Baltimore Jewish Home 10-8-26 by Baltimore Jewish Home

VISIT US ON THE WEB! WWW.THEBJH.COM Vol. 12 Issue #32 | October 8-14, 2026 | ‫ג׳ חשון תשפ״ז‬-‫כ״ז תשרי‬

Back to TA: Approximately 250 Alumni Return For An Unforgettable Yarchei Kallah

Two Ways To Dance, Perspectives Of A Simchas Bais Hashoeva

Choosing to Forgive and to Live Lessons Learned from Yotam Haim, Hy”d

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Dear Readers,

Content COMMUNITY Around the Community

Greater Washington Community News

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JEWISH THOUGHT Daber Davar

Rabbi Zvi Teichman

Torah Sparks

Torah Thought

Living Kiddush Hashem

HUMOR & ENTERTAINMENT To Raise A Laugh

Centerfold

Notable Quotes

Sukkah Contest - New Deadline!

Kids Coloring Contest

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LIFESTYLES Inspiration Nation

Political Crossfire

Forgotten Heroes

Dating

Mental Health Corner

School Of Thought

Health & Fitness

Parenting Pearls

In The Kitchen

On Isru Chag, following a brief illness, my Aunt Judy Hoffman, a”h, was nifteres. Tante Judy was born in Baltimore, the daughter of Max and Shirley Rosen. Her father, a founder of Chofetz ChaimAdath B’nei Israel Congregation (The Adas), took tremendous pride in his daughter marrying a yeshiva bochur, my dear Uncle Leiby Hoffman. Together, they were a power couple: my uncle, tall and handsome with a larger-than-life personality, and Tante Judy beside him like a queen, every step of the way. Their home on Yeshiva Lane was open to bochurim and people from all walks of life. There was always someone coming through the door, always a conversation, always something happening, always song and laughter. It was in that home that they raised a beautiful family, children who shared their warmth, radiance, and outgoing personalities. Those who remember those years would be hard-pressed to recall a home with more energy and excitement. As a child, I always wanted to be with my cousins. There was so much action, so much entertainment, and the wonderful feeling that you were part of it all. Tante Judy and Uncle Leiby had built a beautiful life together. Their home was full of people, laughter, and possibility. Looking back through a child’s eyes, it seemed they were living the dream. In 1988, Uncle Leiby became seriously ill, and life on Yeshiva Lane changed. The effects of his illness and surgery left him permanently disabled. The years that followed demanded extraordinary strength from Tante Judy. She became his right arm, tending to his needs and standing faithfully beside him for the rest of her life. Life asked much of her in so many ways, and she endured so much in so many areas of her life, yet I never heard her complain about the hand she had been dealt.

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She carried her responsibilities with grace and dignity, and somehow retained her sense of humor. The warmth that had filled their home in those earlier years continued to be part of who she was, even when life became far more difficult. More than anything, that is what stands out to me about Tante Judy. She never seemed to get too high with the highs or too low with the lows. She had a way of making life feel a little less overwhelming. I can still hear her responding to something serious I was telling her with a gentle wry “Unbelievable” or “That is really really something,” in that familiar drawl and unmistakable inflection that always brought a smile to my face. You knew she was listening and that she cared, and her touch of humor took the edge off, giving you a little room to breathe. That same warmth reached far beyond her family. She was quietly involved in some of our community’s most important chesed organizations. Professionally, as the office manager at Dr. Jakobovits’s office, she became a beloved presence, caring for and encouraging countless people, offering reassurance when a concerning test result or diagnosis left them anxious. Her illness took her from us in such a short time, but her legacy of warmth and kindness will stay with us for years to come. I find myself thinking about how much a person can give through a reassuring word, a little humor, or the steady comfort of being there. Tante Judy gave all of those things, day after day. May Hashem bring a nechamah and strength to Uncle Leiby, my cousins, the entire family, and all those who feel her loss. May we follow her example of caring for others with grace in good health and happiness.

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The Baltimore Jewish Home is an independent bi-weekly newspaper. All opinions expressed by the journalists, contributors and/or advertisers printed and/or quoted herein are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME, their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, Internet or another medium. The Baltimore Jewish Home is not responsible for typographical errors, or for the kashrus of any product or business advertised within. The BJH contains words of Torah. Please treat accordingly.

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Around the Community

Nearly 1,000 Pack Goucher For Miriam’s Library Concert As New After-School Program Launches

early 1,000 people packed Goucher College’s Kraushaar Auditorium on Chol Hamoed for a Miriam’s Library concert featuring Joey Newcomb, as the organization announced the launch of a new hands-on after-school program and an $18,000 scholarship fund for participating families. The concert featured Newcomb together with Baltimore’s 8th Note Band, led by Menachem Manevich, and marked the public rollout of the first programming at Miriam’s Library’s new Pikesville home. The new six-week program, beginning October 25, is geared toward fourth- and fifth-graders and takes a different approach from the traditional after-school model. Rather than centering on homework help or classroom-style enrichment, the program is built around practical, creative and skill-based activities designed to give children opportunities to discover interests they may not encounter during the regular school day.

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The first slate includes 3D printing and design, guitar fundamentals, mosaic art, screen printing, baking and decorating, and hairstyling and braiding. Girls’ classes will be held on Sundays, while boys’ classes will take place on weekday afternoons. The launch represents what organizers hope will become a broader model of hands-on after-school programming for Baltimore’s Jewish community, with children learning directly from instructors in areas ranging from technology and music to art and practical skills. During the concert, Miriam’s Library also announced the creation of an $18,000 scholarship fund, made possible by the Ben and Zelda Cohen Foundation, to help families for whom the cost of after-school programming could otherwise be a barrier. Transportation from school will also be available, and the program is offering financial assistance to families who need it. A video shown during the evening

introduced several of the instructors who will lead the first classes and gave families a preview of the new program. Democratic nominee for Baltimore County Council District 4 Karson Kamenetz also addressed the crowd, offering greetings and recognizing the launch of Miriam’s Library’s new programming. Miriam’s Library was established in memory of Miriam Mintz

following her passing in August 2024. The organization later acquired an approximately 14,000-square-foot building at 201 Milford Mill Road in Pikesville for roughly $2.3 million, following a community fundraising campaign supported by more than 4,000 donors. Renovations have been underway at the property, but the organization is beginning programming in phases rather than waiting for the full

building project to be completed. The after-school initiative will be among the first regular programs to operate from the new center. Additional classes and activities are expected to be added as the program develops and more of the building comes online. Registration for the first session is now open. More information is available at MiriamsLibrary.com.

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Back to TA: Approximately 250 Alumni Return For An Unforgettable Yarchei Kallah

t was a morning that will not soon be forgotten at Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim - Talmudical Academy of Baltimore. Approximately 250 alumni returned to TA for the Yeshiva’s inaugural Alumni Yarchei Kallah, filling the campus with an extraordinary combination of Torah, kavod haTorah, friendship, and a genuine sense of coming home. The theme of the event was “Back to TA - Where It All Began,” and from the moment the first alumni began arriving, that feeling was unmistakable. In fact, dozens came well before the scheduled start time. They helped themselves to refreshments, caught up with old friends and Rebbeim, and filled the lobby with conversation and laughter, almost as if they had never left. For Bochurim, yungerleit, and young married alumni who had spent formative years at TA, simply walking back into the building brought back the warmth, friendship, and connection they remembered so well. One small detail from the registration process captured, perhaps better than anything else, what the morning was really about: As alumni registered for the Yarchei Kallah, they were asked to list any TA Rebbeim with whom they had remained connected after leaving the Yeshiva. An overwhelming majority filled in that field. For some, many years had passed since they last sat in a TA classroom. Yet their relationships with their Rebbeim had continued. That simple response spoke volumes about the kind of chinuch TA strives to provide. A Rebbe’s role does not end when a talmid graduates or moves on to his next Yeshiva. The relationships forged during those formative years often continue for decades - as sources of guidance, encouragement, friendship, and connection to Torah. And on this morning, those relationships were visible everywhere. Alumni were not simply returning to a school they once attended. They were returning to Rebbeim with whom so many had remained connected long after leaving TA. The alumni then made their way into the Bais Medrash for an hour of learning together. The room was packed. For the next hour, the Bais Medrash reverberated with an incredible kol Torah as the alumni learned through a sugya in Maseches Sukkah. The atmosphere was electrifying: for-

mer classmates learning side by side once again, alumni sitting with Rebbeim, and generations of TA talmidim filling the Bais Medrash with Torah. The centerpiece of the morning was the arrival of Harav Hagaon R’ Yisroel Neuman, shlit”a, Rosh Yeshiva of Bais Medrash Govoha - himself a member of the TA Class of 1963. The kavod haTorah shown to the Rosh Yeshiva upon his arrival was remarkable. As Harav Neuman took a seat at the front of the Bais Medrash, Rabbi Yaakov Schwartz, TA Middle School Menahel, welcomed the alumni back to the Yeshiva and opened the official program. He then introduced the Rosh Yeshiva to give the shiur. Harav Neuman delivered a 40-minute shiur, followed by powerful divrei chizuk. Coming on the heels of the Yamim Nora’im, Sukkos, and Simchas Torah, the Rosh Yeshiva reflected on the different avodos that accompany each tekufah and the areas upon which a person must focus as he moves from one period of the year into the next. As he came to Simchas Torah, the Rosh Yeshiva became visibly emotional. Simply reflecting on those words - Simchas Torah - brought him to tears as he spoke about what they truly mean: the joy of a life centered around Torah. His message was one of “Ki heim chayeinu v’orech yameinu.” Torah is not simply something we learn; it is our life. There is no greater simcha, no greater geshmak, and nothing more precious than being connected to Torah. It is what we live for, what we must remain involved in, and the greatest gift that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has given us. It was an unforgettable moment for everyone in the Bais Medrash. When the Rosh Yeshiva concluded, he began making his way from the building toward TA’s administration building, where he would address the talmidim in grades 4 through 8. Once he stepped outside and began proceeding across campus, the alumni followed and broke into song, escorting the Rosh Yeshiva on his way. Along the route, the sidewalks were lined with some of TA’s youngest talmidim, who came out to greet and escort him as well. It was a striking image: generations of TA talmidim, from the youngest boys in the school to alumni many years removed from their own days in the classroom,

showing kavod to a distinguished alumnus who had walked those same halls more than six decades earlier. Rabbi Yaakov Schwartz once again introduced the Rosh Yeshiva, this time to the hundreds of current TA talmidim gathered to hear his words. When Rav Neuman stood before the fourth through eighth graders, he opened warmly: “Taira Kinderlach.” Then he immediately stopped himself. “Let me correct that: Chashuve Bnei Torah.” It was a beautiful moment, and the message that followed reflected those very words. The Rosh Yeshiva spoke to the boys about how fortunate they are to be in a Yeshiva, to have the privilege of learning Torah, and to be surrounded by Rebbeim and parents who are machshiv their Torah learning. He urged them to recognize just how special that opportunity is. Through their Torah learning, he told them, they have the privilege of growing closer to the Ribbono Shel Olam. His message to the boys was simple but powerful: they should never take for granted the extraordinary privilege they have each day to sit and learn Torah - or what it means to be a Ben Torah. Meanwhile, the alumni gathered in the cafeteria for a gourmet fleishig luncheon prepared in their honor. Once again, the room was filled with conversation, old friendships being renewed, and alumni spending time with their former Rebbeim. The program continued with a special Q&A session, “Rising Through the Struggles of Life,” led by Harav Shraga Neuberger, shlit”a, R”M at Yeshivas Ner Yisrael, himself a TA alumnus. Rabbi Yechiel Spero, who first conceived the idea for the Alumni Yarchei Kallah, introduced the session, and Rabbi Yisrael Lefkovitz, TA Mesivta Menahel, served as moderator. Rav Neuberger addressed the very real struggles and practical questions facing Bochurim and young

men as they navigate the different stages of life. He wove together ma’amarei Chazal, hashkafah, and stories of Gedolim to provide perspective and guidance on a wide range of important contemporary topics. The program ultimately extended beyond its scheduled ending time, and the alumni were more than happy to remain, continuing to talk with one another, reconnect with Rebbeim, and cherish the opportunity to spend a little more time together back at TA. Again and again, alumni approached members of the Hanhala and their Rebbeim to express their appreciation for the event and how much it meant to them to return. There was a warmth and love in the building that was impossible to miss. For TA, the Yarchei Kallah was about much more than bringing former students back for a program. It was about the enduring relationship between a Yeshiva and its talmidim; the bond between a Rebbe and a talmid that does not end with graduation; and the Torah, values, friendships, and memories that continue to shape a person long after his years in school have ended. It was especially meaningful that both of the morning’s featured speakers - Rav Neuman and Rav Neuberger - are themselves TA alumni. Decades after their own years as talmidim, they returned as distinguished Marbitzei Torah to teach, inspire, and guide the generations of TA alumni who followed them. For one extraordinary morning, approximately 250 alumni returned to the place where so much of their own journey began. They came back to learn. They came back to reconnect. And above all, they came Back to TA - Where It All Began.

Save the Date ! The next Alumni Yarchei Kallah will be during Pesach Bein Hazmanim. We cannot wait to greet our alumni once again!

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From Motzei Yom Kippur Through Simchas Torah: Sukkos at Mercaz

rom Motzei Yom Kippur through Hoshana Rabbah, Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah was alive with Torah, Tefillah, and the simcha of Yom Tov, with a full schedule of learning, special programs, and cherished minhagim. The season began with the Mafsik Tish on Motzei Yom Kippur, followed by preparations for Sukkos at Mercaz Arba Minim, where the Zidichover Rebbe personally checked lulavim and esrogim. Throughout Chol Hamoed, the Beis Medrash remained filled with kol Torah through Avos Ubanim and special Bein Hazmanim learning. The younger boys enjoyed a special Neilas HaChag program with Rebbe Hill, while Hoshana Rabbah included Mishneh Torah leining with Izzy Hyatt. On Leil Hoshana Rabbah, bochurim gathered at 11:15 PM for a special shiur from Harav Moshe Aharon Gross, Shlita, R”M at Yeshiva and Mesivta of Baltimore. Hoshana Rabbah continued with a spirited L’Chaim Tish with the Rebbe. The Sukkos experience culminated with Mercaz’s famous Apple Tish, as an overflowing crowd joined the Rebbe for a memorable conclusion to days filled with Torah, ruach, and the special simcha of Zman Simchaseinu.

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Sukkos Comes to Life at Torah Institute

almidim in Grades 3–5 at Torah Institute enjoyed a fun and meaningful day of Sukkos-related activities! Our 3rd and 4th graders got creative as they designed beautiful Sukkos-themed decorative posters. They enjoyed expressing their creativity while getting into the spirit of the Yom Tov. Our 5th graders focused on the mitzvah of Arba Minim, learning about the different species, their significance, and the halachos surrounding this special mitzvah. It was a wonderful opportunity for our Talmidim to combine learning, creativity, and Yom Tov spirit as they prepare for Sukkos!

TA 2nd Grade Make Beautiful Succos Projects With Mrs. Cynamon Photos: Esky Cook

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The Sweet Sound Of Torah Returns To Yeshivas Toras Simcha Photos: Dovid Kapenstein

a yeshiva!

here is nothing quite like the sweet sound of Torah learning filling the halls of

That beautiful sound returned to Yeshivas Toras Simcha on Tuesday as the talmidim came back from Yom Tov, refreshed, enthusiastic, and excited to reunite with their rebbes, moros, and friends. Smiles and warm greetings filled the hallways as friends eagerly shared their Yom Tov experiences with one another. But before long, the familiar and cherished sound of kol Torah once again reverberated throughout the classrooms and hallways. Chumashim and Gemaras were opened, voices filled the classrooms, and the yeshiva was once again alive with the energy of Torah learning.

And what a special way to begin! While Parshas Bereishis often seems to pass by much too quickly, this year the talmidim have an entire week to learn and delve into the first parsha of the Torah. A full week of Parshas Bereishis—what a treat!

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Two Ways To Dance, Perspectives Of A Simchas Bais Hashoeva By: Rabbi Dr. Avichai Pepper

here is something special about being in Yeshiva of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland. There is a warmth and closeness between the boys and the rabbeim that resonates throughout the building. It can be felt on an ordinary day in the Beis Medrash, in the hallways, and in the relationships that develop over years. But perhaps there is no time when that warmth comes more alive than at the Yeshiva’s community Simchas Beis Hashoeva. Throughout the evening, there is pure joy on the faces of everyone who participates. There is a tangible electricity in the room as bachurim lock hands with their rabbeim, some who teach them today and others who taught them in years past, and dance together in celebration of Torah and Yom Tov. And that simcha spreads. Community members who walk into the Beis Medrash are drawn in. Guests who may have simply come to to visit Silver Spring for Yom Tov quickly become part of the celebration. But perhaps most meaningful is watching alumni return for Bain Hazmanim and find their way back into the circle. Years may have passed since they sat in the Yeshiva’s classrooms or learned in its Beis Medrash, but on this night, they are once again dancing alongside their rabbeim and together with the current talmidim. There is something powerful about seeing that the relationships built in Yeshiva do not end when a talmid graduates. The faces may change from year to year, but the circle continues to grow. Watching each shiur rebbi dancing with his talmidim, infusing them with an energy that is almost otherworldly. This joy is apart on the faces of the rabbeim and the Rosh HaYeshiva as well, as they dance too. This is a simcha born from relationship. It is the joy of belonging. The warmth, love, and dedication that exist throughout the year suddenly become visible on the dance floor. A rebbi and talmid who have spent countless hours learning together are now holding hands and dancing together, while former talmidim return to those same circles years later. It is an energy that can remain with a talmid long after

the music stops, and, as the returning alumni demonstrate, long after his years in Yeshiva have ended. Beyond that experience, the Yeshiva offers its bachurim a very different Chol Hamoed Sukkos experience of simcha. Each year, following the in-house Simchas Bais Hashoeva, a busload of boys travel to Brooklyn, New York. Accompanied by their dedicated Rabbeim, the boys go on this amazing trip to experience Zman Simchaseinu on a much grander scale. Rabbi Hes, the Menahel, Rabbi Leiman, and some of the other rabbeim, take the boys to visit several Chassidic Simchas Beis Hashoevas, moving from one Beis Medrash to another, dancing among hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of Yidden from different communities and backgrounds. There, the emotion is different. One of our seniors captured it beautifully. He described what it feels like to stand in a packed room, take the hand of another Yid whom you have never met before, and will quite possibly never meet again, and simply dance together. There is no previous relationship. No shared classroom. No history together. You may not know anything else about him. And yet, you dance, together. Because you are both Yidden. Because it is Sukkos. Because we are cele-

brating Zman Simchaseinu together.

ences are the rabbeim themselves.

One of our juniors summed up the experience even more simply: “It was just real simcha.”

They are the rabbeim dancing hand-in-hand with their talmidim, and former talmidim, in our own Beis Medrash. And they are the rabbeim staying up through the night, traveling from one Beis Medrash to another, so their talmidim can experience the broader joy of Klal Yisrael.

Perhaps these two Simchas Beis Hashoevas, experienced only days apart, capture something profound about both Sukkos and Yeshiva. In Silver Spring, our talmidim experience the simcha that comes from closeness, the bond between a rebbi and talmid, between friends, between alumni and their Yeshiva, and between a Yeshiva and its community. It is a circle built over years, one that continues to expand as each generation of talmidim eventually becomes the alumni returning to dance once again. In Brooklyn, they experience the simcha that comes from something much larger, the realization that they are part of Klal Yisrael. They can enter a Beis Medrash filled with people they have never met, take another Yid by the hand, and immediately belong. And connecting those two experi-

One celebration says: You always belong here. The other says: You belong everywhere that Yidden gather to celebrate Torah and mitzvos. Together, they capture something beautiful about the chinuch of Yeshiva: giving a talmid deep roots in his own Beis Medrash while helping him recognize that those roots connect him to something far greater. That is the simcha of Sukkos. The simcha of belonging to one another, the simcha of belonging to Klal Yisrael, and the simcha of being connected through Torah and mitzvos.

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The Week In News

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The Week In News

School Protests Sweep France A 15-year-old student lost a hand on Monday after picking up a police grenade during nationwide protests in France over deteriorating school conditions, as demonstrations continued to disrupt hundreds of high schools across the country. The teenager was injured in the northern city of Lens. According to a police union source, he apparently picked up a sting-ball grenade that had been fired by riot police, and it exploded in his hand. The protests began in mid-September and have spread rapidly, with students blocking school entrances and demanding action over chronic teacher shortages, overcrowded schedules, crumbling build-

shacharis

“There is no directive to show restraint, even though they are dealing with children,” league president Nathalie Tehio said. The government, meanwhile, says it is working to address the students’ complaints while blaming hard-left activists for fueling some of the unrest. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has called for local officials to urgently fill long-term teacher vacancies and scheduled talks with regional leaders about renovating aging school buildings. The government is also proposing legislation that could force families to help pay for public property damaged by minors.

Nobel Prize in Medicine Three scientists whose work gave researchers a new way to peer into the brain’s wiring have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were honored on Monday for developing optogenetics, a tech-

nique that uses light to activate or silence specific nerve cells. Anna Wedell, a member of the Nobel committee, described the method as a “light-sensitive switch” that lets researchers “map which cells are responsible for which function” in the brain. The breakthrough began with Hegemann and Nagel, German researchers who studied a light-sensitive protein called channelrhodopsin found in algae. They discovered that when the protein was introduced into other cells, those cells could also respond to light. Deisseroth, a Stanford University professor of bioengineering and psychiatry, then adapted the discovery for nerve cells, effectively turning light into a remote control for parts of the brain. The result has transformed neuroscience. Researchers have since used optogenetics to study the circuits involved in pain, thirst, eating, reward, attention, social behavior, memories and emotions. Scientists hope the technology could eventually contribute to treatments for conditions including depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, and Par-

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8:00 am YGW (High School; School-Contingent)

S-F

Young Israel Ezras Israel of Potomac

S S

6:25 am Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua M-F

7:05 am Kesher Israel

M, Th

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Sfardi)

6:30 am Beth Sholom Congregation

M-F

7:15 am Kemp Mill Synagogue

M, Th

8:05 am Ezras Israel Congregation of Rockville

M, Th

Beit Halevi (Sfardi)

M, T

T, W, F

8:15 am Ohr Hatorah

Chabad of Silver Spring

M-F

Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah OLNEY

T, W, F

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah

YGW

M, Th

6:35 am Ohr Hatorah

M, Th

6:40 am YGW

S, T, W, F

Magen David Sephardic Congregation 6:45 am Beit Halevi (Sfardi)

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ings, and classrooms poorly equipped to handle increasingly hot weather. More than 400 of France’s roughly 3,700 high schools were partially or fully closed on Monday, according to the Education Ministry. In the Paris region, about one-third of schools serving students ages 15 to 17 were expected to remain shut. “We’re missing our lessons to give you one,” read one sign outside a Paris high school. While many demonstrations remained peaceful, others have turned violent. In Lille, masked protesters smashed bus shelters and set garbage bins on fire as police responded with tear gas. Elsewhere, students fired fireworks toward officers. Since the protests began, 24 schools have been burned or vandalized, and more than 5,000 people have been arrested, about 85% of them minors. Students have also accused police of using excessive force. The French Human Rights League criticized security tactics on Monday, saying authorities were failing to show sufficient restraint when dealing with minors.

