Five Towns Jewish Home 10.23.25

Dear Readers,

Hoshana Rabbah is the culmination of the Yomim Noraim. We wish each other a “gutten kvittel,” hoping that we will all be written and sealed for a good year and spend much of our day immersed in prayer. But this year, Hoshana Rabbah took on an extra layer. It was a day filled with tefillah and hope, and it was also a day filled with joy and gratitude. One could not escape the significance of our 20 brothers and sisters finally coming home at a time that highlights the special bond and connection between Hashem and His people.

Watching videos of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers finally being reunited was emotional and poignant. Amidst the tears and the hugs, we saw true joy and happiness. As people who have been constantly thinking about members of our Jewish family being held in dark Gazan tunnels over the past two years, we wished we could reach through our phones and share in those jubilant embraces.

And yet, amidst the elation, we were all aware that our nation is still hurting. There are families who are mourning their children, their fathers, their brothers, whose physical beings are still being held in enemy hands. There are families who are missing their sons and fathers and grandfathers, who risked their lives for their nation and died al kiddush Hashem. There are families whose brothers and sisters and sons and daughters and fathers and mothers are bat-

tling their physical and emotional wounds, who spend their days in hospitals and rehabs trying to heal from the scars that mar their bodies and minds.

But even with the mix of emotions, we find the strength to be uplifted and carry on. And from where do we draw that strength and mettle? From the very ones for whom we have been praying over the past two years. From the one who came back after 738 days in the Gazan nightmare and shared that he actually kept Yom Kippur while being held hostage, for the first time. From the one who spoke about talking to G-d every night while staring at a crack in the ceiling – first asking G-d how He was doing and thanking G-d for the little things that he had before asking G-d to grant him freedom. From the one who shared that in Gaza he made kiddush or said Shema Yisroel or began to make brachos.

Perhaps we never would have realized how connected we would feel to a fellow Jew who lived in Israel but didn’t look like us or live near us or speak our language or share certain values. But what we have learned over the past two years is that our Jewish soul is so vibrant and connected that truly, despite what may separate us, we really are one.

Wishing you a wonderful week, Shoshana

Yitzy Halpern, PUBLISHER publisher@fivetownsjewishhome.com

Yosef Feinerman, MANAGING EDITOR ads@fivetownsjewishhome.com

Shoshana Soroka, EDITOR editor@fivetownsjewishhome.com

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Dear Editor,

There are moments in the life of a community when emotion must take a back seat to responsibility — when we must think not only about how we feel, but about what will happen to our families, our yeshivas, and our neighborhoods if we make the wrong choice. This election is one of those moments.

Zohran Mamdani is not simply another candidate. He is a proud socialist and a vocal critic of the Jewish community and of Israel. He has no real governing experience, and his agenda would take our city down a dangerous path — one that punishes success, weakens public safety, and erodes the freedoms that allow our community to thrive.

Many in our community are drawn to Curtis Sliwa. He’s energetic, outspoken, and says what many of us feel. But we need to face reality: Curtis Sliwa cannot win. Every vote for him only helps Mamdani get closer to City Hall. It’s a hard truth, but one we can’t afford to ignore.

Andrew Cuomo is the only candidate with the experience and strength to lead New York forward — and to protect our community from the kind of radical, divisive politics that threaten it. Yes, many still carry frustration over how he handled COVID and the way our community was treated during that time. But we must separate emotion from strategy. A Mayor Mamdani would be far worse — for our safety, our schools, our shuls, and our future.

This is not the year for protest votes or for sitting out. This is the year to vote smart, to vote together, and to make sure our voice is heard loud and clear. If we want New York to remain a city where our

children can walk safely to yeshiva, where our institutions are respected, and where our community continues to thrive — we must unite behind Andrew Cuomo. Our strength has always come from unity. Let’s stand together once again, with clarity and conviction, and protect the city we call home.

Sorolle Idels

Queens Jewish Alliance, chairperson

Dear Editor,

I don’t understand why every year before an election, the rabbanim and leaders of our community have to urge the people in our community to register to vote and to go out and vote.

Are people so uneducated that they don’t understand how important voting is?

Do they not understand that they have the power to decide the future of their neighborhood/city/state?

Do they not understand that if they don’t vote, other communities will head to the polls to vote in candidates who are on their side?

Do they not understand that politicians can see which communities/people vote (although they can’t tell who you voted for) and that they will obviously give preference to communities/people who actually vote?

Wake up! You don’t need your rabbanim and leaders to remind you EVERY year to register (if you aren’t registered yet, well, then, I have no words for you) or to vote.

Just do it.

A frustrated and confused community member

Continued on page 16

Dear Editor,

The “War of Redemption” is now underway in Israel. This newly named description of the war with Hamas is very telling. Netanyahu framed the previous Iran attacks as Operation “Rising Lion” based on the verse in Book of Numbers (23:24), “Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion.” Biblical intonations and verses are hinting to our pointed destiny. Hopefully, by the time this is published, Hamas will no longer be, or close to that. At the end of the day, G-d’s ways are hidden from us.

Steven Genack

Dear Editor,

Growing up, although I attended a local yeshiva, I was never able to fully grasp the Gemara. Every question, proof, step, Rashi, and certainly Tosafos was like navigating a maze, to say the least – mainly due to rebbeim going much too fast and jumping. Even the thought of learning it was scary, and thus, I wasn’t interested in learning, until it was too late: after graduating high school.

Since then, I immensely struggled to find a yeshiva program which could work with me to build my learning skills from

the ground up in a slow-paced, patient setting, but was continuously turned down, especially as I got older, with financial constraints being one main obstacle for me, along with the fact that I was technically in yeshiva before.

After literally 15 years of struggling to find the right place for me, I was about to give up, feeling hopeless, and I figured that I had to accept the reality that Hashem didn’t want me to learn. I thought that it was too late to learn how to learn, being that it’s almost universal for people to do so starting in their 20s. Being much older, I felt I lost my chance, and that it was too late for me.

Ends up, I was proven wrong.

I was flipping through this very newspaper, and came across an ad for Yeshivas Rebbe Akiva, run by Rabbi Manoach Gelbfish.

Without any delay, I contacted him immediately, and much to his credit, he was extremely accommodating to many, getting to work right away.

He couldn’t care less about one’s background. What mattered is that people of literally all ages, backgrounds, and current stages of their lives – and I’m inspired by a couple of the stories I’ve heard from participants – there with one common goal: to start fresh in learning how to learn, for no charge, at any stage in life.

Many years ago, I heard from a number of rebbeim that the Torah’s goal should be accessible to all, irrespective of level or ability to pay.

I extend a huge yashar koach and hakaras hatov to Rabbi Gelbfish for doing exactly that: finally making Gemara accessible to all, for no charge. Klal Yisrael desperately needs many more rebbeim like him within the Torah world at large!

His ad in this paper says it accurately: it truly is never too late to learn how to learn!

Please join us if you’re able to!

Anonymous

Dear Editor,

As an Orthodox Jewish woman, a mother of 8, a grandmother of 4 and a professional, who shops, cooks, serves and cleans up on and for yom tov, I take extreme offense at the excessive amount of Simchas Bais Hashoevas with full videos that are featured on different WhatsApp and other groups. I, and my fellow frum women, am not invited to any of these events with their pseudo famous singers and lavish buffets. I am not even remotely represented at any of the pre- or mid-yom tov festivities, nor is any thought given to the women and our integral role in bringing in the yom tov and running the whole operation.

Tznius is not only (if at all) about elbows and knees. Showing off events that are exclusive and not at all inclusive all day, every day, without end is insulting – to say the least. We’re at home feeding the family, putting the kids to bed and planning the next 55 meals! Be respectful and thank us, include us, show us and the next generation that the beauty of Yiddishkeit is for all to enjoy!

Esther Miller

Dear Editor,

I was touched by the Reader’s Re-

sponse in the “Dating Dialogue” feature of your September 26th edition. In response to the question of whether a divorced man should try to reconcile with his ex-wife, the featured reader said that he should. The reason: the reader himself had done so with his own ex. The discussion that ensued contained deep, difficult revelations of how that process proceeded and a very profound message about marriage and relationships with others in general. It appears to have been tremendous hashgacha pratis that this reader was assigned this question. In any event, I am thankful that it happened and that I was privileged to read this inspirational and instructive piece.

Deena Zivarts

Dear Editor,

While everyone is excited about Hamas agreeing to Trump’s demands to release the hostages NOW, or be doomed, I’d like to share something important related to this:

For the past year or so, I’ve been wearing one of those hostage pins nearly every Shabbos in shul on my suit jacket, religiously.

I don’t understand why I’m the only one who does so, being that we all care about the hostages and want them home. Moreover, people complimented how nice the pin looked on me.

While I appreciate the thoughtful comments on my looks, who really wants to wear that pin?

So until they’re ALL home, I’ll continue to be wearing the pin. Whether I choose to continue to wear it once they’re home, or a different pin, or no pin, is something only the future will tell me, but just remember:

The hostage pin is NOT a nice pin!

Sincerely,

Sole pin wearer in shul

Houthis Detain UN Workers

On Sunday, Houthi rebels detained more than 20 UN employees a day after they raided another UN facility in the capital Sanaa.

Jean Alam, a spokesman for the UN resident coordinator for Yemen, said that the 24 UN staffers were detained inside the facility in Sanaa’s southwestern neighborhood of Hada. Five of those detained were Yemenis; fifteen others were international staff.

The rebels released another 11 UN staffers after questioning.

For now, the UN is in contact with the Houthis and other parties to “to resolve this serious situation as swiftly as possible, end the detention of all personnel, and restore full control over its facilities in Sanaa.”

A second UN official said the rebels confiscated all communications equipment from the facility in Sanaa during the raid, including phones, servers and computers.

The detained employees belong to multiple UN agencies including the World Food Program, UNICEF and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Houthis, a terror group sponsored by Iran, have launched a long-running crackdown against the UN and other international organizations working in rebel-held areas in Yemen including Sanaa, the coastal city of Hodeida, and the rebel stronghold in Saada province in northern Yemen.

Dozens of people, including over 50 UN staffers, have been detained so far. A World Food Program worker died in detention earlier this year in Saada.

The rebels have repeatedly alleged –without evidence – that the detained UN staffers and those working with other international groups and foreign embassies were

spies. The UN has denied the accusations.

The crackdown forced the UN to suspend its operations in Saada province in northern Yemen following the detention of eight staffers in January. The UN also relocated its top humanitarian coordinator in Yemen from Sanaa to the coastal city of Aden, which serves as the seat for the internationally recognized government.

Looters at the Louvre

On Sunday morning, hundreds of visitors walked through the doors of the Louvre to visit Paris’s most famous museum. Thirty minutes after opening, thieves in yellow vests scaled a truck-mounted ladder to the second-floor balcony of the Apollo Gallery, home to the French crown jewels, among other treasures. Using an angle grinder to force open a window, they took just four minutes to enter the room, cut open two cases displaying Napoleonic jewels, grab nine pieces and flee back down the ladder.

The stolen pieces of jewelry had belonged to France’s royal families. A crown of Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, studded with more than 1,300 diamonds and 56 emeralds, was found damaged shortly after the theft on the escape route the four culprits took on a pair of scooters along the bank of the River Seine.

Experts are concerned that the other eight pieces will never be found.

The robbery was a clear example of how thieves have started targeting cultural institutions not necessarily for their prized paintings, but for artifacts that can be dismantled, stripped or melted down for their expensive parts.

Thieves executed a similarly daring raid on Dresden’s historic Green Vault in 2019, smashing their way into a glass case with an ax and making off with 21 diamond-studded Saxon treasures worth at least €113 million ($128 million).

Many of the treasures were recovered years later when five men were convicted of the crime, but some remain missing to this day. All five men told investigators they didn’t know where the missing jewels were.

“What we’ve definitely seen in the last

22 five to seven years is some more shift towards raw materials theft,” explained Remigiusz Plath, the secretary of the International Counsel of Museum Security, part of the International Counsel of Museums.

Plath called museums “a relatively soft target” compared to other highly secured buildings, such as banks. Museums have to balance security with the freedom to see and engage with their collections. “You can actually go in there, when the museum is open, and see it right in front of you,” he said. “And if you apply blunt force, just like a roof, you’re right there — there are not many thresholds to go through to have access to these raw materials.”

Some of the most notorious museum robberies have captured the public’s attention for their ingenuity or boldness. In 1990, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, two men dressed as police officers pulled off the largest art heist in history, with 13 artworks, including three Rembrandts, and a Vermeer, that have never been found. In 1911, the Mona Lisa skyrocketed to international fame when a worker from the Louvre hid the small Leonardo da Vinci painting in his coat and spirited it away for two years.

French authorities are leading the investigation into this week’s heist, though Interpol’s dedicated Cultural Heritage Crime unit may become involved if French officials suspect there is an international component.

French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said, “The French people all feel like they’ve been robbed.”

Fatal Cargo Plane Skid

A Boeing 747 cargo plane landing at Hong Kong International Airport skidded off the runway and into the sea on Monday, resulting in the deaths of two people.

Emirates Flight 9788, from Dubai, touched down shortly before 4 a.m. local time, according to Flightradar24. It “deviated from the north runway after landing and ditched into the sea,” Hong Kong’s civil aviation department said.

While skidding, the plane “crashed through the fencing” and collided with an airport security patrol car, pushing

the car into the sea, said Steven Yiu SiuChung, an airport executive. Two members of the security staff were in the car. Both of them, ages 30 and 41, died.

All four crew members on board the cargo plane were rescued and taken to the hospital.

The security car was “outside the fences” and patrolling a route around the airport’s northern coast and “definitely did not run out onto the runway,” Yiu said.

In total, 213 firefighters and emergency aid officers were deployed to assist, along with 45 vehicles and ships, per the territory’s fire service department.

Hong Kong was the world’s busiest cargo airport in 2024, per statistics from Airports Council International. The airport handled 4.9 million tons of cargo that year.

Trump’s Gaza Peace Summit

After addressing the Israeli parliament last Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke at a global summit in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he and representatives from around three dozen nations met to discuss the Middle East and Gaza’s future.

At the summit, Trump called on Arab and Muslim countries to normalize relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords. The president noted that there are “no excuses” to resist joining the Abraham Accords, asserting that Iran and Gaza are no longer issues.

“Declare that our future will not be ruled by the fights of generations past,” he encouraged leaders in attendance. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the old feuds and bitter hatreds behind us.”

“This is the day that people across the region and around the world have been working, striving, hoping and praying for,” Trump declared. “Nobody thought this could happen with the historic agreement we have just signed.”

Trump’s Middle East visit coincided with the beginning of the Gaza ceasefire, which led to the release of the remaining 20 living hostages. Trump has insisted that the war in Gaza is over, though Hamas has

delayed releasing all the deceased hostages, sparking outrage in Israel.

“Those prayers of millions have finally been answered. The hostages have been returned, and further work goes on…to save bodies,” the U.S. leader said. “Together, we’ve achieved what everybody said was impossible. At long last, we have peace in the Middle East.”

“After years of suffering and bloodshed, the war in Gaza is over. Humanitarian aid is now pouring in, including hundreds of truckloads of food and medical equipment and other supplies,” he noted. “Now the rebuilding begins.”

Trump, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani signed a document that would “spell out rules and regulations and lots of other things” regarding the Gaza truce, Trump said, insisting that “it’s going to hold up.”

Trump expressed his gratitude to the leaders of Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, three countries that played a role in mediating the conflict, as well as the heads of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Pakistan. Trump said the “final sprint” to the ceasefire deal started on the United Nations General Assembly’s sidelines, where he spoke with the leaders of eight Arab and Muslim countries.

Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, attended the summit and met with Trump. A PA may be set to eventually govern the Gaza Strip, according to Trump’s 20-point plan, despite Israeli objections. The PA has for decades supported terrorism.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not attend the summit. He attributed his absence to Simchas Torah. However, reports have suggested that Netanyahu did not show up due to opposition from Iraq and Turkey and for fear of upsetting his right-wing supporters.

Last Tuesday, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto was reportedly expected to visit Israel despite his country’s lack of diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. However, he and Indonesia’s foreign ministry have denied those reports. Subianto reportedly canceled his trip and denied planning the visit for fear of domestic backlash.

Stolen Gold

A woman is being charged with the theft of six gold nuggets stolen from the Museum of Natural History in Paris last month.

The gold is worth around $1.75 million.

The Chinese-born woman was arrested in Barcelona, Spain, trying to dispose of some melted gold, according to officials, and is being held in pre-trial detention. Famous for its stuffed animals and bone collections, the museum is home to a mineralogy gallery, from where the gold was taken. Police found an angle-grinder and a blowtorch at the scene. The museum’s alarm and surveillance systems had been disabled by a cyberattack prior to the theft.

“The thieves, clearly very experienced and well-informed, exploited a security flaw that had not been identified during the last audit conducted in 2024,” a museum spokesperson said.

Cleaners discovered the break-in when they arrived for work before dawn at the museum, which is part of the Sorbonne university and located near the Jardin des Plantes in central Paris.

The suspect was arrested by Spanish police last month on a European Arrest Warrant and handed over to the French on the same day, officials said in a statement. At the time of her arrest, she was in possession of around a kilo of melted-down gold. It is believed she was preparing to leave for China.

One of the largest stolen nuggets, originally from Australia, weighs 5kg. At the current gold price, it would be worth around $680,000.

“We are dealing with an extremely professional team, perfectly aware of where they needed to go, and with professional equipment,” Emmanuel Skoulios, the museum director, shared. “It is absolutely not by chance that they went for these specific items.”

The charges come just days after a separate daring heist at the Louvre in Paris saw thieves make off with priceless French crown jewels.

New Bolivian President

Rodrigo Paz will become Bolivia’s next president on November 8, following his electoral victory on Monday.

An obscure centrist senator and former mayor whose father was a president in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Paz

won Monday’s runoff with 54.5% of the vote, while his opponent, former rightwing President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, earned 45.5% of the vote. Paz is the South American country’s first conservative politician since 2005 to be elected president, following nearly 20 years of socialist rule.

Paz’s meteoric rise from relative obscurity to the presidency has been attributed to widespread dissatisfaction with the governing Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party. The MAS party

lost in the August 17 elections, allowing Quiroga and Paz to face off in Monday’s runoff.

Paz’s Christian Democratic Party secured a slight majority in Congress. As such, he will need to make some compromises in order to advance his plans, which include discontinuing Bolivia’s fixed exchange rates, ending generous fuel subsidies, and slowing down major public investments. To prevent sudden inflation or a recession, Paz has said his

Quiroga conceded soon after Paz was projected to win. During his concession speech, Quiroga said he congratulated his opponent and urged his supporters, some of whom have claimed Paz’s victory was fraudulent, to accept the results.

The U.S. State Department, for the first time in years, congratulated the Bolivian president-elect, adding that it was excited to help Bolivia “restore economic stability, expand private-sector growth and strengthen security.”

In 2008, then-president Evo Morales expelled his country’s U.S. ambassador. A year later, he kicked out the Drug Enforcement Administration. Since then, the two countries’ relationship has deteriorated. Among Paz’s many promises, he has said he would restore Bolivia’s relationship with the U.S.

Paz must address a number of economic issues to survive his first months in office. Bolivians have lost access to their savings since 2023 due to a crippling U.S. dollar shortage. Just last month, year-onyear inflation rose to 23%, a 34-year record. At the same time, the country faces serious fuel shortages.

Paz, whose slogan is “capitalism for all,” has proposed corruption crackdowns, a reduction in wasteful spending, and a potential solution to the U.S. dollar shortage by boosting confidence in Bolivia’s currency.

The Christian Democratic Party won six of Bolivia’s regional departments, including the Andean highlands and Cochabamba, while Quiroga’s party won Santa Cruz, a wealthier area.

free-market reforms would be introduced gradually.

Following his victory, fans cheered, gathering in the streets of Bolivia’s capital, La Paz. People honked their car horns and set off fireworks, with others chanting, “The people, united, will never be defeated!”

Standing together with his wife and four adult children, Paz declared, “Today, Bolivia can be certain that this will be a government that will bring solutions.”

Paz’s running mate was Capt. Edman Lara, a cop-turned-social media star. Lara, who has no political experience, was fired from the police department after condemning corruption on social media. Some of Lara’s promises, including universal income for women and higher pensions for retirees, conflict with Paz’s goals.

AfghanistanPakistan Ceasefire

Last Wednesday, Afghanistan and Pakistan announced a 48-hour ceasefire deal after launching a series of deadly

attacks at each other. The ceasefire was extended on Friday and then renewed Sunday following negotiations mediated by Qatar and Turkey.

On October 10, targets were struck in the Afghan cities of Kabul and Paktika in what the Taliban has claimed were airstrikes launched by Pakistan. Islamabad has neither confirmed nor denied its role in the strikes, which the Taliban called “unprecedented, violent and reprehensible.” However, Pakistan’s Lt. Gen. Ahmed

Sharif Chadhry declared on Friday that there is “evidence” that “Afghanistan is being used as a base of operations for carrying out terrorism in Pakistan.”

In response to the alleged attacks, the Taliban retaliated against Pakistani troops stationed near the border Afghanistan shares with Pakistan. Pakistan branded the attack “unprovoked” and proceeded to retaliate with strikes and raids against Taliban camps. Both countries have offered very different death tolls. Pakistan has

bul, Pakistan has seen a rise in Islamist terrorism. The two countries share a disputed 1,600-mile border, which is often called the “Durand Line.” For years, Pakistan has accused the Taliban of offering refuge to the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) terrorist group, which poses a significant threat to Pakistan’s national security. The Taliban rejects that claim.

India and Pakistan, two neighboring rival countries, have long competed for influence in Afghanistan. For years, Pakistan has secretly supported the Taliban, despite the U.S. and NATO’s “War on Terror,” as Islamabad saw Afghanistan as a counterweight to India, according to Pearl Pandya, a senior analyst for South Asia at ACLED. However, Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan has apparently soured.

The Pakistani military said that the Taliban’s “serious provocation” coincided with the Taliban’s foreign minister’s recent visit to India, which New Delhi branded “an important step in advancing our ties and affirming the enduring friendship” between India and Afghanistan.

Saturday’s talks took place in Doha. The Taliban has agreed, as per the ceasefire deal, to not “support groups carrying out attacks against the Government of Pakistan.” Both countries agreed to “refrain from targeting each other’s security forces, civilians, or critical infrastructure.”

Sarkozy Begins Sentencing

said it killed over 200 fighters in Afghanistan and lost 23 of its own. The Taliban, on the other hand, has said it killed 58 Pakistani soldiers and had only nine casualties.

The clashes were the two countries’ deadliest in years.

During the fighting, U.S. President Donald Trump offered to broker a peace deal. Other countries, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, called for a de-escalation.

Since the Taliban’s 2021 return in Ka-

On Tuesday, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy began serving his five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya. Sarkozy is the first former president of France to be imprisoned.

The 70-year-old was greeted by supporters as he exited his home in Paris with his wife and got into a police car. The car then took him to the notorious La Santé prison, where Sarkozy will now serve his sentence in solitary confinement.

Sarkozy was convicted last month for criminal conspiracy in a scheme to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya. He contests both the conviction and a judge’s unusual decision to incarcerate him pending appeal. His

lawyers said Tuesday that they filed an immediate request for his release.

“It’s an ominous day for him, for France and for our institutions, because this incarceration is a disgrace,” Sarkozy’s lawyer Jean-Michel Darrois said.

In a show of defiance and while on his way to the prison, Sarkozy released a statement on social media declaring that “an innocent man” was being locked up.

“I will continue to denounce this judicial scandal,” he wrote. “The truth will prevail.”

Sarkozy told Le Figaro newspaper that he would bring three books to prison — the maximum allowed — including Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo,″ in which the hero escapes from an island prison before seeking revenge. His lawyers said that he packed a bag with a few sweaters because the prison is cold and earplugs because it’s noisy.

“I’m not afraid of prison. I’ll hold my head high, including in front of the doors

of La Santé,” he told La Tribune Dimanche newspaper last week. “I’ll fight till the end.”

Sarkozy has repeatedly said he is the victim of “a plot” staged by some people linked to the Libyan government and denounced the September 25 verdict as a “scandal.”

Solitary confinement implies that Sarkozy will never see other inmates and will spend most of his time alone in his cell. He will be allowed to go outdoors one hour per day alone in the prison yard and to get three visits per week from his family. Sarkozy plans to write a book about his prison experience.

Last week, President Emmanuel Macron hosted Sarkozy at the presidential palace, explaining it was “normal on a human level” to receive one of his predecessors in this context.

Sarkozy has been retired from active politics for years but remains very influential, especially in conservative circles.

Japan’s First Female PM

Sanae Takaichi was elected Japan’s first female prime minister by parliament this week. It was a landmark moment for the conservative leader in a historically patriarchal country where both politics and workplaces are dominated by older men.

