The drones visible in the images were part of tests conducted by the army.

The effort comes amid ongoing clashes along the Lebanon border, where Hezbollah has frequently launched drones and missiles at Israeli targets. The mesh netting is designed to intercept or detonate incoming drones before they can strike personnel or equipment.

No further details were immediately available on the cost of the netting or specific deployment timelines.

Family, friends, and community members will gather today to commemorate the Yartzheit of Habachur Refael HaKohen Faham Z”L, one of the Bachurim tragically Niftar in last year’s accident.

The family is scheduled to visit the kever at 3:15 p.m.. The kever is located the corner of Brook Avenue and 7th Street.

Later in the evening, Tehillim will be recited from 5:00 p.m. through 7:00 p.m. in the hall of Pine Street Shul, located at 613 Martin Luther King Drive, at the corner of Pine Street and MLK Drive.

Mincha and Maariv will follow, along with a Seuda beginning at 7:30 p.m. The program is expected to continue until approximately 10:30 p.m. and will include a Siyum HaShas before shkiah, as well as guest speakers.

Mesivta bochurim are expected to participate beginning at 9:00 p.m.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States is holding firmly to its established Taiwan policy, even as Washington works to maintain a delicate balance with China after recent discussions between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Speaking in an interview with NBC News, Rubio noted that Xi once again made clear that Taiwan remains “the most important issue” in relations between the two nations, reflecting Beijing’s longstanding position on the matter.

Rubio pushed back by reiterating that the United States rejects any “forced change in the status quo,” cautioning that such an action would create serious instability not only between the two countries but across the global economy.

He emphasized that American policy toward Taiwan “has not changed,” pointing out that it has remained steady through multiple administrations.

Rubio also confirmed that Taiwan was part of the conversation during the meeting between the two leaders, though he indicated that China’s opposition to U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan “did not feature prominently” in those discussions.

“The issue of Taiwan is unchanged as of today and as of the meeting we had here today,” Rubio said, adding that Washington continues to support strategic stability and open communication with Beijing to avoid miscalculation and broader conflict.

According to Rubio, China continues to favor a peaceful political reunification with Taiwan, but he warned that any effort to achieve that goal through military force “would be a terrible mistake” with far-reaching consequences around the world.

He also drew attention to the rapid pace of China’s military development, describing the expansion of its armed forces over the past decade as “without precedent.”

Rubio said Beijing’s intentions appear to extend beyond Taiwan, with a broader effort underway to expand its influence globally in direct competition with the United States.

His remarks highlight the ongoing challenge facing U.S. policymakers as they attempt to manage a complex and sensitive relationship with China.

The United States continues to follow the “One China” policy, formally recognizing Beijing as the government of China while maintaining unofficial ties with Taiwan.

At the same time, under the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington remains committed to supporting Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.

This approach, commonly known as “strategic ambiguity,” is intended to discourage both a Chinese military move against Taiwan and any formal declaration of independence by Taipei, while also preventing a direct military clash between the two global powers.

As China increases its military activity in the Indo-Pacific region and steps up pressure on Taiwan through drills and naval operations, U.S. officials are working to reassure allies, strengthen Taiwan’s defenses, and maintain economic engagement with Beijing without escalating tensions further.

{Matzav.com}

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has opened a wide lead over Vice President JD Vance in the race for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, according to a new national poll from AtlasIntel.

The survey found Rubio drawing 45.4% support among Republican respondents, with Vance at 29.6% and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a distant third at 11.2%. The remaining named candidates, including Vivek Ramaswamy, Greg Abbott, Tim Scott, Brian Kemp and Donald Trump Jr., drew minimal support, while 10.3% said they would not vote for any of the options listed.

The results mark a dramatic reversal from December, when Vance led with 46.7% to Rubio’s 22.6%. Rubio’s rise comes amid a period of high-profile diplomatic activity, including leading negotiations over the war in Ukraine, spearheading new sanctions against Cuba, and playing a central role in Iran diplomacy during Operation Project Freedom.

President Donald Trump appeared to fuel the Rubio momentum during a Rose Garden event Monday. “Who likes JD Vance? Who likes Marco Rubio? It sounds like a dream team to me!” Trump quipped.

Despite his primary strength, Rubio faces challenges with the broader electorate. His general public favorability stands at 46% positive and 51% negative.

AtlasIntel was rated the most accurate pollster of both the 2020 and 2024 election cycles.

The poll also probed public opinion on U.S. strikes against Iran carried out as part of Operation Epic Fury. A majority of respondents, 59.2%, said they opposed the decision to launch the strikes, while 38.9% supported it.

Views on the consequences were similarly skeptical. Some 67.8% said the strikes increased the likelihood of terror attacks against U.S. citizens, and 58.5% believed the strikes increased Iran’s motivation to develop nuclear weapons. Only 18% said they thought the strikes diminished that motivation.

On the strikes’ impact on Iran’s nuclear capacity, 33.8% said they had no effect, 27.6% said they significantly compromised it, 21.7% said they somewhat compromised it, and 8.6% said they completely eliminated it. Just 3.7% said the strikes increased Iran’s nuclear capacity.