M-Th S, T, W, F

Kemp Mill Synagogue

M, Th

Ohr Hatorah

T, W, F

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah

M, Th

6:50 am Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah

M, Th

Silver Spring Jewish Center

M-F

Chabad of Upper Montgomery County

M-F

6:55 am Young Israel Shomrai Emunah

T, W, F

7:00 am Kemp Mill Synagogue

T, W, F

Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua S Silver Spring Jewish Center BETHESDA Magen David Sephardic Congregation [S] 11215 Woodglen Dr, North Bethesda, MD 20852 GAITHERSBURG Chabad of Upper Montgomery County [Ari] 11520 Darnestown Rd, Gaithersburg, MD 20878 OLNEY Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah (OSTT) 18320 Georgia Ave, Olney, MD 20832

Kesher Israel Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah/The National Synagogue Ohr Hatorah 7:30 am Chabad of DC

M-F

Ezras Israel Congregation of Rockville

S, T, W, F

Kehilat Pardes / Berman Hebrew Academy

S-F

Silver Spring Jewish Center

M-F

Chabad of Potomac

M-F

JROC

M-F

Kemp Mill Synagogue

T, W, F

8:30 am Chabad of DC

Chabad of Potomac

S S

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah

JROC Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah/The National Synagogue Silver Spring Jewish Center

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Sfardi)

M-F

YGW (Summer Only)

S-F

7:45 am YGW (Yeshiva Session Only)

S-F

8:45 am Young Israel Shomrai Emunah

S-F

8:00 am Beth Sholom Congregation

9:00 am Chabad of Silver Spring

Kemp Mill Synagogue

Kesher Israel

Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah OLNEY

Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua M-F

Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua S Chabad of Upper Montgomery County

Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah

POTOMAC Beth Sholom Congregation 11825 Seven Locks Rd. Potomac, MD 20854 Chabad of Potomac [Ari] 11621 Seven Locks Rd, Potomac, MD 20854 Young Israel Ezras Israel of Potomac 11618 Seven Locks Rd, Potomac, MD 20854

ROCKVILLE Kehilat Pardes / Berman Hebrew Academy 13300 Arctic Ave, Rockville, MD 20853 JROC 11304 Old Georgetown Rd, Rockville, MD 20852 Ezras Israel Congregation of Rockville Ring House TV Room

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mincha

S S

mincha/maariv

Before Shkiah (15-18 minutes), S-TH Beit Halevi (Sfardi) Beth Sholom Congregation Chabad of Potomac Chabad of Silver Spring Chabad of Upper Montgomery County Ezras Israel Congregation of Rockville (20 min before, S-F) JROC Kemp Mill Synagogue Kesher Israel Magen David Sephardic Congregation Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah/The National Synagogue Ohr Hatorah Silver Spring Jewish Center Southeast Hebrew Congregation Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah Young Israel Ezras Israel of Potomac Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Asheknaz) Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Sefarhadi)

maariv 8:45 pm YGW 9:15 pm Silver Spring Jewish Center 9:30 pm YGW 9:45 pm Ohr Hatorah 10:00 pm YGW

2:00 pm Silver Spring Jewish Center 2:10 pm YGW

S-F

2:45 pm YGW 3:00 pm YGW Middle School

S-Th

SILVER SPRING Beit Halevi [Sefardic] 1009 North Belgrade Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20902 Chabad of Silver Spring [Ari] 519 Lamberton Dr, Silver Spring, MD 20902 Kemp Mill Synagogue 11910 Kemp Mill Rd, Silver Spring, MD 20902 Ohr Hatorah 1009 Kersey Rd, Silver Spring, MD 20902 Silver Spring Jewish Center 1401 Arcola Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20902

Southeast Hebrew Congregation, Knesset Yehoshua 10900 Lockwood Dr, Silver Spring, MD 20901 Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah 9001 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20910 Yeshiva Gedola of Greater Washington (YGW) 1216 Arcola Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20902 Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (YISE) [Ashk + S] 1132 Arcola Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20902

M-Th School Days M-Th School Days

S-Th S-Th S-Th S-Th S-Th

WASHINGTON Chabad of DC [Ari] 2110 Leroy Pl. NW, Washington, DC 20008 Kesher Israel 2801 N Street, NW Washington, DC 20007 Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah/The National Synagogue 1600 Jonquil St NW, Washington, DC 20012

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The Week In News kinson’s disease. The Nobel committee said the work “laid the foundation for a new era in neuroscience.” Deisseroth said he was working late and had just begun falling asleep when the Nobel committee called. “My phone rang at my bedside,” he said. “There was about 30 seconds when I had trouble forming words.” Nagel received his news under considerably sunnier circumstances: sitting on a terrace in Italy. “I didn’t expect this, really!” he said, adding that he had long believed it was too early for optogenetics to receive medicine’s top honor. The field is already moving beyond the laboratory. Researchers have experimented with optogenetic techniques to restore limited vision in people with certain forms of blindness and are studying whether similar methods could improve cochlear implants. The three scientists will share the prize of 12 million Swedish krona, roughly $1.2 million. Their discovery began with tiny algae swimming toward light. Decades later,

that same light is helping scientists illuminate some of the brain’s darkest mysteries.

Death from Plague in Russian Lab Russian health authorities have placed dozens of people under observation after a 28-year-old laboratory technician at a Siberian institute that studies plague and other dangerous infectious diseases died from a mysterious case of pneumonia. The woman, identified by local media as Darya Shipilova, worked at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia. Russian officials said she was diagnosed with pneumonia of “unknown” origin before her death. The case has drawn international attention, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling on Moscow to provide more information. “I think it’s incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world,” Rubio said on Tuesday.

“Maybe it’s bigger than we thought. We don’t know, but I think it would be reckless at this moment, given the limited information we still have, to speculate.” “We’re watching it very closely, hour by hour,” he added. Russian health agency Rospotrebnadzor has sought to calm fears, saying tests found no evidence that Shipilova had contracted any microorganism connected to her laboratory work. The agency said the regional “epidemiological situation” remains stable. Still, officials have taken extensive precautions. The hospital where Shipilova was treated has placed its inpatient facility under quarantine, and several departments temporarily stopped admitting or discharging patients. Local authorities also canceled a community event amid concerns over the unexplained illness. Unofficial reports have said nearly 200 people are being monitored. Several individuals who had contact with Shipilova later tested positive for COVID-19 or rhinovirus, according to Russian authorities. President Donald Trump said the

United States would be prepared to assist Russia if necessary. “Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we’re always willing to help,” Trump said. “It’s a rough disease.” The World Health Organization said it was in contact with Russian officials to verify the circumstances of the case and review laboratory testing. Based on available information, the WHO said the risk to the general public appeared to be “low.” Nevertheless, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan announced heightened health precautions, including increased monitoring at border crossings. One regional official initially said Shipilova may have died “possibly from the plague,” though that has not been confirmed. Pneumonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, can be deadly but is treatable with antibiotics when diagnosed early. Experts stressed that the disease is far less easily transmitted than respiratory viruses such as COVID-19. For now, the cause of Shipilova’s death remains unclear, while Russian authorities continue testing and surveillance.

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The Week In News More Arrests in British Terror Plot British counterterrorism police arrested a seventh suspect this week in connection with an alleged plot targeting a U.S.-operated military air base in England, an incident British officials have linked to Iran. The 22-year-old British national was arrested on Tuesday in central London’s Westminster district on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, according to Counter Terrorism Policing.

The arrest is the latest development in an investigation surrounding RAF Fairford, a Royal Air Force base about 100 miles west of London that has been used by American B-52 and B-1 bombers, including during U.S. strikes against Iran earlier this year. Five British men in their 20s were arrested near the base’s perimeter during the early hours of September 27. A sixth suspect, a 25-year-old British-Iranian man, was taken into custody in London last week. All six have since been released on bail while the investigation continues. Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, said investigators “continue to pursue multiple lines of inquiry” and “remain committed to investigating all possible angles.” The original security alert prompted the evacuation of scores of residents living near RAF Fairford as armed officers and military bomb-disposal teams descended on the area. Police later said gasoline, described as an accelerant, had been discovered in three vans associated with the suspects. No explosives were found. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said there are “strong indications” that Iran was connected to the incident, though officials have not publicly detailed the evidence behind that assessment or disclosed the exact nature of the suspected plot. Iran has denied involvement. Tehran has previously warned, however, that

it views military installations used to launch attacks against Iranian territory as legitimate targets. The United States moved its B-52 and B-1 bombers out of RAF Fairford on Sunday. It remains unclear whether the transfer was directly connected to the investigation. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the aircraft were moved because of a threat. “If we’re going to be threatened, we would just move them, and that sort of alleviates that,” Trump said, adding that those behind the threat “would be linked to Iran.” British officials have declined to confirm reports that concerns about a possible drone attack contributed to the decision to move the bombers.

Ebola Comes to Kenya Kenya confirmed its first case of Ebola on Tuesday after a Kenyan man who had traveled from the Democratic Republic of Congo died in Nairobi, raising concerns that the outbreak in eastern Congo may be spreading beyond the region. Kenya is now the third country to report a case connected to the Congo outbreak, which has grown into the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, with more than 8,000 reported cases. Uganda recorded 20 cases and two deaths earlier this year before being declared Ebola-free in August. The Kenyan patient had lived in Congo for seven years and had reportedly been ill for about a month before beginning his journey, Health Minister Aden Duale said. He traveled by road from Congo to Kampala, Uganda, before flying to Nairobi on Saturday. After arriving at Nairobi’s international airport, the man passed through an airport health screening. He was later taken by a relative to Nairobi Hospital, where he was admitted with fever, chills and bleeding beneath the skin. He was quickly isolated but died late on Monday. Health Ministry Director General Patrick Amoth said medication the man had taken may have temporarily concealed his symptoms, allowing him to pass airport screening. Officials said the patient would be buried under strict safety procedures intended to prevent further transmission.

Kenyan authorities have identified 28 people who had contact with the patient, including relatives and healthcare workers. Officials are also attempting to locate 23 passengers and four crew members who were aboard his Jambojet flight. Jambojet, a subsidiary of Kenya Airways, said it was cooperating with health authorities. Duale sought to reassure the public, saying Kenya has trained nearly 5,000 healthcare workers in Ebola prevention and treatment. “We have continued to maintain, as a country, a high level of alert for Ebola since the outbreak began in May,” he said. Julien Harneis, the United Nations’ senior Ebola coordinator, also expressed confidence in Kenya’s ability to contain the case. “With a solid health response — which is what my colleagues expect from the Kenyan government — this will be managed,” he said. Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people and can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhea and, in severe cases, internal and external bleeding. The current Congo outbreak, caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain, has been blamed for more than 4,000 deaths.

Miracle on Flydubai

What began as a routine Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv turned into a terrifying fight for survival and an extraordinary series of miracles after the co-pilot attacked the captain and attempted to crash the plane with more than 170 people aboard. Flydubai Flight FZ1073 was en route to Israel on September 30 when co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national, repeatedly stabbed Captain Smit

Machchhar inside the cockpit. UAE authorities have since described the incident as an attempted terrorist attack; Israeli officials say the co-pilot appears to have intended to bring down the plane. Within seconds of the stabbing, the flight plunged more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data cited by Reuters. But what happened next turned what could have become one of the deadliest aviation attacks in years into an extraordinary survival story. Despite being seriously wounded, Machchhar managed to unlock the cockpit door before collapsing, giving passengers access to the cockpit. “We knew there was an attack because a woman screamed ‘stabbing’ and the plane shook,” passenger Yaniv Hayun, 50, recalled. “At that moment I ran to the cockpit, and the plane dived.” Hayun – who was seated in row 18 – and several other Israeli passengers raced forward. “One [pilot] was down and one was on the controls,” Hayun later told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I grabbed the assailant and put him in a chokehold, and pulled him out.” After dragging the attacker out of the cockpit, Hayun realized that the plane itself was still diving. He returned to the controls and pulled back on the yoke. “We pulled the assailant out,” he said. “After I pulled him out, we took control of the plane. I pulled up the yoke, I straightened the plane out a bit.” Asked by Netanyahu how he knew what to do, Hayun offered a response that quickly went viral. “I watch Air Crash Investigation, Mr. Prime Minister,” he said. Other passengers joined the struggle. Tzvika Manes, an Israeli bank executive traveling with his family, helped hold down the terrorist. He said passengers ultimately used corded airline headphones to tie the terrorist up. Dr. Shota Musaev helped treat the badly injured captain, while Asaf Rajuan and other passengers assisted in restraining the suspect. Rajuan later rejected the hero label. “I’m not a hero,” he said. “It’s something you do without thinking, running to save your daughter’s life, your family’s life, your wife, and all the staff and people on the plane. You don’t think – you just act.” Passengers described a chaotic scene as the aircraft spiraled downward, with

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The Week In News people being thrown through the cabin. Manes said he first pulled his young daughter away from the bathroom before rushing toward the cockpit. As the aircraft plunged, his daughters screamed, “We don’t want to die.” “It was a very difficult scenario,” Manes recalled. “But because we’re Israelis, we responded quickly.” Then came another extraordinary element of hashgacha: Two additional Flydubai pilots happened to be passengers on the flight. The pilots were “deadheading” — traveling as passengers because they were scheduled to operate another flight — and were able to enter the cockpit after the attacker was subdued. “This is one of the miracles,” passenger Daniel Schlichter said. “Not in every flight they bring two extra pilots.” One of the pilots reportedly climbed over the group of passengers restraining the suspect and took the controls, while the second soon joined him. The badly damaged aircraft was eventually stabilized and diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where it landed safely. For Lital Shahar, who was aboard with her four daughters, there was no question how she viewed their survival. “There were two miracles,” Shahar said after arriving safely in Israel, “that Israelis were on the plane who heroically went into the cockpit…and that there were off-duty pilots onboard who could land the plane in Saudi Arabia.” “It was so scary to death on the plane,” she said. “I felt sick. There are no words to describe what we experienced. Imagine I’m a mother and had my four girls next to me.” Shahar told her children during the terrifying descent to pray for a miracle. She later described their survival as a

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“miracle wrapped in a miracle.” Even Machchhar, fighting for his life inside the cockpit, later spoke of faith sustaining him. The captain told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that as he lay wounded, he repeated religious prayers and believed that “G-d would save us.” “When I was lying on the floor, I could feel the aircraft was going down,” Machchhar said. “I knew exactly that this would be the last push. I told myself that if I didn’t get up, there would be a problem. I managed to open the door, and then everyone else came in.” The dramatic rescue has drawn widespread praise from Israeli leaders. Netanyahu met several of the passengers after their return and hailed them as heroes, embracing Hayun and praising the civilians who had rushed into the cockpit. Investigators, meanwhile, have increasingly focused on the co-pilot’s background and whether the attack had been planned long in advance. “We know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination,” Netanyahu said. “That appears to be something we are gathering from his personal information.” “It looks very likely that he was going to down the plane,” Netanyahu added, pointing to what he described as the suspect’s Islamist radicalization. Before he was hired by the UAEbased airline, Al Hammami – who has a Syrian mother and was born in the UAE – had been banned from flying by Oman over fears he had adopted extremist views. In a later statement, Netanyahu went further. “As time passes, the picture is becoming clearer; the attacker underwent Isla-

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Flight Crew Screenings Israeli officials are moving to tighten screening of foreign airline crews after an investigation into the attempted hijacking of a Flydubai flight exposed significant gaps in the country’s aviation security system. During a Knesset committee hearing on Tuesday, officials revealed that 1,240 airline crew members from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel entered the country over the past year, including citizens of Syria and Lebanon. The disclosure came as authorities investigate Omani co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, who is accused of attacking the captain of Flydubai Flight FZ1073 and attempting to seize control of the Tel Aviv-bound aircraft. Investigators believe al-Hammami intended to crash the plane into Ben Gurion Airport, with a U.S. military base in Jordan reportedly serving as a backup target. The National Security Council has

now been asked to work with the Mossad and Shin Bet to identify countries considered high security risks. Under a proposed new system, airlines flying from those countries would be required to submit passenger and crew lists 48 hours before departure for security approval. Transportation Minister Miri Regev called for “immediate measures” to prevent a similar incident, including a new aviation visa or comparable authorization for everyone flying into Israel. Regev also proposed requiring airlines to provide advance information on crew members and passengers from high-risk countries, with the names reviewed by Israeli intelligence agencies before flights are permitted to depart. The measures follow revelations that al-Hammami, an Omani citizen, had reportedly been removed from flying duties at Oman Air because of concerns over radicalization before later being hired by Flydubai. Israeli authorities nevertheless did not flag him before the flight. Shin Bet personnel have traveled to the United Arab Emirates to participate in the investigation. According to Israeli reports, al-Hammami told investigators that he wanted revenge over Israel’s ac-

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1 Million Calls for Help Nearly one million people have reached out to Israel’s ERAN emotional support hotline since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, underscoring the deep and lingering psychological toll of years of war, grief, and uncertainty. According to a report released on Tuesday, ERAN received 928,911 inquiries over the past three years, including more than 774,000 phone calls and over 154,000 digital contacts through WhatsApp, chat, SMS and email.

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tions in Gaza. Investigators have found no evidence that the flight attendants assisted him in the attack. The attack was ultimately thwarted after the injured captain managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to rush in and overpower the terrorist. Despite the incident, Israeli and Emirati officials are also discussing the resumption of Flydubai’s Israel service, which previously included as many as 10 flights per day.

their survival with a word that would be repeated again and again: Miracle.

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

mist radicalization,” he said. “He came to crash the plane with its passengers. We are investigating whether he was dispatched, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price.” UAE authorities have launched a broad investigation into whether the attack was connected to a terrorist organization, whether the suspect received outside direction, and how he was able to become a pilot despite apparent warning signs in his background. For the passengers, however, the investigation comes after the more immediate reality that they somehow made it home and how G-d showed His strength and love through an open miracle in the skies that day: A wounded captain found the strength to open a cockpit door. Ordinary passengers ran toward danger instead of away from it. One passenger knew enough about aviation to help pull a diving plane upward. A doctor happened to be there to treat the wounded pilot. And, remarkably, two trained pilots happened to be sitting among the passengers. By the time the replacement flight finally reached Ben Gurion Airport, those onboard had already begun describing

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“The three years of war have confronted us with a harsh and ongoing reality,” said ERAN CEO David Koren. “Behind every call for help stands a person grappling with pain, loss, anxiety, loneliness, or burnout — and often a combination of these.” While calls initially centered on trauma, panic and grief, the nature of the distress has shifted over time. Loneliness has emerged as the most common concern, rising from about 28% of all calls during the first year of the war to 41% in the third year. ERAN officials said the increase

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reflects the cumulative impact of prolonged uncertainty, strained families, and disrupted social life. Particularly concerning was the increase in calls from children, teenagers, and young adults under age 24. That group now accounts for nearly one-quarter of all inquiries. Among them, calls involving suicidal thoughts, intentions or actions rose from 2.6% in the first year to 4.4% in the third. Across all age groups, ERAN handled 21,829 suicide-related contacts during the three-year period. The organization cautioned that the

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figures do not necessarily indicate a rise in actual suicide rates but noted that they do show a growing need for accessible, long-term support. Soldiers and reservists have also been heavily affected. ERAN received some 160,000 calls from military personnel, with loneliness cited in 41% of their inquiries during both the second and third years of the war. ERAN officials said many soldiers struggle to transition between intense combat experiences and ordinary life at home. Shiri Daniels, ERAN’s national professional director, urged people not to ignore signs of distress, even when daily life appears to have returned to normal. “Listen closely,” Daniels said. “That way, we can offer help before their distress deepens.”

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Some 4,000 terrorists who took part in the October 7, 2023, massacre have been killed over the past three years, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday, as Israel continues efforts to track down those involved in the attack. “Six thousand terrorists crossed the border into Israel on October 7 and carried out the atrocities,” Katz said in a statement. “Of them, 4,000 have been killed so far, leaving another 2,000.” The figures were presented by Military Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder during a cabinet meeting on Sunday night. The latest estimate is somewhat higher than previous IDF assessments, which had put the number of terrorists who entered Israel during the Hamas-led assault at approximately 5,600. Israeli officials had previously estimated that between 1,200 and 1,600 attackers were killed inside Israel during the massacre itself. According to the updated figures, thousands of terrorists returned to Gaza after the attack, with roughly 2,400 subsequently killed during the war or in targeted Israeli strikes. Another approximately 300 suspected participants have been captured and are awaiting prosecution before special military tribunals, which have not yet been established. Israel has devoted significant intelligence and military resources to identifying those who participated in the October 7 attack, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

A special joint IDF-Shin Bet unit known as “Nili” has spent the past three years identifying and tracking participants in the massacre. Investigators have used videos, photographs and other evidence — including footage recorded by terrorists themselves — along with facial recognition technology to compile lists of suspects. The list also reportedly includes Hamas commanders and other senior figures accused of planning and directing the attack. Israeli forces have stepped up operations against October 7 participants in recent months. In September alone, the IDF said 17 terrorists who took part in the massacre, abducted hostages, or held captives in Gaza were killed in Israeli strikes. Katz said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have ordered the military and other security agencies to pursue all those who participated in the attack, “without limitation and under any circumstances, from the senior ranks to the junior ranks.”

CA to Ban Quartz Counters California is set to become the first state to ban the production or installation of manufactured quartz, amid mounting cases of a lethal lung disease among workers who carve the material for kitchen countertops. The emergency regulation, which California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is expected to pass in October, signals growing alarm over the ill effects of a popular alternative to granite and marble. The board, made up of health, labor and corporate leaders, unanimously agreed in May to take up the proposed ban, which would target manufactured stone that contains more than 1% of crystalline silica. The rule would be subject to brief state review before taking effect. Manufactured quartz is packed with crystalline silica, which is released as dust into the air when a slab is cut. The particles lodge in the lungs, prompting an aggressive immune response; scar tissue forms, slowly killing the lung. By the time silicosis is diagnosed, patients often need a single or double lung transplant. Representatives for manufacturers

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The Week In News and distributors in the $30 billion engineered-stone industry say quartz is safe. They blame fabrication workshops further down the chain of production, where engineered stone slabs are cut to spec, for the surge in silicosis cases. There are many such fabrication workshops in California. Many of the workers have tenuous immigration status. Since 2019, California has confirmed 657 silicosis cases and 35 silicosis-related deaths among countertop workers, according to the state’s Department of Public Health. The state has also recorded a rising tide of lawsuits for injuries related to stone cutting, with multimillion-dollar verdicts. The workers, along with their lawyers, doctors and occupational health experts, have said there is no safe way to cut quartz. California’s ban would be an acknowledgment that the state’s laws requiring safer processing techniques for quartz are not enough to protect workers: Compliance is too low and the industry too fragmented, with many small shops that escape inspection, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations, which has pushed for the ban. (© The New York Times)

Hawaiian Cliff Collapses A prominent cliff on the wave-battered coast of Hawaii’s Big Island collapsed recently, according to the National Parks Service. The Holei Sea Arch, situated within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, was roughly 90 feet high before it collapsed between September 23 and September 27, possibly during a temporary park closure for Tropical Storm Nolo. While anticipated, its fall into the Pacific Ocean marks “the latest transformation of the park’s remote and rugged coastline,” the NPS said in a Facebook post. Officials at the park service warned visitors to keep away from the unstable location, citing severe falling risks. “Photos on social media show people entering the closed area near where the sea arch once stood, putting themselves and first responders at great risk of falling and drowning,” the NPS stated. The arch’s name, Holei, originates from a small endemic plant in the milkweed family. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park con-

firmed the news on Facebook: “So when did it happen? The 90-foot Hōlei Sea Arch was still standing on September 23 but had collapsed by Sunday night, September 27. The exact time of the collapse is unknown and could have occurred when the park was temporarily closed during Tropical Storm Nolo. Hōlei Sea Arch is a very special place to so many of our visitors!”