Japan is facing sharp economic woes and fractured politics.

The 64-year old Takaichi, who is a heavy metal drummer and motorcycle enthusiast, grew up in Nara near Osaka. Her arrival at the pinnacle of Japanese politics tops a remarkable rise, from TV presenter to flag bearer of traditional and nationalist ideals.

Takaichi is a protégé of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and has laid claim to his conservative legacy. She becomes the fourth prime minister to hold office since he stepped down in 2020, reflecting the political deadlock in the world’s fourth largest economy.

Like Abe, she supports revising Japan’s pacifist constitution and has visited a controversial war shrine that includes the names of those convicted of war crimes during World War II – both issues

that spark anger in neighboring China and South Korea, who are also vital trade partners for Japan.

Takaichi admires Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to become British prime minister – known as the “Iron Lady,” a nickname that has since been used for Takaichi herself.

“Like Thatcher, (Takaichi) is a conservative and she is also a woman in a male-dominated world,” noted Shihoko Goto, vice president of programs at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“That said, Thatcher was then – Japan is now. It’s facing a great deal of change, it’s facing a lot of internal domestic pressure … She will be expected, first and foremost, to deal with those immediate threats.”

Takaichi doesn’t come from a political dynasty. She was born in Nara, a city frequented by tourists for its wild deer, to a father who worked for a car company and a mother who was a police officer. Before entering politics, she interned for a U.S. Democratic congresswoman and worked as a TV commentator.

Since joining the ruling LDP party, Takaichi has been elected as a member of parliament nine times. She has held multiple cabinet posts and chaired the party’s Policy Research Council. Most recently, she served as minister of economic security un-

der the administration of Fumio Kishida.

Tackling the high price of goods will be one of her first challenges; for instance, the price of rice, a staple food in Japan, has almost doubled from last year. There’s also the ever-present issue of Japan’s declining birthrate, shrinking workforce and swelling elderly population. There’s a growing public backlash against mass immigration. And then there is the Trump administration and its tariffs, which shook Asian economies earlier this year.

Takaichi’s new cabinet will also include a female finance minister – another first for Japan. Satsuki Katayama, who also worked as a minister in Abe’s government, was appointed to the role on Tuesday.

recent U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal, under which the remaining 20 living hostages were released, marks the beginning of a “new Middle East” and an “age of faith and hope and of [G-d],” as well as an “end of an age of terror and death.”

Trump declared that the war in Gaza — which started just over two years ago following the Hamas-led October 7 massacre — was over, with Israel emerging victorious.

“You’ve won. I mean, you’ve won,” Trump told the government of Israel. “Now it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.”

Trump Addresses the Knesset

Last Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a historic speech before the Israeli parliament, declaring that the

over our heads.” The president also briefly fantasized about a potential peace deal between Israel and Iran.

“Would you be happy with that? Wouldn’t it be nice?” Trump asked Netanyahu. “Because I think they want to. I think they’re tired.”

At one point, he praised the countries that are a part of the Abraham Accords, noting their loyalty, and said that other countries also want to join.

Trump then stated that Iran would refrain from rebuilding its nuclear program. Earlier this year, Israel and the United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities as part of the Jewish state’s 12-day war with Tehran.

Both sides of the Knesset gave Trump a hero’s welcome. He received many standing ovations, with lawmakers frequently chanting his name.

Trump was initially supposed to meet with some of the 20 freed hostages at the Sheba Medical Center. Although he ran out of time to do that, he spoke earlier with hostage families.

Trump went on to praise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for having the courage to accept the deal, touting the Israeli premier as “one of the greatest” wartime leaders and a patriotic man whose “partnership did so much to make this day possible.”

“The timing of this [deal to end the fighting] is brilliant, and I said, Bibi [Netanyahu], you’re going to be remembered for this far more than if you kept this thing going, going, going, kill, kill, kill,” Trump said. “I just want to congratulate [Netanyahu] for having the courage to say that’s it, we’ve won and now let’s enjoy our lives and let’s rebuild Israel and make it stronger and bigger and better than it’s ever been before.”

Trump praised other Israeli politicians, including Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who the president called “a nice man.”

The U.S. president went on to declare that the “world is loving Israel again” and said, in what could be a reference to an Israeli strike in Doha targeting top Hamas officials, that the Middle East likes Israel much better now than it did five weeks prior.

Trump called on Palestinians to “turn forever from the path of terror and violence,” declaring that “now is the time to concentrate on building their people up instead of trying to tear Israel down.” He made a similar appeal to Iran, declaring that “the hand of friendship and cooperation is always open” and noting that the U.S. and Israel “merely want to live in peace” without “any looming threats

In his speech, Trump joked that he would probably be very late to the Gaza peace summit in Egypt, which took place later that day.

Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke before Trump did, praising the president as “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.” Noting that, in the Jewish calendar, that day “marks the end of two years of end,” Netanyahu said Israel remembers that the war started with the October 7 massacre, during which Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and took 251 people hostage. He said Trump’s peace proposal would fulfill all of Israel’s wartime objectives and “opens the door to an historic expansion of peace in our region and beyond our region.”

“Mr. President, you are committed to this peace. I am committed to this peace,” Netanyahu said. “And together, Mr. President, we will achieve this peace.”

During his speech, Trump condemned Hamas’ October 7 massacre as “one of the most evil and heinous desecrations of innocent life the world has ever seen, and the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.” He noted that the war began on “Simchat Torah,” almost exactly two years ago, and declared that the U.S. stands with Israel’s vows of “Never forget” and “Never again.”

During the war, Israel went through hardships “that only a proud and faithful people could withstand,” Trump added.

At one point, Trump called on Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu for his three corruption charges.

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“Who cares about cigars and champagne?” Trump said in reference to the bribes Netanyahu allegedly took. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing.

Lapid, during his speech, praised Trump, as did Knesset Speaker and Likud MK Amir Ohana, who recited the blessing that is said upon seeing a king, and said that Trump will be remembered by the Jewish people for “thousands of years from now” as a “colossus who will be enshrined in the pantheon of history.”

“Mr. President, you stand before the people of Israel not as another American president, but as a giant of Jewish history — one for whom we must look back, two and a half millennia into the mists of time to find a parallel, in Cyrus the Great,” said Ohana, in reference to the ancient Persian king who permitted the Jewish people to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple. “What the world needs now are more leaders who are brave, resolute, strong, and bold. The world needs more Trumps.”

At the beginning of Trump’s speech, MK Ayman Odeh held up a sign demanding that the president “recognize Palestine.” Odeh, the chairman of the Arab Hadash-Ta’al party, was promptly removed from the room. Ofer Cassif, the party’s only Jewish member, was also removed after trying to hold up a sign. Following their removal, Trump commented, “That was very efficient.”

Trump concluded his speech by noting the hostage families’ resilience.

“I’ve looked into their eyes. I’ve seen the worst nightmares of their suffering, but I’ve also seen something else: the beautiful love of the people,” he said. “That holds things together — the love that gives you the courage to carry on through thousands of years of persecution and repression and to emerge with the heart of David.”

He went on to highlight Israel’s mi-

raculous existence as a tiny but mighty country.

“The [G-d] who once dwelled among his people in this city still calls us, in the words of scripture, to turn from evil and do good, to seek peace and pursue it. That is why, even after 3,000 years of pain and conflict, the people of Israel have never given up… You want the promise of Zion, you want the promise of success and hope and love and G-d,” he added. “And the people of America have never lost faith in the promise of a great and blessed future for all of us.”

“From the very first day that modern Israel was founded, we have stood together through thick and thin… We have built industries together. We have made discoveries together. We have confronted evil together, and we have waged war together,” Trump continued. “Perhaps most beautifully of all, we have made peace together. And this week, against all odds, we have done the impossible and brought our hostages home.”

“Now, we’re going to forge a future that is worthy of our heritage. We’re going to build a legacy that all the people of this region can be proud of — new bonds of friendship, cooperation and commerce will join Tel Aviv to Dubai, Haifa to Beirut, Jerusalem to Damascus; from Israel to Egypt, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, from India to Pakistan, from Indonesia to Iraq, from Syria to Bahrain, Turkey to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates to Oman and Armenia to Azerbaijan — another war that I just settled,” he said. “We are going to have hope, harmony, opportunity and happiness here in the spiritual and geographic center of the entire world… Israel, America and all of the nations of the Middle East will soon be safer, stronger, greater and more prosperous than ever before.”

“This has been truly an honor,” Trump concluded. “And I love Israel. I’m with

you all the way. You will be bigger, better, stronger and more loving than ever before.”

Hostage Families Recount Ordeal

After over 730 days in captivity, the final 20 living hostages were brought home on October 13. Since then, family members have described the physical and psychological torture that their loved ones endured in Gaza.

The newly released hostages were treated at Rabin Medical Center and Sheba Medical Center upon their return to Israel.

Idit Ohel, the mother of released hostage Alon Ohel, stated at Rabin Medical Center that her son’s vision deteriorated because he lived with shrapnel in his right eye and head for two years. Ohel will require surgery, though the hospital staff has faith that his eyesight can significantly improve.

“We always knew he had the emotional ability to survive, but honestly, his abilities were beyond anything we could imagine,” said Ohel’s mother.

Sheba Medical Center associate director-general Prof. Itai Pessach said that “every one of them has endured untold adversity and horrors, and therefore the road for recovery is going to be a very long one.”

Throughout their time in captivity, many hostages were relocated several times.

Newly released hostage Rom Braslavski’s mother, Tami, said that her son, from April to July, endured whippings and beatings “with things that I will not even mention.” But he endured it because he “knew it would end,” she said. At one point, Braslavski’s hands and feet were chained, she added.

Tami Braslavski shared that her son’s captors tried pushing him to convert to Islam, promising him more food and more humane conditions if he did so, but he refused. The terrorists also lied to him about Israel’s death toll and damages.

“They told him that we were broken, that we didn’t have the strength to get up and protest,” Tami Braslavski said. “That

he apparently wasn’t so important and that he had nowhere to go back to. They told him Israel had fallen, that almost 3,000 soldiers had fallen.”

Braslavski, who had his hands and feet tied and was given just half a pita each evening, once found a way to set a book and his captor’s uniform on fire. He then used that fire to cook pasta, his mother explained. After the smoke caught people’s attention, the terrorists relocated him to a place that was slightly better.

Yaron, the father of Avinatan Or, said that his son was held alone for two years. When he tried to escape, he was handcuffed and thrown into a cage.

“Avinatan tried to escape from captivity, and then they beat him,” Yaron said in a statement to Kan radio. “He was handcuffed to the bars. It was a barred place 1.8 meters [six feet] high, and the length of it was the length of the mattress, plus a little. You can call it a cage.”

Or’s father added that his son spent the entirety of his captivity in a tunnel, noting that he was not starved “but the food was scarce. He is very thin.”

Segev Kalfon’s father, Kobi, tearfully described the torture his son endured for two years.

Shortly before he was released, Yosef-Haim Ohana was put into a tiny underground pit along with six other hostages.

“[Their captors] put seven men in a pit,” Rabbi Avi Ohana, the hostage’s father, told Kan Moreshet radio. “They could not sit, only lean against the wall while standing. He lacked oxygen. I thank G-d, Who made him strong. What kept him going was his family.”

During Ohana’s captivity, he and another hostage were forced to listen to a radio playing Muslim religious messages, according to Ohana’s father. The two hostages wound up manipulating the radio and tuning into Israeli army radio, where Ohana heard his father in an interview.

“He said to himself, ‘My father is alive! He is waiting for me!’ and it gave him new life,” Ohana’s father said.

Nimrod Cohen also endured unspeakable torture, his brother Yotam told Haaretz. But as soon as he was released, “I saw his smile and the sparkle in his eyes and I knew that it was OK and the same Nimrod returned,” Yotam said. Cohen had almost no idea what was happening in Israel, according to his brother.

“They tried to convince them to believe that Israel gave up on them, that the government didn’t want to bring them back, that the country wasn’t fighting for them,” Yotam shared.

Cohen was beaten, blindfolded, and interrogated. He spent a year and a half in

a cage inside a tunnel, his brother shared, adding that they “treated him worse because he was a soldier.”

All 10 hostages being treated at Sheba are in stable condition, according to Pessach.

“As a physician and as a human being, I can’t emphasize enough the impact of being surrounded by their loved ones on the general well-being and their ability to heal,” Pessach said, adding that the hostages “will probably need weeks, months and maybe years to heal … but they’ll fi-

nally be taking the first steps to return to life.”

At Rabin Medical Center, five hostages were being treated for “severe but treatable nutrition problems,” according to the hospital director of nursing, Dr. Michal Steinman.

“The body remembers those 700-plus days of captivity and starvation,” Steinman said.

“Medically, right now, we don’t have any surprises,” she said. “The hostages

expressed their relief and joy that their nightmare is over.

Gali and Ziv Berman — twin brothers who were held separately — were reunited on Monday.

“We didn’t know where [the other twin] was. Suddenly, they brought him out,” Gali explained in a meeting with President Isaac Herzog.

“It’s up to us to ensure that the new home we build here will be a complete home, that it will be a safe home, in the deepest sense of the word,” Ohel’s mother stated.

Meanwhile, during a statement to the press, Sylvia Cunio, the mother of freed hostages David and Ariel Cunio, stood before a podium, pumped her first, and declared, “My children are home!”

Also released were Bar Kupershtein, 23, Eitan Horn, 38, Eitan Mor, 25, Elkana Bohbot, 36, Evyatar David, 24, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 24, Maxim Herkin, 37, Matan Angrest, 22, Matan Zangauker, 25, and Omri Miran, 48.

Trump Threatens Hamas

Last Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump warned Hamas to disarm or else “we will disarm them, perhaps violently” and urged the terrorist organization to release the remaining deceased hostages.

“We have told them we want them to disarm, and they will disarm. And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently, but they will disarm,” Trump declared. “Do you understand me? … They will disarm.”

interact, they smile. They came with a big drive to heal, recover and rehabilitate.”

Steinman added that she feels “very optimistic” about the hostages’ recovery. She noted, “It’s going to be a very long road, and there are going to be ups and downs, but I think each one of them developed really special techniques of survival and how to keep their mind and soul guarded.”

In addition to the accounts of torture, the hostages and their families also

On Monday, Trump floated the idea of Israeli troops returning to “eradicate” Hamas if the terror group does not comply with the deal.

Two weeks ago, Trump sent U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-inlaw Jared Kushner to meet with Hamas officials, including the terror group’s lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, in Sharm elSheikh to give the group the U.S.’s guarantee that Israel will cooperate with the ceasefire.

On Monday, October 13, the remaining 20 living hostages were freed from

40 Gaza, following two years of captivity. Their release came a few days after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire began. According to the deal, Hamas was also required to release all the murdered hostages, which the terror group has yet to do, though the deal offers some leeway in case Hamas has difficulty locating some of the remains. Hamas has thus far released the bodies of 13 out of 28 hostages, and Israel has said the terror group is lying about its alleged inability to access or find the remaining 15 abductees.

Trump has declared on Truth Social that the deal’s “phase two” has begun. As part of phase two, Hamas must disarm, Gaza’s reconstruction would begin, and issues regarding governance would be addressed. The Strip’s reconstruction is expected to be led by a transitional government of Palestinian technocrats supervised by Trump’s Board of Peace, which will include former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and other important figures.

However, Hamas hasn’t yet agreed to phase two. Instead, the terror group has insisted on negotiating its disarmament.

Last Tuesday, Trump also told the press that Hamas misled meditators about the number of deceased hostages it would be able to release.

“We were told they had 26, 24 dead hostages… and it seems as though they don’t have that because we’re talking about a much lesser number,” Trump said.

Since the ceasefire went into effect, Hamas has executed at least 33 alleged “collaborators.” Trump said he does not have an issue with Hamas’s crackdown on gangs, as he gave the terror group “approval for a period of time” to police “problems” in Gaza.

Still Waiting for More

A few days after the ceasefire went into effect, the remaining 20 living hostages were brought home following two years of captivity. As per the same deal, Hamas agreed to release the bodies of the remaining hostages but has failed to do so. As of Monday, the terror group has only released 13 deceased hostages, claiming that they are having trouble finding or accessing the rest, which Israel believes is a lie.

The remains of 15 hostages, including two foreign nationals, still remain in Gaza. They are: Tamir Adar; Sahar Baruch; Itay Chen; Amiram Cooper; Oz Daniel; Meny Godard; Hadar Goldin; Ran Gvili; Asaf Hamami; Joshua Loitu Mollel; Omer Neutra; Dror Oz; Sudthisak Rinthalak; Lior Rudaeff; and Arie Zalmanowicz.

Tamir Adar, 38, a family man who loved nature and people, was murdered on October 7, 2023, during the Hamasled attacks in southern Israel. Adar died in Kibbutz Nir Oz while fighting Hamas terrorists alongside the local security team, and his body was taken to Gaza. His death was confirmed in January 2024. His family has sat shiva but has yet to hold a funeral. His mother, Yael, wrote: “We have been doing everything in our power to bring Tamir home to be buried here, in the land he loved, the land

of Nir Oz. Tamir is worthy of this. Tamir believed that he was doing the right thing because we are all responsible for each other.”

Sahar Baruch, 24 — a chess, anime, and science fiction fanatic remembered by his aunt as sharp, smart, and funny — was kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri. On October 7, he and his brother, Edan, escaped their house, which Hamas set ablaze. However, because his brother had asthma, Baruch went back into the house to get an inhaler. There, he was abducted, and his brother was killed. That same day, Hamas also murdered his grandmother, Geula. Baruch was later killed after the IDF mistakenly found him during a failed rescue attempt; Israeli troops were trying to rescue Noa Argamani but accidentally found Baruch instead, and he tragically died in the gunfight that ensued.

Staff Sgt. Itay Chen, 19, a U.S. national, was murdered on October 7 while defending the Gaza border. He was killed along with Sgt. Tomer Leibovitz and Cpt. Daniel Perez. Terrorists took Chen’s and Perez’s bodies to Gaza. Perez’s remains were brought home last week. Matan Angrest, who was abducted alongside them, was freed alive last week and has said he is “ready to go into Gaza right now and bring [Chen] back.” Chen’s family has said they will not sit shiva for him until they get the chance to bury him.

Amiram Cooper, 85 — who was described as a man of ideas and a gentle, warm father — was kidnapped with his wife Nurit, who was freed 16 days after October 7. The IDF suspects he was shot dead in early 2024. His family sat shiva for him but are waiting for his body to be returned so he can be buried.

Oz Daniel, 19, was murdered on October 7 while fighting Hamas terrorists near the southern border. The terrorists then brought his body to Gaza. In February 2024, his death was confirmed, and his family sat shiva and held a funeral for him. His mother, Meirav, has said that she cannot grieve him until his body is returned, as she still has some hope that he is still alive.

Meny Godard, 73 — a dedicated member of his kibbutz and a lover of sports, the ocean, and people — and his wife, Ayelet, were killed on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Kibbutz Be’eri. A few weeks later, a funeral was held for both of them, although only Ayelet was buried.

Hadar Goldin, 23, has been held in Gaza since his murder in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge. He died with Oron Shaul, whose body was recovered in January 2025.

Ran Gvili, 24, was murdered and abducted on October 7 while defending

Kibbutz Alumim. That morning, he was at the hospital because he had a surgery scheduled. When he heard about the attack, he left to help defend the southern border communities. His last known contact was a text to a friend saying he had been shot in the leg. His death was confirmed in January 2024.

Col. Asaf Hamami, 40 — who was described as a funny and witty person who loved his family deeply — was killed on October 7 while battling terrorists in Kibbutz Nirim. His remains were then taken to Gaza. The IDF notified his family of his death in December 2023. His family held a funeral for him.

Joshua Loitu Mollel, 21 — an agriculture intern from Tanzania who had a passion for farming and dreamed of opening an agricultural business upon his return home — was abducted from Kibbutz Nahal Oz and was murdered immediately thereafter. His family was notified of his death in December 2023.

Cpt. Omer Neutra, 21 — an American lone soldier who was described as a dedicated and courageous leader — was murdered and abducted on October 7 while fighting terrorists near Kibbutz Nir Oz. His death was confirmed in December 2024.

Dror Or, 48 — who was described as a talented culinary producer and a family man who loved peace — was killed and kidnapped on October 7 after Hamas terrorists invaded his home in Kibbutz Be’eri. His wife, Yonat, was also killed. His children, Noam and Alma, were taken hostage alive and were freed in November 2023. His death was confirmed in May 2024.

Sudthisak Rinthalak, 42 — an agricultural worker from Thailand who worked in Kibbutz Be’eri to support his struggling family — was murdered on October 7 while on the job.

Lior Rudaeff, 61 — who was described as a direct, dedicated, and caring man with a big heart and a dark sense of humor — was murdered by terrorists near his home in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. He was killed while assisting his kibbutz’s rapid response team, and his body was brought to Gaza. His death was confirmed in May 2024.

Arie Zalmanowicz, 85 — who was described by his family as a modest and playful man with a mischievous toughness — was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7. About a month later, around November 17, 2023, he died while in captivity. His death was confirmed in December 2023 after a rescued hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, testified that Zalmanowicz died of malnutrition, neglect, and lack of treatment for his diabetes. In the days before he died, Zalmanowicz spoke in depth about his family. His family sat

shiva for him but are waiting for his remains to hold a funeral.

Israelis Have 4th Highest Life Expectancy

According to data released by the Health Ministry, Israelis are expected to live 83.8 years – the fourth highest life expectancy in countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and all other countries around the world, according to the OECD’s latest report.

Data from 2023 contributed to the report.

Japan came in number one on the list with 84.1 years, Switzerland with 84.3 years, and Spain with 84 years.

The report indicated a dramatic rise in life expectancy in Israel between 2022 and 2023 among both women (from 84.8 to 85.7 years) and men (from 80.7 to 81.7 years).

This is an “extraordinary increase,” the ministry said, “that has only been observed in a limited number of countries, including the USA, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Estonia.”

Among the report’s most striking findings is that Israel comes in second after Switzerland with the lowest preventable mortality rate among OECD countries, at 134 deaths per 100,000 people. This places Israel among a small group of OECD countries that are characterized by both low health spending and a lower-than-average preventable mortality rate.

According to the data, Israel devotes 7.6 percent of its GDP to health, a significantly smaller proportion than European countries such as Germany (12.3%), Austria and Switzerland (11.8% each), and France (11.5%).

The infant mortality rate is also lower than the OECD average, and stands at only 2.7 per 100,000 births, despite existing gaps between different groups in the population, the Ministry said. It attributed that statistic to a “focused investment in increasing public awareness and promoting access to genetic testing.”

The decrease in the mortality rate from 170 per 100,000 people in 2010

to 134 per 100,000 people in 2023 reflects Israel’s success in promoting public health and primary prevention, along with providing quality and accessible health services, including timely emergency care, the ministry said.

Since 2015, death from heart disease has also decreased in Israel. The current rate is only 49.4 deaths per 100,000 people, among the lowest in the OECD. The ministry said this indicates “an improvement in prevention policies, quality of care, and accessibility to medical services.”

Still, Israelis face health challenges. Approximately 16% of all Israelis are smokers, which contributes to around 8,000 deaths per year. Despite a downward trend in the last decade, the decline in smoking in Israel has been slower and less consistent than in most OECD countries.

Typhoon Hits Alaska

Last week, Typhoon Halong hit Alaska’s western coast, bringing with it damaging winds and a powerful surge of six feet of water. Rescue crews airlifted hundreds of people out of remote areas, as authorities worked to shelter survivors and restore power and water services to hard-hit communities.

Hundreds of people were displaced as the water pushed homes off their foundations and into the sea.

One woman in the rural village of Kwigillingok was killed and two people were listed as missing.

In the aftermath of the storm, officials launched one of the state’s largest rescue missions in recent history. On October 15, Alaska National Guard troops airlifted 300 residents from a shelter in Bethel that had reached capacity. Survivors were taken to warm shelters in Anchorage and other cities that avoided the worst impacts of the storm.

“We’ve confirmed that a number of homes cannot be reoccupied, even with

emergency repairs, and that infrastructure has been compromised in several communities,” said Mark Roberts, a commander at the State Emergency Operations Center. “Our focus now is making sure people are safe, warm, and cared for while we work with our partners to restore essential services.”

The hardest-hit parts of the state were in the remote communities of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, which have a combined population of about 1,150 people. Residents whose homes were destroyed were evacuated to Bethel, the largest city in western Alaska, but shelters quickly filled up, requiring hundreds of people to be moved elsewhere.

Rescue operations were carried out with Blackhawk helicopters and other military aircraft. Along with the state’s National Guard, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, the Alaska Organized Militia, the Red Cross and the U.S. Coast Guard were participating in the rescue effort.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said on X that President Donald Trump was monitoring the situation.