At the same time, 45.6% of respondents said the death of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a positive development, while 15.5% called it negative and 31.8% said it was neither.

On the question of Israel’s role, 55.3% said Israel had “a lot of influence” on the U.S. decision to strike Iran, with an additional 13.9% saying it had “quite a bit of influence.” Some 23.9% said Israel had “not that much influence” and 4.8% said it had none.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

A man accused of burglarizing a convenience store in the Whiting section of Manchester Township earlier this month has been arrested following an investigation by township detectives.

According to police, the burglary took place on May 9 at the Country Farms convenience store in Whiting. Surveillance video allegedly showed the suspect smashing the store’s front window with a large stone in order to gain entry before stealing merchandise from inside.

Detectives Guarino and Guker identified the suspect as Keith Mulligan during the course of the investigation.

On May 13, investigators learned that Mulligan’s vehicle had last been seen the previous day in the area of Evesham Township in Burlington County. Further investigation revealed that Mulligan was known to frequent the Barclay Towers condominium complex in Cherry Hill.

Detectives responded to the area and located Mulligan’s vehicle, where he was allegedly found sleeping inside. He was taken into custody without incident and transported to Manchester Township Police Headquarters.

Police said Mulligan was charged with burglary, criminal mischief, theft by unlawful taking, and shoplifting. Following processing, he was transported to the Ocean County Jail.

Authorities reminded the public that the charges are merely accusations and that all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

Police are also urging residents to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity to local law enforcement. Anonymous tips may be submitted to the Manchester Township Police Department or by calling 732-657-6111.

Israeli security forces thwarted a suspected terror plot targeting Yom Yerushalayim events on Thursday, arresting a wanted individual in the Abu Tor neighborhood of eastern Yerushalayim following precise intelligence provided by the Shin Bet.

According to authorities, the suspect had allegedly been planning to carry out an attack during the celebrations. Acting on the intelligence, undercover Border Police units from the Yerushalayim district were deployed to locate and apprehend him.

After receiving the tip, the specialized undercover force was sent to Abu Tor, where they conducted focused operational activity that led them to the suspect’s location inside a car wash complex.

The officers, operating covertly, entered the area, identified the individual, and carried out the arrest without any injuries. The suspect was then transferred to the Shin Bet for further interrogation.

Police emphasized the importance of coordination between security agencies in preventing such threats.

“Joint operations between the Border Police undercover units and the Shin Bet continue to be a significant factor in thwarting terrorism and safeguarding the citizens of the State of Israel, and security forces will continue to act decisively against any threat.”

A Republican congresswoman alleged Wednesday that the CIA removed documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the MK-ULTRA program from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in what she called a potential “internal coup.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), appearing on NewsNation, said lawmakers had been notified that the CIA entered a warehouse belonging to DNI Tulsi Gabbard and removed multiple boxes of files. Luna called the removal particularly troubling given that President Trump had issued an executive order directing the full declassification of JFK assassination records, and that the CIA had long maintained that all MK-ULTRA documents had either been released or destroyed.

“These are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed,” Luna said.

Luna said she had contacted House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and that the committee was sending a document preservation request to the CIA within the hour. She also said she had reached out directly to CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Luna noted that the removal appeared to have occurred while Trump was traveling abroad and Ratcliffe was with him. “This seems like it was an internal coup, to be honest,” she said.

Host Katie Pavlich later clarified that the incident was not a raid and took place last year, not this week, during a government shutdown. According to Pavlich, CIA personnel removed the documents from the National Reconnaissance Office in the middle of the night and have not returned them, leaving ODNI unable to declassify and release the files publicly.

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(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

NEW YORK (VINnews) — New York City plans to begin enforcing a long-dormant law requiring many storefront security gates to be largely transparent, prompting concern from small business owners who say the mandate could cost thousands of dollars and leave stores more vulnerable to break-ins.

The law, passed by the City Council in 2009, requires roll-down security gates covering storefronts to allow significant visibility into businesses after hours. City officials originally promoted the measure as a way to discourage graffiti and improve neighborhood appearance, according to a report by the New York Post
.

Beginning July 1, businesses that fail to comply could face financial penalties.

Some business owners said replacing existing metal shutters with compliant gates could cost several thousand dollars per location and expressed concern that increased visibility could attract thieves.

Others said they were unaware of the requirement until recently and questioned the timing as many small businesses continue facing rising operating costs and economic pressure.

Several City Council members have also criticized the enforcement effort, arguing it could place additional strain on neighborhood businesses still recovering from the pandemic and inflation.

Council member Althea Stevens announced legislation aimed at exempting existing businesses with older-style gates from enforcement requirements. Althea Stevens

The city’s Department of Buildings said enforcement could be delayed if lawmakers move forward with changes to the law, but otherwise inspections and penalties are expected to begin this summer.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing criticism after details of his proposed city budget revealed plans to reduce funding for veterans services and eliminate support for certain events, including a planned ticker-tape parade honoring former service members.