Measles Hits NY New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a statewide disaster emergency on Monday over a measles outbreak, the first such declaration by a U.S. state since cases began surging in 2025. The state also expanded the pool of health professionals allowed to administer measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines as cases rise in rural communities. “No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Hochul said. New York has reported 108 measles cases this year through October 3, including 92 since July 15 in under-immunized rural communities across 18 counties, well above typical annual levels, according to the executive order.

Seven of the cases are in New York City and 101 are elsewhere in the state, the governor’s office said. Local health departments have administered more than 1,000 MMR doses in rural areas since July 15. Neighboring Pennsylvania is battling a fast-spreading outbreak, with 977 cases and five deaths as of October 2, mostly in rural counties that border New York. Pennsylvania health officials said on Monday the state’s total had passed 1,000 cases, making it the largest state outbreak in more than three decades. The U.S. is having its worst year for measles since 1991, with nearly 3,900 cases reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The order allows registered nurses to order tests for suspected measles and for pharmacists to vaccinate children as young as two. It also requires all MMR vaccinations to be reported to state or New York City immunization registries within 72 hours, while waiving adults’ consent for such reporting. Vaccination itself still requires the consent of the patient or a legal guardian. The emergency took effect on Monday and runs through November 4.

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What Does It Take To Feel At Home In Eretz Yisroel?

THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME

By Eric Narrow

here was music in the air at Givat HaShalvah this Sukkos.

Against the backdrop of the hills surrounding Givat Ze’ev, families gathered for a Simchas Beis HaSho’evah led by Ishay Ribo, an evening of music, celebration and the special atmosphere of Zman Simchaseinu.

For many of those present, however, the setting gave the evening an added dimension. They were standing in the place they hope to call home. Givat HaShalvah is a new residential community being built in Givat Ze’ev with a particular understanding of the needs of English-speaking families, whether they are planning a move to Eretz Yisroel or looking for a second home. Its goal is straightforward: to make it possible to feel at home in Eretz Yisroel while enjoying the comfort and sense of community families value.

The wider plans also include a substantial health club, a large shopping center and a future retirement community. The idea is not simply to construct apartment buildings, but to create smaller, connected neighborhood pods in which families can develop a genuine sense of belonging. This is “Living with Intention”: homes and communal spaces planned around the way families want to live, connect and grow. For buyers coming from abroad, another major concern is navigating the Israeli purchasing and construction process. “We strive to bridge the gap between the Israeli system and what Americans expect,” explains Nissan Pshemish, Director of Buyer Relations at LYO Group. “We want to make sure people don’t feel lost in the shuffle.” The project is being developed by AMIM Group, with Solel Boneh, one of Israel’s longest-established construction and infrastructure companies, constructing the first two phases. For families considering Givat HaShalvah, that combination of community

“We were looking for quality and a community feel, but most importantly, the confidence that things would be taken care of,” says Givat Ze’ev resident Dovid Toledano. “At some point you realize that this is about much more than a standard purchase. It is about building a future where your family can thrive.” That sentiment is echoed by prospective and current buyers who have spent years searching for the right balance. “We wanted to experience the kedushah of Eretz Yisroel without giving up the hashkafah and culture of American Torah life,” says homeowner Avraham Danziger. “You want your children growing up in Eretz Yisroel, but you also want a home that works for your family and a community where you feel you belong.” The community is designed to accommodate a broad range of frum Anglo families, each able to maintain its own identity while sharing the advantages of a thoughtfully planned neighborhood. “Where Belonging Meets Becoming” captures that balance: feeling part of a community while continuing to grow as a family. For Givat Ze’ev Mayor Yosef Asraf, the project is also part of the continued growth of the wider community. “Givat Ze’ev is a place for all of Am Yisroel,” he says. “I am thrilled to see this project taking shape and welcoming new families.” Back at the Simchas Beis HaSho’evah, Ishay Ribo spoke about the significance of Am Yisroel returning home and about the value of every step taken in that direction.

For the families looking out across Givat HaShalvah that evening, those words were particularly meaningful. The warmth and generosity of the event itself offered a small taste of what the developers hope to create here: a community where families are not merely buying homes, but are made to feel that they belong. “Seeing these families come together was very special,” says Sruly Lev, CEO of LYO Group. “It has been a real privilege to work alongside Ahron Mertzbach and see his vision take shape. The professionalism of the AMIM team and the expertise of Solel Boneh are evident throughout the project. An undertaking of this scale is only possible through the dedication of many people, and that spirit of partnership was very much part of the evening.” Making a home in Eretz Yisroel, whether full-time or part-time, is ultimately about both ideals and the practical decisions that turn them into daily life: a home, a shul, a school, a neighborhood and a community. At Givat HaShalvah, the homes are rising, and the community is already coming to life.

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“This is the largest project AMIM has undertaken, and its scale comes with a real responsibility,” says Itay Hershkovitz, CEO of AMIM Group. “Behind every plan are the families who will eventually call this place home. We want the finished neighborhood to exceed their expectations, from their own apartments to the community around them. Our ambition is that when they arrive, they will find something even better than they imagined.”

The plans also include ten shuls and extensive indoor communal space for events, co-working and neighborhood activities, alongside educational infrastructure from early childhood through Cheider and Bais Yaakov.

planning and professional oversight is an important part of the appeal.

For Anglo families, that matters. Living in Eretz Yisroel is a privilege and an aspiration, but it is also a major practical undertaking. Choosing a community means thinking about chinuch, shuls, neighbors, housing standards, transportation, outdoor space and countless details of everyday family life. Givat HaShalvah has been planned with those considerations in mind. Spread across approximately forty acres, the development includes plans for

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

No detail had been overlooked. Guests were treated to an elegant evening, with freshly barbecued meats, a lavish dessert table and beautifully arranged hospitality throughout. The aim was to make current and prospective homeowners feel genuinely welcomed, valued and well cared for.

ten acres of parks, landscaped areas and walking paths. Parking throughout the project is designed to be underground, allowing the neighborhood itself to remain pedestrian-friendly and giving children safer access to parks, playgrounds and communal facilities.

Amim Group owner Ahron Mertzbach (L) with Lyo Group CEO Sruly Lev

The band at the event.

Yishai Ribo at the event.

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OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Masnisin: Discovering The Uncharted Frontiers Of Torah Shebal Peh

hen we hear mention of an uncharted chelek of Torah, what likely comes to mind is the discovery of an extinct Ksav Yad that has been lost for generations or perhaps the finding of a vanished medrash.

becoming part of the mainstream learning regimen amongst lomdei Torah. He would say that a proper Siyum Hashas includes learning Zeraim & Taharos.

But do we ever stop to think about an integral portion of Torah Sheb’al Peh – essentially a third of Shas! – that seems to be hiding from us in plain sight!

Truthfully, when Chazal and the poskim speak of the primacy and precedence of learning Gemara, essentially what this refers to is the critical analysis of the Mishnah as per the process of the Amoraim in the Gemara. This includes tracing each halacha of the Mishnah to its source in the Torah, understanding the differing positions of the various Tannaim and the basis behind each, exploring the ramifications and parameters of the mishnah’s choice of words, and ultimately, following through the journey to the Rishonim’s establishment of Halacha Lemaaseh.

Shisha Sidrei The term Shas is an acronym for Shisha Sidrei – referring to the six sedorim of Mishnayos that comprise the mainstay of our Torah Sheb’al Peh. Talmud Bavli primarily covers only four of these six sedorim, with the exception of Masechta Brachos, the only Masechta in Seder Zeraim with Gemara in Talmud Bavli and Masechta Niddah in Seder Taharos. Twenty-One Masechtos

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The reasons given for this are varied but the point is that the 21 masechtos without Gemara (out of 63) are very much a part of our fundamental Torah Sheb’al Peh, encompassing many relevant halachos that are applicable in our day-to-day lives. Uncharted Territory With the focus of our learning being Gemara, over the centuries, the two sedorim without Talmud Bavli have become uncharted territory amongst mainstream lomdim. Rav Chaim Kanievsky whose famous, annual Siyum Hashas included the completion of the Mishnayos of Zeraim and Taharos, was a strong proponent for Zeraim and Taharos

Masechtos With No Gemara

For masechtos without recorded Gemara, this very process was executed by the meforshei hamishnah, primarily using corresponding Gemaras recorded in other masechtos or drawing parallels from other sources in Chazal. For the purposes of what Chazal call “Gadol Talmud shemeivi liydei ma’aseh”, the meforshei hamishnah on these masechtos take the place of the Gemara. This can be seen in the way Bais Yosef and Shulchan Aruch establish the halachos of Challah, Mikvaos, Netillas Yadayim and other sugyos, directly from the mishnah and its Rishonim. A Historic Revolution A primary impediment to learning these masechtos at any level has been the absence of a framework. The lack of familiarity with the subjects has created a sense of distance or

mental abstractness to the concepts of Zeraim and Taharos. Some people are not aware that the halachos pertaining to the challah their wife takes every week come straight from the mishnah in Seder Zeraim. Additionally, the meforshei hamishnah, Rishonim, Acharonim and pirushim, are scattered amongst various editions of the Mishnayos – not all of them readily available. As of this coming Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, all this is about to change. Masnisin, an initiative long-anticipated and long-overdue, will be launching a new mishnah-a-day program designed to make the acquisition of Zeraim and Taharos a realistic goal for yidden across every stratum of Klal Yisroel. Daily Mishnah and Chazarah The program’s easy-to-follow format of a single mishnah per day can be achieved for each person at his own level and capacity for commitment. Built into the program are daily, weekly and monthly chazaras to facilitate easy retention of all that is learned while the Mishnah is still fresh in one’s memory. Resources The program includes beautifully compiled resources and materials to facilitate the learning and acquisition of these 2 sedorim of Shas, tailored for the learner at every level. Mishnayos An exclusive Mishnayos edition bringing together all the meforshim, including the Yachin UBoaz, Rav, Tosfos Yom Tov, Rash, Rosh, Rambam as well as the Artscroll transla-

tion and commentary all conveniently collated in a single publication. Marei Mekomos Carefully chosen marei mekomos, references and sources to provide background and in-depth insight into the daily Mishnah. Shiurim Audio and video shiurim in English, Yiddish and Lashon Hakodesh by world renowned maggidei shiur, catering to lomdim on all different levels. Shiurim are available by email subscription and accessible via the web or automated call-in hotline. Calendar Convenient print and online calendars to help keep to the daily schedule. Support Masnisin provides support and logistical assistance with setting up shiurim, chaburos and chavrusos in communities around the world. A Hadran on ALL of Shas! For those of us aiming to finish Shas, Masnisin will enable us to make a true siyum on all of Shas. Join Masnisin and be zoche, be’ezras Hashem, to say Hadran Alach Shisha Sidrei in its true sense! To join, start a shiur or chaburah, or get a calendar or complimentary Mishnayos Mahaduras Masnisin:

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STA R T I N G T H I S SU N DAY !

‫מהדורת מתניתין‬

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T H E C O M PL I M E N TA R Y M A SN I SI N E D I T I O N

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On Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, lomdim from around the world will begin learning Masechta Pe’ah with the Masnisin program. Grab the opportunity! Join Masnisin for the 69-day journey through Masechta Pe’ah and continue toward the long-term goal of mastering all of Seder Zeraim and Taharos.

Learn it. Chazer it. Own it.

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Zeraim & Taharos - Daily Mishnah & Chazarah

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STARTING MASECHES PE’AH ‫ | ר”ח חשון תשפ”ז‬SUN, 10/11 LOOK OUT FOR YOUR DAILY CALENDAR.

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‫יכין ובועז | פירוש ר"ש רא"ש ורמב"ם | ארטסקרול‬ ‫כור המשנה | אוסף מראי מקומות‬

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

‫זרעים‬

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Master Zeraim & Taharos

Sunday Sunday Tishrei 23

Tishrei 30

Monday Tishrei 24

Cheshvon 1

Tuesday Tishrei 25

Cheshvon 2

Cheshvon 23

27 Cheshvon 16

20 Cheshvon 9

2026 Job Fair

at Shomrei Thursday Thursday

Tishrei 27

6:08 PM

Cheshvon 5

6:18 PM

Tishrei 28

Friday

5:49 PM

Tishrei 29

7:15 PM

7:05 PM

Cheshvon 6

‫פרשת חיי שרה‬

6:56 PM

6:48 PM

5:41 PM

7 Cheshvon 27

‫פרשת וירא‬

31 Cheshvon 20

‫פרשת לך לך‬

24 Cheshvon 13

‫פרשת נח‬

‫פרשת בראשית‬

Saturday

Tishrei/Cheshvon

Cheshvon 4

Next BJH Issue

23 Cheshvon 12

5:58 PM

Next BJH Issue

6 Cheshvon 26

30 Cheshvon 19

5 Cheshvon 25

4:41 PM

29 Cheshvon 18

Next BJH Issue

22 Cheshvon 11

2026 October/November Tishrei 26

Cheshvon 3

4 Cheshvon 24

28 Cheshvon 17

CHANA 8th Annual Fundraising & Outreach Event see page 20

21 Cheshvon 10

Wednesday

COMMUNITY CALENDAR 5

Cheshvon 8

Sukkos Contest NEW! Deadline

Cheshvon 22

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11 Masnism New Program Starting Maseches Pe'ah see page 35

Cheshvon 7

Chesed Fund Clever Elly Device Community Distribution Drive

26 Cheshvon 15

Bonei Olam Fundraising Campaign

25 Cheshvon 14

Cheshvon 21

Oraysa Starts Maseches Pe'ah see page 71

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Next BJH Issue

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Baltimore Weekday Minyanim Guide

Shacharis

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah: EVERY 15 MINUTES

M, TH

For edits, additions, or sponsorships, email ads@baltimorejewishhome.com

M-F M, TH M-F M-F M, TH

7:30 AM Agudah of Greenspring S Agudath Israel of Baltimore S, T, W, F Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi] S Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim S-F Bais Hamedrash and Mesivta of Baltimore S-F Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh S Beit Yaakov [Sefaradi] S Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation S Chabad of Park Heights S Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh S-F Darchei Tzedek S Kedushas Yisrael S-F Khal Bais Nosson S Ner Israel Rabbinical College (Mechina) S-F Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] S, T, W, F Shomrei Emunah Congregation T, W, F 7:45 AM Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation Talmudical Academy Darchei Tzedek Mesivta Kesser Torah Mesivta Shaarei Chaim Yeshivas Torah Simcha (school days only) 7:50 AM Derech Chaim Ner Tamid Ohel Moshe 8:00 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore Bais Dovid-Bais Medrash of Summit Park Beth Abraham Chabad Israeli Center Darchei Tzedek Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek Kehillas Meor HaTorah Ohr Yisroel Pikesville Jewish Congregation Shearith Israel Congregation Shomrei Emunah Congregation The Shul at the Lubavitch Center Tiferes Yisroel Tzeirei Anash Yeshiva Tiferes Hatorah

M-F S-F M-F S-F S-F S-F S S M-F S-F S S M-F S S S S S S S-F S S S S-F

8:15 AM Kehilath B'nai Torah S Kol Torah S 8:20 AM Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim S-F Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim S-F 8:30 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore S-F Chabad Israeli Center S Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's) S-F Ohel Moshe S Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] S Shomrei Emunah Congregation S-F Shomrei Mishmeres Hakodesh S 9:00 AM Aish Kodesh S Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim S Beth Tfiloh Congregation S Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation S Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah S Shomrei Emunah Congregation S-F Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim S-F

Mincha

Mincha Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah Gedolah

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/Tzemach Tzedek 1:45 PM Ohel Moshe M-Th Yeshivas Torah Simcha (school days only) 1 South Street, 27th Floor. 1:50 PM Wealcatch Insurance - 37 Walker Ave 2nd floor 2:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-F) Big Al @ The Knish Shop Party Room

Mincha/Maariv Plag

Ohel Yaakov Shomrei Emunah Congregation Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim

Mincha/Maariv Before Shkiah Aish Kodesh Agudath Israel of Baltimore Agudah of Greenspring Bais Dovid-Bais Medrash of Summit Park Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim Beth Abraham Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation Darchei Tzedek Derech Chaim Kehillas Meor HaTorah Kehilath B’nai Torah Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek Machzikei Torah (Sternhill’s), 5:00pm Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah Ner Tamid Ohel Moshe Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] Ohr Yisroel Pikesville Jewish Congregation Shearith Israel Congregation Shomrei Emunah Congregation Shomrei Mishmeres Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei Israel The Shul at the Lubavitch Center Tiferes Yisroel

Maariv Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah: EVERY 15 MINUTES 8:00 PM, 8:15 PM, 8:30 PM, 8:45 PM, 9:00 PM, 9:15 PM, 9:30 PM, 9:45 PM, 10:00 PM, 10:15 PM, 10:30 PM, 10:45 PM, 11:00 PM, 11:15 PM, 11:30 PM 8:00 PM 8:10 PM 8:15 PM 8:30 PM 8:45 PM

Agudath Israel of Baltimore Kol Torah

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/Tzemach Tzedek Agudath Israel of Baltimore Darchei Tzedek Ner Israel Rabbinical College (Mechina) Ohr Yisroel

8:50 PM Mesivta Shaarei Chaim (Etz Chaim Building) 8:55 PM Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh 9:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore Arugas Habosem Shomrei Emunah Congregation Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim

9:15 PM Kehilas Bnei Yeshiva 9:20 PM Kol Torah 9:30 PM Agudah of Greenspring Agudath Israel of Baltimore Kedushas Yisrael

9:40 PM Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi] 9:45 PM Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim Kollel Erev Birchas Yitzchok (Luries) Kollel of Greenspring Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's) Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] Yeshiva Tiferes Hatorah

9:50 PM Aish Kodesh Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh Ohel Moshe

10:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore Darchei Tzedek Kehilath B'nai Torah Kehillas Shaarei Avodah Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek Ohr Yisrael Shearith Israel Congregation Shomrei Emunah Congregation

10:05 PM Kol Torah 10:10 PM Ner Israel Rabbinical College 10:15 PM Derech Chaim Khal Bais Nosson

10:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore 11:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore Agudah of Greenspring - 6107 Greenspring Ave Agudath Israel of Baltimore - 6200 Park Heights Ave Ahavat Shalom - 3009 Northbrook Rd Aish Kodesh - 6207 Ivymount Rd Arugas HaBosem - 3509 Clarks Ln Bais Dovid-Bais Medrash of Summit Park- 6800 Sylvale Ct Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim - 3120 Clarks Ln Bais Hamedrash and Mesivta of Baltimore - 6823 Old Pimlico Rd Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh - 6618 Deancroft Rd Beit Yaakov - 3615 Seven Mile Ln Beth Abraham - 6208 Wallis Ave Beth Tfiloh Congregation - 3300 Old Court Rd Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation - 6602 Park Heights Ave Chabad Israeli Center - 7807 Seven Mile Ln Chabad of Park Heights - 3402 Clarks Ln Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh - 3800 Labyrinth Rd Darchei Tzedek - 3201 Seven Mile Ln Derech Chaim - 6603 Pimlico Road Greenspring Sephardic Synagogue 6611 Greenspring Ave. Kedushas Yisrael - 6004 Park Heights Ave Kehilath B’nai Torah - 6301 Green Meadow Pkwy Kehilas Bnei Yeshiva - 6700 Cross Country Blvd Kehillas Meor HaTorah - 6539 Pebble Brooke Rd Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek - 6811 Park Heights Ave Khal Bais Nosson - 2901 Taney Rd Kol Torah - 2929 Fallstaff Rd Kollel of Greenspring - 6504 Greenspring Ave. Machzikei Torah - 6216 Biltmore Ave Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah - 6500 Baythorne Rd Mesivta Kesser Torah - 8400 Park Heights Ave Mesivta Shaarei Chaim - 5415 Greenspring Ave Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah - 7000 Rockland Hills Dr Neuberger, Quinn, Gielen, Rubin & Gibber One South Street, 27th Floor Ner Israel Rabbinical College - 400 Mt Wilson Ln Ner Tamid - 6214 Pimlico Road Ohel Moshe - 2808 Smith Ave Ohel Yakov - 3200 Glen Ave Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] - 6813 Park Heights Ave Ohr Yisroel - 2429 Lightfoot Dr Pikesville Jewish Congregation - 7644 Carla Rd Shearith Israel Congregation - 5835 Park Heights Ave Shomrei Emunah Congregation - 6221 Greenspring Ave Shomrei Mishmeres Hakodesh - 2821 W Strathmore Ave Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim - 7504 Seven Mile Ln Talmudical Academy - 4445 Old Court Rd The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei Israel - 5915 Park Heights Ave The Shul at the Lubavitch Center - 6701 Old Pimlico Rd Tiferes Yisroel - 6201 Park Heights Ave Tzeirei Anash - 6706 Cross County Blvd Wealcatch Insurance - 37 Walker Ave 2nd floor Yeshiva Tiferes Hatorah - 6819 Williamson Ave

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7:05 AM Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's)

Tzeirei Anash 7:20 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore Beth Tfiloh Congregation Kol Torah Shomrei Emunah Congregation

Kol Torah Market Maven Reischer Minyan - 23 Walker Ave 2nd Floor 10055 Red Run Blvd Suite 295 2:15 PM Pikesville Beis Medrash - 15 Walker Ave 2:30 PM Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh Tov Pizza Mincha Minyan Ner Israel Rabbinical College Mesivta Shaarei Chaim (Community Kollel) Shearith Israel Congregation 2:45 PM Kollel of Greenspring Shearith Israel Congregation (S-Th) 3:00 PM Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah 3:05 PM Kedushas Yisrael 3:15 PM Hat Box 3:30 PM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah 4:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-Th) Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah 4:30 PM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah 5:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-F) Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah 5:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-Th) Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah 6:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-F) Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah Shearith Israel Congregation (S-Th) 6:30 PM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah 10 Min Before ShkiAh Chabad Israeli Center 14 Min Before ShkiAh Kol Torah

Maariv continued

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Beit Yaakov [Sefaradi] M-F Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F Ohel Yakov S-F Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] S-F 6:00 AM Shomrei Emunah Congregation M-F 6:10 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore M, Th 6:15 AM Kol Torah M, TH Shearith Israel Congregation M, TH M, TH 6:20 AM Agudah of Greenspring Agudath Israel of Baltimore S, T, W, F Arugas HaBosem (Rabbi Taub's) S-F Bais Dovid-Bais Medrash of Summit Park M-F Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation M-F Kehilath B'nai Torah M, TH Pikesville Jewish Congregation M, TH Shomrei Emunah Congregation S, M, TH 6:30 AM Agudah of Greenspring T, W, F Chabad of Park Heights M-F Darchei Tzedek M-F Kehilath B'nai Torah T, W, F Khal Bais Nosson M-F Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek M-F Kol Torah T, W, F Ohr Yisroel M-F Pikesville Jewish Congregation T, W, F Shearith Israel Congregation T, W, F Shomrei Emunah Congregation T, W, F 6:35 AM Aish Kodesh (downstairs Minyan) M, TH Ohel Moshe M, TH 6:40 AM Aish Kodesh (downstairs Minyan) T, W, F Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation M, TH Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] M-F 6:45 AM The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei Israel M, Th B”H and Mesivta of Baltimore (Dirshu Minyan) S-F Beth Abraham M, TH Greenspring Sephardic Synagogue M-F Kehilas Bnei Yeshiva M-F Ner Tamid M-F Ohel Moshe T, W, F Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim M-F 6:50 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore M, TH Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi] M, TH Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh M, TH Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation T, W, F Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh M, TH Derech Chaim M-F Kol Torah M-F Ohel Moshe S Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] M, TH Shomrei Emunah Congregation M, TH The Shul at the Lubavitch Center M, TH 6:55 AM Beth Abraham T, W, F Kol Torah M, TH The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei Israel T, W, F 7:00 AM Aish Kodesh (upstairs Minyan) M-F Agudath Israel of Baltimore S, T, W, F Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi] T, W, F Arugas HaBosem (Rabbi Taub's) S Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh T, W, F Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh T, W, F Greenspring Sephardic Synagogue S Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek S Kol Torah T, W, F Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah M-F Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] S, T, W, F Shearith Israel Congregation S, M, TH Shomrei Emunah Congregation T, W, F Shomrei Mishmeres Hakodesh M-F The Shul at the Lubavitch Center T, W, F Tiferes Yisroel M-F Neitz

Mincha

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M-F: 6:15 AM, S-F: 6:30 AM, 6:45 AM, 7:00 AM, 7:15 AM, 7:30 AM, 7:45 AM, 8:00 AM, 8:15 AM, 8:30 AM, 8:45 AM, 9:00AM, 9:15AM, 9:30AM, 9:45AM, 10:00AM

7:15 AM Kedushas Yisrael S Kol Torah S Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's) S, T, W, F Ner Israel Rabbinical College S-F Shearith Israel Congregation T, W, F Shomrei Emunah Congregation S Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim S The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei Israel S

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Torah Thought

Standing Tall By Rabbi Zvi Teichman

nce again, we begin anew the cycle of Torah starting from ‫ — בראשית‬the ‘beginning’, all over again. Everything was looking great until that fatal error of Adam and Chava having partaken from the Tree of Knowledge, and then all headed downhill from there. We are still trying to recover our former status till this very day. We just concluded the Tishrei season where we reiterated our acknowledgment of our gratitude, debt and duty to the Creator, admitting our shortcomings, and initiating a process of repentance in the hope we can move closer to the goal posts.