Nestle to Cut Jobs

Nestle announced last week that it would be cutting 16,000 jobs over the next two years as it seeks to “substantially” reduce costs under its new CEO Philipp Navratil.

Navratil has established a new goal to achieve cost savings of 3 billion Swiss francs by the end of 2027, which is higher than its previous target.

“As Nestle moves forward, we will be rigorous in our approach to resource allocation, prioritizing the opportunities and businesses with the highest potential returns,” Navratil said.

Navratil became chief executive of the largest packaged food company just a month ago. He said the company needs to “do more and move faster to accelerate” its growth momentum. To do this, Navratil said Nestle is looking to be “bolder in investing at scale” and to leverage innovation to spur growth and boost value.

“We are fostering a culture that embraces a performance mindset, that does

not accept losing market share, and where winning is rewarded,” he said, adding that the actions the company is making, including reducing its headcount, “will secure Nestle’s future as a leader in our industry” while delivering shareholder value.

Since taking over, Navratil has been working to set the company on a path toward growth after a turbulent year in which former CEO Laurent Freixe was ousted less than a year after his appointment.

Freixe’s ousting had been the latest setback for a company whose prior CEO, Ulf Mark Schneider, stepped down voluntarily due to underperformance concerns.

Peanuts are Part of the Cure

A decade ago, a study proved that feeding peanut products to babies could prevent allergies. Now, new research upholds that study and highlights how the change made a big difference in the real world.

In 2015, pediatricians began to urge parents to introduce peanut products to babies as young as four months. Since, peanut allergies began to decline in the U.S. The rate of peanut allergies in children ages 0 to 3 fell by more than 27% after guidance for high-risk kids was first issued in 2015, and by more than 40% after the recommendations were expanded in 2017.

The new study was published on Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics.

Dr. David Hill, an allergist and researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of the study, along with his colleagues analyzed electronic health records from dozens of pediatric practices to track diagnoses of food allergies in young children before, during and after the guidelines were issued.

“I can actually come to you today and say there are less kids with food allergy today than there would have been if we hadn’t implemented this public health effort,” he noted.

About 60,000 children have avoided food allergies since 2015, including 40,000 children who otherwise would have developed peanut allergies. Still, about 8% of children are affected by food allergies, including more than 2% with a peanut allergy.

Peanut allergy is caused when the body’s immune system mistakenly identifies proteins in peanuts as harmful and releases chemicals that trigger allergic symptoms, including hives, respiratory symptoms and, sometimes, life-threatening anaphylaxis.

For decades, doctors had recommended delaying feeding children peanuts and other foods likely to trigger allergies until age 3. But in 2015, Gideon Lack at King’s College London published the groundbreaking Learning Early About Peanut Allergy, or LEAP, trial.

Lack and colleagues showed that introducing peanut products in infancy reduced the future risk of developing food allergies by more than 80%. Later analysis showed that the protection persisted in about 70% of kids into adolescence.

The new study emphasizes the current guidance, updated in 2021, which calls for introducing peanuts and other major food allergens between four and six months, without prior screening or testing, Hill said. Parents should consult their pediatricians with any questions.

Tennessee Plant Explosion

Accurate Energetic System, an ammunition procession plant near McEwen, Tennessee, exploded on Friday at around 7:45 a.m., killing all 16 people inside the facility. Locals from the small Tennessee county gathered outside the Humphreys County Courthouse for a candlelit vigil to mourn the victims.

Authorities have vowed to investigate the blast and have said it could take days to determine the cause of the incident.

The plant manufactures military and demolition explosives. The blast was felt as far as 15 miles away and scattered debris over half a square mile.

On Monday, officials identified the victims as Jason Adams, Erick Anderson, Billy Baker, Adam Boatman, Christopher Clark, Mindy Clifton, James Cook, Reyna Gillahan, LaTeisha Mays, Jeremy Moore, Melinda Rainey, Melissa Stanford, Trenton Stewart, Rachel Woodall, Steven Wright and Donald Yowell.

In the wake of the incident, loved ones issued statements, mourning and remembering the victims.

Emily Tate, Baker’s cousin, remembered him as “big and sturdy — larger than life.”

“He always had a smile and a hug for me, his ‘little cuz,’” Tate wrote, asking for prayers for Baker’s wife, sons, and grandchildren.

One friend described Clifton as “a big personality wrapped around a caring heart.” Another remembered her as a mentor.

Gillahan’s daughter, Rosalina, remembered her as “a beautiful soul — loving, strong, and always thinking of others before herself.”

Mays, a 26-year-old who was employed by Accurate Energetic Systems for eight months, was described by her loved ones as “the glue to our family.”

Moore’s mother, Ava Hinson, said her son was as “sweet as sugar” and her “little boy.” He started working in the munitions industry nearly 19 years ago, according to his father, Gary. On October 20, he would’ve turned 38.

Stewart was a 25-year-old pastor at a church in Waverly, Tennessee, according to his Facebook page. His fiancée, Katy Stover, said he was the best man she had ever known.

Wright leaves behind a wife and two sons.

Amazon Web Goes Down

On Monday, Amazon Web Services went down, causing outages across the internet for many Americans.

Hospitals said crucial communications services weren’t working, and teachers couldn’t access their planned lessons for the day. Chime, a mobile banking service, was down, too, leaving people without access to their money. Ring and Blink cameras, along with most smart home devices, stopped working.

AWS is one of a small group of cloud computing juggernauts that form the backbone of the internet, providing businesses with backend computing tools needed to power crucial parts of their daily

operations. That includes everything from storage to virtual servers that companies can use to develop and deploy apps without investing in their own hardware.

While other cloud providers exist, they lack the scale and reach of Amazon, Microsoft and Google. These three power the majority of the world’s cloud services, around 60% of the market, Roy Illsley, chief analyst at Omdia, said. But among those three, AWS is the largest with roughly 37% of the market, according to

research firm Gartner.

AWS has a customer base of 4 million. When it goes down, the impact is a huge disruption. According to estimates, the outage could have cost users billions of dollars.

“It creates a very large single point of failure that then impacts operations at warehouses, deliveries, people being able to sell their goods and services to websites,” Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, noted.

October 15, found that the 22-foot carbon fiber-made vessel was damaged on a previous trip and imploded because of an “inadequate engineering process.”

The report was released following the Coast Guard’s conclusion in August that the submersible imploded because of a number of issues, including inadequate design, improper maintenance, and a toxic workplace culture at OceanGate, the company that created the vessel.

The implosion killed OceanGate’s founder and CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French maritime expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, as well as Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood. Had Rush survived, he may have been criminally charged, according to the Coast Guard.

After the Titan disappeared, a search was launched. Days later, the search ended after the submersible’s debris field was found on the ocean floor.

On July 15, 2022, during its 80th expedition, the sub was damaged and passengers heard a “loud bang,” which was attributed to the vessel’s hull shifting in its metal cradle. Despite the damage, the sub went on three more trips that year. The sub’s pressure hull was likely weakened further due to freezing temperatures and other factors.

At 10,032 feet, the sub imploded due to a localized “buckling failure” caused by the damage. The passengers died immediately, as they were exposed to 4,930 pounds per square inch of water pressure.

Titan Submersible Had Poor Design

The Titan submersible imploded on June 18, 2023, killing all five passengers during a 12,000-foot deep sea visit to the Titanic’s ruins because of poor design and testing methods, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the incident.

The 87-page report, published on

“OceanGate’s analysis of Titan pressure vessel real-time monitoring data was flawed, so the company was unaware that the Titan was damaged and needed to be immediately removed from service,” the report noted, adding that the sub “failed to meet necessary strength and durability requirements.”

The NTSB found that OceanGate had no emergency response protocol, thus prolonging the search.

The board also found U.S. and international regulations for “pressure vessels for human occupancy” (PVHOs) such as Titan to be “insufficient to ensure OceanGate adhered to established industry standards.” Additionally, OceanGate, for years prior to the disaster, “leveraged

48 intimidation tactics, allowances for scientific operations, and the company’s favorable reputation to evade regulatory scrutiny,” according to the Coast Guard.

Titan was an unregistered, uncertified, and uninspected vessel, the Coast Guard noted.

Pres. Medal of Freedom for Charlie Kirk

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump posthumously honored Charlie Kirk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor.

Kirk’s widow, Erika, received the award on her late husband’s behalf. She tearfully thanked the president and spoke about Kirk and what he stood for.

“Thank you, Mr. President, for honoring my husband, in such a profound and meaningful way. And thank you for making this event a priority,” she said. “Your support of our family and the work that Charlie devoted his life to will be something I cherish forever.”

The ceremony, which was held in the White House’s Rose Garden, took place on what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday.

Just a month ago, Kirk, an influential Republican political commentator, was shot dead while addressing students at Utah Valley University. Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 and played a role in securing Trump’s second term in office. He is the first to be given the honor during Trump’s second term.

“We’re here to honor and remember a fearless warrior for liberty, beloved leader who galvanized the next generation like nobody I’ve ever seen before, and an American patriot of the deepest conviction, the finest quality and the highest caliber,” Trump said during the ceremony. “He was assassinated in the prime of his life for boldly speaking the truth, for living his faith and relentless fighting for a better and stronger America.”

Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, attended the ceremony, as he had visited Trump earlier that day.

The ceremony was originally supposed to take place in the White House’s East Room but was moved to the Rose

Garden because the crowd was “so big and enthusiastic,” Trump said.

When asked what she might have given her father for his birthday, Kirk’s 3-year-old daughter, according to the widow, said a stuffed animal and a cupcake, and added that her father might have liked a birthday surprise.

Though it was sometimes difficult to buy gifts for Kirk, the medal’s the perfect present for him, Erika noted.

She added that her husband might have run for president “but not out of ambition. He would only have done it if that was something that he believed that his country needed from his servant’s heart.”

She said she intends to continue the “mighty work” that began with Kirk and concluded that her husband’s story teaches us that “to live free is the greatest gift but to die free is the greatest victory.”

During his first term, Trump awarded medals to Tiger Woods, a golf star, Lou Holtz, an ex-football coach, Arthur Laffer, a conservative economist, Mariano Rivera, the Yankees Hall of Fame closer, and Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio host. Posthumously, he awarded the medals to Elvis Presley and Babe Ruth. During his second term, he is expected to give the honor to former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and Ben Carson, who was the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Trump’s first term.

Chess Grandmaster Dies at 29

Daniel Naroditsky, an American chess grandmaster who attracted a massive online following through his livestreamed play and accessible teachings, died at age 29.

Naroditsky served as head coach at The Charlotte Chess Center, a chess academy in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“It is with great sadness that we share the unexpected passing of Daniel Naroditsky. Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator, and a cherished member of the chess community. He was also a loving son, brother, and loyal friend to many,” the Charlotte Chess Center said in a statement attributed to Naroditsky’s family.

Naroditsky was the son of Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from Ukraine and Azerbaijan. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Naroditsky began learning chess at age 6, starting a journey that would see him earn the title of grandmaster – the highest title awarded by the International Chess Federation to the world’s top players – before he was a senior in high school.

Naroditsky’s talent was evident early: he won grade-level national championships twice, and in fifth grade became the youngest player ever to claim the California K-12 Championship. That same year, in November 2007, he earned international acclaim as the under-12 World Youth Chess Champion, establishing himself as one of the country’s most promising young talents.

Naroditsky earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University in 2019.

He loved to teach chess as well. The first of his two chess manuals was published when he was just 14, and he went on to become a regular contributor to Chess Life magazine and other platforms dedicated to the game. The New York Times hired Naroditsky as a chess columnist in 2022.

Thousands of people would watch his YouTube channel. His online presence brought the game to life for many, as he livestreamed games and guided viewers through key moves, making even the most complex plays approachable.

“Hop into my stream for great chess, good tunes, and an amazing community!!” Naroditsky wrote in his Twitch profile.

The International Chess Federation posted a statement mourning Naroditsky’s death, praising him as “a talented chess player, commentator, and educator.”

His cause of death has not been made public.

Trump Commutes George Santos’ Sentence

On Friday, President Donald Trump announced that he had commuted the sentence of former U.S. Rep. George Santos, who was slated to serve more than

seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to fraud and identity theft charges. Santos was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, New Jersey, around 11 p.m.

The New York Republican was sentenced in April after admitting last year to deceiving donors and stealing the identities of 11 people — including his own family members — to make donations to his campaign. He reported to FCI Fairton on July 25 and was housed in a minimum security prison camp with fewer than 50 other inmates.

“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump posted on his social media platform. The President said he had “just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY.”

“Good luck George, have a great life!” Trump said.

Santos had served around 84 days in prison. His account on X reposted a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social post on Friday.

During his time behind bars, Santos had been writing regular dispatches in a local newspaper on Long Island, in which he mainly complained about the prison conditions.

In his latest letter, though, he pleaded to Trump directly, citing his fealty to the president’s agenda and to the Republican Party.

“Sir, I appeal to your sense of justice and humanity — the same qualities that have inspired millions of Americans to believe in you,” he wrote in The South Shore Press on October 13. “I humbly ask that you consider the unusual pain and hardship of this environment and allow me the opportunity to return to my family, my friends, and my community.”

Santos was elected to Congress in 2022. After serving less than a year in Congress, it was revealed that he had fabricated much of his life story.

On the campaign trail, Santos had claimed he was a successful business consultant with Wall Street cred and a sizable real estate portfolio. But when his resume came under scrutiny, Santos eventually admitted he had never graduated from Baruch College — or been a standout player on the Manhattan college’s volleyball team, as he had claimed. He also had never worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

He also was not Jewish. Santos said he meant he was “Jew-ish” because his mother’s family had a Jewish background, even though he was raised Catholic.

Within months, he was expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives – with 105 Republicans joining with Democrats

50 to make Santos just the sixth member in the chamber’s history to be ousted by colleagues. He pleaded guilty to the charges.

As part of his guilty plea, Santos had agreed to pay restitution of $373,750 and forfeiture of $205,003.

“I understand people want to make this into ‘He’s getting away with it.’ I’m not getting away with it, I was the first person to ever go to federal prison for a civil violation ... I don’t want to focus on trying to rehash the past and want to take the experience and do good and move on with the future. Repentance is an understatement. I have been dealt a second chance,” Santos said on Sunday.

Big Beard

If you thought your husband’s beard was out of control during sefirah, consider Rudolf Martino’s facial hair.

The Alabama resident has set a record for longest natural beard locks on a living person, with his facial hair growing to a staggering length of 3 feet and 6 inches.

“I have researched thoroughly into different cultures like Egypt, India, and various religions, to create a look that has been around for thousands of years [and] adding my own flavor,” he told Guinness World Records. “The beard locks [were]

inspired by the holy men of India, plus Jamaican Rastafarians who adopted their look from India.”

Martino said he washes his locks once every two weeks. It can take two or three days for his beard to fully dry.

For now, Martino is keeping his beard growing.

“Just as a tree has roots, branches, leaves and some fruit, I have as a symbol my hair, its roots, length and strength,” he said. “My fruits that I contribute to the world [are] my creativity, sharing, [and] caring to make the world a better, sweeter, and [more] tolerable place to live in.”

We “hear” you.

Bird of the Year

Every year New Zealand crowns a bird of the year. But this year, the chosen bird was far from cuddly.

Kārearea, the Indigenous Māori name for the New Zealand falcon, was crowned Bird of the Year on Monday.

Nabbing the title is no easy feat. During the election, feathers fly as avian enthusiasts seek to sway the public through meme battles, trash-talking poster campaigns and dance routines performed in bird costumes.

“Bird of the Year has grown from a simple email poll in 2005 to a hotly contested cultural moment,” said Forest & Bird Chief Executive Nicola Toki. “Behind the memes and mayhem is a serious message.”

The contest draws attention to New

Zealand’s native bird species, with 80% designated as being in trouble to some degree. But it attracts passionate fandom because New Zealanders are obsessed with birds.

In a country with no native land mammals except for two species of bat, birds reign supreme. They appear in art, on jewelry, in schoolchildren’s songs, and in the name New Zealanders are known by abroad, “kiwis.”

Beloved birds include alpine parrots that harass tourists and pigeons which get so drunk on berries that they sometimes fall out of trees.

The first contest two decades ago attracted fewer than 900 votes. More than 75,000 people in the country of 5 million cast ballots this year. At least 87% of the votes in this year’s poll came from New Zealand.

The majestic kārearea can fly at speeds of more than 124 miles per hour and swoops to capture its prey, often smaller birds. The endemic species is threatened in New Zealand, vulnerable to electrocution on wires and loss of their forest habitats.

“They’re a mysterious bird and that’s partly because they’re cryptic, they’re often well-hidden,” said Phil Bradfield, a trustee of Kārearea Falcon Trust in Marlborough, on New Zealand’s South Island.

Official figures suggest between 5,000 and 8,000 New Zealand falcons remain, although the true number is unknown. Bradfield said the “fast and sneaky and very special” raptor was a deserving Bird of the Year winner.

Clearly, people were “raven” about it.

Grandma on the Run

Watch out for Natalie Grabow. The 80-year-old from New Jersey is no ordinary grandma.

Last week, Grabow became the oldest women to ever finish the grueling Ironman World Championship.

“I’m never close to giving up,” she revealed. “I love the feeling of working hard and accomplishing a goal.”

Grabow pushed through a minor hamstring injury, rough waves and intense humidity to run 26.2 miles, bike 112 miles and

swim 2.4 miles in the open ocean on Saturday during the race in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

The mother of four and grandma of two completed the notoriously tough triathlon in 16 hours, 45 minutes and 26 seconds — on a day when more than 60 other athletes of all ages quit.

She has competed in 10 other Iron Man races on the island.

“Whether you choose pickleball or dancing or whatever, it’s just really important to move your body and stay strong. Especially as you get older, when you feel strong in the body, you feel strong in the mind — they go together and it gives you confidence,” Grabow urged.

“You really just have to keep moving,” she said. “And I would say be consistent with it.”

During the race on Saturday, swimming in the choppy water was the hardest part, she said.

“It’s always a contact sport,” she said. “You’re always getting hit in the head, and my googles were kinda getting knocked off,” she said — adding that she was “swallowing saltwater.”

Along with rigorous training and a little good luck, the key to not giving up is to constantly check in with your body, she said.

“Some of the best women pros have problems with overheating. You never know what your body is going to do. It’s a matter of really constantly evaluating how you feel and what you need; what nutrition you need,” she said. “[That way], I always stay mentally good, so I don’t get fuzzy or feeling like I’m not gonna go on.”

She stumbled and fell moments before reaching the finish line — but quickly got back up and completed the race as her coach and daughter cheered her on.

“It feels wonderful,” she said. “It’s really great to feel like you’ve done your best and given it everything you have.”

Grabow learned to swim at age 50.

Her training routine includes running, swimming and biking generally with one long day a week.

To prepare for the scorching race, she said she closely monitored her nutrition and “got my salt in.”

She now plans to give herself a week off for recovery.

She plans to complete another Ironman, perhaps “matching” Madonna Buder, who holds the current world record for the oldest woman to ever finish any Ironman race at 82.

“But you can’t say how you’re gonna feel at 82 when you’re 80,” Grabow said. “You just have to enjoy the day to day.”

Just get to the finish line.

Around the Community HAFTR Hosts Annual Club Fair

By Eliana Kanarfogel and Nora Strauss

HAFTR High School’s annual Club Fair marked the beginning of a new school year, inviting students to learn about a variety of engaging extracurricular activities. From academic fellowships to chesed organizations, there was something for everyone to explore. The event showcased a large range of groups, inviting students to explore new interests, develop skills, and form friendships with others. While some clubs focused on creativity, such as art and fashion, others concentrated on academics, including Mock Trial and Debate.

This year, many students took the initiative to create new clubs, bringing

fresh ideas and exciting opportunities to the school. Club leaders prepared everything from posters to informative flyers, offering prospective members everything they needed to learn about the group. Their dedication helped expand the fair, making it even more engaging for the student body. Students connected with their peers who shared their interests and discovered new passions. The event was buzzing with excitement and school spirit. Students took the opportunity to ask questions, sign up for different groups, and learn more about what each club had to offer.

The fair was an exciting kickoff to the year, offering every student a chance to find a club that matched their skills and curiosities.

Welcome New HALB Families

On Sunday night, the Englanders hosted a beautiful Meet and Greet for New HALB Parents at their home. They were welcomed by ad-

ministrators of Lev Chana, HALB, SKA and DRS, and representatives from the PTA. Welcome to the HALB family!

JCCRP Chol Hamoed Bubble Show

Jewish Community Council of the Rockaway Peninsula (JCCRP) hosted a bubble show for 260 children in Far Rockaway on Friday, October 10, 2025. The show took place as a free Chol Hamoed activity. The children enjoyed watching the bubble show, engaging with the entertainers, and lining up to be placed inside a bubble. The weather was perfect for the event, and it was truly wholesome family fun. The feedback was amazing, “Absolutely genius! All the kids were so well behaved and excited by the show! Thank you for having a free local chol hamoed activity!”

Teacher’s Pets

There are no favorites in the classrooms of the Ganger Early Childhood division of TAG. We love all our talmidos! But when it comes to celebrating Rosh Chodesh MarCheshvan and the parsha is Noach, all our devoted moros escorted their classes to the Petting Zoo where our talmidos enjoyed meeting and feeding the animals.

Design Your Own Experience: Extracurricular Life at YUHSG

At the Yeshiva University High School for Girls (Central), learning doesn’t stop when the final bell rings. Extracurricular life at YUHSG gives students countless ways to explore their interests and try new things — all within a close-knit, supportive environment. This year’s lineup of club offerings reflects the school’s ongoing commitment to experiential learning. “Central offers a wide variety of extracurricular clubs and teams to get involved, find their passions, and hone their talents,” said YUHSG’s Associate Principal, Ms. Leah Moskovich. “Clubs and teams are the opportune space for our students to make friends, shine, and grow both in and out of the classroom.”

Thank you to Torah Academy for Girls’ elementary school for allowing us to use their playground for the event.

Performing arts groups continue to shine as some of the school’s most beloved organizations. YUHSG’s Choir and Dance Team bring school spirit and joy to community events, while YUHSG’s Envision Shakespeare troupe continues to build on its success after last year’s overall first-place finish with its production of the opening scene from The Tempest in the citywide Envision Shakespeare competition. Academic clubs at YUHSG offer a different kind of stage — one that challenges students to think critically, communicate effectively, and apply classroom knowledge to the world beyond. Model UN, Mock Trial, College Bowl, and Torah Bowl regularly compete at citywide and national levels. And new clubs are always given a platform at YUHSG. The newly-found Law Club, helmed by junior Bailey Rosenstock, offers Wildcats interested in civics and government a new option. “I wanted to create a club for girls interested in the field of law and want to learn more about it, but not necessarily be in a competitive environment,” Bailey said. “We are hoping to bring in different lawyers to speak to the club and share their experiences with us.”

YUHSG’s Science Institute is one of the school’s most prestigious academic extracurriculars. Recently, Science Institute junior Emily Segall turned her deep interest in the environmental and biological effects of nanoparticles into a research project exploring how industrial nanoparticles interact with living tissue. Her research abstract, “Quan-

titative Analysis of TiO2 Nanoparticle Uptake and Removal Mechanisms in Fibroblasts,” was accepted for presentation at the 2025 Materials Research Science (MRS) Conference. Also accepted was the research abstract of senior Sarah Leah Sullivan, whose work exploring how protein interactions can play a role in inhibiting blood-clot formation resulted in “The Domain Specific Interactions of P12 and Albumin and Their Inhibition of Fibrin Polymerization.” Both students will be presenting at the conference in Boston on December 3, 2025. Equally vital to the school’s identity are its many chesed clubs, which embody YUHSG values of service and responsibility to others. Over ten active service groups engage in ongoing local outreach and mission trips abroad, bringing assistance and compassion to communities in need. Whether volunteering at food drives, visiting hospitals, or collaborating with international organizations like OU Relief, with which the school will be partnering for a service trip to Tampa, Florida to volunteer in relief efforts following Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton, Wildcats make a tangible difference through acts of kindness and service.

These programs form an essential layer of the YUHSG experience — one that complements classroom learning with opportunities to grow, connect, and lead. Prospective students and their families will have the chance to see this spirit of creativity and engagement firsthand at YUHSG’s Open House on Sunday, November 2. It’s an opportunity to discover what makes YUHSG special: a small school where every student can find her voice, follow her interests, and love every part of her learning.