Under the proposal unveiled Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Services would see its budget decrease from approximately $7.6 million in the fiscal 2026 adopted budget to about $6.6 million for 2027, representing a drop of more than 13%, according to city data.

Osbert Orduna, a service-disabled Marine Corps veteran, strongly condemned the proposed reductions, describing them as dismissive of those who have served.

“It’s a slap in the face to veterans, to New Yorkers and more specifically to service-disabled veterans — people who have sacrificed their minds and their bodies in service to our nation and live in the city,” Orduna said.

City Council Member Frank Morano, who heads the council’s Committee on Veterans, said he intends to press for answers about the specifics of the cuts and how the funds would be reallocated.

The mayor’s proposal also includes reducing funding for veterans-related events by $60,000 annually from fiscal 2026 through 2030. City officials indicated they plan to turn to private donations to cover the cost of such ceremonies going forward.

Orduna emphasized the importance of these gatherings, saying they serve as a critical support system for veterans across generations.

“Veterans from across every generation — from World War II to the present — the one time that we can all come together, build our community and support one another is at these functions,” Orduna said.

“Many lives have been saved by veterans just coming together and finding comfort in one another, and connecting so that we don’t lose another veteran life — so another veteran does not add the word ‘homeless’ to the title of veteran,” he added.

Among the proposed changes is the cancellation of a “Homecoming of Heroes” ticker-tape parade that had been planned around the anniversary of Sept. 11. In its place, the administration is considering a lower-cost “Remembrance Ruck” march developed in coordination with veterans’ organizations, according to a spokesperson.

Ryan Graham, a former U.S. Air Force serviceman who now chairs the New York City Veterans Advisory Board and is aligned with Mamdani, downplayed the importance of such events, calling them unnecessary.

“Events are fluff. That’s it, plain and simple,” Graham said, adding that he would rather see city money be put towards the Department of Veterans Services to help veterans with housing, mental health and food insecurity needs.

“I don’t want to see another Kyle or any other veterans take their lives because those services were not there,” Graham said referring to his high school buddy who served in the military and later committed suicide.

Within the department’s budget itself, the administration is proposing to eliminate a $585,000 line for “Other Expenses – General,” sharply reduce funding for “Temporary Services” from $441,000 to $15,000, and cut roughly $57,000 allocated for supplies and materials.

Former Queens Council Member Bob Holden, who previously chaired the council’s veterans committee, blasted the proposal, accusing the city of shortchanging those who served.

“Replacing a ticker-tape parade with a cheaper event and then planning these so-called ‘savings’ for years ahead is insulting to the men and women who served this country and sacrificed for New York City,” Holden said. “The city has no problem wasting billions of dollars, but suddenly when it comes to honoring our veterans and 9/11 heroes, they want to pinch pennies.”

A spokesperson for the mayor defended the plan, arguing that the proposed changes would not impact core services provided to veterans.

The City Council will ultimately decide whether to approve Mamdani’s budget proposal.

Morano said that even before the proposed reductions, funding for veterans services remained insufficient.

“I’d love to see veterans become a much bigger priority for lawmakers at every level of government, not just during commemorative moments, but year round,” he said.

{Matzav.com}

New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman)

It has been 59 years.  Picture standing there in 1967. The heart pounds as history unfolds. After two thousand years of exile, of tears, of prayers whispered in foreign lands, Har HaBayis – the Temple Mount returned to Jewish hands.

In those moments of divine intervention, miracles unfolded across Yerushalayim. The Mirrer Yeshiva experienced one of them. A bomb crashed through the ceiling of the beis medrash — and did not explode.

Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz zt”l delivered a shmuess in the Mirrer Yeshiva in June of 1967, just days after the war ended. He cited the pasuk in Az Yashir: “Then the chieftains of Edom were startled; as for the powerful men of Moav, trembling seized them.” Rav Chaim asked: what chiddush is the pasuk revealing? Is it not obvious that open miracles produce trembling?

His answer cut deep. It is precisely the nature of people not to change themselves even after seeing open miracles. “This explains,” said Rav Chaim, “why people around us now are not changing after seeing the open miracles of the Six Day War.”

The Mir bomb was one of many.

Pilots returning from sorties over Egypt were stunned at their own success rates — 150 percent, 200 percent, beyond anything their training predicted. The Jordanians, unaware that the Egyptian codes had been changed the previous day, sent battlefield communications to Cairo that never arrived in time. Soldiers who liberated the Old City refused to enter through Shaar HaAshpa, the Dung Gate; they went in through Shaar HaArayot, the Lions’ Gate, the same gate through which the Sanhedrin once exited to the Mount of Olives.

But the greatest miracle was the return of the Kosel itself. For nineteen years it had been forbidden to us — its stones yearning for our touch as we yearned to press our foreheads against them.

The Place Itself

The Kosel is the last physical remnant of the retaining wall built by Herod around the Har HaBayis. It is not the Mikdash. It is not the Kodesh HaKodashim. It is the outer wall of the platform — and yet the Midrash (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:9) teaches that the Shechinah has never departed from the Western Wall. The Alshich explains this continuous presence as Hashem’s tangible promise of our eventual return.