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Our sages have revealed that the taking of the Four Species over the holiday of Sukkos is a direct attempt to rectify that very first sin and bring the world to the realm of Moshiach. It has been noted that the exact words from the verse used by the Torah to describe the four species we take: ‘Pri Eitz Hadar, Kapos Temarim, V’Anaf Eitz Avos, V’Arvei Nachal’ is numerically equivalent to the sentiment: ‫ארבעת המינים לולב ואתרוג הדס וערבה תקון‬ ‫ – לחטא אדם הראשון‬the four species, Lulav and Esrog, Hadassim and Aravos is the rectification of the sin of Adam HaRishon.(3,075) The great and renowned sage, eighteenth century rabbinic figure, Rav Yaakov Emden reveals in his epic Siddur, that the Esrog is associated with the Tree of Knowledge and the Lulav aligned with the Tree of Life. These parallels relate to profound mystical concepts beyond simple comprehension, but perhaps the following anecdotes can shed light on these comparisons. The renowned eighteenth-century Chassidic leader, Rav Mordechai of Ne-

shchiz, lived a life of poverty. Nevertheless, he managed to collect small coins over the year to enable himself to buy a beautiful Esrog. Legend has it that after accumulating a significant sum, on the way to the Esrog merchant to purchase his longed for Estrog, he came across a fellow Jew whose horse had collapsed dead while hitched to his wagon, his sole means of support for his family. Reb Mordechai immediately assessed the situation, handing over to the poor fellow the funds he desperately needed to provide for his family. The Rav exclaimed with satisfaction, “this year while everyone else will be bentshing the Esrog, Mordechai will be making his blessing over a ‘ferd’ — a horse!” Rav Shaul Alter, the brilliant and beloved Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Sfas Emes, asserts that Rav Mordechai’s humorous comment regarding his ‘blessing over a horse’ has a deeper significance. When the Prophet Yirmiyah wondered how it was that Nebuchadnetzar was rewarded for taking four steps in honor of G-d, G-d responded, “ if you are amazed about the reward given to Nebuchadnetzar for four steps he took for My honor, how much more will you be amazed at the reward given to Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, who ran in front of Me (did My will) like horses!” (‫)סנהדרין צו‬ Strange that the Patriarchs would be likened to horses! The Rosh HaYeshiva explains with an anecdote. His grandfather, the Imrei Emes, possessed a pair of Tefillin that belonged to the great Tzaddik, Rav Moshe of Pshvorsk, and had hoped to bequeath it to his son, the Pnei Menachem upon his Bar Mitzvah. But he gifted it to a poor Yid who needed a pair of Tefillin instead. He calculated that although he had intended for his son to benefit

from wearing such a holy and inspiring pair which could certainly have long reaching effects upon him and his generations, but that would be for his own ‘needs’ — spiritual ones notwithstanding — but not solely to fulfill the pure will of G-d to do a charitable act in helping the poor man. He realized we don’t educate our children for ‘our’ sake but rather to perform that which is demanded of us at that moment.

This is predicated, he says, on another law that calls for these items that grow from the ground to be held in a position ‫ — דרך גדילתן‬in the direction they grow [naturally] — upward.

A horse has no ‘will’ of its own, it merely responds to the prod of the rider. That is the attribute of our illustrious Patriarchs, as they too are merely the chariot for the Divine Presence to ride upon.

May I humbly add that the straight Lulav rising unimpeded and upward reflects on the words of Koheles who reminds us how although G-d made us ‫ — ישר‬straight [simple and uncomplicated], but they have engaged in ‫ — חשבונות רבים‬too much reasoning. (‫)קהלת ז כט‬

No doubt Reb Mordechai’s waving of his longed for Esrog would have reverberated immeasurably upon the heavens, but it would have paled in significance to the pure and selfless act of charity he merited to perform. The word we call this fruit — Esrog – ‫אתרוג‬, is rooted in the Aramaic word, ‫ – רגג‬desire. The description of the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge as ‫ – נחמד למראה‬desirable for the eyes, alludes to being naturally drawn towards this fruit. One opinion posits it was indeed an Esrog that they ate from. Evidently not everything we are attracted to is an indication of its propriety. In life we face numerous situations where we rationalize our behavior based on personal ‘desires’ and ‘interests’ convincing ourselves it is in fulfillment of the will of G-d. Defining the fine line between the two is then the challenge of the ‘Esrog’. No wonder it is the symbol for the temptation of the Tree of Knowledge and the challenge in distilling our interests from those purely for the sake of G-d. The straight and narrow Lulav, in contrast, represents the Tree of Life. The numerical value of Lulav – ‫ לולב‬is equivalent to ‫ – חיים‬Life! The Rosh HaYeshiva directs us to the passage in the Talmud that states that we make the blessing over the shaking and waving of the Lulav and the other three species, specifically ‫ — על נטילת לולב‬on the taking of the Lulav, since it is the tallest of them all. Although we generally extol the value of humility, here we emphasize ‘standing tall’.

This emphasizes our yearning to achieve closeness. It is the compulsion to ‘reach for the heavens’ that infuses us with devotion and total submission to the will of G-d.

The Tree of Life that we must grab on to is the unrelenting commitment to the will of G-d without rationalizations or excuses. In the prayer Asher Heini we recite after reading Megillas Esther, we mention how a ‫ — נץ פרח מלולב‬a blossom bloomed from a Lulav branch, a reference to Mordechai whose unwavering commitment to never compromise — ‫ — לא יכרע ולא ישתחוה‬would not bow or prostrate himself [before Haman], straight and proud defying the forces of Amalek who seek to sow self-doubt in all that we do. He defeats Haman who as well, the Talmud teaches, is alluded to in the Tree of Knowledge, ‫המן העץ‬... — Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to? For is it not our own ‘reasonings’ that mimic the arrogance of Haman in attempting to operate out of the realm of providence? Rabbeinu Bachya in fact records a Midrash that corresponds the merit of our standing tall like the ‫— ארוך‬ ‘length’ of the Lulav we defeated Haman and having him hanged on a ‫ארוך‬ — ‘lengthy’ pole. (‫( )כד הקמח לולב‬Kudos to R’ Issac Maron for this find) When we rise high in our quest for closeness, we defeat those who rise with arrogant defiance against the will of G-d. May we ‘stand tall’ as we forge forward in ‘uplifting our hearts in the ways of the Lord’, without compromise, without excuses, in bringing back the closeness we so pine for!

You may reach the author at: Ravzt@ohelmoshebaltimore.com

Hashem creates the world in 6 days, and rests on the 7th day, Shabbos. Man is enticed by the snake, sins and is ousted from Gan Eden. Kayin kills Hevel. Adam offers a sacrifice. Mankind degenerates and becomes morally corrupt. 10 generations between Adam and Noach. Despite being surrounded by negativity, Noach finds favor in the eyes of Hashem.

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Where is G‑d? Wherever He is allowed in.

-Rebbe of Kotzk

GEMATRIA

The gematria of ‫( אור‬Ohr) – light – is 207, the same as the phrase in Rashi: ‫יודע היה היכן הוא‬. When we are aware that G-d knows where we are, that gives us a tremendous light to see ourselves and truly know where we takka are!

Inspiration. Everywhere.

Parshas Bereishis

QUICK VORT We often ask people, “What are you up to?” Or “What do you do?” Or “How are you?” Hashem, however, asks of man a fundamentally different question: ‫איכה‬ (Ayeka) – “Where are you?” It’s easy to answer the question of what you are up to. To explain to someone, though, where YOU are, that’s a much greater challenge. Quite often, if we are being honest with ourselves (which btw, it’s good to be honest!), we simply don’t know where we are. We might be doing x,y, and z. We might be accomplishing and doing. We might be crossing our T’s and dotting our I’s. But still, we may feel lost, confused, uncertain.

Did You Know?! EVERYTHING in the world was created on the first day of creation, but only set into motion on its particular day.

Can you imagine this?! The King of all Kings, the Master of the entire Universe, knows where YOU are. Yes, you might feel lost. You might feel worthless at times. You might be ready to give up hope because what’s the point anyways.

With this powerful knowledge in mind, now you can go ahead and answer the question Hashem is asking: Where am I? I’m right here, Hashem, with You. I’m fully present. Fully in. I’m all Yours.

CHEVRA, I INVITE YOU TO JOIN MY PELE YOEITZ DAILY CHABURA (AS PART OF THE HACHZEK MUSSAR PROGRAM). A NEW SHIUR IS POSTED SUN-FRI. SCAN THE QR CODE TO JOIN OUR WHATSAPP GROUP FOR THE DAILY SHIUR!

Points to Ponder Baal HaTurim points out that the end letters of “Bereishis Bara Elokim” spells EMES – ‫אמת‬. Why is the idea of Emes (truth) alluded to in the very beginning of the Torah? What message is Hashem trying to convey?

Scan the QR code to view Torah classes from R’ Ori Strum on Torah Anytime!

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His shiurim and other Jewish content can be found on Torah Anytime and Meaningful Minute. He may be reached at rabbistrumo@gmail.com

Nesivos Shalom highlights that the Torah begins with Bereishis rather than the first mitzvah of Hachodesh HaZeh Lachem, to teach us the importance of working on our Middos, as middos are a hachana (preparation) for the Mitzvos.

When I read the words of Rashi in this Parsha, it gave me tremendous chizzuk. Rashi, on Ayeka, says: ‫יודע היה היכן הוא‬, Hashem knew where he [Adam] was.

But if you’ll just remember this, your life will change: ‫יודע היה היכן הוא‬. Hashem knows right where you are. He’s got His eyes on you. Wow! How amazing!!

Rabbi Ori Strum is the author of “Ready. Set. Grow.” “Dove Tales,” “Karpas: The Big Dipper,” and “Veyidgu: The Upstream Jew.”

Thoughts in Chassidus

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

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Torah parks S

Pesukim - 146 Words - 1931 Letters - 7234 Mitzvos - 1

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nspiration Nation

Choosing to Forgive and to Live Lessons Learned from Yotam Haim, Hy”d BY BrendY J. Siev

efore October 7, Iris Haim’s life ran on a rhythm she barely had to think about. She was a hospice nurse in the Gaza envelope, managing her own palliative care business, teaching, dancing, walking, busy with her own private things. “Normal life,” she recalls. “Just normal life.” She had three children. Tuval, the oldest, is 33. Noya is 23. And Yotam, the middle child, lived in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. On October 7, 2023, Yotam was taken hostage into Gaza during the Hamas invasion of Israel. He would have turned 31 this year, had he not been killed months later during the war, in the chaos of his own escape from Hamas captivity. A rabbi, trying gently to speak of him in the past tense, once said to Iris that she “had a son.” She corrected him on the spot. “No,” she told him. “I have a son. He’s still with us.” * * * At 6:29 on the morning of October 7, Iris woke to a missile attack, the kind

she assumed at first was just another round of rockets. Yotam lived close by, in Kfar Aza, and soon WhatsApped his parents that there were terrorists on the kibbutz, though from a distance no one understood yet how bad it was. Yotam was calm until 10:00 a.m. Then his house came under fire. “Yotam said that they are shooting on his door,” Iris recalls. What he typed next, from inside his safe room, would be the last thing she ever heard from him: “They are here, Ima. I don’t think I will survive that. It’s a matter of minutes. I love you.” Then he went silent. Iris does not describe what followed as panic exactly, though it was close. “I’m never in shock,” she says. “I always function.” But that morning she froze. Her husband pushed her back into motion. “Contact somebody,” he told her. “Contact the police. Contact the army.” So she did what she could. She called hospitals. She searched Facebook for anyone who might know some-

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i believed in his abilities, his resilience. That’s what i just told myself. i could see Yotam as a hero, as a big part of the big story of Am Yisrael. now everything is lost, everything is ruined. And it was amazing, this thing that we did.

thing. She and Tuval posted, “My son disappeared. Please help us.” For three weeks, nothing came back but silence. Then the army confirmed their biggest fear: Yotam was a hostage. * * * For the next weeks and months, Iris drew upon a discipline she had spent years building without knowing she would ever need it. As a hospice nurse she had trained in theta healing, in meditation, in spiritual guidance. Now she turned those same tools on herself. She was firm in her belief that Yotam was alive, a certainty she could feel within her. “I listened to an inner voice, my inner voice that was very strong,” she says, “and I didn’t want to hear any other voices.” She calls herself stubborn about it, almost fanatic. “I didn’t let nobody ruin my story,” she says of her refusal to give up hope. Yotam had struggled for years with anorexia and with emotional pain, but she chose to trust what she had always believed about his resilience. “I believed in his abilities, his resilience,” she says simply. When there was no information, she made her own. “For myself, I made the information.” She insisted, against every fear that would have been reasonable to feel, that Yotam had access to the medication he needed. “I just said opposite,” she explains. “I said, he will have the medicines.” That refusal to entertain the worst case rippled outward. Her own family, grieving already, had begun looking for a grave. But over time, her confidence and hope became theirs. After fifty-five days, a hostage released from Thailand who had been held

alongside Yotam brought back word, they learned. Everything matched what Iris had insisted on all along. “I jumped today like to the ceiling,” she remembers, “and said, ‘I knew!’” Yotam was optimistic. He was drumming on whatever they could give him, staying upbeat, staying himself. Food was scarce but present. He was not, she was told, treated as cruelly as she had feared from the news. * * * The day it ended began, for Iris, with the same certainty she had carried for months. It was the end of Chanukah. A major hostage deal had just brought 110 people home, and though Yotam wasn’t part of it, she was sure his turn was close. She was preparing for a television appearance, already in her makeup, when the phone rang. An officer was on the phone, and her voice sounded different. “You need to go back home,” was all she said. Iris didn’t ask why. She called Tuval. Shortly after they came home, a delegation of women arrived at her door. One of them, an officer, told her that Yotam had been killed, not by Hamas, but by the IDF, misidentified as a terrorist while he was escaping captivity. Her first words, before anything else could form, were not what anyone expected. “I am not angry,” she insisted, “because it’s our soldiers, the Israeli army.” That composure did not mean the grief was any smaller. “I was not just in shock,” she says, “but I was devastated.” She counts it as only the second time in her life she has felt real despair, the first being when Yotam nearly did not survive his anorexia at eighteen. This time, she says, “I couldn’t. It’s the end.” She asked herself, over and over, how she could keep living. She had no answer.

brother was furious; somewhere else, Yotam was happy. One night, he dreamed they were driving to a concert. The next day, a musician named Guy Davidov, a stranger to him then, asked to use footage of Yotam in a remix, with space left for a drummer’s part, not knowing both brothers played. “It’s like completing my dream from the same night,” Tuval says. He didn’t just give permission. He played the part himself, for the first time since his brother’s death. From there, something opened in him that had never been there before. He began writing songs, something he had never done as a session drummer for other artists. He recorded “Kanfei Ruach,” built on words by Rav Kook, a choice that would have made him laugh before October 7. “The things about the stigmas, religious, non-religious,” he says, “completely fell away.” The song, and the video that followed it, shot at all of Yotam’s favorite places, was meant to carry a different message than the one people kept offering him. “When I told people that I’m the brother of Yotam,” he says, “the reaction was like, oy vey, a voy.” He wants people, hearing his brother’s name, to think about who Yotam was, not only how he died. Looking back at shiva, Tuval recalls sitting alone in his room. There, he felt something he still struggles to explain: his brother’s voice, his hand. “I want the final lesson,” the voice told him. It confused him at first; he had taught Yotam drums, not the other way around. Days later, it came to him: Yotam wasn’t asking to be taught. He wanted Tuval to teach others, through him. That conviction carries the music and the organization forward, built around the same idea Iris holds for Yotam’s memory: that his story might become something someone else can lean on. “You really are capable of doing much more than you think,” Tuval says now. “I took the courage from Yotam.”

This article is based on a podcast, “Inspiration For the Nation,” hosted by Yaakov Langer. To catch more of this conversation, you can watch it on LivingLchaim. com or YouTube.com/LivingLchaim or listen wherever you listen to podcasts (just search for “Inspiration For The Nation”) or call our free hotline: 605-477-2100

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months older than his brother, and for most of their childhood, they were nearly inseparable, sharing a room, friends, sports, music. When Tuval discovered heavy metal, Yotam followed him into it. But when Yotam’s anorexia surfaced in high school, Tuval was in the army and caught up in his own struggles, and the distance between them grew. “I was not understanding,” he admits, “and also judging.” It took an actual physical fight between them, and the honest conversation that followed it, for the brothers to become close again in a deeper way. “We have a connection,” Tuval says, “a way of communication that I don’t have with anyone else.” On October 7, Tuval lost four friends and did not know for a full day whether his brother was among the dead. “I crashed,” he says. “I thought he’s dead.” His mother’s optimism, at the time, only made him angrier. “How can you be like that?” he asked her. What steadied him, eventually, was music. A therapist asked what he loved, and he said drums, and told him to do something with that. He reached out to every musician he knew, famous names he had toured with, including Netta Barzilai. They all came the following Saturday. “Now everything is lost, everything is ruined,” Tuval says of that moment. “And it was amazing, this thing that we did.” It helped his parents too, giving them a place to cry. “I felt this is like a prayer,” he says. “You need something to hold on to.” But Yotam was killed, and that fragile hope collapsed. “My hope was crushed,” Tuval says. “I stopped playing music.” He didn’t leave the house for two months, furious at the soldiers, the army, the government, everyone. “Yotam always said that the world is bad,” he says, “and I felt that he was right.” At night, Yotam kept appearing in his dreams, playing drums beside him. Tuval noticed a pattern: when he dreamed of Yotam trapped here, his

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

before the shiva was over. Since then, soldiers have sought her out at lectures across Israel and abroad, less to apologize, she says, than to unburden themselves. “They were angrier at themselves,” she says, “at their friends, at their officers, than at me.” One soldier, in particular, connected with her, a young man in the tank who had been ordered to fire on the building where Yotam was hiding, not knowing who was inside. For two months after Yotam’s death, he could not eat or sleep. He finally asked to meet her, and they sat together at a restaurant in Tel Aviv, where he cried for an hour before Iris gently redirected him. “We are doing things for Yotam,” she told him. “What are you doing in life?” He was a chef. She told him Yotam used to cook gnocchi for her. He created a dish in Yotam’s memory and went back to his life. Iris wants people to remember her son the way he tried, all his life, to be. He struggled for years, but in captivity he was strong, drumming on whatever they gave him, keeping others’ spirits up. “That people will remember him as a helper,” she says, “I think this was what Yotam wanted.” She and Tuval are building an organization in his name meant to reach people carrying the same pain Yotam once carried, through the four things he loved most: music, animals, sport, and family support. Iris was raised in a secular home, then moved as a young woman to a left-wing, secular kibbutz. “I was afraid from religious,” she admits. Since October 7, something in her has shifted. “I’m feeling much more connected to my Judaism,” she says, though she is not formally observant. “Something that it’s higher than me,” is how she describes what she has come to believe in. “A hundred- and eighty-degree change in me.” * * * Tuval Haim is two years and four

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A friend who had lost her own brother young told her only, “You will find the way. You will have ups and downs.” Iris didn’t believe her. For the first two days, she was, in her own words, broken, asking over and over why this had happened to a family that had stayed so positive, and insisting, “I can’t believe it.” Then she looked at herself and asked, “Where is Iris? Where is the Iris that you know?” The person she meant, always positive, always helping other people, was nowhere to be found. What brought her back was a session with her therapist, a psychodrama practitioner. In the therapist’s room, she set a single chair apart from the others and named it “the liberation day.” She asked Iris to sit in that chair and speak as if she were Yotam himself. Iris did. Speaking as her son, she described a war zone, the danger, not knowing whether he would make it out alive. “I didn’t let them murder me,” she said, becoming Yotam. “I died as a free person.” Sitting in that chair, something in her shifted. She and her husband had spent years, long before October 7, wondering aloud who in their family might have resisted the Nazis. Now she had an answer, found inside her own home: Yotam the partisan. “I could see Yotam as a hero,” she says, “as a big part of the big story of Am Yisrael.” * * * A few days into the shiva, Iris learned the soldiers involved were themselves shattered. One woman connected to the unit told her the men could no longer fight. “We came to save hostages,” they had said, “and we ended up killing them.” Iris asked to speak to them directly, and sent them a message telling the soldiers, in her own words, that her family held no anger toward them. It changed the entire atmosphere; four of them came to sit with her family