A Special Trip 5 Towns Flag Football

Week # 6 in the 5 Towns Flag Football League was incredible. This Friday brought us some amazing games. In first grade, the Giants beat the Jets and the Patriots tied the Broncos. In second grade, the Patriots beat the Broncos and the Giants tied the Jets. In third grade, the Vikings won the Raiders, the Giants won the Seahawks, Patriots won the Broncos, the Jets beat the Packers, and the Steelers won the Eagles. In the 5/6 league, we had some amazing matchups, with the Eagles toppling over the Steelers, Broncos

beat the Panthers, and the Vikings beat the Giants in a shootout. In the 7th and 8th grade league, the Jets beat the Giants and the Patriots beat the Broncos. Great plays were made by Yosef Glatt, Aryeh Grinspan, Gabriel Jaffa, and Zev Weinstein.

We are excited and looking forward to next week as we get closer and closer to the playoffs. This coming Friday will be FM Home Loans authentic winter hat giveaway day. Every player will get a fleece-lined 5 Towns Flag Football winter hat. Can’t wait!

First Graders at YOSS Start Strong

Transitions create new opportunities and Mrs. Hadad’s first grade boys at YOSS have been acclimating beautifully to their new environment. They are embracing these changes with excitement and are eager to succeed as they take on new responsibilities and challenges.

They’ve been stepping up to new responsibilities, learning how to care for their belongings and classroom materials, and practicing how to communicate kindly with one another. Along the way, new friendships have been forming, making the classroom feel like a warm

The Special Children’s Center took over 50 children with special needs on an exciting trip to Urban Air on Chol Hamoed Succos! Both the kids and staff had an incredible time filled with smiles, laughter, and fun. To get involved or learn more, please call 516-200-2234 ext. 507 or email FiveTowns@theCenterNY.org

Living Teshuva, Tefilla, and Tzedakah at YHT

The centerpiece of the Yamim Noraim tefillot is the moving U’nesaneh Tokef prayer, added to the Mussaf Amidah on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This tefilla describes Hashem sitting in judgment over all creation. At its most dramatic moment, the words are recited: Repentance, prayer, and charity can sweeten even the harshest decree.

These words remind the Jewish people that growth and change are always possible. Teshuva, tefilla, and tzedakah are not always easy to achieve, but they are powerful ways to improve both personal lives and the world around us. To bring these ideas to life, Yeshiva Har Torah devoted three special days during Aseret Yemei Teshuva to explore each concept in depth.

ty who had donated kidneys—along with a recipient whose life was saved—shared their remarkable stories, brought to the school with the help of the organization Renewal.

and welcoming community.

Academically, the year is already off to a strong start. The boys have been introduced to short vowels and are excited to apply their new reading skills during independent practice. In math, the class has begun exploring addition and is eager to discover fun and creative ways to learn.

With such an enthusiastic beginning, the boys feel empowered and ready to grow. They look forward to continued progress; both academically and socially as they make this school year a truly memorable one!

On Yom Teshuva, students participated in sessions that explained what repentance really means and how it can be practiced throughout the year. On Yom Tefillah, students submitted thoughtful questions about prayer, focusing on how to connect as individuals and as a community. Their questions were answered by Rebbeim and Morot, along with guest speaker Rebbetzin Batya Basalely of Great Neck, who shared powerful insights and inspiration about building a meaningful relationship with tefilla.

On Yom Tzedakah, students were given a powerful new perspective on what true giving can mean. Instead of simply learning about dropping coins into a pushka, they witnessed examples of tzedakah at its highest and most life-changing level. Members of the YHT communi-

The donors described the courage it took to make such a decision, the emotions they felt throughout the process, and the deep sense of purpose that came from giving another person the chance to live. The recipient spoke openly about the struggles he faced before the transplant and how receiving a kidney gave him a second chance at life.

For the students, this was more than a lesson—it was an unforgettable experience. They saw firsthand that tzedakah is not only about money, but about selflessness, sacrifice, and the power to change someone’s world forever. Many walked away deeply moved, inspired by the realization that acts of kindness, both big and small, can transform lives.

Over these three meaningful days, students didn’t just learn about teshuva, tefilla, and tzedakah—they experienced them. The program brought the words of the U’nesaneh Tokef to life, leaving students inspired to carry these values with them throughout the year.

With Jubilant Dancing and Meaningful Mitzvot, Mercaz Academy Celebrates the Hostages’ Return

Songs, prayers, and cheers rang through the halls of Mercaz Academy on Friday, October 17, as students, parents, and staff gathered to celebrate the miraculous return of all living hostages to Israel over the Sukkot school break. For two years, the Mercaz community prayed daily for their safe return, and the school marked this moment with a joyful and meaningful school-wide program led by Israeli B’not Sherut Mevaseret Zimmerman and Einat Shapira.

“We couldn’t let this moment pass by without celebrating as a school,” said Principal Rabbi Kalman Fogel. “All of Am Yisrael, all over the world, is feeling such intense simcha, achdut, and hoda’ah as we welcome home our captives after two long, difficult years, and want to make

sure our kids felt they were part of this communal rejoicing.”

The celebration for grades one through six focused on the theme of giving thanks, both to the IDF soldiers who have fought and sacrificed to defend Israel, and to Hashem for the return of the hostages. First, students in every grade wrote letters of thanks and blessing to IDF soldiers still serving, which will be hand-delivered to the soldiers by Israeli family members of Mercaz staff. Students wrote in Hebrew and English, drew pictures of flags and hearts, and signed their names.

The event continued with a communal hafrashat challah, the traditional mitzvah of separating and braiding challah dough. For many, this mitzvah had taken on special significance during the recent

HAFTR Learns and Lives Chesed

HAFTR Middle School’s eighth graders are once again proving that chesed is something they live. Known for their remarkable dedication to acts of kindness, last year’s students collectively logged nearly 2,000 volunteer hours, making a real difference in the lives of others. This year, with an even larger class and renewed passion, they’re setting their sights even higher.

To kick off their year of giving, the eighth grade attended a Chesed Information Session, where they learned about the mitzvah and lifelong value of chesed: kindness, compassion, and responsibili-

ty toward others. This was then followed up with a vibrant “Chesed Fair.” Representatives from organizations such as the Israel Chesed Center, Gural JCC, Kulanu, Ohel, Chai Lifeline, Boi Challah, FIDF, Special Children’s Center, Lawrence Clothing Gemach, Israel Parasports Center, and Bikur Cholim introduced students to meaningful opportunities to give back.

The event was informational and inspirational. Students left energized and ready to turn learning into action, eager to bring warmth, support, and joy to those in need.

conflict, as communities worldwide performed it while praying on behalf of the hostages and soldiers.

“Since October 7, we have been doing hafrasha and praying for the return of our captives every week, praying that this would be their last Shabbat in captivity,” said parent Shmuela Sternbach, who made the blessing at the event. “This Shabbat, their first one back home, it was so meaningful to do hafrasha with thanks instead of longing, because our prayers were answered.”

Exuberant Israeli music, dancing, and singing brought the event to a close, uniting everyone in celebration. Students, teachers, parents, and staff all danced together, circling, jumping, spinning and waving Israeli flags.

“It was an impromptu event that we

put together in less than a day, and it was a perfect expression of what we are all feeling,” said Rabbi Fogel. “Relief, joy, unity, gratitude, belief in the power of prayer. This was a huge moment that touched Jewish communities worldwide, and just as we mourn together, so must we celebrate together.”

At HAFTR, chesed isn’t only a graduation requirement; it’s a pillar of who we are. Acts of kindness are woven into our curriculum, with chesed trips and volunteer opportunities planned throughout the year.

Thank you to Mrs. Nechama Landau, Judaic Studies and Chesed Coordinator, for organizing the Chesed Fair and guiding our students as they track their volunteer hours throughout the year.

Our students continue to embody the values of empathy, leadership, and Jewish responsibility reminding us that when we lift others, we lift our entire community.

HANC High School Meets with Author of One Day in October

By Abigail Saldin

What does bravery and heroism mean to you?

This past week, on Monday, October 20, the students at HANC High School had the special honor learning about this ever-relevant concept by hearing from Oriya Mevorach, co-author of the best-selling book, One Day in October.

One Day in October is a collection of several harrowing and remarkable accounts of Israelis who experienced the October 7 attacks firsthand. Each story was dutifully researched from interviews

with survivors, and on Monday, Ms. Mevorach shared four of these stories with HANC students.

The way Ms. Mevorach conveyed them with respect and tact made students truly remember the despair and severity of the day. But throughout the despair, what she

highlighted the most throughout every story was the ability for hope to prevail. Even in moments when staring death in the face, with the help of Hashem, these victims of October 7 heroically stood for their brothers and sisters in Klal Yisrael.

After giving the school-wide presen-

tation, Ms. Mevorach later spoke with a smaller audience of the senior girls to talk a little about her background and shared one more story.

HANC High School would like to thank Oriya Mevorach for the remarkable experience we will certainly never forget.

Meaningful Tefillah, Lasting Impact: The Gibber Family’s Jerusalem Yom Kippur Minyan Raises $300,000 for American Friends of Yad Eliezer

/ B’ezri

Continuing their yearly tradition, the Gibber family hosted an incredible Yom Kippur minyan at Jerusalem’s Dan Panorama Hotel, bringing together a remarkable group of participants — and an even more remarkable outpouring of generosity.

This year, over 330 people registered, and by Kol Nidrei night, more than 400 filled the ballroom, with dozens standing in the hallway, eager to be part of the uplifting tefillah.

A choir of 18, led by Dudi Kalish, elevated the davening with stirring harmonies that inspired heartfelt emotion throughout Yom Kippur. The Gibbers handled every detail for the over 400 attendees who traveled from across the U.S., Canada, France, and Germany, including a large group from the tri-state area — the Five Towns, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Teaneck. The family prepared seating arrangements, supplied

yahrzeit candles and machzorim, provided food for the break-fast, and everything in between.

“Unbelievably inspiring, uplifting, and comfortable davening experience. We all enjoyed it immensely.”

“You have a portion in any good I do this year. This minyan truly cleanses me and allows me to focus on what I want to work on for the year to come.”

A highlight of the day was the Neilah address by Daniel Gibber of Teaneck, described by participants as “deeply moving” and “the perfect close to an incredible Yom Kippur.”

A Record Year of Giving

Through the efforts of the Gibber family and friends of Yad Eliezer/B’ezri, aliyos from the King David Hotel minyan over Yom Tov were also directed to the initiative. Together with the funds raised from seat reservations and aliyos, participants of both minyanim helped

raise an astonishing $300,000 in tzedakah. Donations were directed to B’ezri’s Holiday Fund, contributing to the $3.1+ million in essential holiday expenses and food distributed to thousands of widows, orphans, single parents, struggling families and chayalim across Israel.

The Gibber family once again covered all event expenses, ensuring that every dollar raised went directly to families in need. Thanks to the funds from the minyanim, an additional 600 families were able to receive food vouchers and celebrate Yom Tov with true sim-

chas ha’chag.

Looking Ahead

With participation growing each year, plans are already underway for a larger venue next Yom Kippur to accommodate even more attendees eager to join this uplifting and meaningful experience.

The success of this year’s minyan stands as a testament not only to the Gibber family’s meticulous planning and heartfelt dedication, but also to the power of tefillah and unity — a community turning inspiration into action and generosity into lasting impact.

YOSS 4th Graders Spark Excitement with STEM

After a busy yom tov season, Ms. Fagan’s fourth graders are excited to settle back into their school routine and dive into learning! The energy in the classroom is contagious as students reconnect with one another and jump right into hands-on projects and activities that make learning come alive. The class kicked off with exciting STEM challenges that have our young scientists thinking critically and working together to solve problems. From marshmallow tower builds to paper chain engineering contests, the boys are learning to test ideas, collaborate, and

think creatively.

The science lab has quickly become a favorite spot, as the students explore different types of lava and create their own volcanic eruptions! These thrilling experiments spark lively discussions and have the boys eagerly anticipating what’s next.

As the weeks unfold, the classroom continues to buzz with curiosity, teamwork, and a genuine love of learning. It’s sure to be an exciting and productive year ahead for Ms. Fagan’s fourth grade class!

Power of Attorney: Not What You Think (But Crucial)

By Monet Binder, Esq.

If you’ve taken steps to plan your future, you’ve heard of a Power of Attorney (POA). It’s a foundational legal document that lets a trusted person (your agent) manage your financial and legal affairs if you can’t. It’s an absolute necessity for protecting your assets from disaster, fraud, or even just simple oversight while you’re incapacitated or away.

The Big Misconception, despite its name, is that a POA does not give your agent a law degree. More importantly, it has one major limitation that most people miss: A Power of Attorney expires the moment you die. What does this mean for your family? While You’re Alive: Your agent can manage your bank accounts, pay bills, and handle investments. After You Pass Away: The POA immediately

expires. Authority stops, accounts can be frozen, and assets are left unprotected and vulnerable to probate court. This sudden stop often forces your family directly into the slow, expensive process of probate court just to get permission to manage your affairs and pay final bills.

The Complete Solution: Your Estate Plan

The good news is you can prevent this interruption and protect your loved ones from court chaos. The definitive solution is integrating a Living Trust into your comprehensive Estate Plan. A Living Trust allows a designated person (your Trustee) to manage your assets seamlessly, both while you are alive and after you pass away. Since the assets are held by the trust, they avoid the entire probate process, ensuring continuous management over your assets. This means a des-

ignated Trustee can step in immediately upon your incapacity or death, ensuring bills are paid without disruption or delay. Furthermore, because a trust avoids the public court process known as probate, it offers enhanced privacy; your financial affairs and asset distribution details remain confidential, away from public court records. Ultimately, this seamless transition and private management result in robust asset protection, helping to ensure your hard-earned inheritance remains intact for your loved ones as you intended.

Don’t rely on an online form or a generic template. You owe it to your family to have a plan crafted correctly by experienced professionals. Ready to get started? Your family’s future depends on it. Consult a professional who has your best interests in mind, not someone who only

focuses on after death documents. Estate Planning is also about what happens while you’re still living. Learn the best way to protect yourself and your family while you’re still living and after you’re gone, and keep everyone out of court and conflict. Call today: 718-514-7575 or 732-333-1854.

Monet Binder, Esq., has a practice in Lakewood, Queens, and Brooklyn areas, dedicated to protecting families, their legacies and values. All halachic documents are approved by the Bais Havaad Halacha Center in Lakewood, under the direction of Rabbi Dovid Grossman and the guidance of Harav Shmuel Kaminetsky, shlita, as well as other leading halachic authorities.

Community Gathers at Israel Chesed Center for October 7 Commemoration and Evening of Chizuk

Two years after the devastating attacks of October 7, 2023, the Israel Chesed Center (ICC), in partnership with the Gural JCC, hosted a powerful community-wide commemoration and evening of reflection, chizuk, and gratitude. The event honored the memory of the fallen, celebrated the return of twenty living hostages during Sukkot, and reaffirmed the community’s ongoing commitment to help the State of Israel rebuild and heal.

The evening opened with remarks from Moshe Bodner, speaking on behalf of ICC co-founder Jeff Eisenberg and the ICC’s dedicated team of volunteers, expressing appreciation to the Gural JCC and to all who helped make the program possible.

“Why are we doing this?” Bodner asked. He then gave four answers: “Because we can’t forget — we still observe Yom HaShoah decades after the Holocaust. Because the war isn’t truly over — even today, we lost two soldiers in Gaza. Because even after the guns fall silent, the needs will continue. And finally, because tonight reminds us that our mission isn’t finished — it’s evolving.”

Following the singing of Hatikvah by Chazan Joel Kaplan and the recitation of Tehillim by Rabbi Saul Chill of the Young Israel of Far Rockaway, the program featured a deeply moving candle-light-

ing ceremony led by local high school students, each representing a group profoundly affected by October 7: Nova Festival victims; ZAKA, MADA, and Hatzolah first responders; residents of kibbutzim and southern communities; IDF soldiers; police and security personnel; civilians; and the hostages.

Students from HAFTR, HANC, MTA, RAMBAM, SKA, Shulamith, and Hewlett High School participated — symbolizing the unity and compassion that have characterized the Five Towns community since the first days of the war.

Chazan Kaplan led the Kel Maleh Rachamim in memory of the victims and later inspired the crowd with a heartfelt Mi Shebeirach for Israel’s soldiers and wounded heroes, concluding with a spirited Tov Lehodot in gratitude for the re-

turn of the hostages.

Rabbi Shalom Axelrod of the Young Israel of Woodmere delivered the evening’s keynote address, reflecting on the spiritual resilience of Am Yisrael and the ongoing chizuk efforts that continue to define the Five Towns community. Introducing him, Bodner expressed deep hakarat hatov to the community rabbanim whose leadership has guided and inspired the community through this challenging time. Rabbi Axelrod noted that even amid pain and uncertainty, we must also find space for gratitude — to our soldiers for defending us, and to Hashem for His continuing kindness.

The program concluded with an emotional address by Ron Segev, a survivor of the October 7 attacks on the Nova Festival. Segev offered a gripping, inch-by-

inch recounting of his harrowing escape and his two-year journey of recovery, resilience, and hope. His story, filled with faith and determination, reminded the audience that the legacy of October 7 is not only one of tragedy, but also of courage, rebuilding, and collective responsibility.

Founded in October 2023, the Israel Chesed Center has grown from a grassroots volunteer initiative into a thriving humanitarian hub — now housed at the Gural JCC — providing ongoing aid to wounded soldiers, bereaved families, and displaced communities across Israel.

As Bodner concluded, “The war may have started two years ago, but our work — our chesed — is far from over. Am Yisrael still needs us, and we will continue to show up.”

Dr. Paul Brody, President of the ZOA of Long Island and Queens, was among the invited dignitaries at the JNS Visionary Leadership Conference, held on September 28, 2025. He is seen here with “The Great One,” Mark Levin and Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

Feels Like Fall at Lev Chana

Students at Lev Chana have been enjoying some fun fall activities including nature walks and a fall scavenger hunt!

A Night to Remember at HANC’s New Reinstein Family Campus

This past Monday evening, a very special event lit up HANC’s brand new Reinstein Family Campus in West Hempstead. For the first time in the Rabbi Gottesman Beit Midrash, students in grades four through eight and their families gathered for a spirited kumzitz featuring world-renowned singer, songwriter, composer, author, and teacher, Rabbi Ari Goldwag.

The excitement was especially personal for HANC, as Rabbi Goldwag is the brother of HANC’s beloved Morah Elana Jacobs, a proud West Hempstead native, and himself a HANC alum. Students were inspired to learn that someone who once sat in their very classrooms went on to become a child star with the Miami Boys Choir and later launched a flourishing solo career, producing eight albums, countless music videos, and the viral hit “Am Echad”—which has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube. His channel has amassed over 30 million views worldwide.

After a warm introduction celebrating his accomplishments, including his “Parsha Podcast” and his book Perfectly Imperfect, Rabbi Goldwag took the stage. From the first strum of his guitar, the Beit Midrash was alive with energy. Students lit up as they recognized familiar songs, joining in with full voices. Before long, the room erupted into spirited singing and dancing, with children, staff, and parents all swept up in the joy of the music.

In between songs, Rabbi Goldwag shared a moving Torah lesson on the meaning of the shofar. “We all make mistakes, but Hashem speaks to us in a quiet voice within our hearts, guiding us to do better,” he reminded the audience. A

highlight of the evening came when fifth grader Jack Adler confidently recited the four steps of Teshuvah, leaving Rabbi Goldwag visibly delighted.

The sight was unforgettable: students, parents, grandparents, teachers, and administrators dancing arm in arm, filling the Beit Midrash with song and spirit. Even as the hour grew late, no one wanted the night to end.

Reflecting on the evening’s success, Rabbi Ouriel Hazan remarked:

“At HANC, we sing the song of Torah all day, every day. It begins with our morning Tefila, continues in our Judaic studies, and is highlighted by our Birkat HaMazon after meals. We encourage our students to discover their personal song and share their Torah with the world. Hosting Rabbi Ari Goldwag was the perfect way to bring the message of Torah as song to life for our students during the Yamim Nora’im.”

It was an unforgettable night of music, meaning, and community, one that will be remembered long after the final note faded.

Outdoor Play at Gan Chamesh

Cactivities. Their smiles attest to just how much they love the

SHS Celebrates the Miraculous Return of the Hostages

Since October 7, we have held our collective breath along with the whole Jewish nation, understanding that nothing short of a miracle could bring all of the remaining living hostages home. Witnessing that miracle on Hoshana Raba, the culmination of 738 days of intense tefillah and tears, was a moment we are unlikely to ever forget. In contrast to two years before when we returned from Sukkos in utter devastation, the remarkable timing added even more simcha to the occasion.

Several SHS girls came to school on Isru Chag to decorate the building with signs proclaiming “baruch matir asurim” and exuberantly pasting “HOME” on the hostage signs they had created a year before, for our October 7th commemoration. Students arriving at school on Friday were greeted with an unmistakable reminder that the world had changed since they had last been there.

BYAM Haschalas Ha’Parshiyos Torah Party

The girls in BYAM’s preschool returned from the Sukkos break to an exciting celebration! Adopting the beautiful tradition of the ganim and chadarim in Eretz Yisroel, we celebrated Haschalas Ha’Parshiyos with a lively Torah Party — our very own mini Sim-

chas Torah! Each class created colorful Torah flags and danced and sang with so much enthusiasm. And of course, no party would be complete without pekalach! May the Torah always remain as sweet and joyful for us as it was when we began Bereishis!

Rambam Mesivta Celebrates the Release of the Hostages

Mrs. Sara Munk, principal, reflected on the dual feelings of the day. She spoke about balancing our elation over the return of the hostages with the awareness that many bodies are still held in Gaza and the grief that comes with the second yahrtzeit of the victims of October 7th and beyond. Rabbi Yaakov Trump continued on the same theme, noting that the Torah acknowledges and encourages us to hold two conflicting feelings at once, and guides us in how to navigate such extremes.

We joined in song for the mourning that was and still is, before switching the tone to celebrate the miraculous return of the 20 who came home. Though there is no turning back the suffering and sadness we’ve endured, we join Klal Yisroel throughout the world in celebrating this neis, and daven for the day of lasting, genuine simcha with the coming of Mashiach.

Students and staff at Rambam gathered last week for a special assembly, held by founder and Rosh HaYeshiva of Rambam, Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman, to celebrate the release of the hostages from captivity. The emotional program highlighted the mitzvah of Pidyon Shevuyim, one of the most important mitzvos in Judaism. Rabbi Friedman also called attention to the IDF and Klal Yisroel as a whole for all they did to serve and help from the front lines, to tefillot, to support in the Diaspora. He also recognized the Rambam alumni who served in the IDF during the war. Prior to the Succos break, Rambam held an assembly to commemorate October 7. At that assembly, Principal Dr. Hillel Goldman opened the assembly by sharing videos and reflections that connected October 7 to Rambam’s ongoing support for Israel. The school also welcomed an IDF soldier and tank commander, brought through the Friends of

the IDF (FIDF), who spoke about his experiences defending Israel and expressed the immense chizuk his fellow soldiers feel from the American Jewish community’s support. The program concluded with heartfelt Tehillim, led by Reb Yitz Milworn, a former IDF soldier, Rambam alumnus, and Director of Student Activities.

The October 7th Assembly was held with the hope that the hostages would soon be released. Just a few weeks later, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Friedman were sponsoring breakfast and donuts for the entire school in celebration of their release at this uplifting moment for Am Yisrael. As Rabbi Friedman stressed, everyone at the assembly played a role during this time, through prayers, chesed, donations, volunteering, and representing the Jewish people in countless forums. The release of the hostages was the release for all of us, b’yachad.

HALB Celebrates the Released Hostages HAFTR STEM Makes Invisalign

For two years, students and faculty at HALB have come together to daven for the release of the hostages. Last week, all students and faculty from first through eighth grade joined together to daven, sing and dance to celebrate all the living hostages coming home. It was an incredibly powerful and moving experience, filled with simcha!

HAFTR Celebrates the Return of 20 Living Hostages from Gaza

Last week, HAFTR students across all divisions came together to mark a moment of hope and joy for the Jewish people the extraordinary and emotional return of 20 living hostages from Gaza, 738 days after their captivity began.

At the Lower and Middle Schools, students gathered for a spirited “homecoming” assembly that overflowed with song, dance, and heartfelt gratitude. The air was filled with excitement and relief as children waved Israeli flags, sang together, and celebrated the precious gift of life and freedom. Teachers and students reflected on the power of tefillah, unity, and faith that continue to strengthen the Jewish nation in moments of darkness and light alike.

At the High School, students and faculty joined together for an uplifting program that reflected deeply on the significance of this moment in Jewish history. They watched a meaningful montage of the hostages returning. Through moving words, singing of Acheinu, and shared emotion, the program reinforced what it means to stand with Am Yisrael with pride, empathy, and unwavering hope.

The day’s celebrations beautifully captured what it means to be part of the HAFTR community: standing together in moments of deep meaning, celebrating life, and expressing gratitude as one Jewish people bound by shared destiny, faith, and love for Israel.