The Emek HaMelech writes that the prayers pressed against these stones by the tzaddikim of Yerushalayim sustain the world. Every crevice has absorbed centuries of supplication.

Kriyah: The Halachic Picture

The halachos of Kriyah upon seeing Yerushalayim and the Kosel deserve careful attention, particularly on Yom Yerushalayim when Jewish sovereignty over the city is precisely what is celebrated.

The basic halacha is recorded in Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 561). One who sees the cities of Yehudah in their destruction recites “Arei kodshecha hayu midbar” and tears [as in rips- not tears as in cries]. One who sees Yerushalayim in its destruction recites “Beis kodsheinu v’sifarteinu” and tears again. One who sees the place of the Mikdash tears once more — and this tear is the more serious tear made near the heart, which may never be fully mended.

The question that hovers over Yom Yerushalayim is whether Kriyah still applies today. The Bach (OC 561) holds that when Jews have sovereignty over Yerushalayim, the city is no longer considered “in its destruction” for purposes of Kriyah. The Taz disagrees sharply [with his father-in-law the Bach], arguing that without the Beis HaMikdash, the city remains in churban regardless of who holds political control.

The Chasam Sofer (Yoreh Deah 759) ruled that Kriyah remains obligatory. The Minchas Shlomo (1:73:10) of Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt”l addressed this directly in our era: even though Yerushalayim is under Jewish government, non-Jewish places of worship and burial sit upon the Har HaBayis itself, and we are powerless to remove them. The city is not yet redeemed. Kriyah stands.

The Chazon Ish would tear Kriyah even upon seeing the Kosel through a window or from a distance. The Mishnah Berurah (561:4) adds that on the day one first sees Yerushalayim in its current state, one should abstain from meat and wine.

Practically speaking, one tears upon seeing Yerushalayim (the populated city) if it has been thirty days since the last visit, and again — near the heart, irreparably — upon seeing the place of the Mikdash. The Kosel itself, according to most poskim, is treated as the Makom HaMikdash for this purpose.

Going Up to the Kosel — Not the Har

A sharp distinction must be drawn between the Kosel and the Har HaBayis itself. The Kosel plaza sits below and outside the Temple Mount platform. Halachically, it is permitted territory. The Har HaBayis above is another matter entirely.

The Rambam (Hilchos Beis HaBechirah 7:7) ruled that the kedushah of the Mikdash never lapsed — “kidshah l’sha’atah v’kidshah l’asid lavo.” Since we are all assumed to be teme’ei meis, entry to areas of the Har that require taharah is forbidden. The Rabbanut HaRashit issued a public proclamation immediately after the Six Day War, signed by virtually every gadol of the generation — Rav Yitzchak Nissim, Rav Isser Yehudah Unterman, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, the Steipler, Rav Moshe Feinstein — forbidding entry to any part of the Har HaBayis. The Edah HaChareidis took the same position.

The other issue is that if one does go up to Har HaBayis thinking he himself will go to the Mikveh and make sure to only walk in places where he thinks he knows that it is permitted to walk in – he is causing others to stumble terribly – it is equivalent to walking on the edge of the Grand Canyon and hoping no one follows.  Each year 2 to 3 people die by falling over the cliff.  Those that violate walking on Har HaBayis are thousands times more.

The Kosel plaza, by contrast, is not only permitted but, according to many, sought after. The Mishna (Keilim 1:8) and the Tzitz Eliezer (10:1:10) discuss which inner zones of the Har are forbidden even today.

The Pilgrimage Question

Is there a mitzvah to come to Yerushalayim during the Shalosh Regalim in our times? The Rambam (Hilchos Chagigah 1:1) holds that the obligation of re’iyah was tied to the korban re’iyah; without the Mikdash there is no mitzvah. The Tashbatz, the Sdei Chemed, the Chasam Sofer, and the Aruch LaNer disagree — the mitzvah of aliyah l’regel exists independently of the korban.

Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt”l acted on the second position. He walked to the Kosel every regel. When age made the walk difficult, he went during the seven days following Yom Tov, when the kedushah of the chag still hangs over Yerushalayim.

Davening at the Wall

Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l ruled — based on Brachos 30a and Shulchan Aruch OC 94 — that one davening at the Kosel should not face the stones themselves but should angle slightly toward the place of the Kodesh HaKodashim. The stones are not the destination. They are the gateway.

Sovereignty and Responsibility

The Greek soreg inscription discovered in 1871 by Charles Clermont-Ganneau — and now displayed in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, with a fragment at the Israel Museum — warned non-Jews not to pass the latticework barrier into the inner Temple courts on pain of death. The very stones of the Mount testify to the kedushah of what we have inherited.

That kedushah obligates us. Sovereignty without sanctity is hollow. Walking to the Kosel, davening at its stones, weeping into its crevices — this is the unbroken chain reaching back to David HaMelech, to Shlomo, to the kohanim who served in the Beis HaMikdash. Every tefillah pressed into these stones is a thread in the tapestry of geulah.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Beijing this week alongside President Donald Trump, even though he had previously been sanctioned by China — a development made possible after Chinese officials quietly modified how his name is written in official records.