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OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Political Crossfire

Inside a Billionaire’s Paradise With Crypto’s Most Powerful Ex-Convict By David Yaffe-Bellany

BU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — One morning in June, cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao pulled up to the St. Regis resort in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in a white Nissan SUV. Zhao is the richest man in crypto, worth an estimated $114 billion, and he lives in a villa nearby, with nine bedrooms, four bodyguards, a chef and a yacht named Da Moon. But he also likes to play the part of a “normal dude,” as he often describes himself, and that day he had offered to give me a personal tour of the city. Outside the St. Regis, Zhao sat at the wheel of the Nissan, with his iPhone mounted on the windshield, like the world’s wealthiest Uber driver. “My Lamborghini,” he joked as I climbed in. Zhao, to be clear, isn’t a normal dude. Not long ago, U.S. authorities brought a criminal case against him for his management of Binance, a crypto exchange depicted in court papers as a haven for Russian money launderers, Iranian sanctions evaders, and Islamic State terrorists. Zhao pleaded guilty and escaped with his fortune intact. After serving a four-month prison sentence, he returned to Abu Dhabi, still Binance’s majority shareholder and still the most powerful figure in the industry. These days, Zhao, who is 49, moves through the world like a head of state, flying around Asia on his private jet to advise governments on crypto regulation; a stop in Islamabad or Manila, Philippines, is often followed by the announcement of a new regulatory breakthrough for Binance. At home, one of his two dogs is a Taigan, an elegant Central Asian breed, likened to the gazelle. It was a gift from the crypto-curious president of Kyrgyzstan, with whom he went skiing in February. “He actually wanted to give me a tent, like a full-sized

tent,” Zhao said. “I said no to the tent, and then he insisted on the dog.” Zhao’s most influential allies are a pair of powerful ruling families. One is the clan that runs the UAE, which wants his help creating a technology powerhouse in the desert. The other is the Trumps. Last year, Binance forged a business relationship with World Liberty Financial, the crypto startup founded by President Donald Trump and his three sons. World Liberty generated $799 million for Trump last year — his single most lucrative asset, more remunerative than his real estate portfolio or his social media business. Trump pardoned Zhao last October, a move widely criticized as a quid pro quo. Known in the industry as “CZ,” Zhao often avoids reporters, but he met with me several times this year, eager to put a friendlier gloss on his career at Binance, which still hasn’t stanched the flow of dirty money. He is tall and thin, with short dark hair and a Binance tattoo on his forearm, and lacks the frat-bro swagger of many of his crypto peers. He comes across as polite and attentive, though his interests are almost comically narrow. This year, he self-published a memoir, “Freedom of Money,” in which he describes receiving an after-hours tour of the Louvre. The experience left him cold. The guide might as well have been “playing piano to a cow,” he wrote. For years, his true calling has been what academics term “jurisdictional arbitrage” — moving from country to country in search of a legal framework pliable enough to accommodate his appetite for risk and growth. In Abu Dhabi, he may have found an ideal base of operations. As we drove into the city, Zhao chatted amiably, pausing to ask his bodyguard for help

with directions. (“Yes, boss, stay right.”) We passed a string of impressive compounds and drove toward the presidential palace, Qasr Al Watan, whose striking white dome resembles the Taj Mahal. Zhao was growing animated. “Democracy has been hailed as, like, the holy grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient,” he said as we approached the palace. “If you get a benevolent dictator, it’s actually extremely efficient. There’s very little debate going on. You don’t waste time on a lot of frivolous stuff.” Lately, this top-down model of business and politics, simultaneously medieval and ultramodern, has gained traction in the United States. On a trip to Abu Dhabi last year, Trump called the nation’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, “a very strong man” and “a man of vision like few others.” Zach Witkoff, the son of one of Trump’s top advisers and himself a kind of MAGA princeling, put it more bluntly at a crypto conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in May 2025. “We really need to take a page out of His Highness’ and the Emirates’ book,” Witkoff said. “They are just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also maintaining your family values.” Zhao is already living in the future these men crave, nestled in an elite enclave where monarchs and billionaires operate in harmony. As he drove away from Qasr Al Watan, he told me about a private conference he had attended nearby, at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental hotel, a gathering of executives such as hedge fund founder Ray Dalio and Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son. While he sat in the audience, Zhao noticed someone stooping down to speak with him. It was Sheikh

Mohammed. He wanted to know how Zhao was getting along and whether he could do anything to help. “This is the king,” Zhao told me, “kneeling down beside you.”

ne day early this year, Zhao was working from bed — he often does business lying on his back after a long struggle with chronic pain — when the windows began to shake. He got up, he told me, and walked onto his balcony, where he saw a trail of smoke in the sky. Zhao lives on Saadiyat Island, an enclave of Abu Dhabi across the Persian Gulf from Iran, which had just fired a missile at the UAE. It was the start of a geopolitical crisis that has destabilized the region, but Zhao was not overly concerned. He went back to bed and kept working. “More people die from traffic accidents than from the missiles,” he said later. “Very protected here.” Until he settled in the UAE, Zhao was a man without a country. He was born in China, then moved to Canada with his family at the age of 12. After attending McGill University, he worked a series of technology jobs, bouncing among New York, China and Japan. In July 2013, over a poker game in Shanghai, a colleague suggested he check out “this new thing called bitcoin.” It was the perfect borderless technology for his borderless lifestyle. After a few months of study, Zhao made a radical bet. He sold the family home — a three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai where he and his wife were raising two children — and plowed the $900,000 in proceeds into bitcoin. It was a risky move, but Zhao wasn’t worried. Even if bitcoin plunged, he figured, he could easily land another high-paying job in traditional finance. Zhao went on to work at a succession

43 giveness than permission.” Privately, Zhao had discussed ways to obfuscate that Binance served American users even though it wasn’t licensed in the United States, according to legal filings. “Don’t leave anything in writing,” he told a subordinate. In Abu Dhabi, Zhao described himself as a “rule follower.” It seems obvious, however, that he made a strategic choice to push the legal limits at a crucial time, when the habits of a new generation of investors were forming and the rules themselves were rather elastic. I was reminded of this when he showed me into the entrance of his house, which

had signed a memorandum of understanding with local authorities to develop rules for crypto operations; the company dispatched three staff members to help put together a framework. A draft was completed in January 2022 and signed into law a few weeks later. “When you’re the captain of a ship that’s sailing true north, the UAE wants you on their team,” Abed said. “They did that with CZ. They rallied around him from Day 1.” Not everyone in the UAE is treated so generously. Over the years, the nation’s leaders have conducted mass surveillance, outlawed even the mildest forms of dis-

was stocked with boxes of Binance swag. He urged me to pick out a gift, perhaps a Binance backpack or a yellow-and-black Binance sweater, styled to look like a varsity jacket. I told him that reporters have protocols about these sorts of things and that I had to decline any gift over $20. He laughed and said the price was “probably 19 bucks.”

illionaires gravitate to the UAE for billionaire reasons. The country doesn’t levy an income tax, and it’s considered extremely safe, at a time when crypto investors have been targeted by kidnappers in Europe and the United States. But for Zhao, who had just seen his nemesis dragged across borders, the UAE held another important advantage: It had no extradition treaty with the United States.

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hao paid a visit to the UAE in 2021, after years of roaming around Asia. In 2017, he and his Binance colleagues had been forced to flee China in the middle of the night, as the government prepared to announce a ban on crypto exchanges. A stint in Japan hadn’t worked out, either; nor had Singapore, where it was difficult to get a work visa. Then Zhao’s friend Gabriel Abed, a businessperson who served as the ambassador to the UAE for Barbados, made a suggestion. He told Zhao to check out Dubai. Immediately, Zhao saw how the UAE treated the rich and powerful. He arrived in Dubai on a Saturday morning in October, and within hours, a government minister, Omar Sultan al-Olama, came to visit. He offered Zhao a so-called golden visa, which grants 10 years of hassle-free residency. A doctor was summoned to conduct the blood test required of all visa holders. Applications often take weeks to process. Zhao was approved in less than 12 hours. The friendly reception impressed Zhao. “On my fourth day in Dubai, I saw two properties,” he told me. “I bought the second one.” By the end of the year, Binance

sent, and overseen a labor market where foreign workers are frequently exploited and abused. But for Zhao, it was the beginning of a comfortable new life. Before founding Binance, he had separated from his wife, who moved to Tokyo with their children. He connected with one of his colleagues, He Yi, a marketing executive known in China as the former host of a travel program called “Beautiful Destinations.” While his older children attended college in the United States, Zhao and He raised a young family in the UAE. Zhao was ushered into a rarefied world of billionaire networking. He got to know a group of Emirati leaders who were curious about technology — the “crypto sheikhs,” as he calls them. Eventually he worked his way up to the brother of Sheikh Mohammed, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a jujitsu enthusiast who would host high-powered businesspeople at his palace. On the royal dinner circuit, Zhao was treated as a valued guest. “We’re like, ‘What’s the seating arrangement?’” he said. “‘Just sit anywhere, it’s fine.’” During these early encounters, the sheikhs would pitch Zhao on the UAE, asking what they could do to help him. Soon, Zhao was preaching the nation’s virtues to the broader billionaire community. He encouraged artificial intelligence mogul Sam Altman to set up a corporate presence in the UAE, warning that other countries would treat him with hostility. “You’re going to face a lot of regulatory issues,” Zhao told him over coffee.

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In July 2013, over a poker game in Shanghai, a colleague suggested he check out “this new thing called bitcoin.”

Zhao had more than a passing familiarity with the perils of emerging industries. As he arrived in the UAE, Zhao was locked in a vicious competition with a young entrepreneur named Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of a rival exchange, FTX. The son of Stanford Law School professors, Bankman-Fried was in many ways the polar opposite of Zhao: a consummate insider whose personal connections and proximity to the U.S. political elite greased his path to the top of the industry. “He had tricks I didn’t have,” Zhao wrote in his memoir. Bankman-Fried would poach Binance employees, offering salaries three to five times as high. Zhao also heard rumors that Bankman-Fried was bad-mouthing him in Washington. In November 2022, a report in the crypto publication CoinDesk raised doubts about the stability of FTX’s finances. Zhao was in Dubai, on his way to have drinks with Abed, when he decided to weigh in on Twitter, posting a short but ruthless announcement. He was selling a stash of $500 million in FTT, a digital coin that was a proxy for FTX stock. The post set off a panic, as anxious investors rushed to pull money out of FTX. The money wasn’t there — Bankman-Fried had stolen $8 billion from his customers. He had no choice but to seek a bailout, and only one man in crypto had the resources to save him. Two days after his tweet, Zhao announced that he was buying FTX; a day later, he pulled out of the deal, sending FTX deeper into crisis. It all had the feel of a masterful bit of corporate warfare — an act of “blood sport,” as one observer put it. Within six weeks, Bankman-Fried was arrested at his apartment in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States. He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud. Zhao told me that he had never meant to destroy FTX. Slipping into his usual mode of shrugging naivete, he explained that he had hoped to gradually sell his FTT over a few months. “I had no intention to crash them,” he said. “We lost $500 million.” His vanquished rival sees it differently. “He played me,” Bankman-Fried said at the time. “He played it well.”

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of crypto startups in Asia. The industry grew rapidly in the 2010s, with hundreds of new tokens, but the platforms for trading these coins were poorly run and vulnerable to hacks. In July 2017, Zhao founded Binance. Within a few months, it was the largest exchange in the world, a title it has never relinquished. Binance’s success rested on two pivotal insights. The first was that crypto investors, as a species, were drunk on risk and would never be satisfied swapping dollars or yen merely for an equivalent amount of crypto. For years, Binance has operated as a margin exchange: Traders can borrow money to place high-risk, high-reward bets on the prices of bitcoin and other popular tokens. The second insight was simpler yet more consequential. Many crypto investors didn’t want to identify themselves, and Binance didn’t ask them to. For its first four years, the company allowed customers to open accounts without providing even the most basic KYC — the “know your customer” information that traditional companies require to prevent financial crime. Binance was not the only exchange to offer these types of risky services, but Zhao executed better than any of his competitors. “There was a lot of MySpace in the exchange world, and he built Facebook,” said Austin Campbell, the founder of a crypto consulting firm. The result was an extremely lucrative free-for-all: a platform where unvetted investment products were available to unvetted traders. As the market boomed, Binance took a cut of each transaction; the company quickly reached $1 billion in profits, according to “Freedom of Money.” Zhao was suddenly a crypto celebrity. But he has never been widely understood outside the industry, even as he has joined a small cohort of ultrawealthy executives who wield astonishing political influence. When he recounts his most contentious moments, Zhao portrays himself as a kind of passenger — a crypto nerd overwhelmed by success, a naive outsider who somehow stumbled into Bond villain status. It is not always a convincing performance. Sitting in his kitchen in late June, Zhao told me that he had “never really wanted” to break the law in Binance’s explosive early years, when the company’s lax controls allowed a procession of bad actors to launder money. “It’s just my lack of experience in that area,” he said. “I’m a tech guy. I lived in China.” That image isn’t compatible with the evidence U.S. prosecutors collected in their investigation into Binance. In court, they quoted an admonition that Zhao had given his underlings: “Better to ask for for-

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44 In either late 2022 or early 2023, he recalled, an Emirati royal asked him over dinner whether he wanted citizenship. Zhao sent in some documents and waited. Months later, a government emissary arrived at his house, holding a box with passports for Zhao and his family. The Emiratis “would never extradite citizens,” Zhao told me. “That was a very strong thing.” He had reason to be wary: The noose around Binance was tightening. U.S. prosecutors were collecting evidence that the exchange’s lax protocols had allowed scammers, hackers and sanctions evaders to move money. In private messages obtained by the government, Binance employees spoke with astonishing candor about the exchange’s shady clientele. “Is washing drug money too hard these days,” one employee wrote. “Come to Binance we got cake for you.” Zhao hired a team of lawyers to broker a deal with the Justice Department. His new passport gave him considerable leverage. After a couple of years in Dubai, he moved an hour and a half south to Abu Dhabi, closer to the nation’s center of political power. While the negotiations unfolded, Zhao gave serious thought to life as a fugitive; he would have to limit his traveling, but he would be safe in the UAE, at least in theory. Eventually, his legal team struck a bargain with the U.S. government. Zhao would plead guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering statute, and step down as CEO. (The company would pay a $4.3 billion penalty.) Despite the generous terms, he was frustrated with his lawyers and didn’t think he deserved any prison time at all. “I got put in jail because we had a platform that didn’t have proper KYC,” he told me. “You can vote for the president of the United States government without having an ID. I don’t know how that system came about. I would imagine someone should be put in jail for that, given what I went through.” Still, it was an excellent outcome for Binance. At the sentencing hearing in the spring of 2024, Zhao delivered a contrite statement: “I deeply regret my failure, and I’m sorry.” The judge gave Zhao a fourmonth sentence, calling him “a dedicated family man and a giving person.” When the sentence was read aloud in the courtroom, Zhao’s college-age son quietly pumped his fist. As the rare felon with virtually unlimited resources, Zhao was ideally positioned to suffer as little as possible. He was assigned to Lompoc II, a low-security facility in California, the same complex where Bankman-Fried was later housed. Before

With Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE

he reported to prison, Zhao assembled a team of advisers, who schooled him in the subtleties of cellblock politics. One of them, Michael Santos, exchanged letters with other inmates, who agreed to help Zhao get his bearings inside. “CZ, you’re a guy who’s understood people and had thousands of employees,” Santos told him. “You’re not going to lose those skills when you walk in here.” Zhao arrived at Lompoc on the morning of May 30, 2024. He quickly settled into what’s known as a “car” — an informal social group, often established along ethnic lines. The other Asian inmates sat with Zhao during meals and worked out with him in the yard at recess. They were thrilled to be in the presence of a multibillionaire. “Everybody gave way for him,” said Jaton Aguon, a fellow inmate at Lompoc. “It was like a king walking down the aisle.” Zhao grew close with a Vietnamese bank robber who had once worked as an engineer. They talked in detail about the robberies, which didn’t involve any of the “Ocean’s Eleven”-style preparation one might expect. He was “very mellow” and “a super-chill dude,” Zhao told me. “He just walks in, asks for the money and leaves. And he got away with it 11 times.” The bank robber was one of a handful of inmates who were interested in the business world. He read Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal and asked Zhao about Elon Musk’s astronomical compensation package at Tesla. Other inmates also had questions about business, including one who wanted to understand the mysteries of the crypto market. “He’s like, ‘Well, bitcoin — why did it go up?” Zhao recalled. “I’m like, ‘Wow, I don’t know for sure, either.’” Zhao started a study group that tracked stock prices; one of the prison TVs was tuned to CNBC. Not every one of his messages landed. At Lompoc, Zhao had a hard time conveying his deeply held belief that the Binance

case was essentially victimless, with “no fraud, no nothing.” When he explained the details, the response was dismissive. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s what everybody says,’” Zhao recalled. In August 2024, Zhao left Lompoc for a halfway house. But a complication with his immigration status meant he had to spend his last two weeks at a local jail, passing the time doing pushups and crunches in his cell. On the day of his release, an officer escorted him outside, where his mother, sister and assistant were waiting. They drove to a nearby airport and deposited him onto a private plane bound for Abu Dhabi. Between the moment Zhao left custody and the moment his jet took off, only 26 minutes elapsed.

hao returned to a world that was shifting in his favor. A crypto-friendly administration was poised to take power in Washington. Shortly before the election, Trump had founded World Liberty as a joint enterprise with the family of Steve Witkoff, a real estate mogul who was preparing to serve as White House envoy to the Middle East. Soon, America’s newly empowered dealmaker-diplomats were spending lots of time in the UAE. As he drove me around the city, Zhao paused to point out the ADNEC Center, a conference hall that hosted a giant gathering of crypto enthusiasts in December 2024. “This is where I met Eric Trump,” he said. At the venue, he recalled, a Trump booster named David Bailey had introduced him to the president’s middle son, a leader of World Liberty. It was a casual conversation, with no official agenda. “He was just saying that he was looking at some real estate deal here,” Zhao told me. Their interests were about to align. The UAE had been working to transform from a petrostate into a powerhouse in emerging technologies, a project spearheaded by Sheikh Tahnoon, who oversees $1.5 trillion

in Emirati sovereign wealth. Before he went to prison, Zhao had held talks with Peng Xiao, one of the sheikh’s top lieutenants, about selling the Emiratis a stake in Binance, the ultimate union between his company and his political guardians. Rarely seen without dark glasses, Sheikh Tahnoon is chair of a venture capital fund called MGX, which specializes in AI. Early last year, MGX agreed to invest $2 billion in Binance, a deal that valued the company at $75 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. MGX viewed Binance as the perfect bridge between crypto and AI — a high-tech money-transmission service that could someday enable automated AI “agents” to make payments on behalf of real people. Zhao told me that he wanted to settle the deal in bitcoin. The Emiratis worried that it was prone to drastic price swings that would complicate the transaction. They preferred to pay Zhao in stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a price of $1. What happened next is widely disputed — and likely to become the subject of a congressional investigation if the Democrats win control of Congress in November. According to MGX, the fund evaluated several stablecoins before selecting USD1, a coin created by World Liberty, citing “business suitability.” It was a stunning choice, given that USD1 was completely untested, with no track record. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had specifically asked MGX to pay in USD1; Zhao said MGX had made the decision. “I didn’t care too much as long as the stablecoin is reputable and is not going to disappear overnight,” he told me. “There wasn’t any other consideration.” But all the parties had an incentive to cut World Liberty into the transaction. A UAE-backed investment firm had taken a 49% stake in the startup in January 2025, days before Donald Trump’s inauguration; Sheikh Tahnoon got a seat on World Liberty’s board. Around the same time, the Emiratis were negotiating with the White House to secure the export of the valuable computer chips that power AI. Binance also had business in front of the Trump administration. With its legal troubles receding, the company wanted to escape some of the restrictions imposed in the 2023 settlement. Witkoff’s son Zach announced the deal in May 2025, thanking Binance and MGX “for their trust in us.” Democrats in Congress condemned it as “stablecoin corruption.” An issuer like World Liberty makes money by accepting cash deposits from crypto traders, giving them stablecoins in

45 lion and $30 billion. He could live comfortably on a tiny fraction of that, he said — a mere $10 million. On the crypto podcast circuit, Zhao is occasionally asked about his house, and he often mentions an upstairs leak that he has never managed to fix. Sure enough, in the living room, he pointed to a patch of water damage on the floor, then gestured to the ceiling. “That’s the spot,” he said. “I don’t know if you see the difference in color.” It’s true that Zhao’s villa is modest by billionaire standards; a house nearby is on sale for $150 million, he told me. But it’s hard to square his affectations of humility with the world of power and privilege that he has settled into. Once, at a group dinner, Zhao listened as Altman described an emerging field of biotech research. Zhao has his own ambitions to defy biology; he has invested in a startup that works with artificial wombs.

While Forbes estimates his wealth at over $100 billion, Zhao insists that the actual figure is much lower, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion.

al currency. Zhao posted a brief thank-you message on social media as his hosts greeted him in the capital city, Bishkek. He spent the evening at a restaurant with the president, talking about stablecoins.

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n a blistering morning this summer, Zhao pulled into the driveway of his $5 million villa, where he and He host a rotating cast of grandparents and siblings. He was greeted at the door by his two dogs. In addition to the Taigan, Zhao has a Belgian Malinois that he named Broccoli, which he thought sounded a little like “blockchain.” With a photographer trailing behind him, Zhao bounded from room to room, pointing out pictures of his young family. A stately cream-colored piano sits in the center of his children’s playroom, surrounded by toys — a scene of neglect that dismayed the tuner who came to service it. It was a Steinway, “one of the expensive ones,” Zhao told me, “but I don’t know how to use it.” In his home gym, he paused to do some bench presses. Zhao wanted to make clear that he doesn’t live like a normal billionaire. While Forbes estimates his wealth at over $100 billion, Zhao insists that the actual figure is much lower, somewhere between $10 bil-

Since prison, Zhao has split his time among a range of ventures, including his tech investments and his travels as a kind of crypto diplomat, helping promote the industry in countries where he’s often treated like royalty. “They always send a guy with two cars to drive right up to the plane,” he told me. “There’s a girl holding the local delicacy, like you’re supposed to try one of them.” Zhao downplayed his involvement in Binance; the company’s plea deal prohibited him from “operating or managing” the business. He made a point to express frustration with Binance’s recent decision to sue the Journal, after the paper reported on turnover in the compliance division, calling the case “a gigantic waste of time.” Even if Binance wins, “they won’t get very much,” he told me. (The company dropped the lawsuit last month.) It’s obvious that Binance remains a major part of his life. One of the two coCEOs appointed to replace him was He — the mother of his three young children. Two years ago, in a gesture toward traditional governance, Binance established a board of directors with three supposedly independent trustees. One of them is also the board’s chair — Gabe Abed, the friend who first recruited Zhao to the UAE. They

have gone jet-skiing together, and Abed gave Zhao a pair of orange high-top sneakers, emblazoned with the words “TRUMP CRYPTO PRESIDENT.” Lately, Binance has faced new accusations of impropriety. The company fired or suspended four compliance officials last year, after they reported that nearly $2 billion had flowed from customer accounts to a cluster of entities with ties to Iran — a possible repeat of the sanctions evasion that led to the U.S. criminal case in 2023. The company disputed the employees’ findings and denied that anyone was disciplined for raising concerns. The Justice Department said later that two Chinese firms had used Binance to launder the proceeds of Iranian oil sales, though it didn’t file any charges against the exchange. Some cracks have also emerged in Binance’s relationship with the Emiratis. In December, the company received a license to operate out of Abu Dhabi, which would soon face a barrage of Iranian missiles; the exchange’s new overseer hailed the company as a beacon of “regulatory progress.” Over the summer, however, two Binance employees were briefly detained in the UAE, an unusually aggressive step by local police, who were looking into possible financial crimes on the platform. The detentions alarmed Binance’s local workforce. Zhao told me that he had sent a message to a contact in the Emirati police and reached out to lieutenants of Sheikh Tahnoon. “I just said, ‘Look, let’s find a way not to have this happen,’” Zhao recalled. “It looks bad for the country, it looks bad for us.” He insisted that the UAE remained a friendly home for Binance. “No one’s in danger,” he said. Zhao has the confidence of someone who has glided away from trouble over and over, a consummate winner in an era that often rewards brazen rule-breaking. In his memoir, he writes for a page and a half about his belief in “simulation theory,” the notion that we might all be living in someone else’s imagined reality. He encountered the idea early in his crypto career and now believes it’s a mathematical certainty. “In 20 years, we should be able to plug a rod into our heads like in ‘The Matrix’ for complete simulations,” he writes. “Billions of people will. There will be billions of simulations.” That belief has given Zhao some detachment from the stresses of everyday life. It’s possible we’re versions of Super Mario, he writes, running around an artificial landscape. He tries to live by a simple mantra: “It’s just a game.”