HAFTR 6th graders got handson with real-world STEM learning by creating their own “Invisalign” braces using our state-ofthe-art vacuum former. Through this exciting project, students combined creativity, design, and engineering, bringing science to life in true HAFTR fashion!

Over Chol HaMoed Sukkos, MTA filled homes and sukkahs across the tri-state area and beyond with the joy, warmth, and inspiration of Yom Tov. Through an incredible lineup of Tikkun Leil Hoshanah Rabbah and Simchas Beis HaSho’eva events, the yeshiva ensured that every talmid could experience the ruach of MTA wherever he spent Sukkos.

The Tikkun Leil Hoshanah Rabbah programs brought together rebbeim, talmidim, and families for powerful nights of Torah, song, and connection. Each gathering transformed the Yom Tov atmosphere into one of true inspiration and unity. A huge thank you to Rabbi Shimon Schenker, Rav Mendelson, Rabbi Brownstein, Rav Balsam, Rabbi Sudwerts, Rav Pearl, and Rabbi Fuchs for leading uplifting programs in their respective communities and bringing Torah and simchas Yom Tov into the homes of our talmidim across Teaneck, Bergenfield, Brooklyn, West Hempstead, and

Queens. Their dedication exemplifies the heart of MTA, with rebbeim who go above and beyond to stay connected with their talmidim and families even outside the walls of the yeshiva.

Adding to the excitement, Rav Kerner led a spirited Simchas Beis HaSho’eva in Monsey that brought together local talmidim and alumni for an unforgettable night of dancing, singing, and celebration. MTA’s reach even extended to Yerushalayim, where Rav Danto brought the same energy and achdus across the ocean, connecting talmidim from New York to Eretz Yisrael through shared simcha and Torah.

So many simultaneous programs made one message clear: wherever our talmidim and families may be, MTA is there, bringing Torah, inspiration, and genuine simcha into their homes and hearts. The ruach of Sukkos continues to resonate long after Yom Tov, reminding every talmid that he is part of one yeshiva family, united in Torah and joy.

Around the Community

Names Not Numbers Commences at HAFTR

Two weeks ago, HAFTR’s 8thrade students began their annual Names, Not Numbers® project, an extraordinary initiative that connects students with Holocaust survivors to preserve their stories for future generations. This year marks the largest group of students to ever participate in the program, a testament to HAFTR’s deep commitment to Jewish memory, identity, and responsibility.

Through Names, Not Numbers®, students have the rare privilege of meeting and interviewing survivors, documenting their lives before, during, and after the Holocaust. In doing so, they not only learn historical research and interviewing

Rav Mattisyahu

By Avrohom Birnbaum

R’ Ezriel Munk’s cell phone rang. A look at the caller ID, and he quickly answered.

“Reb Ezriel,” Rav Mattisyahu Salomon’s warm voice greeted him, “I need your help.”

“My help? Sure!” R’ Ezriel was all ears.

“Do you by any chance know Senator Joseph Lieberman?”

The Mashgiach, who knew that R’ Ezriel was involved in kiruv and was thus well connected, continued, “I happen to know a bachur whom I think the senator can help. This bachur, a tenth grader and an orphan, is struggling. He keeps on adamantly insisting that he wants to leave yeshiva. Knowing that we could lose him if, chas v’shalom, he leaves the yeshiva, I asked him what it would take to get him to stay in yeshiva. He told me that he loves politics, and if he were able to meet and talk with Senator Joseph Lieberman, and the senator would advise him to remain in yeshiva, he would listen to him.”

“I would love to help,” R’ Ezriel answered apologetically, “but I don’t know Senator Leiberman.”

skills but also develop empathy, perspective, and a profound sense of duty to ensure that these voices are never forgotten.

As in previous years, HAFTR is partnering with Lawrence Middle School, joining together in a shared mission to preserve the stories of resilience, faith, and courage that shaped our collective history. To prepare, students heard from Tova Fish-Rosenberg, founder of Names, Not Numbers®, who spoke about the sacred responsibility of bearing witness and the impact each student can make. They also learned interviewing techniques from Shoshana Soroka, editor of The Jewish Home, who guided them on how to ask thoughtful, respectful questions

that bring survivor stories to life.

The students left inspired and deeply motivated, aware that they may be among the last generation to hear firsthand testimonies from survivors. Their eagerness to listen, learn, and share these stories reflects the very essence of a HAFTR education where memory becomes mission, and history becomes heart.

Names, Not Numbers® Inc: an interactive, multi-media Holocaust film documentary project created by educator, Tova Fish-Rosenberg. www.namesnotnumbers.org

The Names, Not Numbers ® Program is generously supported by a prominent national foundation.

With Assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany Supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.

The Mashgiach’s five-word retort stopped R’ Ezriel in his tracks, “So get to know him. We need to save the life of this bachur!”

Two days passed.

The conversation was at the forefront of R’ Ezriel’s mind, but he had still not come up with a way to meet Senator Lieberman.

It was late in the day when R’ Ezriel was circulating at an upscale dinner in Manhattan. Suddenly, who walked right in front of him? None other than Senator Lieberman and his whole entourage!

With the Mashgiach’s words fresh in his mind, he thought, I need to act now. I will never have another chance to meet him casually like this.

Running over to the senator, R’ Ezriel pushed his way through the outer circle until he was standing directly in front of him.

“Senator!” R’ Ezriel exclaimed. “Please, I need three minutes of your time.”

When the senator saw R’ Ezriel’s serious demeanor, he said, “Okay, hold on.”

A few minutes later, he gave R’ Ezriel his full attention. R’ Ezriel described the young orphan’s situation, how just by

speaking to him, the senator would ensure that the boy would have a future in Yiddishkeit

“Really,” the senator replied, “I would love to speak to him. But I am not in charge of my time. I have a very tight schedule, and my aides make sure I function on schedule and get from one place to the next.”

“But Mr. Lieberman!” R’ Ezriel pressed, “just think: You could change the entire trajectory of his life. You could make a difference to whether or not he stays in yeshiva!”

Just then, someone walked past, handing out ArtScroll commemorative bentchers. Taking one of the bentchers, the senator opened it and asked for the boy’s name.

“Dovid*,” R’ Ezriel answered, “his name is Dovid.”

“Dovid,” the senator wrote inside the bentcher, “With thanks for all the Torah learning and mitzvot you are doing, and every good wish.” Signed, Joseph Lieberman, senator from Connecticut.

Needless to say, Dovid remained in yeshiva and today is the father of a wonderful family.

R’ Munk concludes, “What amazed me more than anything was the Mashgiach’s bitachon and siyata d’Shmaya. He knew that this was what he needed to do, and he was certain that once he had done his hishtadlus, Hashem would take care of the rest. And He did! When you care about every yachid, Hashem enables you to help them!”

* Name was changed.

Reprinted from Rav Mattisyahu by Avrohom Birnbaum, with permission from the copyright holder, ArtScroll Mesorah Publications.

TJH Centerfold

Back to “Normal” Trivia

1. According to a 2024 MyBioSource survey of 1,000 people, what percentage of people say they feel “burned out” the first week back from vacation or holidays?

a. 8%

b. 41%

c. 67 %

d. 99.99999999%

2. According to a recent Microsoft report, how many work emails does the average office worker get per day?

a. 31

b. 58

c. 62

d. 117

3. According to a study recently published in the National Library of Medicine, which included 3 million nights of data, what percentage of people hit the snooze button in the morning?

a. 14.5%

b. 22.8%

c. 55.6%

d. 68.1%

4. According to a recent Microsoft study, how much time per week does the average employee spend in meetings?

a. 2.1 hours

b. 8.8 hours

c. 11.3 hours

d. 22.8 hours

5. According to a 2023 study by Talker Research, what is the average length of time of the average person’s morning routine, from waking up until walking out the door?

a. 14 minutes

b. 30 minutes

c. 54 minutes

d. 1.2 hours

6. According to The DataReportal “Digital 2024 Global Overview Report,” how much time does the average person spend on social media each day?

a. 45 minutes

b. 90 minutes

c. 2 hours and 23 minutes

d. 3 hours and 44 minutes

Answers:

1-B (the other 59% of you are the ones who should get your heads checked out…way too functional!)

2-D (and that’s after Bed, Bath & Beyond closed down!)

3-C (you mean it’s not mandatory to hit the snooze button?)

4-C (“you guys really have to start putting the coversheets on the TPS reports before they go out!”)

5-B (…and that’s on a day that there is no Tachanun!)

6-C (which is why the world is turning into a bunch of numbskulls!)

Wisdom Key:

5-6 correct: You are so normal – which means that you are really crazier than all of us!

2-4 correct: You are average – enjoy your 117 emails and 11.3 hours of meetings this week!

0-1 correct: You beat the system! …OK, so you live on a park bench, but you don’t have the problems that us normal people have.

You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

Moishe comes back from a family Sukkos getaway in Israel. Yankel greets him in shul and says, “Nu, Moishe, did the trip change you?”

Moishe replies, “Absolutely! I used to have money.”

Riddle Me This

It’s the first day back at work, and you go to the cafeteria for a pick-me-up doughnut. But the doughnut box is empty. Four coworkers speak up. Exactly one of these statements is true.

Avi: “Baruch took the last doughnut.”

Baruch: “Chaim didn’t take it.”

Chaim: “David took it.”

David: “I didn’t take it.”

Who took the last doughnut?

David’s claim that he didn’t take it is the only true statement. Any other culprit makes 0, 2, or 3 statements true.

If Chaim took it, Avi’s claim that Baruch took it is false; Baruch’s claim that Chaim didn’t take it is also false; and Chaim’s claim that David took it is false as well.

Answer: Chaim.

Now That Yom Tov is Over

1. You no longer have to ask, “Wait—what day is it again?”

2. The kids think leftovers are a food group.

3. You can open your fridge without fear of a kugel avalanche.

4. You remember that your car has a radio, not just schach fragments.

5. Your phone alarm is back to “wake-up for work,” not “check the Eruv.”

6. Your lulav is now a decorative hazard.

7. Your freezer closes.

8. You finally find your dining-room table, which was hiding under six tablecloths, three plastic covers, a challah board, and three esrog boxes and lulav cases.

9. For breakfast, you have a coffee and a muffin, not schnapps and herring.

10. Instead of thinking that you do Amazon intake for a living, you are thinking of opening a concierge Amazon returns business.

11. Instead of going to sleep at 2 a.m. every night, the kids go to sleep at a normal time – 12:30 a.m.

12. The freezer closes again.

13. Your credit card bill reads like a megillah.

14. You constantly calculate how much time is left until Chanukah…because regular, everyday life is a bit overrated.

15. You debate keeping up your sukkah as a winter man cave.

Torah Thought

Parshas Noach

By Rabbi Berel Wein z”l

The rabbis were not so much critical of Noach – as he is paid the highest of compliments, throughout the Torah as a righteous person – but they were wary of him. I have often felt that this attitude is born of the idea that Rashi himself states in commenting upon the origin of Noach’s name. Rashi makes a point that the name Noach should not be construed as a derivative of the Hebrew word “nacheim” – meaning to comfort - but rather it is derived from the other Hebrew word “noach” – meaning, rest, leisure, comfortable but not comfort as in consolation.

Rashi attributes this understanding of Noach’s name to the fact that he was the father, so to speak, of modern agricultural technological advancement and progress. The iron plow, the first great essential tool for farming developed for humans, enabling settlers to abandon a nomadic existence, was an invention of Noach. This was his great contribution towards the advancement of human technology.

Noach therefore becomes the source of human technological progress which grants us leisure, eases our physical

workload and gives us many physical comforts in life. However, technology alone with all of its attendant blessings does not guarantee us any sort of mental, spiritual or social comfort. It does not console us in our hour of grief nor does it strengthen our spirit in our moments of self-doubt and personal angst.

If Noach could have achieved these goals, then Rashi points out that his name would have been Menachem – the one who brings true consolation and comfort to troubled souls. Hence Noach is viewed

not the Amish nor are we willing to be consigned a back seat in the drive to physically improve the human condition of life on this planet. Yet Judaism realizes that true psychological and spiritual comfort cannot be found in the latest version of the iPod.

Noach’s technology can be enormously beneficial in a society that adopts Avraham’s values and beliefs. But bereft of any spiritual focus or restraint, technology running wild makes our world a more fearful place to inhabit and forces many

Technology alone with all of its attendant blessings does not guarantee us any sort of mental, spiritual or social comfort.

in tradition as being incomplete – technologically advanced but spiritually wanting – in short, a pretty accurate description of our current human society.

The rabbis of the Talmud taught us that if “one tells you that there is wisdom, knowledge and skills present amongst the nations of the world you should believe him.” However, “if one tells you that there is Torah amongst the nations of the world, then do not believe him.” Judaism and Jewish society has no basic argument against the advance of technology. We are

to yearn for the good old, less technologically advanced eras that preceded us. Noach’s grand technology could not save the world from the ravages of evil that brought upon humankind the great flood described in this week’s parsha. Avraham’s grand values and holy behavior almost saved the seat of world evil, Sodom. The world is Noach’s world, but its survival is dependent upon the existence and eventual triumph of Avraham’s children, ideas and beliefs.

Shabbat shalom.

When Noach was born, the world was already quickly descending into a state of depravity. He was therefore the world’s hope. That is why his father Lamech named him Noach, which is related to the word “comfort,” saying (Bereishis 5:29), “This one will comfort us from our acts and from the sadness of our hands…” But, although he was a tzaddik, Noach ultimately disappointed the world. He was unable to prevent the destruction of the world, and after the Flood (ibid. at 9:20-24), he became drunk and embarrassed himself. What happened? The Torah never tells us stories for entertainment’s sake or simply to teach us history. It speaks to this generation. What does this episode teach us? While we cannot fully understand someone Hashem Himself calls “pure” and a “tzaddik” who “found favor in G-d’s eyes” (ibid. at 6:8-9), why did Noach descend to that level?

The truth is that one of my rebbeim, Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik, zt”l, wrote a sefer called “The Lonely Man of Faith” for a reason. Every tzaddik feels alone, set apart from the rest of the world. Anyone who wants to be a tzaddik must commit to treading his own path, not living like everyone else. There is an element of loneliness inherent in any tzaddik’s journey. This must have been true on an even greater scale with respect to Noach after the Flood. Not only was he alone as a tzaddik, but he watched the destruction of every single human being on earth except for his own family. One cannot even imagine the loneliness he felt at that time. Indeed, we know of people today who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from far less jarring traumas that the destruction of mankind and a year of taking responsibility for the welfare of all the remaining people and every other creature

From the Fire

Parshas Noach Alone Together

By Rav Moshe Weinberger

Adapted for publication by

Binyomin Wolf

in the world who survived the calamity.

When I was young, there was a song that was just becoming popular about what brings all different types of people to a bar to drink, and one verse of the song said, “They’re sharing a drink they call loneliness but it’s better than drinkin’ alone.”

While my parents lost their parents in the Holocaust, they managed to rebuild their lives. But there were others who experienced the destruction who were completely broken by it. And there were still others who were completely broken by the fact that they survived. They felt tremendous guilt and could not psychologically survive their own survival. We cannot imagine the loneliness Noach felt or why he turned to alcohol. And we know Lot did the same thing as well after his world, the city of Sedom, was destroyed (Bereishis 19:30-36).

But there was another tzaddik in the Torah who felt completely alone, and that was Avraham Avinu, who was called “Ha’Ivri, the Hebrew” (Bereishis 14:13),

which literally means “the one on the other side. The Midrash explains that he was called that because “the whole world was on one side, and he was on the other side” (Bereishis Raba 42:8). The Navi Yechezkel said about him, “Avraham was one” (33:24), meaning that he was alone in the world. He left his father’s home; he said goodbye to the entire world he knew before that and began working to change the world all by himself with no one but his wife behind him, backing him up. He was utterly alone in the world.

People do not like those who “rock the boat,” who try to do things differently than everyone else. Avraham was therefore despised, and powerful people wanted him dead. But Avraham embraced his aloneness and worked to bring the whole world over to his side, to the side of the Master of the World (Rashi on Bereishis 12:5). A person can be extremely intelligent, charming, talented, and bright. But if he always wants to fit in, to be “just one of the guys,” perhaps above-average, but

not outstanding, he will never be a “tzaddik,” he will never change the world.

This is the thrust of a tiny little teaching found between the first and second volumes of Likutei Moharan by Rebbe Nachman, zy”a. The title of the lesson is “Avraham was One,” quoting the pasuk in Yechezkel mentioned above. Rebbe Nachman writes, “Avraham served G-d only through the fact that he was ‘one,’ meaning that in his mind, he considered himself the only person in the world and he never looked at the other people in the world who tried to turn him away from Hashem and stop him, nor at his father or other naysayers. Rather, he looked at himself like he was the only person in the world.”

And Rebbe Nachman continues, showing us what this means for us: “And so too anyone who wants to enter into the service of G-d: It is impossible to begin except with this thought. One must think that he is the only person in the world and not look at anyone else who attempts to stop him…nor at any other obstacles which arise from anyone else in the world who denigrate him, attempt to draw him away, or prevent him from serving G-d… Instead, he must cling to the quality of ‘Avraham was one,’ as if he was the only person in the world.”

This does not, G-d forbid, mean being indifferent to others. Part of being a tzaddik means caring about and working to help other people. But in terms of how one identifies his own role in life based on his own personal talents and inclinations, one should not allow others to define him. That is why a person should say (Sanhedrin 37a), “The world was created for my sake.” A person must see that the key to becoming great is recognizing that no one else in the world is meant to serve G-d the way he is.

A person cannot define himself by

what people in the world – even nice, good, normal people – do. Even Dovid Hamelech grew up in a very good family, but to become a tzaddik, he had to say (Tehillim 69:8-9), “I have borne humiliation because of You, embarrassment has covered my face. I have become strange to my brothers and alien to the children of my mother.” He saw himself as alone in the world and sought out the G-d’s truth wherever it led. That is how he became great.

Even the Jewish people experience this existential loneliness on the national level. While it may be true, as we say in Kiddush and in davening on Yom Tov, “You chose us from among all of the nations,” we are also hated because we are different. We are the tzaddik of the world, different, set apart, lonely, and subject to a completely different standard than anyone else.

Everything we have spoken about until now is step one. By focusing on seeking

never writing off another person.

We only have eight teachings from Reb Mendeleh Vorker, zy”a, known as the “silent tzaddik,” son of Rav Yitzchak Vorker, zy”a, and brother of Rav Yaakov Dovid of Amshinov, zy”a. One teaching was on the Gemara (Shabbos 4b), “When Shlomo instituted Eruvin [Eruvei chatzeiros, which permit people who live in different courtyards to carry things to one another’s homes on Shabbos] and the washing of the hands [before eating bread], a Heavenly voice came out and said (Mishlei 23:15), ‘My son, if your heart has become wise, my heart will rejoice as well.’” Shlomo Hamelech was a very wise person in many areas. What is so unique about instituting the rabbinic mitzvos of Eruvin and the washing of the hands that particularly demonstrates his wisdom?

Reb Mendeleh Vorker explains that these two mitzvos have opposite char -

One should not allow others to define him.

out the lonely path of the man of faith, there is a danger that one may give up on the rest of the world. Noach built a shelter, an ark in which he and his family could hide from the world’s destruction. The generation of Noach was wiped out partly because Noach was not ready to go out and speak to them and bring them into his shelter like Avraham did, who tried to bring the whole world into his tent.

This is why Noach was called, in Yiddish, the “tzaddik in a fur coat.” If a room is freezing, there are two ways to warm up. One is to wear a fur coat. It warms the person up but allows everyone else to freeze. The other method is to build a fire to give warmth to everyone in the room. Noach was a tzaddik who wore a fur coat to shelter himself from a world which was freezing because of a lack of G-dliness. Eventually, his loneliness eventually got the better of him, and he was overcome by it. Avraham Avinu, however, built fires to warm up everyone with whom he came into contact. Even though he was alone in the world, he loved and cared for everyone else.

We must invite others into the ark called Shabbos. We cannot be indifferent to friends and coworkers who are unfamiliar with the holiness of Shabbos. We cannot escape into ourselves by hiding in an ark, a fur coat, or alcohol. We must be like Avraham Avinu, living G-dly lives as if there was no one else in the world but

acteristics. Eruvin bring people together by permitting those with houses abutting different courtyards to bring food to one another’s homes on Shabbos to increase closeness and the bonds of friendship among a larger circle of neighbors. Washing one’s hands, however, is an act of purification. Purification inherently involves separating oneself from the world generally and anyone else who may have a negative effect on one’s holiness. The Divine voice made it clear that Shlomo was uniquely wise because he instituted these two opposing mitzvos, demonstrating particular greatness because he was able to contain within himself the quality of “Avraham was one” while not being a tzaddik in a fur coat.

The ideal is therefore to connect to other people, in touch with the social reality of one’s community, while never losing sight of who one is and what he is living for. He must never be afraid to swim against the tide. May we all merit to be like Avraham, always living in the right way as if we are alone in the world, but never indifferent to others, always working to help them in whatever they need!

Rav Moshe Weinberger, shlita, is the founding Morah d’Asrah of Congreagation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, NY, and serves as leader of the new mechina Emek HaMelech.

Delving into the Daf

Analysis of Halachic Requirements for Kiddush on Liquor

By Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

The common practice, particularly in Litvishe communities, is to recite kiddush exclusively over wine or grape juice. However, a differing custom is observed among many Chassidic circles, where kiddush is recited over liquor, typically using a small one-ounce cup.

This divergence raises two primary halachic issues. The first concerns the permissibility of using any beverage other than wine or grape juice for Kiddush. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 272:9) records a dispute: “In a place where wine is not commonly available, some say one may recite kiddush on beer or other significant beverages (chamar medina), while others forbid it.”

The Rema rules in accordance with the Rosh: on Friday night, if wine is unavailable, kiddush should be made over challah; but for the daytime kiddush, if wine is unavailable, one may use chamar medina (literally, “wine of the country,” meaning a significant, socially respected beverage). The Mishnah Berurah (272:29) explains that “where wine is available, one should certainly use it.” This suggests that beer or liquor should not be used when wine is readily accessible.

However, the Mishnah Berurah continues: “In our lands, where wine is expensive and most social drinking is with other beverages, even the Gedolim do not customarily use wine for the daytime kiddush and rely on the lenient opinions. Kiddush during the day is only a rabbinic obligation.”

He adds that one who nevertheless uses wine fulfills the mitzvah in the most ideal manner. In the following paragraph, the Mishnah Berurah extends this leniency further, ruling that if one prefers liquor to wine, they may use liquor l’chatchilah for the daytime kiddush. This forms the halachic basis for the custom of using liquor.

Yet another question arises. The Chazon Ish and Ketzos HaShulchan held

that no beverage today truly qualifies as chamar medina. Nevertheless, Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, ruled that beer and liquor in America do indeed have the status of chamar medina. The classification of other drinks—such as orange juice, coffee, milk, or soda—remains uncertain and should be determined in consultation with a rav.

Thus, one who makes kiddush on liquor on Shabbos morning, even where wine is available, may rely on the Mishnah Berurah together with Rav Moshe’s ruling.

The Volume Requirement

This leniency depends on a second critical condition: the required volume. The Mishnah Berurah stipulates that when using liquor, “one must be careful to use a cup that holds a revi’is and to drink from it a malei lugmav (a cheekfull – most of a revi’is).”

The exact volume of a revi’is is disputed, ranging from 2.9 to 3.3 fluid ounces, though for Friday night kiddush, a stricter standard of about 4.5 ounces is often used. The cup must hold a full revi’is, and the one reciting kiddush must drink at least a malei lugmav (approximately 1.6-2 oz). This is a firm requirement ac -

cording to the Mishnah Berurah. If the person reciting kiddush does not wish to drink that much, the Mishnah Berurah allows the beverage to be distributed among participants. If the combined amount consumed equals a malei lugmav, the obligation is fulfilled b’dieved. Ideally the one making kiddush should personally drink the required amount.

The Mishnah Berurah adds another condition: the malei lugmav must be consumed within the time of k’dei achilas pras (the time it takes to eat a small loaf of bread), estimated between two and nine minutes. Even when multiple participants combine to drink the required amount, all must finish within one k’dei achilas pras.

The Afikei Yam questions this requirement. He argues that k’dei achilas pras defines the continuity of a single act of consumption; when several people drink separately, their actions are already distinct, and the timeframe should be irrelevant.

The Mishnah Berurah, however, in Biur Halacha, cites a proof from Zevachim 31b. The Gemara rules that if a Kohen intends for two people each to consume half a k’zayis of sacrificial meat after its per -

mitted time, the offering becomes invalid. Although two individuals are involved, their acts combine into one halachic unit. Similarly, the Mishnah Berurah concludes that all participants sharing in the malei lugmav must finish within one k’dei achilas pras period.