According to a report published Thursday by The Washington Post, the change involved only a slight adjustment in the Chinese characters used to represent Rubio’s name, but carried meaningful diplomatic implications.

Experts said the revised version of Rubio’s name began appearing in Chinese government usage soon after Trump selected him as secretary of state in 2025.

Rubio, who also holds the role of national security adviser, has spent years as a sharp critic of China’s communist leadership.

He frequently spoke out against Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong, its policies toward Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and other human rights concerns, positions that prompted Chinese authorities to impose sanctions on him.

During his confirmation hearing in the Senate, Rubio described China as the “most potent and dangerous” challenge facing the United States.

Since stepping into his current position, Rubio has backed Trump’s push to manage tensions and maintain stability in relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, even as disagreements persist over trade, military posture, and economic rivalry.

On Thursday, Rubio stood with Trump at an official reception ceremony hosted by Xi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Positioned at the front of the U.S. delegation, Rubio greeted Xi with a handshake, while Chinese state outlets displayed the updated Chinese spelling of his name on formal signage and documents.

Observers in China told The Washington Post that Beijing now sees Rubio as taking a more measured and cooperative tone compared to his earlier years in the Senate.

Speaking this week, Rubio described China as both “our top political challenge geopolitically” and “the most important relationship for us to manage.”

Still, analysts noted that the shift in how his name is rendered may reflect lingering friction beneath the surface.

Chinese versions of foreign names are based on phonetic approximations, and different characters can sound alike while conveying very different meanings.

Specialists pointed out that the earlier version of Rubio’s name used a more neutral character commonly found in surnames, whereas the new version may carry connotations suggesting impulsiveness or rough behavior.

Under the previous spelling, Rubio remained directly linked to the sanctions imposed on him by China in 2020 during his time in the Senate. The altered spelling, however, appears to have given Chinese officials a way to sidestep formally removing those sanctions while still allowing him entry into the country for high-level meetings.

“China is giving itself a way out of the awkward situation,” former Chinese diplomat Zhang Jiadong said. “We can’t cancel the sanctions because they were announced for a reason, but banning a secretary of state from entry could further damage bilateral ties.”

In response to earlier questions about the name adjustment, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry said Rubio’s English name remained “more important.”

Chinese officials have previously maintained that the sanctions applied to Rubio’s conduct and statements during his time as a senator, drawing a distinction between that role and his current position as secretary of state.

Zhao Minghao, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said granting Rubio a visa effectively indicated that the sanctions are no longer being actively enforced.

Zhao said Beijing now views Rubio as a “new and friendlier” figure compared to his earlier image in Washington.

The leader of a neo-Nazi accelerationist group was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison Wednesday for plotting mass racial killings, including a scheme to poison Jewish schoolchildren in Brooklyn, the Justice Department announced.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, known as “Commander Butcher,” led the Maniac Murder Cult (MKY) and pleaded guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and providing instructions for manufacturing bombs and the poison ricin. He was extradited from Moldova last May.

Chkhikvishvili’s plots included a New Year’s Eve attack in which an operative dressed as Santa Claus would distribute poisoned candy to minorities, and a follow-up plan to target Brooklyn Jewish schools and children with ricin. He told an undercover FBI agent, whom he believed was a genuine recruit, that he wanted the attack to be bigger than the 2011 Norway massacre that killed 77 people.

His “Hater’s Handbook,” distributed since 2021, urged followers to carry out school shootings, use child suicide bombers, and conduct vehicle-ramming attacks. A Nashville school shooter who killed one person last January cited the manifesto, as did a man who stabbed five people outside a Turkish mosque in 2024.

“This defendant concocted hate-fueled, mass-casualty plans and inspired others to commit attacks based on his vile rhetoric,” said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

National Security Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg said the sentencing had taken “a monster off our streets.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

Chinese President Xi Jinping opened his meeting with President Donald Trump in Beijing by invoking concerns about a potential future conflict between the United States and China, framing the moment as a critical test for relations between the two global powers.

During his opening remarks inside the Great Hall of the People, Xi pointed to the concept known as the Thucydides trap, which describes the dangers that arise when a rising power challenges an established one.

“The whole world is watching our meeting,” Xi began inside Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, with Trump seated across the table.

He went on to describe a rapidly shifting global landscape and warned of instability shaping international affairs.

“Currently, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe, and the international situation is fluid and turbulent,” he continued, according to one translation of his remarks. “The world has come to a new crossroads.

“Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world? Can we, in the interest of the well-being of our two peoples and the future of humanity, build a brighter future together for our bilateral relations?”

Xi has referenced the Thucydides trap for years, a theory popularized by Harvard professor Graham Allison and rooted in the writings of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who described how Athens’ rise led Sparta to view war as unavoidable.

He characterized the issues facing Washington and Beijing as “questions vital to history” and to “the world and to the people.”

President Trump, speaking after Xi, did not directly engage with those warnings but struck an optimistic tone about future ties between the two nations.

“The relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before.”