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was like, ‘If the newspapers think I should be asking for a pardon, maybe I should,’” he said. In reality, as early as December 2024, Zhao’s legal team had been working with Brett Tolman, a prominent pardon attorney, to explore the possibility of clemency, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The New York Times. Ultimately, Binance paid $2.1 million to a lobbying firm run by Ches McDowell, who is close to the president’s elder sons, for services including “executive relief,” according to public filings. (A World Liberty spokesperson said the company had “zero involvement in any decisions on pardons.”) When the pardon was announced last October, Zhao had just landed in Kyrgyzstan for a meeting with President Sadyr Zhaparov, who was interested in creating a digital coin pegged to the Kyrgyz nation-

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return and then investing the deposits to generate a yield. With the $2 billion from MGX and Binance, World Liberty instantly became one of the world’s largest stablecoin companies, a boon to the Trump and Witkoff families. “It’s just such a craven effort to curry favor,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who has investigated Zhao and Binance. “Unprecedented in its scope and scale of corruption.” Zhao is adamant that nothing untoward occurred. He said he no longer held the USD1, which he used to invest in bitcoin and other assets. “I assume that President Trump has very good lawyers, and the setup where the sons run businesses and the father is the president is completely kosher,” he told me. He suggested that some of the outrage might reflect cultural differences. “In Kazakhstan, we can eat horse meat,” he explained. “In some other countries, we’ll be like, ‘Well, that’s crazy.’” The ruling families of two governments had struck a business deal — couldn’t that be a good thing? Zhao reached for a medieval comparison. “If you marry the daughter of one country to the prince of another country,” he said, “they maintain peace for 50 years.” Two weeks after the $2 billion transaction, the White House agreed to share access to the chips, overcoming concerns from some U.S. national security officials. Steve Witkoff joined Trump last spring on a trip to Abu Dhabi, where they celebrated the deal with the Emiratis at Qasr Al Watan. Privately, Witkoff also told an acquaintance that Zhao deserved a pardon, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Zhao had filed the relevant paperwork and was waiting for the president’s verdict. The outcome would have enormous implications for Binance. After Zhao pleaded guilty, the exchange’s dormant U.S. operation lost state-level licenses. A pardon could help the company pitch itself to regulators. (A White House spokesperson said Witkoff does not play a role in the pardon process.) When he described the process to me, Zhao spoke carefully, calling it a “black box” overseen by a couple of lawyers who gave periodic updates from Washington. Once in a while, he said, he would be approached at social events by shady middlemen who said they could arrange a meeting with Trump — for the right price. “It’s a mini industry of people who want to make a buck,” Zhao said. Zhao ignored them. He told me that he started thinking seriously about a pardon in March 2025, after other crypto executives received clemency and the Journal reported that he, too, was seeking it. “I

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To Raise a Laugh A Stiff-Necked People

his week’s column is about stiff necks. Nothing to do with the fact that many of us slept in the sukkah last week. Some of us at the table. Stiff necks are a real pain in the neck. (Ouch.) And they always strike without warning. They just sneak up behind you – often while you’re sleeping – and before you can turn around, they’re upon you! And then you can’t turn around. I recently read that at any given point, one out of twenty people has a stiff neck. So if you’re ever in a room with a whole bunch of people, look around. If you can’t, it’s you. The worst part of having a stiff neck is that you can’t move your head. Even if you want to do something as simple as look at someone, you have to turn your whole body, and you think you’re being all casual about it, and then he says, “Do you have a stiff neck?” And this is not to mention how stiff necks can really affect your performance at your job, especially if you’re a bus driver, an air traffic controller, an aerobics instructor, a violinist, or anyone who swims for a living. Also, sometimes you want to silently tell someone, “No,” but you can’t turn your head, so you have to do it with your entire body from the waist up. And he’s going to say, “Why are you dancing?”

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By Mordechai Schmutter

I think if you’re a mother, a stiff neck isn’t as big of a deal, because you have eyes in the back of your head. My wife does. I try to sneak food from the kitchen when she’s in the dining room, and she asks, “What are you noshing on?” “How do you know I’m noshing on anything?” “I have eyes in the back of my head.” “If you have eyes in the back of your head, how do you not see what I’m noshing?” So apparently my wife has eyes in the back of her head, but they need glasses.

Sure, there are a lot of advice articles out there, but it’s not easy to tell which ones know what they’re talking about. You only have one neck. For example, one article I read said (and I am not making this up), “TIP #6 – Massage. STEP 1: Grasp your neck with your thumb on one side and your fingers on the other.” Wait. Which two sides are we talking about? Care to be more specific? Am I strangling myself here? “STEP 2: Knead your neck by gently squeezing for 1-2 minutes.” Yup.

And anyway, if you take a nap during class, it’s on your arm, and you never wake up from that with a stiff neck anyway. At worst you wake up with a dead arm and a deep red impression of your shirt button. So I was never really taught how to sleep. I kind of just figured it out on my own. Halacha does say it’s a good idea to sleep on your side, but aside from that it’s pretty vague. It doesn’t really say anything about back alignment, or how many pillows to use, except when it comes to Tisha B’Av and you need to sleep on one less pillow because you’ve been sitting on the other one all night. Unshowered.

I didn’t put a lot of stock in that article anyway, because it was called, “9 Home Remedies for a Stiff Neck,” and #8 was to call a chiropractor.

So here are some actual tips, taken from articles that I have no way of verifying that they know what they’re talking about. But to be fair, you never have a way of verifying that I know what I’m talking about:

Plus a lot of the advice these articles give seems to be contradictory. For example, a bunch of them said to, quote, “Apply heat and cold.” Won’t they cancel each other out? Can I just apply nothing?

- Decrease your stress levels. Of course, it’s hard to decrease stress when you can’t say no to anything.

And public opinion doesn’t help that much either. Whenever people hear that you have a stiff neck, they’re very quick to point out that you probably slept wrong. So I guess the best idea is to go back to bed and try again until you get it right. You never know.

- Apply cold first. If you don’t have an ice pack, you can use a bag of frozen cholent beans. Next, apply heat. If you have no heating pad, use a bag of cholent.

The problem is that when you’re sleeping, you’re unconscious, so you have no idea that you’re sleeping wrong until you get up and you’re like, “Was that wrong? I was like that for six hours!” I have no idea if I’m sleeping wrong. I could be sleeping wrong every night. No one really ever taught me how to sleep. I went to school for like twenty years, and as far as I can tell, there’s no class for that. In fact, if you fall asleep in class, the teacher gets all judgy about it. He never says, “Oh, you’re doing it wrong; let me show you.” There should be official sleeping classes. What are you paying all that dorm money for? Just so your kid can take naps during lunch?

- Don’t fall asleep sitting up. Except on Friday nights.

- Take a hot shower. Then have someone flush the toilet so it’s cold. Repeat. The stress will not help, though. - Sleep correctly. Many articles that have a larger photography budget than this one have pictures of how your head and neck and back should be aligned when you sleep, but the pictures are always taken from behind, so you honestly have no idea whether you’re aligned properly. So when you lie down, you need someone to stand behind you with a magic marker.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books anddoesstand-upcomedy.Youcancontacthimat MSchmutter@gmail.com.

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Torah Thought

“One More Day” Carrying Teshuvah Forward

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By Nataly Magendzo

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here is a fascinating halacha regarding the esrog that, at first glance, seems almost strange. Even after Hoshana Rabbah has passed and the mitzvah of the Arba Minim has seemingly come to an end, we are still not permitted to eat the esrog. The Shulchan Aruch teaches that in Eretz Yisrael, the esrog remains set aside for the mitzvah through Hoshana Rabbah and may only be eaten on Shemini Atzeres. In chutz la’aretz, where we observe two days of yom tov, that prohibition extends even further: the esrog remains forbidden throughout Shemini Atzeres and may be eaten only after Yom Tov has completely passed. Why does the halacha require us to wait just one more day? Perhaps hidden within that extra day is a beautiful message about what happens after teshuva. We spend an entire month preparing ourselves. Elul begins, and we look inward. Rosh Hashana arrives, and

we stand before Hashem. We enter the Aseres Yemei Teshuva. We reach Yom Kippur, when we ask Hashem for forgiveness and commit ourselves to change. And then come the days of Sukkos, culminating in Hoshana Rabbah. The Zohar describes Hoshana Rabbah as a day connected to the completion of the judgment and the final sealing. And then, after Hoshana Rabbah, there is one more day. Perhaps that is not merely an extra day on the calendar. Perhaps it is a day to pause. The Torah tells us: “And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree...” (Vayikra 23:40). There is something striking about the words “b’yom ha’rishon, on the first day.” We know Sukkos begins on the fifteenth of Tishrei. Why does the Torah call it the first day? Chazal give us an incredible answer:

“And you shall take for yourselves on the first day — the first day for the accounting of sins” (Vayikra Rabbah 30:7). Chazal discuss the identity of the fruit of the Eitz HaDaas. There are several opinions, and one opinion identifies it as an esrog. This is only one opinion among Chazal, but it creates a remarkable connection. The very fruit that, according to one opinion, represents the first sin of mankind becomes part of one of the holiest mitzvos of the year. There is something deeply symbolic about that. The Torah does not ask us to erase the past. It asks us to transform it. And this brings us back to that one extra day. From Rosh Hashana until Yom Kippur, we are in a period of din, judgment and teshuva, the Yomim Noraim, when we stand before Hashem with awe and humility. From Yom Kippur until Hoshana Rabbah, the atmosphere changes from din to ahava. Having

experienced forgiveness and reconciliation with Hashem on Yom Kippur, we enter a period of closeness and love, expressed through the joy of Sukkos and culminating in Hoshana Rabbah. And then Hashem asks us for one more day in which we still don’t eat the esrog. The message is clear: Stop. Before you move forward, take one more day to remember where you have been. Think about Rosh Hashana. Think about Yom Kippur. Think about the prayers you whispered. Think about the tears you shed. Think about the things you promised Hashem you would change. Think about every person from whom you asked mechilah. Think about every person with whom you still need to make peace. Think about every reason you asked Hashem for forgiveness. Think about the journey from the be-

49 Do we remember the promises we made? Do we remember the closeness to Hashem that we felt? That is why perhaps there is one more day. Not another day of judgment. A day of internalization.

turning it into something sweet. The sour fruit becomes sweet jelly. This is the ultimate message of teshuva. We cannot change the past. But we can change what we do with it. The things that once represented our mistakes (sourness) can become the source of growth (sweetness).

Before you move forward, take one more day to remember where you have been.

The pain can produce compassion. The mistakes can produce humility. The failures can produce greater closeness to Hashem. The past can become part of the sweetness of the future. That may be the message of that one extra day. Wait. Pause. Remember.

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A day to pause between the holiness of the Yamim Noraim and our return to ordinary life. A day to make sure that the teshuva we experienced does not remain an experience of the past. There is another beautiful part of the story. The esrog is famously sour. We know that Hashem’s ways are not a coincidence. One of the ways people preserve the esrog after Sukkos is by

Don’t go back. Move forward. Maybe that is why we are given “one more day.” One more day to make sure that the person who walks into the new year is not the same person who entered Elul. Because teshuva is not measured only by the tears we shed, the words we said, or the resolutions we made. Teshuva is measured by what we carry with us afterward. The esrog remains out of reach for one more day, as if Hashem is telling us: Don’t rush. Before you return to your routine, before the holiness of these days becomes a memory—pause one more day. Remember who you wanted to become. And then take that person with you. Because the goal was never simply to have a beautiful Yom Kippur. The goal was to have a different year. May we be zocheh to carry the pnimiyus of these holy days with us throughout the entire year, transforming our teshuva into lasting change, our challenges into growth, and our past into the foundation for a sweeter future.

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ginning of Elul until Hoshana Rabbah. And then: Stop. The greatest challenge of teshuva is not recognizing what we did wrong. It is not returning to the person we were before. It is so easy for the inspiration of the Yamim Noraim to fade. After yom tov, life becomes busy again. The tefillos become memories. The commitments become difficult. The emotions of the past month begin to feel distant. And that is precisely when we need to remember: Do not go back. Teshuva is not only about leaving the past behind. It is about carrying something forward. We spent an entire month working on ourselves. We asked Hashem to give us another chance. We asked people for mechilah. We tried to identify the things that needed to change. Now we have to take the pnimiyus of those days and bring it into the year ahead. The real test of teshuva is not how we feel on Yom Kippur. It is who we become on a random Tuesday in the middle of the year. Do we respond differently? Do we speak differently? Do we treat people differently?

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Living Kiddush Hashem

it was empty. The sign stated that the company was not present because it was observing the Jewish holiday of Shavuos.

Standing Strong Without Apology

There was no apology and no embarrassment. Simcha simply stood proudly and naturally for his values. A year later, Simcha returned to the conference and was shocked by what happened next. During the event, a pilot who operated a charter company approached him. Simcha knew him from previous business dealings. The pilot had once been religious but had stopped practicing Judaism many years earlier.

By Rabbi Shraga Freedman

imcha Shain is a Hatzolah paramedic who also runs a business that coordinates private jets for business executives and medical purposes, including organ transplants, air ambulances, and other emergency medical needs. In 2024, Simcha was preparing to launch a new technology platform for his private-jet business at the NBAA, a major aviation conference. He had booked a costly prime booth nearly a year in advance and spent months preparing for the event. Then, just a few weeks before the conference, Simcha realized that he had made a terrible mistake. He had accidentally checked the previous year’s calendar when looking up the date of the conference. The conference was scheduled for Shavuos.

Simcha immediately contacted his staff. “We’re not doing it,” he told them. “Shavuos is a Jewish holiday. We’re not going.” Several members of his team were not Jewish and offered to attend the conference and run the booth without him. “No,” Simcha replied. “We’re not doing that.” The conference organizers would not refund his payment, offering only a 50% credit toward the following year’s conference.

“I came to this conference to see you,” he told Simcha.

mitment that he would no longer fly on Shabbos or Yom Tov. A year later, he came back specifically to tell Simcha that he had kept that commitment and had not flown since the previous conference. Simcha then remembered that he had his tallis and tefillin in his car. “How about putting on tallis and tefillin?” he asked. “Of course!” the pilot replied. Right there at the conference, the pilot put on tefillin. All because one Jew had stood proudly for his values, without apology.

He explained that he had happened to attend the previous year and noticed something strange. There wasn’t a single person wearing a kippah.

Rabbi Shraga Freedman is the author of Sefer Mekadshei Shemecha, Living Kiddush Hashem, and A Life Worth Living.

“Where did all the Jews who usually come to this conference go?” he had wondered.

Email LivingKiddushHashem@ gmail.com for a free sefer. Visit LivingKiddushHashem.org for more resources

Then he noticed Simcha’s booth—and the sign.

Living Kiddush Hashem was founded with the goal of imbuing every Jew with a powerful sense of mission — the mission to be mekadeish Sheim Shamayim in his or her own unique way. We strive to accomplish this by raising awareness of the paramount importance of the mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem and its centrality in everything we do.

The pilot was deeply shaken.

Simcha decided to keep the booth but simply not attend. He wanted to turn the situation into a Kiddush Hashem.

“How could I have fallen so far,” he said, “that I didn’t even know it was a Jewish holiday?”

He asked the organizers to place a simple sign at the booth explaining why

The simple sign awakened something inside him. He made a personal com-

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DeeDee & Aharon Koschitzky on the birth of a son Eli & Rivi Bogart on the birth of a son

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Muttie & Shira Kohn on the birth of a son

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Flydubai Hero Plumber Yaniv Hayun’s New Slogans “Roto-Rooter & Rudder” “Drains, Planes & Everything In Between” “Air Force Plumb” “The Wright Plumbers” “From Clogged Johns to Jumbo Jets” “Plumbing, Heating & Emergency Landings” “Licensed Plumber, Unlicensed Pilot “No Job Too Big, No Altitude Too High” “We Make House Calls — Even at 35,000 Feet” “Your Pipes Are in Good Hands. Apparently So Is Your Plane” “If It Goes Down, We Bring It Back Up” “One Call Does It All: Toilets, Turbulence & Takeoffs”

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“We’ll Get You Out of Any Jam — Plumbing or Aviation” “Why Call a Pilot When You Can Call a Plumber?” “We Accept Cash, Credit & Frequent-Flyer Miles” “We Unclog Toilets. We Also Prevent Unscheduled Landings” “When Your Pipes Are In A Nosedive, Call The Guy Who Knows What To Do”

You Gotta Be Kidding Me! A blind pilot walks into a plane waving his walking stick. The passengers all look at each other in disbelief. The flight attendant gets on the PA and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, the captain is legally blind, but rest assured, he is one of the best pilots in the world with over six thousand successful flights.” Next the co-pilot makes his way to the plane, and he is also blind and uses his walking stick to make it to the cabin. The flight attendant gets on the PA and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, the co-pilot is also blind, but rest assured, he is the second-best pilot in the world with over five thousand successful flights.” The plane begins to take off from the runway. As it gains speed, the passengers grow tenser. The plane keeps accelerating more and more, and as it approaches the end of the runway, it still hasn’t left the ground. The plane is approaching the end of the runway at high speed, and the passengers start screaming. At that moment, the plane smoothly takes off and begins its ascent. The pilot turns to the copilot and says, “One day, they aren’t going to scream, and we are all going to be dead!”

1. In Operation Solomon in 1991, which was a mission to rescue Ethiopian Jews, Israel set an aviation record by carrying how many people on a single El Al Boeing 747? a. 539 b. 603 c. 985 d. 1,088

4. During the daring 1976 Entebbe operation, Israeli commandos flew more than 2,000 miles to Uganda and rescued 102 hostages being held at the airport. What unusual item

6. On the first morning of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel launched Operation Focus, sending roughly 180 aircraft to attack Egyptian airfields while leaving only about 12 fighters behind to defend Israeli airspace. By the end of that first day, approximately what percentage of Egypt’s air force had Israel destroyed? a. 35% b. 40% c. 60% d. 90% 7. In 1960, Mossad agents secretly captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who had been living in Argentina under the false name Ricardo Klement. How did they manage to smuggle him out of

8. On the first day of the Yom Kippur War, an Egyptian formation suddenly attacked Israel’s Ofira air base in the Sinai. Only two Israeli F-4 Phantom fighters were available to scramble and defend the base. How many Egyptian MiG fighters did those two Israeli planes shoot down? a. 2 b. 4 c. 7 d. 12 Answers: 1-D 2-B 3-C 4-B 5-C 6-D 7-A 8-C Wisdom Key: 6-8 correct: Yaniv Hayun has nothing on you! 3-5 correct: You are b’seder! 0-2 correct: You must have gotten hit by an exploding seltzer bottle (maybe it was Mayim Chaim…extra fizz!).

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3. In 1972, Israeli commandos disguised as airplane technicians stormed hijacked Sabena Flight 571 at Lod Airport, killed two hijackers and rescued the passengers. Which future Israeli prime minister was a member of the rescue team and was actually wounded during the operation? a. Ariel Sharon b. Yitzhak Rabin c. Benjamin Netanyahu d. Shimon Peres

5. In September 1970, TWA Flight 741, carrying Rav Yitzchok Hutner, zt”l, his wife, daughter and son-in-law and 40 other Jews was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and diverted to Jordan. Exactly how many days was Rav Hutner held captive before being released? a. 12 days b. 16 days c. 20 days d. 27 days

Argentina and fly him to Israel? a. They sedated him, dressed him as an El Al crew member, and pretended he was sick b. They hid him inside an El Al cargo shipment c. They gave him a forged diplomatic passport d. They drove him across the border and flew him from another country

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

2. In 1948, why did Israel’s fledgling air force drop empty seltzer bottles over enemy lines? a. They contained written messages in them b. Because they made a whistling and shrieking noise that the Arabs mistook as bombs c. So Israeli soldiers could fill them with water from local sources d. So the enemy would think that Israel had no more bombs and would thus expose their own military assets to bombing

did they bring with them as part of a plan to fool the Ugandan guards and reach the terminal by surprise? a. Ugandan military uniforms b. A black Mercedes made to resemble Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s car c. Forged airport identification cards d. Ugandan flags for their vehicles

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Israel and Its Airplane Miracles Trivia

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Notable Quotes “Say What?!”

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I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ableists. - One of many angry comments on social media after a radically liberal bar in Massachusetts lifted their face mask requirement for Saturdays

You chose to use your time to spill tears and center your feelings. This is incredibly racist and deflecting behavior. – Response of one of the bar patrons when the owner explained at a meeting that she lifted the ban one day a week because the bar is tens of thousands of dollars in debt and needs to increase revenue

Call Tom on his cellphone at 479-453-0533, and let him know. – Pres. Trump in a Truth Social post giving out Sen. Tom Cotton’s cell number and imploring people to call him to have him allow the bill to stop Daylight Savings Time to pass

No one likes changing the clock, me included. But Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter. Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.

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- Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) responding on X to Pres. Trump

Before I had a kid, more daylight seemed great to me. Now I got a little one, and I’m not a fan. Which led me to an obvious epiphany. A society with fewer parents means fewer people whose daily lives force them to think about the world as it was designed. It was designed really for kids. - Greg Gutfeld

If you’ve never had to get a kid out the door on a January morning and stand with him at a dark bus stop, you have no reason to consider that tradeoff. You’re more likely to think, “Great, I get more daylight after work to get hammered.” And the safety concerns hit the people who aren’t you— parents. – ibid.