Size of the Kiddush Cup

While the Mishnah Berurah requires a cup holding a full revi’is, the Taz presents a dissenting view. He contends that the revi’is standard applies only to wine or beer; for strong liquors, the requisite measure is what is locally considered a normal serving—often a single shot (about one ounce). Accordingly, the Taz permits reciting kiddush on a one-ounce cup of liquor. This opinion was followed by numerous Chassidic Rebbes. Therefore, those whose family or community tradition, based on their rebbeim, follows the Taz may continue to do so. Others should adhere to the Mishnah Berurah’s requirement of using a cup that holds at least a revi’is.

The Material of the Cup

A final issue concerns the kiddush cup itself. When Chassidic Rebbes used a oneounce cup, it was typically made of silver or another durable material. Modern practice sometimes involves disposable plastic shot glasses, raising a separate question of whether such cups possess sufficient “importance” for kiddush. Since a plastic shot cup is usually single-use, some authorities consider it less valid than a reusable disposable cup. Nonetheless, the prevailing custom is to be lenient and permit their use, especially for daytime kiddush.

Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow is a rebbe at Yeshiva Ateres Shimon in Far Rockaway. In addition, Rabbi Sebrow leads a daf yomi chaburah at Eitz Chayim of Dogwood Park in West Hempstead, NY. He can be contacted at ASebrow@gmail.com.

Headlines Halacha

A Practical and Immediate 6-Step Guide to Fulfilling the Mitzvah of Lo Saamod al Dam Rayacha

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

The primary mitzvah here is the recognition that Mamdani represents an existential threat to the Jewish community in New York. Imagine what happened at the universities times ten. There are other mitzvos involved as well, but let’s first get to the 6 Step Guide. By the way, there are new, brilliant insights here. We just need the right people to step up and do these six steps. Ultimately, of course, everything is b’yad Hashem – but we must do our hishtadlus, too.

We need to convince Curtis Sliwa, a friend of the Jewish community, to drop out of the NYC mayoral race so that Cuomo can have a chance to win.

1. Ask Sliwa what his main platform positions are and try to negotiate with Cuomo to adopt them.

2. Get Cuomo to promise him a prominent role in his administration where they can work together for the betterment of New York City.

3. Get every newspaper and publication that we can to endorse Cuomo and call for Sliwa’s withdrawal.

4. Find a future alternative race where

Jewish leaders will promise to back him.

5. Meet with Catholic, Evangelical and Italian leaders to get out the vote in their communities.

6. We must combine honest conversations about his chances with respect for their motivations and offering him a graceful exit that preserves dignity.

And now the mitzvos involved:

1. There is the mitzvah of “v’nishmartem me’od l’nafshosaichem (Devarim 4:15) – the mitzvah of protecting our well-being. If we do nothing, we have violated this directive.

2. Few have heard of the second mitzvah. The verse says (Devarim 4:9), “Rak hishamer lecha” is understood by most poskim to actually comprise an actual second mitzvah (see Rav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l, Shaar HaTeshuvos #25) to take special care. Again, if we do nothing, we have violated this pasuk as well.

3. There is a third mitzvah, “v’chai bahem, and you shall live by them” (Vayikra 18:5). Our performance of mitzvos must ensure our survival as well, and chalilah, there could be very dire antisemitic inci-

dents if we do nothing.

4. There is a fourth mitzvah found in the verse in Parshas Ki Teitzei (Devarim 22:2) which discusses the mitzvah of hashavas aveida, returning an object, with the words “vahasheivoso lo – and you shall return it to him.” The Gemara in Sanhedrin (73a), however, includes within its understanding of these words the obligation of returning “his own life to him as well.” For example, if thieves are threatening to pounce upon him, there is an obligation of “vahasheivoso lo.” In other words, this verse is the source for the mitzvah of saving someone’s life. I believe that this is the general mitzvah the Shulchan Aruch refers to in Shulchan Aruch Orech Chaim 325.

5. Lo saamod al dam rayacha – There is a fifth (a negative mitzvah) of not standing idly by your brother’s blood as well. This is mentioned in Shulchan Aruch (CM 426:1) and in the Rambam. This includes yourself and your spouse and children too and the entire Jewish community.

6. And finally, there is a sixth mitzvah of “Lo suchal l’hisalaym – a negative

commandment associated with the positive commandment of hashavas aveidah, and that is the verse in Devarim (22:3), “You cannot shut your eyes to it.” This verse comes directly after the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah. The Netziv (HeEmek Sheailah) refers to this mitzvah as well.

In short, we need to adopt these six steps and ensure that we get out the vote.

Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, discusses the obligation to vote in an English letter and finds the source of such an obligation in the notion of hakaras hatov, expressing our gratitude. In 1984, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York was conducting a voter registration campaign. Rav Moshe Feinstein was approached and responded that, in fact, Jews should vote.

Subsequently, a letter was released signed by Rav Feinstein delineating the obligation to vote. The letter stated:

“On reaching the shores of the United States, Jews found a safe haven. The rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights have allowed us the freedom to practice our religion without interference and to live

in this republic in safety.

“A fundamental principle of Judaism is hakaras hatov — recognizing benefits afforded us and giving expression to our appreciation. Therefore, it is incumbent on each Jewish citizen to participate in the democratic system which guards the freedoms we enjoy. The most fundamental responsibility incumbent on each individual is to register and to vote.

“Therefore, I urge all members of the Jewish community to fulfill their obligations by registering as soon as possible, and by voting. By this, we can express our appreciation and contribute to the continued security of our community.”

Rectifying An Urgent Matter

On the other hand, the Steipler Gaon, zt”l, seems to view the obligation of voting as a means of fulfilling the need to rectify an urgent matter. Indeed, he is cited in Orchos Rabbeinu p. 141 in Cheshvan of 5726 as even having permitted a mourner within the seven days of mourning to vote when the need to vote is urgent.

Respecting the View of the Gedolei HaTorah

The Slonimer Rebbe, zt”l, and others (see Bais Yaakov Yerichon L’Inyanei Chi-

nuch 027-028 p. 30) have proposed an entirely different reason for the obligation. They write that the obligation to vote stems from the obligation to respect the view of Gedolei HaTorah.

Strengthening Torah

The Vizhnitzer Rebbe writes that the obligation to vote in Israel stems from the

It would seem, from the proliferation of letters from yeshivos and shuls, that it does. One should also vote in every election that a such matters as well. It would also seem that it is worthwhile to investigate or to perhaps at least ask around as to which candidate would help support the Torah way of life most.

In conclusion, there does seem to be a

Gaon, zt”l, seems to view the obligation of voting as a means of fulfilling the need to rectify an urgent matter.

obligation to strengthen Torah (Michtevei Kodesh #238).

Do These Reasons Apply Here?

Does this obligation to vote apply in the NYC mayoral elections and to put these 6 steps into action?

Of course!

Rav Feinstein’s reason was stated here, so for that issue there is no question. But what about the other three reasons?

halachic obligation to vote either stemming from hakaras hatov, according to Rav Feinstein, zt”l, rectifying an urgent matter according to the Steipler, zt”l, respecting the view of the Gedolei HaTorah according to the Slonimer Rebbe, and from the obligation of strengthening Torah according to the Vizhnitzer Rebbe.

With antisemitism surging to levels unseen in generations and Jews and democratic institutions under assault, we stand

at a crossroads that will define not just our community’s future, but our very survival as free Jews in America. This is not politics as usual. This is about whether our children will inherit a nation where they can walk proudly as Jews without fear.

The forces that seek to marginalize, demonize, and ultimately endanger Jewish life are mobilizing. They are organized. They are voting. And they are counting on our complacency.

We have seen what happens when good people remain silent. We carry that history in our bones. We know that freedom is not a birthright—it is a responsibility that each generation must fight to preserve.

This is our moment. Our choice. Our obligation—not just as citizens, but as the inheritors of a covenant that demands u’vacharta ba’chaim.

We also do not see any indication that the four above reasons are mutually exclusive. In other words, there could very well be four different halachic reasons that we should be voting.

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

I’m back home.

Figuring out how to manage on your own in a relatively new place, after a lifetime of partnership, despite the huge support of family and friends is very hard. My booked flight back to Israel was Motzash (Motzei Shabbos for the uninitiated). As I sat feeling sorry for myself, cocooned by a wonderful family in Woodmere, I began to have doubts about returning home and my new reality.

It’s been hard and not so hard; right now, the hard part is taking a front row seat. Three standout comments.

• How are you?

• Will you be moving back to America?

• How did he die?

• Many, many more….

I’m not “mekabel,” that people “don’t know what to say.” Unfortunately, most Jewish grownups have participated in the Jewish rituals surrounding death; in practice, they make a lot of sense. What makes no sense to me is the acceptance of random “comforting” the mourners for the whole year of mourning when you happen to bump into them.

Imagine minding your business as you walk down the street or shopping in the supermarket and someone spots you and comes running over, stops, says some words that they think (hope) is encouraging and supportive, says the “Hamakom,” etc. and walks away. It happened to me when, as I walked along Central Ave, a car stopped, someone called my name…well, you can figure out the rest.

This occurred both with the person still sitting in the car and another time, wherein the person parked and jumped out of the car as I tried to pass. In each instance, I was deep into my own thoughts and startled by the “drive-by” nature of the encounter.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself; I am not comforted by these “well-meaning” people who “don’t know what to say.”

Coming home with the hostages, erev the last day of chag, for me was poignant and surreal.

To really capture the feeling of antic -

School of Thought

Coming Home With the Hostages

By Barbara Deutsch

ipation and relief felt by all goes beyond my writing skills. I can retell the greeting the senior stewardess shared with all of the passengers as we landed, first in Hebrew then in English; they were similar but not the same.

“I want to welcome you to Israel.

Thank you for choosing El Al. This will be the last time this crew will be stating the count of the many days our chatufim have been starved and beaten against

about the hostages when she translated to English.

Ulpan works!

In my present state of fragile mind, it is comforting to know that for some, not all, wishes do come true. From what I know and try to understand, the cruelty inflicted on these poor children of mothers and fathers have a long hard road of healing ahead of them. They have been on a terrible journey, and hopefully they

In my present state of fragile mind, it is comforting to know that for some, not all, wishes do come true.

their will. They are coming home, and we have the privilege of greeting them as they return. G-d bless our brave IDF soldiers who have risked life and limb to win this war against the evils of Hamas. Thank you, Bibi Netanyahu, for bringing the hostages home.”

Everyone cried.

For some reason, I don’t know why, the stewardess did not say anything

will become a better version of whom they used to be before they were taken.

We rejoice and pray for them.

As for the return of the bodies. I went to be menacheim aveil Rav Doron Perez with Rabbi Heshie and Rookie Billet, dear friends. Rabbi Perez is the head of World Mizrachi and his son Captain Daniel Perez’s intact body (a deep comfort to the family) was one of the returned.

Rav Perez was sitting shiva in an Ulam that could accommodate the expected hordes of people coming to pay their respects. He had already sat the prescribed seven-day shiva two years ago when Daniel’s bloody uniform was returned to the family.

When a body is recovered and reburied, a person sits again. For the burial itself, hundreds of people came in support; there were long, supportive speeches and praise for the great man, gone too soon, that this soldier hero was.

At the shiva, I did not see a broken grieving father; time heals, they say. I witnessed a strong, proud man mourning the loss of a beloved son. Doron, the dad, seemed comforted that Daniel, his son, can now have a proper and respectful burial. The rituals will never take away the pain of profound loss but you have to/ can live with it.

We Jews have the mourning rituals down pat; I was glad I went.

These are the best (better) of times for our nation and the worst (working hard towards getting better) of times for me personally.

When you see me, just say, “Hi.” There was never a question that I would return home to my beloved Israel; it is where I belong.

On Sukkot, we read Kohelet where it discusses the concept of “time”; there is a time for everything. It was “time” for the hostages to come home.

Bob died because it was his “time.” We all have a “time.”

Welcome back, dear hostages. It feels so good to say those words.

Barbara Deutsch is the former associate principal at HANC, middle school principal at Kushner, and Dean of Students at Yeshiva of Flatbush. A not-retired educator, she is trying to figure out life in Israel through reflections on navigating the dream of aliyah as a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend.

An Uplifting and Joyous Day

Amb. David Friedman Shares His

Thoughts on the Final Hostage Release

By TJH Staff

Ambassador Friedman, you spent yom tov in Israel. How was it?

It was so incredible. It’s always incredible to be here, but especially this year. The juxtaposition of the chag coming, especially with Simchas Torah coming on the heels of the hostage release, was really beyond words.

Where were you on Hoshana Rabba, the day of the release?

I got up very early and went to shul and then spent the day at the Knesset waiting for President Trump to address the Knesset. The mood at the Knesset was really joyous. I spoke with people on both sides of the aisle, and there was so much joy as we were there, waiting for the President and after the speeches.

I told President Trump after the speech that he lifted up a nation and lifted up his standing in the world.

I think he said something that people really needed to hear, which is that it’s time to go back to work. Enough war. Start rebuilding your lives, start rebuilding your businesses. All those people in the reserves who spent more than half of these two years away from their families and job and careers…he told them that it’s time to go back to their lives and that we have your back. The live hostages are back home now, and Israel is going to emerge from this nightmare better than ever.

I think that this message, coming from an outsider, somebody outside the Israeli government, somebody

who is as respected as President Trump – this message was something that everybody needed to hear. It really lifted everybody up.

I told the President that after the speech. He called me from the car as he was going to the airport, and he asked me what I thought of his speech. I told him that I thought he lifted up an entire nation on his shoulders.

Were you surprised that the left was as laudatory as they were in their speeches at the Knesset as well?

You’re referring to Lapid? I think this is very special about Trump – that, at least in Israel, he’s a unifying force. In America, there may be people who still have Trump Derangement Syndrome, but in Israel, they have all seen what he’s done. They see how he stood with Israel. Even the Opposition, in Israel, Lapid spoke very well about the importance of what happened and how grateful they were for the return of all the hostages. I wasn’t surprised to hear them say that. This is really a consensus issue in Israel. Israel has very diverse viewpoints, but on this issue, there was a real consensus.

Trump has been speaking about this deal for many, many months. What do you think finally clinched the deal?

I think what he did which was unique and differ -

ent was to assemble the entire Arab world – Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan…countries that have relationships with Israel and countries that don’t have relationships with Israel. He put them all on one side with Israel, and he isolated Hamas. Hamas woke up after that and said, “You know, we’re alone. We have no place to go. There’s nobody on our side anymore.” And I think that was important.

Over the course of these two years, the work of the IDF was extraordinary. The work of all the other Israeli security forces, the Mossad – everything they’ve done has been incredible. The leadership of the prime minister has been extraordinary. So, it wasn’t just Trump, but Trump had that kind of secret ingredient. He had what I think people call an “X factor,” where he was really just able to put on the finishing touches of isolating Hamas. Once Hamas was able to see that they had no place to go, it was surrender or suicide. And I think that’s where the difference was made.

We haven’t gotten back all the hostages’ bodies, which is, as a Jewish person, super painful. Trump has been tweeting that we need the bodies back. What do you think are the next steps for ensuring that Hamas gives Israel back the bodies of the dead hostages?

Israel’s obligation to withdraw was conditioned on getting the bodies back. We can debate whether recovering all of them requires more effort — maybe it does

— but Hamas is not fully abiding by what they must do: returning the bodies and ceasing killings. They shouldn’t be executing Palestinians in the street. The President just put out a statement minutes ago saying this wasn’t the deal, Hamas was not supposed to start killing people, and if they continue, there will be consequences. Everyone recognizes that when it comes to Hamas, you can put out 27 pieces of paper with 20 points on them and Hamas will just ignore them. The structure of the deal was very well executed and very well written but you’re still dealing with Hamas, and Hamas has never shown an ability to keep their word or to abide by a deal.

We’ll have to see what happens, but at this point, Israel has 98% of the leverage. Any time it wants Israel can wipe out Hamas. They’ve got their living hostages back on Israeli soil. That weight has been lifted, and with that weight having been lifted, now Israel has a free hand to do whatever it needs to do and it knows that and Hamas knows that. Israel also has the entire Arab world behind them on this deal, along with the United States. It’s as good an opportunity as there has been for Hamas to abide by the deal. But if they don’t, they won’t, and Israel will have American support then to do what it has to do.

To your knowledge, how much involvement did Jared Kushner have in getting this deal pushed through? It seems as if he only really showed up towards the end, but I’m sure he was involved behind the scenes.

I don’t know because I wasn’t in the room, but knowing Jared and knowing the relationships he has with all these countries involved, he has a wonderful ability to find common ground. He’s a brilliant guy. He’s very committed to Israel’s protection. I am pretty sure he played an instrumental and enormously positive role. This issue is really very close to his heart.

Have you met with any of the hostages who were released this week?

No, I haven’t. There have been several whose families I’ve stayed involved with. There have been hostages who were released less recently whom I’ve met and spoken with. There have been families that I’ve had a lot to do with, but over the last two, three days, I haven’t met with any of the newly released hostages.

I’m sure the road to recovery is not going to be short or easy for them.

I’m sure. I’m not an expert in this field, but, yes, there’s an enormous amount of recovery. At the same time, look at some of them and what they’ve done. Look at Matan Angrest, who was freed and within a day, he was at the funeral of his commander Daniel Perez. That, to me, was incredible. He showed up just

one day out of captivity because this was his tank commander. There are some real incredible heroes here.

You know about the Berman twins, who were separated from each other the entire two years. People thought while they were in captivity, oh, well, they’re probably staying strong together. But truthfully, not only were they separated from their families, they were also separated from each other the entire time.

The story of Avinatan Or, who was quite tall and was held in a cage and couldn’t even stand up for two years handcuffed at the bars in the dark. The suffering here is incredible, but then we see how strong they are. These are great heroes of the Jewish people. As the stories come out, and they’ll probably be coming out in drips over the next few years, we will probably learn more and more just how courageous and selfless they were.

is pretty strong. The real estate values are incredibly high. The people are out on the streets every night. The restaurants are full, and they’re not cheap either. I don’t see Israel at risk, as a society or as a country –they’re stronger than they’ve ever been before.

“I told President Trump after the speech that he lifted up a nation and lifted up his standing in the world.”

Aside from the human loss that we’ve endured over the past two years, Israel has suffered tremendously in the media. The antisemitism around the world has been vile and rampant and it’s no longer hidden. What are your thoughts on that, and is there a way for Israel and the Jewish nation to recover from that?

The state of Israel will recover from it. I firmly believe because I’m here now and I can feel it. It’s a Jewish state with almost 8 million Jews here and the country has been suffering through this trauma but the trauma is now beginning to lift and the economy

The question is what’s going to be with the diaspora, and I think, with that, you’ve got some real issues. I’m not giving up on America at all. I think there are some questions that we have to answer, though. For example, if Mamdani is elected mayor of New York, that is an incredibly dangerous signal about America because New York has more Jews than any other place in the world. As of now, he’s favored to win, and if he wins, that just shows you that we’ve got problems in America. But places like London and Paris are basically lost causes. So, the diaspora really is at risk.

When it comes to America, I’m not too concerned. I know it can be fixed. The vast majority of Americans are not antisemitic. The others make a lot of noise, but it’s not the majority. America will hopefully climb out of this. I’m not so sure about the rest of the world, though.

In America, you see that the new leaders of the Democrat Party are clearly Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, and they’re bringing Mamdani along with them, which is concerning not just for Jews but also for anyone who wants to live a values-based life in the United States.

There is something wrong, collectively, with people in America under 30. Somehow, they’ve been given a wrong set of basic values – in university, social media, they’re not reading enough good books that will cause

them to really think. It’s way beyond antisemitism, as you point out. I really do hope this gets fixed because it’s really an important concern.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk highlights that there are many people who share good, conservative values who we may not have heard of before.

There are. But at the same time, there are people who intend to hijack those movements by injecting a dose of antisemitism into them and trying to galvanize the far-right. It’s important to know that there are a lot of good people out there. But the way it works on social media is that if you’re a good person with good values and good judgement, you won’t get very far on TikTok or Twitter. You just don’t fit any algorithm that’s going to drive a lot of traffic to your accounts. On the other hand, if you’re a crazy Jew-hating antisemite, and you combine that with some spiritual affinity that will attract people, you can do a lot of damage, but again, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the way people really think. Most social media algorithms work to provide you with more and more of the stuff that you’ve already

shown an interest in. So it tends to reinforce bad points of view with others who agree with that harmful rhetoric, which is a whole other issue, and that may be a big part of what’s wrong with the world. There are a lot of people trying to fix it, and I’m pretty encouraged by the number of Americans who still see things the right way. I think it’s still the majority.

When this deal came to fruition, there was talk about who will be governing and running Gaza. It has been said that the Palestinian Authority may be part of that. What are your thoughts? I think the Palestinian Authority is completely corrupt. It’s a vile, evil organization without the skills to govern at all. My understanding is that they won’t have a meaningful role in the control of Gaza. The real question is, who will? They’re creating a Gaza Stabilization

“We’re probably in the first inning of a nineinning game when it comes to Gaza.”

Board that’s supposed to be a group led by an American three-star general that will include representatives of most of our friendly Arab countries, and somehow, they will create a security force from their own ranks to control Gaza. But we’re probably in the first inning of a nine-inning game when it comes to Gaza. There are a lot of aspirations and a lot of well-meaning people who have entered into the fray only to exit relatively quickly in frustration. So, let’s see if this time is different.

Thankfully, President Trump did not exit in frustration and was able to close the deal. You’re very close to the current ambassador to Israel, Ambassador Mike Huckabee. You were both filmed were jamming on stage with Avraham Fried on chol hamoed. Are you in touch with Ambassador Huckabee on a consistent basis?

Yes. We speak all the time and on all topics. We’re very good friends. We were friends before he became

ambassador, and we continue to be friends. He lives down the block from me in Jerusalem, a few blocks away. He actually had dinner in the sukkah with me with President and Mrs. Herzog last week. My wife and Janet Huckabee are friends. We have the closest of relationships.

Ambassador Huckabee is doing a beautiful job, and we’re very grateful for that. You mentioned that young people are not reading the right books. What books would you recommend young people read if they want to learn more facts over fiction about what’s going on in the Middle East and the world?

I would have to think about specific books, but the first book, I would say, is that everyone should be fluent or at least conversant in the Bible. I’m not talking about yeshiva kids, but I’m talking about other kids. Know what the Bible says. The Bible is the wellspring from which all the values of America have emanated. It’s the bestselling book in America, but it’s not selling enough, because not everyone has read it.

There are lots of great books out there. Aside from the Bible, there’s not a particular book I would say people should read; they should read good books by people who are giving serious thought to what America should look like, what the world should look like, and it will make them think. If you start thinking about those things, you’ll come up with your own views, and hopefully if you were raised properly, you’ll come up with the right views.

Reading books is an art. People don’t have the patience for it anymore, I guess. People just want to get their messages from a short paragraph, and you just can’t do justice to serious issues in a paragraph. If you read books about the formation of the state of Israel, about the Holocaust, about the beginnings of America, about how wars got started and how wars ended, you’re going to be a lot smarter and you will be much more likely on your own to think about these issues and come to the right views.

Thompson, Connecticut Who? What? Where? When? Why? The Wandering Jew

By Hershel Lieber

When I thought of writing about my travels to Thompson, Connecticut, I knew I would be bombarded with many questions: what, who, where, when and most certainly, why.

In order to address these questions, I will give a short introduction that will resolve those inquiries.

My readers may not know that besides for a fair amount of travel that both Pesi and I have done over the years, I actually had to work for a living. My occupation

was accounting and with the exception of the first few years after getting married, my profession was inundated with bookkeeping, profit and loss statements, balance sheets and the myriad of tax returns that I had to file for my clients. During the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, my work was almost entirely done on worksheets with the help of a trusted lead pencil and the even more fundamental eraser. Only after the dawn of the twenty-first century did I make some concessions to using a computer.

Still, most of my work was done by hand

on spreadsheets with the aid of a five-dollar calculator. Throughout the year, I was able to manage my workload and keep my clients satisfied. When tax season arrived, the enormous amount of work that I had to do was intense and overwhelming. With corporation and personal taxes due at the same time as the payroll tax and sales tax deadlines, with phones ringing off the hook and a myriad of scheduled meetings with clients, I barely had the patience or the time to sit down and compile the year-end figures. My office was at

home, and I had neither day nor night to sit peaceably and prepare my work. What I needed badly was a couple of days of seclusion with zero interruptions to complete my year-end work. I needed to get away from my home office which was the source of relentless disruptions of phone calls, voice messages, and email notifications. I started looking into a getaway location, not too far from home, with no distractions and no attractions to keep me on track in completing my workload.