“It’s an honor to be with you. It’s an honor to be your friend,” Trump said.

“I really look very much forward to our discussion,” he added. “It’s a big discussion. There are those that say, this is maybe the biggest summit ever.”

The meeting between the two delegations lasted roughly two hours inside the Great Hall.

Despite Xi’s pointed framing, some analysts suggested his message was less about confrontation and more about reassurance.

“What Xi Jinping said in that speech is that we can transcend the Thucydides trap,” Sky News Asia correspondent Helen-Ann Smith said. “So what he’s saying is that, you know, ‘We are an upcoming power and you should not be threatened by us.’

“That’s his key message.”

Ahead of the summit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed China’s long-term ambitions, making clear that Washington would not accept a scenario in which Beijing’s rise comes at America’s expense.

“They believe they will be the world’s most powerful country, they’ll surpass the United States, and they have a plan to do it, and they’re executing on that plan, and I don’t blame them,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News’ “Hannity.”

Rubio emphasized that while the administration is not seeking to limit China’s growth, it will resist any effort that undermines U.S. strength.

“Their rise cannot come at our fall. So there’s an area where we’re just going to have a difference of opinion,” Rubio said.

“That’ll come up on this trip,” the top US diplomat added, “but more importantly, that’ll be a feature of this relationship for a long time.”

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Tens of thousands of Israelis took part Thursday in the annual Jerusalem Day Flag March marking the 59th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, as police deployed large security forces and closed major roads across the capital.

Government ministers, Knesset members, rabbis and public figures joined marchers carrying Israeli flags through central Jerusalem and toward the Old City.

Ahead of the event, several prominent Religious Zionist rabbis issued a public appeal urging participants to act responsibly and avoid confrontations.

“Our great strength lies in our steadfast spirit and devotion to the Torah,” the rabbis wrote, calling on celebrants not to be drawn into provocations that could overshadow the day.

Among the signatories were Yaakov Shapira, Yaakov Ariel and Eliezer Igra.

Police shut down numerous roads throughout Jerusalem as crowds moved through the city, including major streets in the downtown area and routes surrounding the Old City.

Authorities said roads would gradually reopen as the march continued.

Jerusalem Day commemorates Israel’s capture of eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City, during the 1967 Middle East war. The annual march has at times been a source of tension between Israelis and Palestinians, particularly in and around the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ascended the Har Habayis Thursday morning ahead of Yom Yerushalayim’s annual flag march, declaring it to be “in our hands” and crediting “determination and deterrence” for what he called a restoration of Israeli sovereignty there.

It is important to note that every mainstream posek has ruled that it is assur gammur to go on the Har Habayis.

His visit came amid a day of mounting tensions in the Old City, capped by a police announcement that afternoon that officers had arrested a suspect planning a terror attack during the celebrations. Acting on intelligence, police located the man at a carwash and took him into custody for interrogation by the Shin Bet.

Violence broke out earlier in the day when a group of youths clashed with Old City residents and left-wing activists from the Standing Together movement, at one point hurling chairs at them. Police intervened and escorted the activists out of the Old City, a move the group framed as a “solidarity guard” aimed at protecting Palestinian and Arab residents from what they called “extremist settlers.”

Police arrested 13 people, both Jews and Arabs, in connection with the day’s altercations. Roads across Jerusalem were shut down Thursday afternoon, with officers announcing they would reopen them incrementally as the march progressed.

Gedolei Yisrael across the spectrum – from previous generations to today’s foremost poskim – have been unequivocal in their psak: it is assur gamur, with the severity of kares, to ascend Har HaBayis in our time. This includes the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, who have repeatedly reaffirmed that visiting Har Habayis is a serious aveirah.

Around twenty years ago, during a Sukkos visit to the home of Harav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv Ztl, then-President Shimon Peres was personally urged by the Gadol Hador to prevent all Jewish visits to Har HaBayis. Rav Elyashiv warned that such provocations would be viewed by the nations of the world as deliberate incitement, and he stressed that they carry the potential to ignite a religious war.

In the eyes of gedolei Torah, such visits are not merely controversial but are acts of issur that jeopardize both spiritual and physical safety. The Chief Rabbinate has reiterated in multiple proclamations that even those who purport to purify themselves before ascending are transgressing, as the boundaries of the holy areas are not fully known, and no preparation can remove the punishment of kares for entering forbidden areas.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Twice this week, U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed interest in turning Venezuela into his country’s 51st state. The latest came via a Truth Social post Tuesday with a map showing the South American country filled with the U.S. flag.

Previous statements doubting Venezuela’s sovereignty over the past 25 years have been met with immediate derision from senior government officials, including the president. The ruling party even organized demonstrations in the capital, Caracas, as recently as Jan. 3, hours after then-President Nicolás Maduro was captured by the U.S., that included chants of “Gringo go home.” This time around, however, the government has mostly kept quiet, save for a brief statement to reporters Monday from acting President Delcy Rodríguez.