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I ask myself, what do you do on a day like this? How can I come and do something for all those who were murdered? I said, I’m coming to Nova today and putting on tefillin in memory of all those who were murdered and never had the chance to truly go on living. I invite all of you: Stop for a moment, put on tefillin today, and dedicate it to them. - Former hostage Bar Kuperstein upon returning to the Nova music festival site where he was abducted by Hamas terrorists three years ago

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

On the 70th day [of my captivity], I spoke to G-d and said: “Listen, I know I haven’t spoken to You in seven years, and it’s hypocritical of me to ask You for something now, especially when there’s a good chance I’ll forget You once I get out. So I’ll speak to You frankly: the Torah commands us to honor our parents, and I tried to do that even before October 7. Now it’s Your turn to fulfill the part that promises long life in the land.” - Former hostage Avinatan Or in a recent interview

I thought that the airline hijacking would be a much bigger story… The media is always a little reluctant to call it terrorism when it’s obviously terrorism; then after a while, they do. But I noticed when the Hamas propaganda is out there, that stuff gets fasttracked. – Bill Maher, HBO

The reporting was that the two pilots had an altercation. Yes, they had a little argument: “I think we should crash the plane and you don’t. Let’s agree to disagree.” - ibid.

- Lital Hirschl-Shahar, who was on the Flydubai flight with her four daughters, in an interview with the New York Post

It was just a miracle wrapped in a miracle wrapped in a miracle. - ibid.

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I was talking to G-d nonstop, believing prayer was the only thing that could save us. I told my daughters to pray, too.

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OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

I don’t usually tend to write on social media, but today I felt something burning inside me that I had to share… This morning, after this great miracle, I went to the synagogue to recite the Birkat HaGomel, the blessing of thanksgiving for surviving danger… The reading at the synagogue included Deuteronomy, Chapter 33, verse 26: “There is none like G-d, Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to your aid, through the skies in His majesty.”

This hijacking story is INSANE but I’m looking forward to hearing the terrorists’ side of the story on Miss Rachel today. - Jimmy Failla on X

100 Israeli passengers vs. One Muslim Pilot. What a completely disproportionate response from Israel. - Anastasia Volkova on X

PRO TIP: Next time you try to Highjack a plane, maybe try the easier level, like an Irish airplane that would love to get highjacked, and not a plane full of Israeli army veterans, with combat training, a short fuse and a burning hate for terrorists… You are not ready for that level.

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- JewniorProMax on X

I just want to thank and congratulate Yaniv Hayun. He’s a Trump fan, and I’m a fan of his, a big fan. He saved that flight. He got in there, and he learned how to fly from watching Air Disasters on television, and he’s my kind of guy. He can be my plumber; he can be whatever he wants to be. What a job he did. He’s a hero. You like me, and I like you. Thank you, Yaniv! - Pres. Trump congratulating Flydubai hero Yaniv Hayun

Tennessee corrections failed to execute an inmate despite administering two full doses of a lethal drug. Critics say next time they should just hire Hillary Clinton—unlike the state of Tennessee, she actually knows how to make people disappear permanently. - Greg Gutfeld

I read the verse, stopped, and shuddered along with all the other worshippers who knew the story. After everything we had been through— the fear, the attack, and the realization of how thin the line between life and death had been— standing there, facing those particular words, was a moment that is difficult to explain. I don’t know whether this was divine providence, a coincidence, or simply a moment that took on profound meaning. But today, during the Birkat HaGomel, I felt one central thing: gratitude. Gratitude for life, gratitude for the miracle, and gratitude for the privilege of standing here and telling the story. Am Yisrael Chai! The people of Israel live! - Facebook post by Assaf Raguon, one of the Israelis who helped overpower the terrorist pilot on the Flydubai flight

The Russian Jewish Heroes of World War II By Avi Heiligman

another stint in the hospital, he was assigned to a tank unit and transferred to the Kharkov Tank School, where he graduated as a junior lieutenant. In the summer of 1944, Degen was deployed to the front lines as a commander of a T-34/85 tank in the 2nd Guards Separate Tank Brigade. It was during Operation Bagration – the massive Red Army offensive that tore through the Nazi army in Belarus, Poland, and the Baltic States – that Degen became a tank ace. He destroyed 12 tanks, including 8 Panthers, 1 Tiger and 4 self-propelled guns and took out several machine guns, mortars and other enemy targets. In January 1945, he was severely wounded again, and his fighting career was over. For his actions on the battlefield, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner along with several other decorations for bravery in battle. In 1977, Degen moved to Israel to practice medicine and write his memoirs and poems. Vulf (Wolf) Vilensky was another highly decorated Jewish soldier in the Red Army to eventually move to Israel. Born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1919, Vilensky joined a Zionist movement before being called up for active duty in 1940. He was in officer’s school when the Germans invaded Russia on June 22, 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. Together with the other students at the military school,

Ion Degen

Vilensky was sent to the front lines to fight defensive battles in Belorussia. At a bridge near Molodechno, he held off the Germans for seven hours with his machine gun. The Russians suffered heavy casualties during the surprise invasion, and men like Vilensky were needed to be fully trained so they were sent back to the rear to complete their training. The Soviets decided to form ethnic divisions, and Vilensky became a company commander in the 16th Lithuanian Division, which had many Jewish soldiers in its ranks. In 1943, he married Sonia, who served as a medical orderly in the same division, and she was present at several battles evacuating wounded soldiers to the rear. In October 1944, Vulf’s unit was at Klaipeda, Lithuania, where they were fighting against a regiment from the Hermann Göring Division. While commanding his company, Vilensky also manned a machine gun and was determined to get back at the Nazis for murdering his family. The enemy attacked eight times, and Vilensky killed over a hundred German soldiers and forced the enemy to pull back. For this action, Vilensky was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. The division went on to liberate Lithuania from the Nazis, and Vilensky helped many of the Jewish soldiers search for Holocaust survivors. In 1948, he met Is-

rael’s first ambassador to the USSR and future prime minister, Golda Meir. He retired from the army in 1965 but was initially not allowed to leave the USSR due to him being labeled as a refusenik by Soviet authorities. He finally moved to Israel in 1983 and was reunited with his son and daughter, who had made aliyah eight years earlier. Vilensky was later given the honorary rank of colonel in the Israel Defense Forces. There were other former Red Army soldiers, estimated in the thousands, who defied Soviet restrictions and eventually immigrated to Israel. Among them was Yerachmiel Milya Felzenshtein, a decorated combat veteran who famously had to renounce his Hero of the Soviet Union medal just to be granted permission to leave the USSR. These Forgotten Heroes were vital in the defeat of the Nazis, and after surviving the horrors of the Eastern Front, many went on to help build and defend the young State of Israel. Their heroism and courage is a vital chapter of history that deserves to be remembered.

Avi Heiligman is a weekly contributor to The Jewish Home. He welcomes your comments and suggestions for future columns and can be reached at aviheiligman@gmail.com.

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he Allies of World War II were a diverse group of countries that banded together to fight a common enemy. Jewish soldiers and service members served in almost all of these armies and air forces, including those from the United States, Great Britain, and other European nations, Australia, and even Mexico and Brazil, who joined the fight to defeat the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The United States and the Soviet Union had a working but strained relationship during the war, which, after the fighting ended in 1945, turned into the Cold War between the two world powers. About half a million Jews served in the Red Army, with many receiving decorations and medals for bravery in action. Tanks became a major weapon of World War II as many armies fielded large armored divisions or other units dedicated to mechanized warfare. Ion Degen was a Ukrainian-born soldier who first served in the Red Army as a volunteer in an infantry division. After recovering from a battlefield wound, he returned to service and was assigned to an armored train battalion. There were two trains assigned to protect certain sectors, and Degen was appointed as the commander of the reconnaissance units. While on a mission behind enemy lines, he was wounded for a second time. After

British tanks operated by Soviet crewmen in 1942

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Vulf (Wolf) Vilensky

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Forgotten Her es

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OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Dating Dialogue

What Would You Do If… Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

We are worried

ty, recommended that there should be separate seating at weddings and

grandmothers

weddings for the community but not for young people as this was an op-

writing to you

portunity for them to meet.

about the shidduchim

crisis

which is primarily with older single women ages 28 and up. We are seriously concerned with the situation, and perhaps you can find some solutions for this pressing situation which did not occur until recent years. When we grandmothers dated and our daughters too, young yeshiva men basically went to yeshiva and secular colleges preparing for their lives ahead. This took place until fairly recently. Today, this is not done enough. At the same time, young women are being educated in careers and find that there are fewer yeshiva men suitable for them as educated as they. And then there is the set-up. Years ago, you got a name usually from someone who knew you and perhaps your family. Perhaps, you did a little

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research, but for the most part, it worked. There were few divorces then. Perhaps, there is too much parental involvement. We might add about separate seating at weddings, the other popular thing now. When there wasn’t separate seating at weddings, many shidduchim at those weddings came about. A pertinent number of our peers

It should be noted that back in the ‘30s, the Agudah, worrying about the few frum people around, sponsored boat rides in the New York area so that these frum young people could meet. A few of our friends’ parents met that way. They married and raised beautiful families whose children and grandchildren and so on continued the frum life. Many of those parents were instrumental in setting up day schools. So what is happening today? Shidduchim can take a long time to be even suggested and even set up. In some ways, it is going back to pre-Holocaust times in Europe. We were really surprised to hear that finally after a date is set up, the shadchan sets up the time for the initial meetings. Really —it used to be the boy called the girl, certainly an icebreaker which helps to get to know each other a bit. We appeal to you to help to rectify this situation. Perhaps for kosher type meetings such as a time for friends of the chosson/kallah to meet and greet. A problem has been made for no reason that affects these young people. We appeal to you who are the ones most likely to find other ways for young people to meet.

also met their bashert this way. Those were indeed kosher meetings. Rabbi

With respect,

Joseph Breuer, of blessed memory, the head of the German communi-

A group of grandmothers

Disclaimer: This column is not intended to diagnose or otherwise conclude resolutions to any questions. Our intention is not to offer any definitive conclusions to any particular question, rather offer areas of exploration for the author and reader. Due to the nature of the column receiving only a short snapshot of an issue, without the benefit of an actual discussion, the panel’s role is to offer a range of possibilities. We hope to open up meaningful dialogue and individual exploration.

Dear Readers, We want to offer YOU an opportunity to be part of the discussion! Please email us at MichelleMondShadchan@gmail.com, subject line “reader’s response,” if you would like to participate in the new “A Reader’s Response” columnist spot. We will send you a question and publish your answer in an upcoming Navidaters edition. If you have a question you would like the Navidaters to answer, please reach out to this email as well. Looking forward! Michelle, the “Shadchan”

Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, M.S.

The Shadchan Michelle Mond

ear Readers, As you may know, I put this column together, collecting the questions and answers weekly. Over the years, I have gotten many interesting questions from an array of different types of people. This letter was one of the most special ones I have received for the column. I first received this letter via snail mail to my home address. I hadn’t published it for a couple of months after I received it since I didn’t have a digital version. A couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call from one of the grandmothers herself. I told her that it wasn’t published merely because I needed the letter digitized. She quickly found a way to get ahold of a computer and have it typed up and sent it so the letter could be shared and their message could be conveyed. This group of heimishe grandmothers gathered together to write a

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ear Grandmothers, Thank you for bringing to the public’s attention several matters that need to be addressed as well as some historical context for shidduch efforts of the past in particular Jewish communities. I can attest to these facts. By reminding us of the way things were done in the past, you also lend support to some innovative efforts going on right now to promote dating in a more relaxed manner, rather than in the current manner which keeps becoming more and more formal with more and more “rules.” Having young people meet over select Shabbos dinners and at wedding receptions with shadchanim present as facilitators, as well as the shidduch lounge initiative, make for more optimized dating opportunities. There are other variations as well such as trips and recreational events developing by organizations and in communities. These need broader adoption. Our practices have begun to change slowly, and your letter helps effect that change. Thank you for bringing these important points to the attention of our readers. One final word: Those who have done the research say that the growing numbers of available singles in our communities are the reason we feel that there is a shidduch crisis. Much more effort

needs to be expended to help our singles find their partners. There is much awareness and growing action. Everyone has a share in that responsibility and that includes educators who now address the shidduch process and priorities for the individual future dater during the gap year and beyond.

curated space that is set up in a local venue and run by community members and shadchanim. The venue can be multipurpose, allowing for all different types of events. These are kosher, tzinius events that allow singles to be introduced in a kosher, curated way. Every event at a Shidduch Lounge is carefully put together based on specific ages and hashkafos to make sure singles are meeting the right types. There are many shadchanim present at these events to help facilitate. If you are a single in a community that does not yet have a Shidduch Lounge, I urge you to look into going to one of their events in Lakewood or New York. What would be most influential is to have this kind of concept in every large community. It is also crucial to note that the events held should be encouraged to prioritize older singles. We need as many opportunities as we can for older singles, in all categories, to meet each

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The Rebbetzin

handwritten letter to our generation because they see a tremendous flaw in the way our generation is handling shidduchim in general. I urge you to read these grandmothers’ sage words and make sure your rabbanim and community leaders read them, too. You won’t find anyone who can dispute the fact that our communities need change in this area. We have to be smart and creative, allowing for more opportunities for all singles. The good news is that there are some communities that are recognizing this and coordinating solutions. There is the concept of the Shidduch Lounge, which started in New York and has been wildly successful, and has now branched out to Toronto, Florida, and Lakewood. It cannot come to other communities fast enough, but to allow that to happen, we need community leaders and rabbanim on board. The Shidduch Lounge is a carefully

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The Panel

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OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

other in a kosher way. I would also encourage families to host singles of certain categories for meals together. Another important point brought up by the grandmothers is the topic of men planning for a parnassa. We have to be encouraging of solid, frum young men who decide to train for a professional degree or work, while also being kovea itim. There is no reason why girls should feel that the only option for building a bayis ne’eman is finding someone learning full-time “for however long it works out,” or indefinitely. That kind of koach and lifestyle is meant for a select few yechidim who are actually cut out for it. There are too many unfortunate scenarios where boys go into this kind of life unprepared, just because it’s the thing to do, when they are not actually cut out for it, which ends up being disastrous for the young couple. This is simply because the young men weren’t encouraged to follow the path that was actually the best thing for them. With the divorce rates of young couples as rampant as they are, it is impossible to ignore the elephant in the room. Forcing an entire generation of boys to do one thing is not healthy or conducive to anyone. There are a bunch of serious, smart, well-rounded young women who are looking for shtark, young men in the professional category. It should not be made so difficult for them to find a shidduch because of it. Although I could go on and on, for the sake of brevity, I will not. Just reading the letter will hopefully be food for thought and spark some change in our communities. May this be a year of an abundance of shidduchim and bracha throughout the world!

The Zaidy Dr. Jeffrey Galler

would like to give these grandmothers a great big hug (in a modest way, of course). Countless folks have been asking the same questions. Current practices in our

community have made it unnecessarily difficult for young men and women to meet and date. Let’s examine three subjects worthy of discussion. First, what can we do to make things easier for our kids? The good news is that things may already be moving in the right direction. Caring people and responsible organizations are increasingly sponsoring singles events and Shabbatons. WhatsApp groups publicize events for every age and hashkafa. For example, YUConnects’ “Circle the Dates” has over 800 members and posts singles events every week. Another great concept is the Shidduch Lounge ((https://w w w.shidduchlounge.com.) It originated in the Five Towns and has now expanded to Florida, Lakewood, Monsey, and Toronto. It is a relaxed way for singles to meet and socialize, much like the Agudah boat rides the grandmothers describe from the 1930s. Just last week, 500 singles attended a Shidduch Lounge event at the American Dream Mall. Clearly, we need much more of the same. We should encourage our synagogues and organizations to do more. Second, how will our children and grandchildren respond? There is a reluctance on the part of many singles to accept these overtures. Part of the problem is that many of our young people have been taught from an early age that virtually any non-shadchan-related contact with the opposite gender is religiously inappropriate. So how do we get shy singles to take advantage of these opportunities without fear of being ostracized? I don’t know. Long-established communal attitudes are extraordinarily difficult to change. And, sadly, some who may have a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo might be especially resistant to change. Third, how did we get into this mess? In a well-intentioned desire to promote high standards of tzinius, influential rabbanim and teachers have created an abundance of restrictions, rules, and warnings. In some circles, simply meeting and conversing with another eligible

person may be considered a serious infraction. The grandmothers who wrote this letter, and many of us with similar concerns, feel there is nothing inherently wrong with allowing young men and women to meet naturally. A wedding, engagement party, Shabbos meal, community event, chesed project, gathering of friends, college class, or workplace can be perfectly acceptable places for singles to meet. To be fair, our current shidduch system has been very successful for many. Baruch Hashem. Countless wonderful marriages have resulted from dedicated shadchanim and helpful folks making thoughtful introductions. They deserve our gratitude. We should preserve what works. But preserving a system does not mean we cannot criticize it, modify it, and add alternatives. If older singles are telling us that an antiquated system has become too cumbersome, restrictive, or dependent upon gatekeepers, we ought to listen. And if there are respectful, appropriate ways to create more opportunities for young people to meet, we ought to encourage them. Finally, what if you don’t agree with me? The group of grandmothers who sent this letter are asking whether our community can normalize natural, healthy interactions between eligible singles. My answer is yes. We can preserve traditional shidduchim while reopening other kosher avenues for young men and women to meet. Please note: Arguing with an opinionated grandparent who remembers “the good old days” is futile. Arguing with a whole bunch of us could be downright dangerous.

Reader’s Response Rivka Levy

ear Grandmothers, Your letter speaks the worry of so many both in the situation as daters and observers on the sidelines waiting

Today, in some circles, there can be so many people between the two people who are actually supposed to be getting to know each other.

for their loved ones to cross this milestone. Your point on educated women finding there are “fewer yeshiva men suitable for them as educated as they” are definitely resonates with those in throes of dating. The good news is that not everyone is looking for someone so educated, and secondly, secular education does not necessarily indicate intelligence or success. There are many transferable skills that yeshiva guys use in their careers. There are many individuals who have a knack for business or have an entrepreneurial spirit which they capitalize on. What seems to be more of an issue is the timing in which these men set out to pursue these endeavors. There needs to be a change within the system so that these men are encouraged to pursue a livelihood earlier and that they don’t end up so lost. Older single men who remain in yeshiva are in a world where they don’t really have a “makom,” and the phenomenon can sadly lead to a lot of angst and insecurity. The changes you speak of are societal and need to come from the Roshei Yeshiva of the world. It’s a systemic issue that shadchanim cannot solve. The suggestions for mixed seating at weddings is one that many in the shidduch world have advocated for. Both men and women look their best at a wedding, and it is an opportune time for such meetings to occur. I would go one step further and suggest that the baalei simcha make sure that there are people around to help facilitate shidduchim, whether it be official shadchanim

help build relationships and see how the couple handles difficulties together. Perhaps the solution is letting two people who are hoping to get married to have an adult relationship that requires them to speak about their differences, figure out if there are deal-breakers, and yes, even break up with someone themselves and not through a shadchan. Exercising these muscles prepares you to be in a marriage, and it starts with, as you mentioned, setting up a date. There could be an argument for doing these things for a 20-year-old, but your letter is specifically referencing 28+ and you could not be more correct in your worry. There needs to be more ownership of the dating from the singles themselves. The changes cannot come fast

So how do we get shy singles to take advantage of these opportunities without fear of being ostracized?

enough. You, grandmothers, can make a difference by encouraging those around you to move towards these steps. Be the change you want to see – you never know who it’ll impact.

Pulling It All Together The Navidaters Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists

people getting together in a kosher env ironment, meeting each other, talking, noticing one another. People meeting people. Friends introducing friends. Men and women being able to talk to each other. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have made normal conversation between single men and women into something almost forbidden. And I think that deserves some examination. Not every interaction between a man and a woman needs to be loaded with meaning. Not every conversation is a date. Not every introduction needs weeks of research before two people can say hello. Sometimes, people need an opportunity to simply be around each other and discover, “Oh. I like talking to this person.” I also understand your point about the phone call before a first date. There was something very human about the

people remained in marriages they might not remain in today. So I’m hesitant to use divorce rates as proof that marriages themselves were necessarily healthier. But your larger question remains: Have we made it too hard for single people to meet each other? I think in some ways, yes. And I think the answer may not only be “more shadchanim” or “more dates.” Maybe we also need more spaces where single adults can simply be human beings together. Shabbos meals. Events. Volunteer opportunities. Classes. Community gatherings. Yes, maybe even boat rides. Kosher does not have to mean disconnected. And perhaps instead of only asking, “How do we fix the shidduch crisis?” we should be asking the people actually living inside of it: What would make this process feel more human? What is getting in your way? What would help you meet one another? I would really like to hear their answers. Jennifer

Jennifer Mann, LCSW, is a therapist and certified life coach in private practice in Cedarhurst, NY and via telehealth. She works with individuals, couples, and families, and is a part-time school social worker at Bnos Malka Academy. Her work centers on anxiety, relationships, life transitions, and narcissistic abuse. She integrates attachment-based therapy, cognitive behavioral approaches, and relational work, grounded in the belief that healing and growth emerge through honest, attuned, and meaningful human connection. To set up a consultation or to ask questions, please call 718-908-0512.

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ear Grandmothers, I found myself nodding throughout your letter. I think you are raising something important, and I don’t think it should be dismissed as, “Things were different in our day.” Things were different. And maybe some of those differences are worth looking at. I work with singles, and I hear firsthand how frustrating the current system can be. There are wonderful shadchanim doing incredibly devoted work, and there are certainly benefits to having people involved who know the singles and are trying to make thoughtful matches. But I also wonder whether, in our effort to protect the dating process, refine it, research it, and make it more appropriate, we have made it so complicated that we’ve taken some of the humanity out of it. The boat rides you describe actually sound wonderful to me. Frum young

young man picking up the phone, introducing himself and arranging the date directly. It was a tiny interaction, but it allowed two adults to begin relating to one another as two adults. Today, in some circles, there can be so many people between the two people who are actually supposed to be getting to know each other. I think your point about education and careers is worth discussing, too. Women today are often highly educated, professionally accomplished, and exposed to a very broad world. If the pool of men they are being encouraged to consider does not evolve alongside that reality, of course that can create challenges. That doesn’t mean every husband and wife need identical educational backgrounds or careers. They don’t. But compatibility matters, and intellectual compatibility matters to some people very much. Where I would gently push back is on the idea that there were fewer divorces because the dating system worked better. There were certainly fewer divorces. But there were also generations in which

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enough of them, and very often they exclude the older age groups that need this more so. There’s a lot of work to be done in this area. Lastly, regarding how set-ups are done, yes there may, in fact, be too much checking out, but you also noted the high divorce rate. So perhaps checking people out isn’t the issue, but rather people are dating for way too short of a time, without actually building a relationship with this person. There is an invisible ticking time-bomb that they feel may go off if they do not get engaged by a certain date number. There is too much relying on a shadchan to have difficult conversations that

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or people who are great networkers and can help connect people at the wedding. You may be surprised to find out that generally the biggest naysayers for this idea are singles themselves for two main reasons: they have been conditioned to think there’s something inherently wrong with this idea and/or they just want to enjoy the wedding and not think about shidduchim at that time. I wish that the Agudah of today would tackle the issues of shidduchim much like the Agudah of the ‘30s. The good news is that there are “kosher” trips that have been organized like this by Rabbi Senter and by The Shidduch Lounge. The bad news is there aren’t

Mental Health Corner Sweet Dreams By Rabbi Azriel Hauptman Dreams have captivated and intrigued humanity for centuries, leaving us spellbound and mystified. The interpretation of dreams is a subject matter that is central to Parshas Vayeishev and Parshas Miketz, and the Gemara in the ninth Perek of Mesechta

Berachos delves deeply into the various types of dreams that exist, ranging from meaningless ramblings to profound revelations. Dreams are not only a reflection of our subconscious thoughts, but they can also be a powerful tool for self-discovery

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OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

and exploration. However, we may be depriving ourselves of the profound benefits of dreaming by not giving ourselves enough time to sleep. The price of this neglect may be far greater than we realize. To grasp the gravity of this issue, it is essential to understand the critical role that sleep and dreams play in our lives. Sleep is a complex process that unfolds in cycles, with each one lasting approximately 100 minutes. These cycles are composed of four distinct phases, with the first three being non-REM sleep and the final phase being the REM sleep. REM, or rapid eye movement, is a crucial period of sleep where our eyes move rapidly and our muscles experience low tone throughout our body, allowing us to dream vividly. This connection between low muscle tone and vivid dreams is paramount, as without this crucial muscle paralysis, we might inadvertently act out our dreams and cause harm to ourselves or others.