I do not remember where I saw the

advertisement about a mansion in Connecticut’s northeastern “quiet corner,” in the town of Thompson, called the Lord Thompson Manor. The stately, traditional English-styled manor was built in 1917 as a summer home for the Gladding family who founded Providence, Rhode Island’s famous department store. The forty-acre estate is enclosed within landscaped grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmstead of Central Park and Prospect Park fame. When I was doing research about the manor, I realized that the main use of that elegant locale was for weekend weddings. The owners also occasionally rented out a room or two during the weekdays to executives who were doing business in the nearby cities of Worcester, Boston, and Providence. In 1999, I called the manor, and the owner, Jackie, told me she had a vacancy for four nights from Sunday, May 2. We packed our luggage for the week together with two large file boxes of accounting work, and we were off.

When we arrived, Jackie was a most accommodating hostess. Our room’s décor included patterned hunter green wallpaper, polished oak floors, embroidered rugs, Tiffany-styled lamps and traditional furniture. The room’s focal

point was a massive wood-fueled fireplace with its brass ornamental tools. There was a very comfortable desk and armchair with ample lighting for me to do my accounting work. The staircase leading up to our bedroom was adorned with small, candlelit lanterns on every second step. We told Jackie that we subscribe to a kosher diet and would not be using any china or silverware. We kash-

so inviting and cozy.

From 1999 until 2004, we went to the Lord Thompson Manor seven times. I accomplished my objective to work with peace of mind and achieved the goals I set for my accounting workload. I would sit down after davening Shacharis and work with almost no interruptions for seven or eight hours on end. Pesi brought along some of her projects, like updating

We had our elegant dinners in the salon sitting by a flickering fireplace in the company of her two small pets, a Yorkshire Terrier and a cat.

ered a microwave oven and were able to use her fresh tablecloths, napkins and glasses. She told us that we could use anything in her house that we please. We had our elegant dinners in the salon sitting by a flickering fireplace in the company of her two small pets, a Yorkshire Terrier and a cat. I could spend half an article describing the manor’s décor. Suffice it to say, besides its elegance, it was

telephone books (remember what those are), reading, crocheting, and shmoozing on her phone. On two occasions, I dedicated some time preparing badchanis for upcoming weddings. One was for a friend’s son, and one was for my nephew Sruli Daum.

In February 2001, we arrived at the manor at the start of a major blizzard. The grounds were knee-deep in snow,

and one could not see three feet ahead. We also experienced a total blackout for twenty-four hours – no electricity and no heating. Our room was cozily warm as we were constantly feeding wood to our fireplace. Jackie brought up sufficient candles so that I could continue to work.

Although my intention was to stay put at the manor during these working trips, I could not satisfy my urge to do some traveling around to the nearby cities. We traveled to neighboring Worcester, Massachusetts, on a few occasions to shop and to see their impressive Art Museum. In 1999, we went to Boston on Lag B’Omer and joined the Hadlakah by the Bostoner Rebbe. In 2001, we traveled again to Boston and went out for dinner to Taam China with our friends Szmuel and Chana Cymerman. In February 2002, we visited our nephew Shuli Lieber in Waterbury and met with Rabbi Aharon Kaufman, the Rosh Yeshiva. Our November 2002 trip to the manor included my mother, a”h, and she was so impressed with the artistic decor and the relaxed mood that she experienced. Our last trip in May of 2004 was followed by a delightful Shabbos by our friends, Rabbi David and Susy Avigdor, in New Haven, CT.

I truly miss those trips to the Lord Thompson Manor. Though I was heavily involved in my work, the atmosphere and the surroundings were a source of deep contentment and pleasure for both of us.

Hershel Lieber has been involved in kiruv activities for over 30 years. As a founding member of the Vaad L’Hatzolas Nidchei Yisroel he has traveled with his wife, Pesi, to the Soviet Union during the harsh years of the Communist regimes to advance Yiddishkeit. He has spearheaded a yeshiva in the city of Kishinev that had 12 successful years with many students making Torah their way of life. In Poland, he lectured in the summers at the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation camp for nearly 30 years. He still travels to Warsaw every year – since 1979 – to be the chazzan for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur for the Jews there. Together with Pesi, he organized and led trips to Europe on behalf of Gateways and Aish Hatorah for college students finding their paths to Jewish identity. His passion for travel has taken them to many interesting places and afforded them unique experiences. Their open home gave them opportunities to meet and develop relationships with a variety of people. Hershel’s column will appear in The Jewish Home on a bi-weekly basis.

In Memory

What I Learned from Rabbi Moshe Hauer, zt”l

By Rebbetzin Dr. Adina Shmidman

Ikeep hearing Rabbi Hauer zt”l’s voice.

Not in sound, but in thought — the pauses between words, the care in his phrasing, the way he turned a question into an opening rather than a conclusion. Since the passing of Rabbi Moshe Hauer, zt”l, that voice continues to echo — a steady reminder of what genuine leadership looks like.

During the five and a half years that I worked with him at the Orthodox Union, I came to understand that his leadership was not a style; it was a value system. The hundred-plus files in my computer that bear his name — meeting notes, reflections, drafts — capture not only what we discussed but how he led: with clarity, humility, and care.

Lesson 1: Leadership begins with responsibility.

Our first team meeting took place at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station as the uncertainty of Covid loomed. Fear and confusion hung in the air, yet his calm presence anchored the room. That day set the tone for the years that followed – years marked by challenge and resilience. Covid, war, tragedy – yet under his guidance, he taught us what it means to lead. He reminded us again and again that Torah does not pause for crisis — that our achrayus, our responsibility to one another, only deepens when the world feels unsteady.

Lesson 2: Vision means making space, not taking space.

Rabbi Hauer had a vision for the Orthodox Union and the Women’s Initiative — expansive and Torah-driven — but it was never imposed from above. He didn’t dictate; he cultivated. His meetings were conversations, not directives. When others spoke, he listened fully, often pausing before responding, as if to weigh not only what was said but what was meant.

Lesson 3: Progress is better than perfection.

I learned this most powerfully through the creation of the Torat Imecha Halacha initiative. Rabbi Hauer wanted women learning halacha — as simple as that. I raised countless complexities that seemed insurmountable. For two years

ideas relentlessly without telling people what to do.

And when the program finally launched, I shared messages from participants — women thanking us for helping them remember a detail in Shemoneh Esrei or reconnecting with halacha in daily life. Rabbi Hauer listened, smiled, and

When others spoke, he listened fully, often pausing before responding, as if to weigh not only what was said but what was meant.

we went back and forth. Each week, we would tuck the topic at the end of our weekly meeting agenda, hoping we would run out of time. He never gave up. “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good,” he would remind me. “No” was not an option. His persistence taught me that you can champion a value and advance

said nothing more. There was no I told you so, no triumph. Only quiet satisfaction that people were growing in Torah.

Lesson 4: Compassion is the core of connection.

So many have shared how his sensitivity transformed moments of pain into

comfort. He gave advice sparingly but empathy freely. When he spoke publicly — at conferences, Tehillim gatherings, and national programs — his words were never about himself. They were about us — Klal Yisrael — how we could elevate, unite, and heal. Rabbi Hauer’s willingness to help was transformative, his sensitivity and care ever-present. In private interactions, as in every public setting, he led with compassion first.

Lesson 5: Legacy is measured in ongoing impact.

We often speak of din v’cheshbon — judgment and accounting. At first glance, the order seems reversed. Shouldn’t there first be a reckoning of one’s deeds before any judgment is rendered? And does Hashem need an accounting at all? He already knows every detail, every act and omission.

Perhaps the phrasing hints to something deeper — that even after a person’s lifetime, their cheshbon continues to unfold. Every act of kindness they inspired, every word of Torah that spreads in their merit, every soul they touched — all continue to add to their account.

And so it is with Rabbi Hauer. Every project he encouraged, every person he guided, every idea he inspired carries his imprint. His cheshbon continues, expanding through every corner of the community he strengthened.

Rabbi Hauer, zt”l, taught me that leadership begins in humility and ends in care. That faith and purpose can coexist with grief. That even when the way forward is painful, it is still — and always — possible.

Yehi zichro baruch — may his memory continue to teach us all.

Rebbetzin Dr. Adina Shmidman is founding director of the OU Women’s Initiative.

nspiration Nation

Douglas Murray

On October 7, Charlie Kirk, and the Justification of Violence

By Eliyahu RosEnBERg

During the October 7 massacre

— as thousands of Hamas terrorists abducted, tortured, and slaughtered Jews — another atrocity was happening an ocean away. As the attacks in southern Israel unfolded, over a thousand demonstrators gathered in Times Square to celebrate. They did so shamelessly, praising Hamas for murdering babies, wiping out entire communities, and dragging civilians into captivity.

In His Words…

a ntisemitism is always a warning that people are looking for a scapegoat for the inadequacies of their own lives. There’s this phrase from Vasily grossman: ‘Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, and i’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.’

i’ve noticed in the wake of october the 7 that a large number of Jews in israel and in a merica and the diaspora are engaging more with their faith, engaging more with their scriptures, engaging more with their traditions... in response to the madness, it’s probably inevitable that there would be a wish to return to tradition.”

i encourage other people not to spend any time concentrating on what fools say about you.

October 7 was horrific for obvious reasons. On October 7 — the Jewish nation’s darkest day since the Holocaust — Hamas killed 1,200 people and took another 251 captive, wounding and torturing and committing unspeakable acts against thousands of others. But that day was tragic for another reason: It shone a light on a serious moral issue currently plaguing society: the world’s tendency to justify violence.

It’s easy to attribute this madness to sheer stupidity; to say that the protestors are just fools. And indeed, some are. Some, for example, chant “from the river to the sea…” but have no idea what river or sea they’re referring to. But the most lethal form of anti-Zionism is driven not by ignorance — not by a lack of education — but by systemic mis education and indoctrination. Tragically, countless youth have been infected by an ideology that is so toxic that it could literally kill.

Douglas Murray, a non-Jewish author, political commentator, and outspoken supporter of Israel, calls that ideology a “death cult.”

Have you ever wondered how it’s possible for radical leftists — people who purportedly abhor the death pen-

alty and guns — to celebrate when terrorists shoot Israelis dead?

We can observe this phenomenon not only in their reaction to October 7 and global terrorism, but also in the way that much of the left have responded to recent acts of political violence. When President Trump was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, thousands of social media users said they wished the gunman hadn’t missed. When UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead in Manhattan last year, countless people praised the assassin and declared that Thompson deserved to die because his company denied patients insurance coverage. And most recently, when conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk was shot dead while speaking at an event, far too many people celebrated his death.

While those assassinations obviously cannot be compared to October 7, the global reactions to the massacre and to recent killings in America have been similar: justification and celebration. These reactions expose America’s growing appetite for violence and stem from the ideology that all action, including violence, is justified against those who threaten our freedom.

“There are two things at play here,” explains Murray. “There is the use of appalling, barbaric violence. And then,

there’s the secondary shock that comes because of the number of people whose response to violence is either a celebration or an excuse for it in some way.”

For example, if you believe the lie that Israelis are colonizers and Palestinians are the colonized, it is excusable, according to this ideology, for the Palestinians to “revolt” against Israel. That’s partially why many college students celebrated October 7: through their sick, distorted view of reality, they didn’t see terrorists storming into Israel and slaughtering innocent people; they saw “freedom fighters” standing up for the “oppressed” Palestinian people by fighting against an abusive “colonial power.” But what about the babies and all the innocent lives lost in the Palestinians’ “revolt”? They’re referred to as “collateral damage.”

Similar lines of reasoning are used to justify political assassinations in America. Because Trump is supposedly a threat to democracy, he must be killed, they reason. After all, wouldn’t we be saving American democracy by killing Trump? The healthcare CEO’s murder was also justified, they say, because he was allegedly responsible for so much pain and suffering; his killing would apparently bring attention to that injustice. And as for Charlie Kirk — well, the murder suspect’s bullet casings referred to him as a “fascist.” Kirk’s haters didn’t only despise his views; they saw his political opinions as so dangerous and threatening that his death, in effect, would save the world from tremendous harm. In Douglas Murray’s words, “It’s tolerance of the idea that there are some views that should be shut down by violence.”

“I think that the murder of Charlie Kirk is a very solitary moment for America to work out whether or not we excuse, in

any way, the use of violence, whether we say, ‘but…’ or whether we just say no,” Murray discloses. “No. Nobody should be killed for their views, let alone when they are literally in the process of doing the thing that we need to do so much in America, which is to look each other in the eye, face to face, and hash out differences of opinion.

“Charlie often said that the use of debate and the exchange of ideas is not just the best but the only way to avoid the descent into the use of violence. And for him to have been murdered as he was exemplifying that thing that he had argued for…it’s deeply shocking.” * * *

“In the opening of my book, Democracies and Death Cults , I describe an event in Times Square on October the 8th. I went to the protest to observe it. It was happening in the middle of New York as the massacre was still going on, and it was in support of the massacre,” Murray shares. “And so, I knew then that the world would have to face a very deep question: When, for instance, young people are massacred in the early hours of the morning by terrorists, why are there so many people in America who think it’s hard to know what side to be on, or choose to be on the side of the murderers and the torturers and the kidnappers?”

As Murray notes, our society understands right-wing but not left-wing antisemitism.

“Left-wing antisemitism is the worldview that the whole world can be divided into oppressor, oppressed, victim, victimizer, colonizer, colonized, white supremacist, anti-racist. There’s a whole list of doctrines. And somehow, this system too would end up finding the Jews to be the ultimate expression of everything they hate or purport to hate,” Mur-

ray explains. “So that the Jewish state, the one Jewish state in the world, will be the principal focus of their campaigning, because Israel, they say, is the most colonizing state, the most white supremacist state, the most capitalist state, the most genociding state, and so on.

“These lies need to be pulled apart, but I think we also need to understand what is it that has gone wrong at a very deep level in societies like ours — that such an issue would not be an issue of interest or study, but as something like a sense of meaning in the lives of the people who engage in this,” he notes.

“It’s quite something to turn out not just week after week, but day after day, spend your university years instead of being educated and making friends and learning about your area of study, to live in a tent and holler about a far-off conflict about which you know nothing... I discover all the time students in their teens who have been persuaded that they should have a view on the Israeli-Palestinian question. I’m sorry — half of them leave school effectively illiterate. So, no. They should not be told to have a view on the Israeli-Palestinian question.”

Murray emphasizes, “We need to address the miseducation, the indoctrination that has been going on about the issue of Israel and many other issues… But I think we also need to address: what is this lack of meaning that leads so many people, particularly disproportionately tilting towards the young, to think that their meaning in life could be found by shouting about Israel, demonstrating against Israel, supporting not just the Palestinian cause, but actually supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Iranian revolutionary government?” Murray questions. “What is it that has made that happen? And we need to not just diagnose that, but we also need to de-radicalize that por -

tion of youth in our countries who have found in this cause a sense of meaning in their lives.”

Murray notes that this is more than an ideology. It’s a cult. And like other cults, members are persuaded to cut ties with family members who hold different beliefs. They’re also taught to make their lives revolve around the cult’s tenets and follow the cult without questioning anything or engaging in critical thought. As Murray declares, “We’ve massively misunderstood the difference between education and indoctrination.”

Though the world is crazy, Douglas Murray believes there is reason to be optimistic.

“I’ve noticed in the wake of October the 7 that a large number of Jews in Israel and in America and the diaspora are engaging more with their faith, engaging more with their scriptures, engaging more with their traditions. I’ve noticed the many vigils since Charlie Kirk’s assassination. They’ve been almost entirely peaceful, dominated by prayer,” Murray says. “In response to the madness, it’s probably inevitable that there would be a wish to return to tradition. And I think that’s proving to be a good thing. I’m very moved by Jewish friends of mine who are engaging more deeply in Torah and learning Hebrew and understanding the tradition from which they come…

“Maybe one of the good things that will come out of all of this is, in the end, more people in the civilized West will realize that if we’re going to go through a difficult time, it’s probably a good time to put on your strongest moral armor.”

Most of all, Douglas Murray advises us to disregard the foolish antisemites, to be strong in our traditions, and, above all else, to be proud.

Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

Hi, thank you for giving me the opportunity to bring up a topic for discussion.

I’ve been in shidduchim for about a year and a half. I’m 23 years old and currently working. One challenge I’ve been facing is that when I reach out to shadchanim, many times, my messages are either read without a reply or just ignored. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if they wrote back with a simple, “We don’t know anyone for you at this time.” I understand that some people might find that hurtful, but for me, I’d much rather have that honesty and clarity than silence.

I’ve been working full time since I finished high school at 18, and I sometimes wonder if that makes it harder for shadchanim to find the right type of suggestions for me.

I want to know what’s the best way to approach shadchanim for follow up, so that I can keep the connection open for future suggestions without coming across as just another person asking them for an idea?

-Avi*

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.

The Panel

Dear Readers,

We want to offer YOU an opportunity to be part of the discussion! Please email us at MichelleMondShadchan@gmail.com, subject line “reader’s response,” if you would like to participate in the new “A Reader’s Response” columnist spot. We will send you a question and publish your answer in an upcoming Navidaters edition.

If you have a question you would like the Navidaters to answer, please reach out to this email as well.

Looking forward!

Michelle, the “Shadchan”

The Rebbetzin

Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, M.S.

Among the many challenges in the current shidduch environment is the vulnerability it engenders. Don’t look at your history of working as a negative. Don’t look at your family situation as a negative. Don’t look at your education status as a negative. Don’t look at lack of responsiveness of shadchanim as a response to you personally. Take action to transition from a feeling of vulnerability to one of confidence and empowerment.

The best way to build yourself up is to feel accomplished. Create situations which will make you feel successful. Develop your personal skills, interests, network, social circle, and marketable skills. Young adulthood is the time to become yourself. Expand yourself, and you will grow in many aspects. Finding a life partner as a stronger and more resilient independent adult will make you a better candidate.

Remember that shadchanim are bombarded with calls, resumes, and entreaties from parents and single men and women. Most cannot handle the volume of outreach they receive. Many of them have their own friends, shul members, and neighbors that they see regularly that will naturally come to mind first.

Your broadening growth and emergence from your native environment to new youth groups, sports groups, classes, and chesed groups will expand your social circles. More people will get to know the real you as an interesting, confident individual, rather than some facts

on a resume. That will lead to many more suggestions than pursuing overburdened professional matchmakers.

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

Dear Avi,

Thank you so much for your question and sparking this very important conversation. One of the most difficult parts of being a shadchan is juggling all of the parts this volunteer position comes with. Especially because shadchanim work voluntarily, it is crucial to recognize the level of pressure and caseload upon each shadchan which you collaborate with. With this knowledge you will also understand that, realistically, there are simply not enough hours in the day (unless a shadchan is texting and calling people literally 24/6, and even that is not enough) to work on every single who reaches out. It is literally impossible to be on our a-game with responsiveness. Perhaps this is what gives us as shadchanim a bad reputation, but it simply is a Catch-22.

Making shidduchim is the only position in the Jewish world which is absolutely necessary and incredibly time consuming for which there is no official job position or compensation. It is because of this that it has become one of the most frustrating experiences, both for the single and for the ones trying to help them on their own time.

Now that I have highlighted the background so you understand the position

shadchanim are in a little more, I would like to give you a few practical suggestions to help you create a more positive rapport with the shadchanim you connect with.

With the sheer amount of demand placed on a shadchan, the shadchan usually ends up focusing on those that fall most in line with singles who show appreciation, are socially adept, who act with menschlichkeit to the people they set you up with, and who are easy to deal with.

Here are some guidelines for the singles and parents reading this to think about.

1. Don’t be difficult to deal with.

• I know this sounds obvious, but many who are difficult don’t realize it. If a shadchan has suggested an idea and you don’t think it’s a good idea, be polite in your response and speak in an appreciative tone. Don’t put down or reprimand a shadchan for suggesting a match that you aren’t interested in.

• In your communications, make sure you are not coming across as aggressive or overeager. Watch your social boundaries and cues.

2. Be a mensch.

When a shadchan suggests a match and you’re interested, give the other side some time to look into it (two days is normal). Follow social norms and boundaries, be patient. You don’t need to message the shadchan every six hours to see if there is an update.

3. Follow through.

• When you give a “yes” and agree to go out with someone, don’t suddenly backtrack and decide you’re no longer interested before the first date. Follow through with your “yes.” The shadchan has put this match together, and the girl is excited and interested. This is basic menschlichkeit as there are feelings on the other end.

• In the more modern world, if you exchange numbers with a girl, reach out to her immediately to plan a phone call/ date. Don’t spend days texting randomly with no date in sight. I see this too often, and it is very frustrating as there is usually an uneasiness in feeling the connection is going nowhere, yet still questionable.

• After the date, get back to the shadchan within a normal amount of time –

Even when we tell ourselves it’s not personal, it feels personal.

no ghosting. If you are in the more modern world, get back to the girl directly with communication whether you are interested in going out / having a call again.

4. Appreciation.

Show appreciation to the shadchan who is helping you or your child often. Recognize that this shadchan is working voluntarily to help you/your child. If there has been a significant amount of time and effort spent on you/your child, think of a way to express appreciation in a nice way.

My hope for you is by following these pieces of advice you will have more hatzlacha and clarity through the process.

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey Galler

Your letter highlights how stressful it can be for so many of our wonderful singles, as they navigate through our antiquated and unwieldy shidduch system.

But, please, be patient. We are in the middle of autumn, the harvest season, and are reminded that every hard-working farmer knows that before he can enjoy the harvest: he must first plow, plant, and nurture.

Like our farmer who must get past rocky fields, thorns, and other obstacles, you need to overcome four barriers.

First: Getting an Initial Response from a Shadchan

Yes, we all understand that some shadchanim are often inundated and overwhelmed. Of course, it’s inexcusable for them to ignore you, but what can you do to try and get a response?

• Try reaching out to them at quieter times in their lives, not during yom tov or yeshiva vacation.

• Choose shadchanim whose client bases match you. For example, don’t expect a satisfactory response if you are strictly blue-collar but the shadchan’s client base is Ivy League, or if you never want to move from Southern California but the shadchan’s territory is exclusively based in Manhattan.

• Mention who recommended you. You might try: “Avi Cohen said that you are the best at matching normal guys with other normal singles,” or “Rabbi David Goldberg suggested that you would be able to help me.”

• Make yourself stand out and get the shadchan’s attention. For example, “I am the only Orthodox Delta Airlines pilot,” or I was the youngest apprentice to ever achieve the status of a fullfledged Journeyman in the Plumbers’ Union.”

Second: Assuring a Follow-up

Let’s say the shadchan responded, and perhaps even tried to set you up with someone. How do you stay on their radar?

• Always send a thank you note, like: “Thanks for letting me know that you are looking out for me. I really appreciate your trying to help.”

• Send small tokens of appreciation, like flowers for Shabbos or a fruit basket for yom tov.

Third: Turning a Perceived Negative into a Positive

Yes, it’s true that starting to work right after high school might make you less appealing to girls who had their hearts set on marrying a Kollel boy or a medical doctor. But what you’ve done makes you an exceptionally desirable “catch” for others.

Don’t downplay your accomplishments. Showcase them as signs of maturity and responsibility.

For example, you can emphasize how a licensed plumber will always be able to provide for his family, or how you are a rising star in your real estate job, or how for the past five years you have held a stable and responsible job with a good salary and benefits

Pulling It All Together

Dear Avi,

Thank you for writing in. I can feel how sincerely you’re trying to navigate this process with self-awareness and respect, and that alone tells me a lot about the kind of person you are.

Let’s start with the obvious: being ignored hurts. Even when we tell ourselves it’s not personal, it feels personal. You’re putting yourself out there, and silence can start to chip away at your confidence. So I want to say clearly that your reaction makes perfect sense. You’re not too sensitive. You just want

basic cour - tesy, and that’s fair.

Now about the follow-up piece. Shad- chanim are human, too. They’re busy, distracted, often juggling dozens of people, but that doesn’t mean you should feel like you’re chasing them down. The goal is to stay on their radar without losing your dignity or your warmth.

Here’s what I’d suggest: when you reach out, keep it brief, upbeat, and personal. Something like, “Hi [name], just

Fourth: Bypassing the Shidduch System

Shadchanim really try to do their best, but you should explore alternatives. You can meet prospective life partners at singles’ events, at shul functions, at friends’ Shabbos meals, or by volunteering at community-philanthropic programs.

You may not meet the girl of your dreams at these events, but you will make yourself known, and meet someone who knows someone, who might be able to recommend someone special to you.

In conclusion, don’t be discouraged. Keep sowing seeds. Hashem has His own calendar for when they will bloom.

Reader’s Response

Esther Shapiro

This is a really difficult question that I think a lot of people struggle with in shidduchim. Shadchanim are busy with shidduchim and their personal lives, and they don’t necessarily always have time to send that quick text that

This process can make even the most confident person start second-guessing themselves.

would be appreciated. Yet for those in shidduchim it’s very frustrating to not hear anything at all. One thing you can do is focus on sending your resume to the shadchanim that you find you work well with instead of every shadchan you know – whether they answer your messages more frequently or personality wise they click better with you or you connect better with them. And if there aren’t any that you feel you have a connection with, pick one or two and start connecting with them better.