The approach demonstrates the balance Rodríguez must strike between external and internal politics following the January U.S. military attack in Caracas. The Trump administration has since implemented a phased plan to try to turn around the crisis-wrecked country and has forced Rodríguez’s political movement, Chavismo, to abandon the anti-U.S. sentiment that long accompanied its teachings.

“This is probably the most public and sharp manifestation of the government’s transactional, self-survival approach above everything else right now, above even that sort of basic tenet of Chavismo,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at the London-based Chatham House think tank. “It’s better that they hold their tongue, not offend the U.S. right now. Why overreact to a ridiculous claim by Donald Trump?”

Rodríguez on Monday told journalists that Venezuela had no plans to become the 51st U.S. state, but her comments were much more reserved than past presidential addresses deriding these types of U.S remarks. They came after Trump said he was “seriously considering” the move. Trump has made similar comments about Canada.

“We will continue to defend our integrity, our sovereignty, our independence, our history,” Rodríguez said. Venezuela, she added, is “not a colony, but a free country.”

The Trump administration stunned Venezuelans by choosing to work with Rodríguez, instead of the country’s political opposition, following Maduro’s ouster. She has since led cooperation with the administration’s phased plan, pitching her oil-rich nation to international investors and opening its energy sector to private capital and international arbitration. Rodríguez has also replaced senior officials, including Maduro’s faithful defense minister and attorney general.

Trump has praised her work, and his administration has lifted economic sanctions against her personally and eased sanctions against the country, though some still remain in place. The U.S. now also recognizes her as the “sole” head of state of Venezuela.

The U.S. stopped recognizing Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader in 2019, the year after he claimed reelection victory in a contest widely considered a sham as opposition parties and candidates were barred from participating.

Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken to New York to face drug trafficking charges after their Jan. 3 capture. Both have pleaded not guilty and remain jailed at a Brooklyn detention center.

In Caracas, some residents on Wednesday viewed the government’s response as submitting to Trump, but they also acknowledged that Rodríguez is not in a position to unleash Chavismo’s characteristic anti-U.S. propaganda.

“She knows that it’s wise not to engage in direct confrontation because she knows she’s bound to lose,” college student Adonai Osoria said. “Now, are there some who disagree, who don’t like it? Well, yes, of course. But I consider her reaction right now to be a common, understandable reaction.”

Government supporters last showed their inflammatory attitude against the U.S. in the days after Maduro was captured, burning U.S. flags and carrying signs that read “Gringo go home.”

Among the government’s strongest supporters across the country are the armed groups known as colectivos. The groups are a staple of pro-ruling party demonstrations. Local leader Jorge Navas characterized Trump’s comments as “irresponsible acts of provocation” and praised Rodríguez for her diplomatic response.

“We are bending, strategically, but we will not break,” Navas said of Chavismo’s current approach to U.S. pressure. “We continue to resist, that is, realistically, given the country’s economic situation.”

by Rabbi Eliezer Sandler

The concept of the Yissachar-Zevulun Torah Learning Pact goes back well over 3,500 years, to the time of Yaakov Avinu and his sons. It is named for the Torah pact between two of his sons – Yissachar the scholar and Zevulun the merchant. Not only was it an equal pact but, Chazal explained, the deed of Zevulun/the Sponsor is considered even greater than that of Yissachar, because without the support of Zevulun, Yissachar would not have had the wherewithal to study Torah undisturbed.”

It is well-known that when it comes to learning Torah, people who sponsor the learning, often do so, not just as a donation. By financially supporting specific Torah scholars, they enter into a binding, written, signed and sealed learning partnership pact whereby the Sponsor (the Zevulun) is deemed by Halacha as if he personally studied the Torah completed by the Scholar (the Yissachar). (See below.)

Thus, those who support the Talmidei Chachomim at Shas Yiden via a Yissachar-Zevulun Pact merit a portion in every daf of the entire Talmud Bavli and associated texts that they study, and complete the entire cycle in the space of ONE year. Some of the Sponsors opt to continue sponsoring repeat cycles of Shas which accrue to them.

Sar Hatorah, Maran Hagaon Harav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l, Nasi Shas Yiden, emphasized: The most mehudar Yissachar-Zevulun pact to support in our times is that offered by Shas Yiden – it comprises the entire Shas, Rashi and Tosfos – all in just one year!

Rav Chaim explained why this pact with Shas Yiden is the most mehudar. Chazal say that the highest level of learning is when one understands what he is learning b’iyun u’ve’amkus. However, even higher than that is when one remembers b’al peh all what he has learned. I have farhered the Shas Yiden avreichim geonim many times and can attest ZEI KENNEN SHAS (they know Shas)!

YES! YOU CAN MAKE

your OWN SIYUM on the ENTIRE

Shas, Rashi & Tosfos

IN JUST ONE YEAR!

The Yissachar-Zevulun Pact in Halacha

The Shulchan Aruch in Yoreh De’ah Chapter 246 regarding the efficacy of the Yissachar-Zevulun Sponsorship Pact for the Zevulun (the Sponsor) states clearly:  It is deemed as if he (the one sponsoring the learning) himself learned all the Torah studied under the pact.