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The amount of time that we spend in REM sleep varies throughout the night. At the beginning of the night, we spend a lot more time in the deep sleep phase and we experience much less REM sleep. As the night progresses, REM sleep increases and therefore the ability to have vivid dreams increases as well. The power to remember a dream hinges on the precise moment of waking up, as one must be roused from slumber during a dream for it to be recalled vividly. Thus, if you enjoy sufficient sleep and your body naturally begins to stir, you significantly increase your chances of recollecting your dreams. You exist in a state of limbo, hovering between the realms of sleep and wakefulness, allowing your awakening mind to retain the essence of your dreams. Such restful sleep not only results in sharp recall but also leaves you feeling rejuvenated and energized for the new day ahead. No need for caffeine or other external stimulants to kickstart your day when you’ve had a restful night’s sleep! Alas, we find ourselves inhabiting a society that is chronically sleep-deprived. Our penchant for artificial light and other modern-day conveniences has afforded us the ability to carry on with our daytime activities well into the night, often at the expense of quality sleep. The recent introduction of digital screens has further exacerbated this issue, pushing our bedtime to even later

hours. Shockingly, studies have indicated that the average adult in the United States obtains less than six hours of sleep per night, with dire consequences for our REM sleep. This dearth of quality slumber unfortunately culminates in dream deprivation. The gravity of dream deprivation cannot be overstated. Recent studies have demonstrated that poor dreaming may be linked to mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. While the biological function of dreaming remains a subject of debate, there is no doubt that dreaming plays an essential role in refreshing our brains, consolidating memories, and processing our emotions. The implications of dream deprivation are far-reaching, and we must prioritize restful sleep as a cornerstone of our physical and emotional well-being. It is not uncommon for some individuals to experience difficulty recalling their dreams, even after a restful and peaceful night’s sleep. This phenomenon, in and of itself, may not necessarily be problematic. The hippocampus, a critical brain structure responsible for learning and memory processes, remains somewhat inactive upon awakening, making it challenging for some individuals to retain dream memories. However, the real issue arises when dream amnesia is a byproduct of chronic sleep deprivation, and addressing it could significantly improve our overall well-being. In conclusion, dreams are more than just fleeting thoughts in the night; they are a window into our innermost selves. Like a painter’s canvas, they reveal the intricacies and nuances of our thoughts and emotions. But without the right conditions, this canvas remains blank, and we miss out on the opportunity to delve deeper into ourselves. We must prioritize restful sleep as a fundamental pillar of our physical and emotional health, ensuring that we have ample time to enter into the realm of REM sleep. By doing so, we transform sleep from being perceived as idle downtime to a productive time that underpins our physical and emotional vitality. This is a service of Relief Resources. Relief is an organization that provides mental health referrals, education, and support to the frum community. Rabbi Yisrael Slansky is director of the Baltimore branch of Relief. He can be contacted at 410-448-8356 or at yslansky@reliefhelp.org

Thought

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School of By Etti Siegel

Q: A:

back means sitting on your hands while she makes the phone call or has the conversation herself. And sometimes, it means saying, “I understand why you’re upset. I would be disappointed, too. But I don’t think this is something Mommy needs to fix.” Will your child always appreciate that answer? Definitely not. There is one more thing I would add. When you do call the school, call to understand before you call to accuse. “I wanted to hear what happened from your perspective.” “My daughter came home very upset, and I’m trying to understand the situation.” “I know I’m only hearing one side. Can you fill me in?” Those openings make it much easier for a teacher to work with you. You may learn something that changes the whole picture. Or the teacher may learn something from you that changes hers. Does parent advocacy always improve a situation? No. Sometimes, parents step in too quickly and make a small problem bigger. Sometimes, a child is mortified that a parent called. Sometimes, the parent’s intervention prevents the child from developing a skill she was perfectly capable of learning. But there is something deeply important about a child knowing: If I really need my parents, they will show up. That means a lot. Know your child. Know what is appropriate for her age. Find out as much as you can about what actually happened. Think about the risk of stepping in and the risk of staying out. Then make your decision. Our goal is not to raise children who never need us, and it is certainly not to raise children who need us to fight every battle. It is to raise children who know we are behind them while they become increasingly capable of standing on their own. Wishing you a wonderful year! Etti

Mrs. Etti Siegel holds a MS in Teaching and Learning/Educational Leadership and brings sound teaching advice to her audiences culled from her over 35 years of teaching and administrative experience. Etti is an Adjunct at the College of Mount Saint Vincent/Sara Shenirer. She is a coach and educational consultant for Catapult Learning, FACTS Education Solutions, Brienza Academic Advantage, Yeled V’Yalda; is a sought-after mentor and workshop presenter around the country; and a popular presenter for Sayan (a teacher-mentoring program), Hidden Sparks, and the Consortium of Jewish Day Schools. She is a frequent contributor to Hamechanech magazine and The Journal for Jewish Day School Leaders and has a weekly column in The Jewish Home. She can be contacted for questions and comments at ettisiegel@gmail.com.

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Dear Trying to Find the Balance, This is one of those parenting questions where I wish there were a simple rule, but there isn’t. Should you advocate for your child? Absolutely. Should you call the school every time your child is unhappy? Absolutely not. The hard part is figuring out which situation you are looking at. Before you pick up the phone, you need to know three things: What is developmentally appropriate for a child this age? What actually happened in this particular situation? And what are the risks if I step in and if I don’t? A first grader who tells you, “Nobody played with me at recess” is very different from an eighth grader saying the same thing. A child who generally handles social situations well but comes home devastated one afternoon is different from a child who has struggled socially for years. A child who says a teacher embarrassed her once is different from one who has been coming home anxious about that class for three weeks. Context matters. I would start by listening. • “What happened?” • “What happened right before that?” • “What did you say?” • “What did the teacher say?” • “What do you think you could do tomorrow?” Those questions tell you a lot more than, “Do you want me to call your teacher?” Remember, you are hearing the story from someone you love dearly, but you are still hearing one side of a story. Children are not necessarily lying when their ver-

sion is incomplete. They see situations through their own eyes. So do adults! A child may genuinely believe, “My teacher yelled at me for no reason” and leave out the fact that the teacher had already asked the class to stop talking four times. Or your child may tell you something that makes you realize, no, this really does need adult intervention. Some children minimize the situation. If your child does that, when that child finally tells you something is wrong, pay attention. Other children come home every afternoon with a new catastrophe. You love them just as much, but you learn not to call the principal at 4:15 every day. Some children need a push to speak up for themselves. Others will confront anyone within a ten-foot radius and may need coaching in how to do it appropriately. Advocacy has to make sense with the kind of child you have and the child’s age. One of our jobs as parents is to gradually move from doing things for our children to helping them learn to do those things themselves. If your fifth grader believes a teacher misunderstood something, perhaps your first response is not, “I’ll call her.” It might be, “What could you say to your teacher tomorrow?” And help her practice. That is advocacy, too. You are advocating by giving your child the tools to advocate for herself. And sometimes the child tries, and it doesn’t work. Now you may decide it is time to step in. There are also situations where I would not wait for a child to handle it independently. Safety concerns, ongoing bullying, repeated humiliation, a serious academic problem that is not being addressed, or something that is significantly affecting a child emotionally requires adult involvement. Independence is a goal. It is not an excuse for adults to ignore something serious. But there is another side to this. Children need to experience some unfairness. I know. Nobody wants to hear that. They will get a part in the play that they don’t like. A teacher may misunderstand them. A friend may choose someone else. They may get a grade they think should have been higher. They may have to sit next to someone annoying. They may not make the team. If we rush in and fix every uncomfortable situation, we can unintentionally send a message: You cannot handle hard things without me. That is not the message we want to send. We want to say, I have your back, and I also believe you can handle things. Those are not opposites. Sometimes, having your child’s back means making the phone call. Sometimes, having your child’s

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Dear Etti, My daughter came home very upset about something that happened in school. She feels her teacher was unfair to her and wants me to call the school. I’m torn. Part of me feels that if my child is hurting, I should advocate for her. But I also don’t want to be the parent who calls every time something doesn’t go her way or teach her that Mommy will fix every problem. How do I know when I should call the teacher or school, and when I should stay out of it and let my child handle the situation herself? - Trying to Find the Balance

Health & F tness

Not Every Person Loves a Checkup. But Everybody Loves Free Ice Cream. By Hylton I. Lightman, MD, DCH (SA), FAAP

THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

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et’s establish something right from the beginning: I know your child does not necessarily want to come see me for a well visit. I’ve been a pediatrician long enough to accept it. Given the choice between spending an afternoon in my office or hanging out with friends at the pizza shop, I know exactly where I rank. Frankly, most adults aren’t much better. Nobody wakes up on a beautiful Sunday morning and says, “You know what would make today perfect? Going to the doctor’s office for a blood test.” How then do we convince children— and their parents—to actually come in for an annual well visit? I suppose I have two options.

The Horror Stories I Could Tell You Option one is that I could scare you. Every pediatrician has stories. The 9-year-old who walked into the office feeling perfectly fine. The 12-year-old whose mother almost canceled the appointment because “there’s nothing wrong with him.” The teenager who hadn’t been to the doctor in a while be-

cause she was healthy, active and doing great in school. And then, during an ordinary well visit, we notice something. Maybe it’s a blood pressure reading that doesn’t look right. A heart sound that deserves another listen. A growth pattern that suddenly changed. A lump that shouldn’t be there. A vision problem nobody realized was developing. Or perhaps it’s a symptom the child never thought was important enough to mention. Most of the time, these things turn out to be manageable. Sometimes, they lead to another test or a visit to a specialist. And every once in a while, we discover something serious; something that would have continued quietly if nobody had looked. There are children who have walked into a pediatrician’s office believing they were completely healthy and walked out with the first clue to a diagnosis that ultimately saved their lives. There. Are you scared enough yet? Good. Because I have a much better strategy. It involves ice cream.

Now We’re Talking At our office, after your child’s well

visit, we have a fully-stocked freezer of ices and Cholov Yisrael ice cream waiting to be taken by our patients. Real ice cream. Different flavors. Sprinkles. Chocolate chips. The works. We also have stickers, prizes and plenty of other goodies. I have discovered over the years that telling a 7-year-old, “Preventive medicine is an essential component of your long-term health” is not particularly persuasive. “You get ice cream afterward” performs considerably better. Amazing how that works. But underneath the ice cream – and I promise we’ll get back to the ice cream – is something I wish more parents understood about these appointments.

What Are We Actually Looking For? A well visit isn’t simply a sick visit without the sickness. When your child comes into my office with a fever, sore throat or cough, we have a specific mission: What’s wrong? What caused it? What do we need to do about it? A well visit is completely different

because I’m not looking for one particular thing. I’m looking at the whole child. How are they growing? How is their weight progressing? What does their blood pressure look like? How is their vision? Their hearing? Their heart? Their spine? Are they meeting the developmental milestones we expect for their age? What does the depression screening show? Then there are the things that don’t necessarily show up on an examination table. Are they sleeping enough? Eating properly? Getting physical activity? How are things going in school? How are they doing socially? Are there changes in behavior or mood that deserve a closer look? As children get older, the questions change. We start talking about puberty, anxiety, friendships, school pressure, sleep, screens and the many other things that become part of adolescence. Children change quickly. A lot can happen in twelve months, and that’s exactly why these visits matter.

Healthy is Exactly How I Want Them “But my child is perfectly healthy.”

There’s another part of the annual visit that becomes particularly important as children get older.

checkup, too. No stethoscope required.

Preventive Medicine With Sprinkles Yes, I could convince you to schedule well visits by continuing to tell you scary stories. I could remind you about

A well visit isn’t simply a sick visit without the sickness.

Part of growing up is developing independence. A good relationship with a pediatrician gives a teenager another responsible adult in their corner. Sometimes the conversation is about sleep or school stress. Sometimes it’s anxiety. Sometimes there’s a physical concern they were embarrassed to mention. Sometimes it’s simply an opportunity to ask a question they weren’t comfortable asking anywhere else. Those conversations are part of the

the things we sometimes discover and tell you that early detection matters and preventive medicine can save lives. All of that is true. But I don’t want children growing up believing the doctor’s office is a scary place you only go because somebody thinks something terrible might be wrong. I’d rather teach them something very different: taking care of yourself is normal. And it’s great to come to our office.

a board-certified pediatrician and the Medical Director of Suffolk Health Five Towns. He adores his patients and tolerates their parents. His life’s mission is to deliver quality health care to babies, children, teenagers and young adults so they bring their children and grandchildren (and great-grandchildren) to him. He loves what he does.

◦ Call us before you call your insurance company ◦ Our experts will help make the insurance process ◦ smooth and easy ◦ We work with all major insurance companies ◦ We take care of all paperwork

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You go to the doctor when you’re sick. You also go when you’re healthy. We check in. We talk. We measure. We listen. We make sure everything is moving in the right direction. Hopefully, I’ll tell you everything looks terrific and I’ll see you next year. And then comes the part your child has actually been waiting for. The delicious ices and ice cream experience. If it helps, think of our office as a Cholov Yisroel ice cream parlor that just happens to have some stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs hanging on the wall and medical scrubs are the uniform. Preventive medicine with sprinkles. Isn’t that sweet? As always, daven.

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Sometimes They Tell Us Things

Sometimes kids tell us things. There may be something your 15-year-old tells a pediatrician that he or she hasn’t told you. Before any parents become offended, remember what I said at the beginning: don’t take it personally.

THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME

Wonderful. That’s exactly how I want your child to arrive for a well visit. There’s a misconception that doctors are primarily here to take care of sick people. Obviously, that’s a part of what we do. But some of the most important medicine happens before anyone realizes there’s a problem. An annual visit gives us a baseline and, over time, lets us follow patterns instead of snapshots. One blood pressure reading gives us information. Several years of readings tell us much more. One height measurement is useful. A growth curve tracked over years tells a story. The same is true for weight, development, emotional health and so many other pieces of your child’s overall well-being. Most of the time, I get to tell parents exactly what they hoped to hear: everything looks great. This is a successful visit.

The Jewish Home | AUGUST 13, 2026

THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

Parenting Pearls

I’m Sorry By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

ne of the bedtime books currently in circulation in our home is titled “I’m Sorry.” The rambunctious puppy inadvertently knocks over his friends and creates chaos as he chases a squirrel. When the game is over, the puppy wants to play with his friends but finds they’re avoiding him. He has to apologize and make them feel better before they once again are eager to join him in a fun game. My little one enjoyed the book enough to begin reciting it by heart. It was rather cute hearing that high-pitched voice say “oops!” throughout the book. The story is probably easy for a child to understand with its simple language and colorful graphics. It’s also very relatable to adults who often find children making these types of mistakes. As humans, we all make mistakes. Children happen to be exceptionally talented in the fine art of mistake-making. Sometimes, it’s because they don’t know the correct actions, but other times, it’s simply a lack of self-control to behave correctly. Understanding how to respond to the many situations of childhood errors that will come up is a surprisingly frequent part of parenting. Additionally, during many of these situations, the parents themselves may have their own emotions – such as embarrassment or anger – that come up.

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Language and Development Kids lack an adult’s level of language. They can’t communicate at the level we do, and they can miscommunicate that much faster. What may be a minor discussion between adults can become a full brawl between children. Where an adult may communicate verbally, a child will quickly resort to yelling, grabbing or hitting. This causes many childhood conflicts that appear unnecessary. Children can also become very upset over seemingly minor issues. For example, how often do adults have arguments over their cookie being broken or being slightly smaller than their friend’s? Children are also cognitively less mature and fail to understand the world around them at an adult level. Where adults can see gray, children may see only

black-and-white. In situations where an adult can understand the other person’s viewpoint, a child only recognizes their own. It’s actually rather frustrating trying to speak to a child who can only see things their own way and doesn’t realize how wrong they may be. We can provide children with the language to help them navigate their interpersonal relationships, and we can educate children on how to make amends beyond the perfunctory “say sorry.” The goal is to help children learn how to state their needs, avoid fights and deescalate tense situations.

Attitude & Approach Parents may become very upset by some of the many talented errors their precious children can make. Children break expensive items in the house, they make tremendous messes, and they fight with each other. They can be disrespectful and act in ways that embarrass the adults around them. It feels too frequent that parents need to take a step back and think of how to address yet another childhood insanity. Having a healthy attitude and understanding of their child’s actions can help keep some of their child’s behaviors in perspective as they decide how to best address the current damage. There are many things that are obvious to adults but not to children. For example, parents consider it self-evident that a room full of glass and other fragile items is a poor place for a vigorous football game. Sadly, that isn’t so clear to children who will do exactly that and then be shocked when something breaks. Often, it seems that children think rules are only there because adults got bored and needed to make restrictions and not because there is a valid reason for that rule. Parents often assign specific intent to their child’s actions when really their child wasn’t thinking logically or at all. What seems intentional to us is often a lack of planning, understanding of the rules/situation, or self-control. Even when their actions are intentional, they still don’t completely recognize the full repercussions of their actions. Remembering this can often

help parents remain somewhat calmer when addressing the situation. Parents need to patiently and clearly explain the rules using simple language. With little kids especially, we need to limit the number of words we use. Don’t assume kids intuitively know we don’t throw balls in the dining room or color on walls. Instead, give them simple instructions: “Balls are for outside only.” “No balls in the house.” This is an appropriate time to mention the Mishna in Avos (5:11) that describes a person who is slow to anger but quick to calm down as pious. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to be the opposite. Parents should try to be patient with their precious youngsters and calm down quickly when they do become upset. In parenting, it is rarely helpful to hold onto negative feelings. Many of the things kids do could potentially make their parents upset. As challenging as it is, parents should try to remove their personal feelings from the situation and calm down before addressing their child. Obviously, a child should be removed from any danger immediately, but the more thoughtful chinuch lessons are best imparted when not seething in anger. In addition to calming down quickly, we shouldn’t hold their misbehavior against them in the future or hold a grudge. We certainly shouldn’t constantly remind them of their mistakes. It’s emotionally unhealthy for both the adults and the children and creates an unpleasant environment. We can encourage corrective actions. It’s easier to do things ourselves, but that often takes away from the lesson and the natural consequences that exist in this world. All consequences should be both appropriate to the child’s age and development and should match the level of the offense. For example, messes should be cleaned up by the child themselves. Par-

ents may need to assist depending on the child’s age and development. Children can do chores or some other means to pay back for damaged items. Our actions should reflect our values. The parents’ response should match the level of the child’s behavior and not the parents’ personal feelings or anger. For example, if parents become very angry when something is broken but react less severely when one child injures another, they are demonstrating a higher value to the broken item than to the damage caused to a person. Adults also make mistakes, and we can be forgiving of others and ourselves. There is a teshuva process to help us better ourselves and not to simply push ourselves down. People who feel low have trouble acting true to their potential, while those who recognize their potential can succeed. We set the example we want our child to follow. When we can be slow to anger, quick to calm, forgiving and understanding of others we have provided our child with a precious life lesson. Our children will naturally make many mistakes as they grow and learn to become ovdei Hashem. How we respond to their mishaps plays an important role in their chinuch and sense of self. It is definitely one area where we build ourselves as we build our children. We set the example we want our child to follow.

Sara Rayvych, MSEd, holds a master’s degree in general and special education. She has been homeschooling for over 15 years. Sara provides personalized parent mentoring services, addressing a variety of general and specific parenting concerns. She can be contacted at Sara.Rayvych@gmail.com with comments, questions or for private consultations.

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In The K tchen

Artichoke Chicken Recipe by Alicia Wilbur

By Naomi Nachman

know who is a winemaker. We made her fa mily’s favorite chicken recipe that of course includes some delicious wine. You can watch us make this recipe on my cooking show Sunny Side Up on Kosher.com and learn all the tricks and tips of this easy-to-make recipe.

Ingredients

Preparation

• 1 box of your favorite long, flat pasta such as pappardelle or fettuccine

• 3 pounds boneless chicken, cut in 1/8ths • Olive oil, for drizzling

Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Cook pasta according to the instructions for al dente and drain.

• 3 lemons, halved

3. Arrange chicken in a baking dish, top with leeks and fennel, juice of one lemon,

• 2 leeks, rinsed and sliced

salt, pepper, and 2 cups of the white wine. Bake until the internal temperature reads

• 1 fennel bulb, rinsed and cubed

165°F in the thickest parts of the chicken. Cube chicken and discard skin.

• 1 can artichoke bottoms • 1 teaspoon oregano • Sea salt, to taste • Black pepper, to taste

4. Combine chicken and vegetables with pasta in a large sauté pan. On low flame, add in artichokes and juice of remaining lemons, oregano, and salt to taste.

5. Drizzle with olive oil and garnish with fresh cilantro. Serve cold or warm in a bowl or on a plate. Pair with a fruity white wine such as the Herzog Special Reserve Albariño or Baron Herzog Chenin Blanc.

Naomi Nachman, the owner of The Aussie Gourmet, caters weekly and Shabbat/ Yom Tov meals for families and individuals within The Five Towns and neighboring communities, with a specialty in Pesach catering. Naomi is a contributing editor to this paper and also produces and hosts her own weekly radio show on the Nachum Segal Network stream called “A Table for Two with Naomi Nachman.” Naomi gives cooking presentations for organizations and private groups throughout the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan area. In addition, Naomi has been a guest host on the QVC TV network and has been featured in cookbooks, magazines as well as other media covering topics related to cuisine preparation and personal chefs. To obtain additional recipes, join The Aussie Gourmet on Facebook or visit Naomi’s blog. Naomi can be reached through her website, www.theaussiegourmet.com or at (516) 295-9669.

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• 1 bottle Baron Herzog Chenin Blanc

OCTOBER 8-14, 2026

I recently made this chicken recipe on Kosher.com with my friend Alicia Wilbur, who is the only fru m woman that I

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