All the learning under the Shas Yiden Yissachar-Zevulun Pact is yours בעוה”ז ובעוה”ב (in both This World and the World to Come)! Concerning this, the Netziv of Volozhin comments that in Olam Habah, the Zevulun sponsor will sit together with the Gedolei Torah of the past and merit to participate in their discussions and pilpulim on all the Torah learned.

Achieve Almost 7 million Mitzvos in One Year

The Vilna Gaon in Shnos Eliyahu Pe’ah 41 states that one should hold precious every word of Torah that he learns because each word is considered a mitzvah of its own.

Thus, since in Talmud Bavli, Rashi and Tosfos there are 6,608,891 words, that translates into almost 7 million mitzvos accruing through Yissachar-Zevulun at Shas Yiden.

Official Shtar from Shas Yiden

Each Yissachar-Zevulun pact is confirmed by an official contract (shtar) from Shas Yiden specifying the learning of the entire Shas, and is witnessed by talmidei chachomim.

All who wish to enter into a Yissachar-Zevulun Pact for the entire Shas during ONE year should contact Shas Yiden to make arrangements: 718-702-1528.

The opportunity to complete the entire Shas has been a cherished way to honor family members and others as a prized achievement. It has also proven to be a source of comfort for mourners to obtain such a zechus for their dear ones during the year of mourning – a siyum of the entire Shas can be completed on the yahrzeit!

Yissachar-Zevulun Pact –

Beyond the Grave

The legendary visionary and “Father of Yeshivos”, Reb Chaim of Volozhin, was the founder of the famous yeshiva in the town of Volozhin and the beloved talmid of the Vilna Gaon. 

Reb Chaim had an ongoing Yissachar-Zevulun pact with a local shoemaker – a man who was not learned but who dearly valued Torah learning. They had a ‘deal’ whereby the shoemaker would pay the monthly financial support needed for Reb Chaim and his family. For this financial support, the shoemaker would have an equal share in all Reb Chaim’s daily Torah study – both in the mitzvah of Torah study בעוה”ז and that the knowledge of the Torah learned would continue to be his בעוה”ב (in the World to Come).

One day the shoemaker passed away suddenly. During the shiva period, Reb Chaim was facing a perplexing halachic question and researched high and low for a solution. That night the shoemaker appeared to him in a dream and gave him the full solution that he sought. Reb Chaim was amazed and commented, “Azoi gich, Azoi Gich – So quickly, so quickly has he acquired the zchus and knowledge of the Torah that I have studied!”

In the words of Gedolei Torah:

Maran Hagaon Harav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l, Nasi Shas Yiden:

“In just ONE year, through Yissachar-Zevulun at Shas Yiden, you can be zoche to the entire Shas forever – בעוה”ז ובעוה”ב (in olam hazeh and olam habah).

“Moreover, whoever supports Shas Yiden is zocheh to fulfill both Yissachar-Zevulun and support of aniyei (the poor of) Eretz Yisroel in the fullest sense of the word.

“Those who support Shas Yiden will be saved from chevlei (the travails of) Moshiach – spiritually and materially, and will be zoche to have ehrlicher bonim u’vanos yir’eishomayim ”

Maran Hagaon Harav Dov Lando, shlit”a, Rosh Yeshiva, Slabodka:

“Who compares to the Shas Yiden? Incredible talmidei chachomim geonim who raised the bar in limud Hashas b’iyun u’v’amkus. Blessed are those who enter a Yissachar-Zevulun pact with them.”

Hamashpia Hagadol Reb Meilech Biederman, shlit”a:

 “Yissachar-Zevulun at Shas Yiden – best possible deal, and in just 1 year! 100% partnership! 100% Shas x 5 times! 100% Shisha Sidrei Mishna – בעוה”ז ובעוה”ב”

Sanzer Rebbe, shlit”a:

“A first in 2000 years of Jewish history! Until Shas Yiden, never a Torah institution where ALL the avreichim metzuyonim v’geonim know the entire Shas by heart”

Harav Yaakov Hillel, shlit”a:

“Therefore, the great mitzvah to support the efforts [of the Talmidei Chachomim] with generous donations in order that they should continue diligently with their studies to enhance the greatness of the Torah and its glory.

ShasYiden.com

Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, hinted on Thursday that a resumption of war with Iran may be imminent.

Speaking during an interview with Kol Chai, he said: “We’re in critical days ahead of the opening of a campaign against Iran, closer than ever to a return to war. We have to finish this story called Iran.”

In response to a question about whether he would fly abroad in the next few days, he responded: “I would think twice about flying next week. We’re approaching a critical stage.”

Also on Thursday, during a memorial ceremony ahead of Yom Yerushalayim for the fallen soldiers of the Six-Day War and the War of Attrition at Mount Herzl, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz delivered strong messages toward Iran and Hezbollah and made clear that Israel is preparing for the possibility of renewed military action against Tehran.

“Iran suffered extremely severe blows over the past year, and yet our mission is not complete,” Katz said. “We must complete the objectives of the campaign.”

“As I have said before, we’re prepared for the possibility that we may soon be required to act again to ensure the achievement of these objectives.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)