Sending your resume is your hishtadlus, and getting a response is up to Hashem

wanted to check in and see if anything new comes to mind for me. Hope you’re doing well and thank you for keeping me in mind.”

That’s it. Simple, kind, no pressure. You can follow up every month or so, just enough to stay visible without it feeling transactional.

As for your work situation, please don’t shrink it. You’ve been working full time since 18 years old. That shows maturity, responsibility, and grit. You’re not too independent; you’re grounded in reality. The right person, and the right shadchan, will see that as a strength, not an obstacle.

This process can make even the most confident person start second-guessing themselves. Try not to internalize the noise. Your job is to keep showing up with self-respect and openness and to remember that silence says more about the system than it does about your worth.

Keep your heart open but your sense of self intact. The right person doesn’t need convincing.

Warmly Jennifer

Shmooze & Muse

Better Late Than Never

By Mordechai Schmutter

Today, we present the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes. The Ig Nobel Ceremony, which I write about every year, is exactly like the Nobel prizes, except that there’s not really a cash prize, it’s also given for research that didn’t work out, and they don’t pay to fly the winners in. If you want your prize, you have to come get it.

Also, apparently, the Ig Nobel Prizes could be given posthumously, I guess since they’re not flying you in anyway. Your yorshim can come in. So if you did science this year and didn’t win, don’t dismay. You can still win after 120.

For example, the Biology Prize went to two scientists in the 1930s, who were looking for a way to produce more milk. They noticed that some cows were harder to milk, almost as if they were holding onto the precious liquid. So they wanted to figure out if there was some way to get the cows to release the dairy delight, and they thought, “Maybe if we scare the cows.”

Well, how do you scare a cow? Cows are pretty big.

Well, how do you scare a person? For example, you can blow up a paper bag, sneak up behind the person, and pop it right next to their head. So that’s what they did.

No, really. Look it up.

But then they said, “What if cows are not sufficiently scared of paper bags?”

So they decided to put a cat on the cows’ backs. The plan was, you pop the bag, the cat goes “RAO!” and the cow goes, “OW!” Every morning. This was the long-term plan.

So they placed a cat on a cow’s back as the milker was being attached and then exploded paper bags, quote, “Every ten seconds for two minutes.”

I don’t think I can pass that test.

What is the cat still doing there? Was it strapped on? The article did not say.

The researchers soon realized they didn’t need the cats, so they got rid of them, which is what you’d say in your report if all the cats have long since run away and you’re covered in scratches.

But what they found was that terrified cows actually release less milk. And also that sneaking up behind cows and popping a paper bag is a great way to get kicked through the wall of a barn.

The Peace Prize this year went to American psychologist B.F. Skinner, for his experiments to improve the accuracy of missiles during World War II using pigeons.

This was also posthumous, but not because of anyone getting kicked through a wall.

During World War II, the Allies developed ways to shoot missiles farther, but what they didn’t think about until afterward was, “Well, what about accuracy?”

“Does that matter?”

“A little!”

It’s not like they could call the enemy afterward and ask, “How did we do? I’ll tell you what we were aiming for, and you can tell us where we hit, so we know what to adjust for tomorrow.”

Enter the top-secret Project Pigeon, which was brainchild of B.F. Skinner. Skinner became inspired by how birds can maneuver in the sky and drop payloads with crazy accuracy, and he thought, “Maybe they could pilot the bombs.”

He’d already trained pigeons to peck on things on a screen to get food. It was a small step from that to piloting a missile. Or at least peck on things on a windshield.

So he fitted a spot inside the missile to hold a pigeon, and then he trained the pigeons to peck at an image of a battleship. With each peck, the nose of the bomb would face the target.

Actually, he designed the nose to hold three pigeons, in case one would get distracted by, say, a bug on the windshield. He figured, “Maybe we should put three pigeons in there, so we can put it to a vote.” And they were in three separate compartments, so they wouldn’t all be distracted by the same bug.

Ultimately, Skinner formed a squadron of 64 pigeons, because the thing about putting pigeons in a missile is that

they’re not reusable. He demonstrated his idea to the government, using pigeons trained to target features on the New Jersey coastline.

The government did originally give him money, but eventually pulled the plug on the project to divert the funds to one of their other secret weapons, such as the atom bomb, which it turns out did not have to be super accurate. And Skinner was left with, quote, “a loft full of curiously useless equipment and a few dozen rapidly-aging pigeons with a strange interest in the New Jersey coast.”

Some of the prizes, though, were awarded to people who are alive. For example, the Physics Prize went to researchers in the U.S. for demonstrating the swimming abilities of a dead trout.

The researchers wanted to explore how fish might use less energy while swimming by basically just riding the current. But they were like, “We need a really relaxed fish for this.”

So they used trout, which are known for bears just plucking them out of the water. And then they thought, “What’s the most relaxed trout we can use? Ooh! A dead one!”

So they got themselves a dead trout, and they, I don’t know, defrosted it, and voila! The dead fish exhibited “unnervingly similar kinematics to a live fish,

with the exception that it cannot put on the brakes.”

“Where’s Bob going?”

“Oh, he died earlier.”

This study was published posthumously of the trout.

And then there was Saul Newman, who won the Demography Prize this year for his detective work into all these people who are famous for having the longest lives.

Have you ever wondered why with all these people, it’s like, “The world’s oldest woman just had a birthday; she’s 138, and she lived in some third-world country!” and you wonder, “How is this possible?” And then the reporters ask her, “What’s your secret?” and it’s never diet and exercise. It’s some made-up thing, like yak milk.

I don’t think baby yaks live to 138. And then everyone starts drinking yak milk.

You ever wonder what their real secret is? It’s lousy record keeping.

Saul found that all these countries who have the world’s oldest people also, totally coincidentally, are countries that have an inaccurate system of record keeping.

For example, he noticed that almost none of the people over 110 have a birth

certificate. Though, that’s fair. A birth certificate is a flimsy piece of paper as old as you are. There’s no way I’m going to still know where mine is when I’m 110.

But new people are turning 110 every day (maybe not every day) and still no birth certificates.

He also found a link between people who reach remarkable ages and places where there’s a hefty amount of pension fraud. For example, Tower Hamlets in England has more 105-year-olds than all

And they get away with it, because who’s challenging it? I’m not. The second oldest person? He’s tired. Or lying himself. The hundredth oldest person? He’s going to prove the 99 above him are liars? And then what? His secret to long life is not stressing about stuff like this.

And speaking of total coincidences, this brings us to this year’s Probability Prize, which went to a team of over 50 researchers for showing, through 350,757 coin flips, that when you flip a coin, it

And then they thought, “What’s the most relaxed trout we can use? Ooh! A dead one!”

the richest places in England put together. But almost no 90-year-olds. How does that happen? It must be something in the yak milk. Also, in Japan, he found that 82% of the people listed as being over 100 are actually dead. Apparently, the secret of living past 100 is don’t register your death. Just keep swimming.

“Where is he, though?”

“He’s swimming!”

tends to land on the same side that it started.

We think it’s 50/50, but it’s not. It’s based by whatever side you start off on. Though what side you start off on is 50/50. So it doesn’t really matter.

Someone noticed that, as it turns out, if all the tests that had been done before that showed that it was 50/50, they never recorded what side it started on. So that

person said, “I think it lands on the side it starts from.” And his colleague said, “I think you’re wrong.” Who’s to say? “Let’s flip a coin… OK, best 2 out of 3… Best 3 out of 5…” And eventually the numbers got away from them. And by the time they got to 350,757 coin flips, they said, “I guess this was the experiment.”

How did they decide how many flips were enough? Maybe their budget ran out. You’d think the entire budget would be 25 cents, but if they want to be scientific, they have to keep switching coins.

The theory was that because of how the coin is flicked, it spends slightly more time with the original side facing up. How slight? The argument was that it had a 51% chance of landing on that side.

This wasn’t a waste of time at all.

The question now is what would happen if you glued the coin to a buttered piece of toast and also to a cat that’s standing on the back of a cow?

I think that needs a bigger budget.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. He can be contacted at mschmutter@gmail.com.

Parenting Pearls Mixing Emotions

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

It was a very busy yom tov season. We went from yom tov to Shabbos and back again. It felt like almost every day was preparing for an upcoming seudah. It’s hard to imagine settling back into a regular schedule.

Many of us will say the highlight of the yom tov season was seeing the return of our brothers from Gaza. The long-awaited reunions brought up indescribable emotions. Erev Shemini Atzeres brought part of a two-year nightmare to an end. The inspiration of seeing a father stop to say “shema Yisroel” before embracing his son after his miraculous return will remain with us long after the sukkah is back in storage. The stories of faith and resilience are only starting to emerge.

Along with joy, relief and gratitude to Hashem came other feelings, such as pain and anger. Klal Yisroel had to pay a very steep price to get to this point. We had the simcha of seeing released hostages walking on Israeli soil while simultaneously feeling the pain of waiting for the return of those that had fallen. There was gratitude over the end of the torture, mixed with the pain of what they’ve endured. We can’t help but reflect on the two years that have passed.

I’ve heard many adults argue over how we should feel after so much has happened. The full range of emotions have been suggested, each with their own accompanying reasons. I can’t tell anyone how they should feel. For myself, I’ve settled with accepting the simultaneous presence of mixed – often opposite and competing – emotions.

It’s comfortable when something fits nicely into a labeled box. We can easily define it and understand what we’re looking at. The reality is that many things don’t fit in so easily. Emotions can be mixed. People can have positive and negative aspects to their personality. Anticipated events can be both exciting and nerve-wracking.

It’s confusing to experience such internal conflict. We want to have clear feelings in one direction. Something is either good or bad. Sweet or sour. Happiness or sadness. Black or white. The truth is that we live in a world with many shades of gray. This mix happens in many areas of life, and it’s our job to guide our

children through them.

Definition and Acceptance

It can help to label the different things we are experiencing or noticing. Something tends to be less scary and confusing once it has a name. Being able to say, “I’m excited for the first day of school but nervous my friends won’t be in my class” defines the different emotions, such as excitement and nervousness. “The other boy is nice to you most of the time, but he also gets jealous when you win the game.” Until we put a name or label on something, it’s unknown and more confusing – it’s also scarier.

Once we define something, we know what we’re working with and we can start to process our thoughts, work through our feelings, and accept what we can’t change.

It’s important to recognize that we can think or feel multiple things at once – and that’s fine. The very same thing can be good, bad and neutral – all at the same time. It’s not neat, nor is it convenient, but it’s the reality.

This concept is very hard for adults, but it’s even more challenging for children who are, by nature, more concrete thinkers. We often don’t appreciate how many concepts and ideas are abstract because they seem so simple or basic to us.

Children are also new to this world, and they’re trying so hard to make sense of it. There is so little they understand, and to mix things up in the same pot only makes this task even harder for them. By giving labels or names we can help separate the confusion into smaller, more manageable pieces.

With People

This need to hold simultaneous, but competing, feelings goes beyond just events. It’s normal to want to be able to define people as “good” or “bad/” This is a safety mechanism, as well as a way to make sense of the world. If someone is “good,” then we can feel safe around them. Alternatively, if someone is “bad,” then we know to stay away. This would be a nice theory if it were true.

Sadly, life is rarely this convenient.

There are too many stories of people who did so much good for others yet were found to be committing terrible crimes. Despite the seemingly good they may have done, the bad far outweighs everything else. Fortunately, most people are overall good, even if they can still do wrong at times. As this is more common in a child’s everyday life, I’d like to focus predominantly on this mixture. Examples include a friend who does something mean, a parent who says something hurtful or a teacher who wrongly accused a student. These individuals may all be kind people, yet it’s hard for a child to assimilate the hurt and still remember the person is good overall.

This is a complex topic and beyond the scope of one article, but I’d still like to give some suggestions. Again, this is only referring to a person who is healthy for your child to be around – even if they are human and err.

The Torah has already given us some suggestions. Children are taught to be dan l’kaf zechus (judge favorably) and a basic understanding of teshuva (repentance). These ideas may be lofty, but children can begin to understand them at rudimentary level. It’s natural to apply both of these teachings to the current discussion.

We can help children judge others favorably. Perhaps their friend misunderstood the situation. Maybe the parent wasn’t feeling well. This doesn’t excuse the misbehavior, but it can help a child understand how a mistake can be made, even by a good person.

We can also explain that only Hashem is perfect. Humans are designed to make mistakes. Our children, as wonderful as they are, do the wrong thing at times. They can be amazing, incredible individuals –but they’re going to make mistakes. Just like our child can err, so can others. Just

like our child would like others to think well of them and be forgiving, our child can begin to learn to extend that to others. Teshuva wouldn’t need to exist if good people couldn’t make mistakes and then improve. If someone is emotionally unhealthy for a particular child, then we need to keep them away – even if that person is a great person overall. There are certain combinations that don’t mix well. Just like adults may have that coworker they always seem to have friction with, children can have someone who is a toxic mix for that particular child. They may always fight or bring out the worst in each other. Perhaps they tease or say mean things to just our child, even if they’re nice to others. While we want to teach children to get along with their peers, there are times when the negative to our child outweighs any possible future benefits.

Sometimes, a person is very mixed in their middos. There are times we can teach children to take the good and leave behind any bad. Maybe the other child is great at sharing, but not at losing a game. They may have a wonderful playdate as long as they avoid competitive activities. This skill may be too difficult for many children and should only be applied if it can realistically work.

I join all of Klal Yisroel in welcoming our brothers back from Gaza. We daven for their continued healing and the safety of our entire nation. The love and connection we have for each other are emotions we can all agree on.

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

School of Thought

By Etti Siegel

Q:Dear Etti,

My daughter hates school. I don’t mean she just complains – she seriously hates it. She has never been very academic, but until now she accepted that going to school is simply part of life. Lately, everything has changed. Now she cries, yells, and even throws things. Most mornings we practically have to drag her to the bus stop. Her behavior in school isn’t much better, and I feel at a loss. I don’t know how to help her, and I’m worried about what this means for her future. Please, can you guide me?

Sincerely, - Worried Mom

A:Dear Worried Mom,

First, let me acknowledge that this is a tough time for you and for your daughter. What you’re going through is hard, really hard, and I want you to know that unfortunately you are not alone. Many children, even sweet and capable kids, can hit a stage where school feels unbearable. The yelling, the tears, and the dramatic resistance at the bus stop aren’t signs that you’re failing as a parent. They’re signs that your daughter is struggling to put into words what school feels like for her right now.

Every behavior is a form of communication. The behaviors you are describing are not just her “being difficult.” Your daughter is telling you in the only way she knows how that school is an issue for her.

When a child is “not so academic,” school can quickly turn into a daily reminder of what doesn’t come easily. At first, she may have accepted it as part of life. But over time, that feeling of always feeling weaker than everyone else can wear a child down, especially when it seems that the children around her all seem to be finding school less challenging than she does. Suddenly, what once

was tolerable becomes overwhelming. She starts to define herself by her weakness, and she hates it. And possibly, sadly, she might even start to hate herself. That’s when you see the crying, the throwing, the desperation to stay home. Not only is she struggling, but she is feeling different and feeling less-than.

When the adults work together, she sees that the world around her is steady even when she feels shaky.

If you are a mom in our mainstream frum community, life is really hectic right now. You are still dealing with adjusting to a school schedule for this child and any others you may have. You are dealing with the seasons changing and what that means for all of your closets and wardrobes…and one of the busiest yom tov seasons with all the preparations (more freezer space, anyone?) that these holy days entail.

But your daughter needs you now. One of the most important things you can do is create a neutral space to talk, where you can try to listen with curiosity. Now is not the time to solve anything; it is a fact-finding mission. Sometimes, the problem isn’t the whole day; it might be a specific subject, a particular teacher, a specific student, comments being made to her or about her, or an unstructured time, such as recess. Finding out what part of the day feels scariest or hardest can make the big problem feel smaller, and smaller problems are easier to work on. Sometimes, just the fact that you are listening and empathizing is all she needs right now. Kids are more resilient than we give them credit for, when they are secure in the knowledge that we are their safety net.

The other piece I don’t want you to overlook is what happens the night before. A chaotic, late, or stressful evening almost guarantees a rough morning. The way your daughter ends her day sets the tone for how she begins the next one. Building a calm, consistent bedtime routine – without rushing, without screens, and

with plenty of reassurance –can make the mornings feel a little less like a battlefield. Sometimes, the solution to the morning tears starts at 8:00 p.m., not 7:00 a.m.

School staff need to be part of the solution, too. Share with her teachers exactly what mornings look like at home. Let them know how much she is struggling, not to complain, but so they can be partners with you. A child who feels supported at home and in school stands a much better chance of regaining her footing. And when the adults work together, she sees that the world around her is steady even when she feels shaky. And through it all, don’t lose sight of her strengths. Your daughter is more than her tantrums, more than her academic struggles, more than the tears at the bus stop. Every child shines somewhere. Maybe she is talented in art, in the chessed she does, in her sense of humor, or in her imagination. Find ways for her to use her kochos (strengths) and revel in feeling success. Success builds confidence, and usually more success follows. Let her feel that she is loved and valued for the whole of who she is, not just the part that shows up in a classroom. That sense of worth will help her weather the harder days that get her down.

There may come a time when you want to talk with a therapist, just to make sure nothing deeper, like anxiety, learning issues, or emotional struggles, is hiding underneath what you are seeing. But for now, know that with your steady and unconditional love and your willingness to problem-solve this storm can calm down. With patience, teamwork, and gentle structure, your daughter can rediscover that learning doesn’t have to be the enemy.

With brachos extended that it will get easier,

- Etti

Relationships Rewired Is the Dust Really Settled?

By Bassy Schwartz, LMFT

If I could rename Cheshvan, I’d call it Burnout Month.

The whirlwind of the chagim is finally behind us. The sukkah has been taken down, the endless meals have been eaten, and the unstructured time is turning back to routine. The complicated family and relationship dynamics that swirl through every yom tov season have run their course, at least for now. The dust is settling. We’re easing back into structure, hoping it will serve us well. And to top it all off, the days are getting shorter, and the season of slow is settling in.

If you’re feeling slumpy, short-tempered, or at the end of your fuse, you’re in good company. In my work, this time of year often brings a familiar wave of emotional fallout. After the adrenaline of yom tov fades, what’s left can be heavy— resentments that bubbled up, exhaustion that’s been ignored, and relationship tension that has nowhere left to hide once the noise quiets down.

I see a few common ways people respond once the chagim end. Some check the drama at the door, vowing not to think about it until next yom tov season. “It’s over,” we tell ourselves. “Let’s move on.” Others feel resolved to do things differently next time. We draw clear lines in the sand for our future selves, deciding that we will no longer be as accommodating, as silent, or as available for patterns that hurt. And then there are those for whom this year’s turmoil was the breaking point. Something inside of us quietly shifts.

For most of us, the way we process and move forward after the chagim is often passive, almost automatic. We slide back into the familiar—what we’ve always done, what feels easiest in the short term. But ease is not the same as peace. If you’re still reading, you might be ready to consider a different path this time around.

My friend and colleague Rachel Tuchman, LMHC, once shared a post that said, “Setting proper boundaries early on can help prevent estrangement.” I’ve thought about that line countless times since she

wrote it. We tend to think of boundaries as something you set after there’s been damage – as a response to pain. But healthy boundaries are actually a form of preventative care. They keep relationships safe, sustainable, and intact. And this doesn’t just apply to family estrangement. It applies to marriage, to friendships, to community life. Strong connections don’t just happen; they’re built on the quiet framework of limits and clarity.

But our culture isn’t wired this way. We’re taught not to make things “a big deal.” Not to rock the boat. To be flex-

more than their share before yom tov. Each of these moments, on their own, might seem insignificant. But when they go unaddressed – when we brush them off, swallow our discomfort, or vent about them behind someone’s back – they start to accumulate. Over time, those micro-ruptures become deep fissures.

Many of us learned in childhood to “move on” from conflict as quickly as possible. Maybe we were told not to talk back. Maybe we grew up in homes where disagreement felt dangerous, or where peace was valued more than honesty. So

Burnout doesn’t just come from doing too much. It comes from holding too much

ible, forgiving, and understanding—to a fault. The unspoken rule is: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The problem is that many relationships are quietly breaking long before we ever notice.

In therapy, we talk about small ruptures – tiny moments when connection weakens just a little. A sarcastic tone in the kitchen. A remark about weight or appearance. A disagreement about money. Resentment for feeling like one side did

we carry those patterns into adulthood. We “let it go,” again and again, telling ourselves we’re being mature or kind. Until one day, we wake up resentful, disconnected, and convinced the other person is the problem.

So, if you’re feeling burned out right now, take it as data – not defeat. Burnout doesn’t just come from doing too much. It comes from holding too much – too many unspoken feelings, too many small

hurts, too much pretending that things don’t bother us when they do.

This month, instead of powering through, pause and take stock. Reflect on the moments that felt heavy during the chagim. Maybe there was tension with a sibling. Maybe you felt unseen by your spouse or dismissed by your parent. Maybe you noticed yourself snapping at your kids more than usual or feeling unusually drained by family interactions. Whatever it was, don’t rush to file it away under “normal holiday stress.” Ask yourself: Is the way I’m processing this helping me get closer to the kind of relationships I actually want?

If not, what would it look like to make a small change now, before the next holiday cycle rolls around? Maybe that means initiating a hard but honest conversation. Maybe it’s starting therapy or journaling about what boundaries would make you feel safer. Maybe it’s simply deciding that you’re no longer going to ignore the small ruptures that show up in your daily life.

You don’t have to wait for a dumpster fire to take control of the outcome of your relationships. You can start right now, by noticing the small ruptures, honoring your limits, and choosing intention over autopilot.

Because healing doesn’t happen in the middle of the whirlwind – it happens in the calm after, when the dust settles and we finally have space to decide who we want to be next time around.

Bassy Schwartz, LMFT, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy, brings a compassionate and unique approach to her practice – focusing on couples and individuals dealing with conflict and disconnection due to childhood emotional neglect and complex family dynamics. Bassy empowers clients to harness their inner strength and authentic selves to achieve meaningful relationships beyond what they could have ever imagined. Reach her directly at bassy@corerelationships. com or WhatsApp (347) 309-5362.

It was late on a Thursday night, the house finally quiet. A pile of folded laundry sat half-done on the couch. The smell of chicken soup simmering on the stove drifted through the kitchen.

Devorah stood by the counter, scrolling through her phone, while Eli rinsed the last of the dishes. “I just don’t understand,” she said, trying to sound calm, “why it always feels like everything for Shabbos falls on me.”

Eli turned from the sink, wiping his hands. “That’s not fair. I helped all night. I’m washing the dishes, I bathed the kids, I…”

“Right,” she interrupted, “but I still had to remind you three times. It’s like you don’t see what needs to be done unless I say it.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s not true. You just don’t notice what I do.”

And just like that, they were off, each trying to explain and to prove their point. They both knew this argument; they’d been here before. Somehow, these conversations always ended with frustration and anger and nothing resolved.

When couples get caught in these moments, on the surface it’s about the kugel, or the reminders, or the chores. Those things are real and need to be figured out. However, when conversations about these topics get heated, it’s be -

Wired for Connecti n

The Battle to Be Understood

By Michal Goldman, LCSW

cause their underlying pain of not feeling understood, accepted, or successful in this moment are being touched.

The painful irony of this is that the harder each partner tries to make their point understood, the less space they have to actually hear the other.

In my sessions, when couples hit this wall, I often pause their back-and-forth and ask them to try something new: Instead of defending your perspective (which, honestly, your partner probably already knows), shift your goal from getting to a place of agreement to getting to a place of connection

The way to do this is by putting your full focus on what your partner is sharing and then letting them know that you get it . For example, I’ll say, “Eli, can you tell Devorah what you heard her say?” And after he does, I’ll ask, “Now, can you tell her why that would make sense if you were in her shoes?”

When the tension goes up, it can be almost impossible to come to a conclusion that both of you will be happy with. The goal here is to deepen your understanding and connection with each other.

Validation means letting the other person know “what you’re feeling makes sense. I get you.”

After a pause, Eli sighed. “I get it,” he said quietly. “You’re juggling a lot and want me to see that and be fully engaged, not just when you ask for help.” Devorah nodded, her shoulders dropping. “And I know that you do a lot, too. I just get scared that if I don’t remind you, it won’t get done.” Eli smiled faintly. “That actually makes sense.”

The tension eased, and the temperature in the room dropped dramatically. The laundry still wasn’t folded, but something more important had been accomplished.

Not every conversation will end in agreement, and it shouldn’t! You’re two separate people with different experiences, sensitivities, and ways of coping. But when you make your connection your main goal, you start building a sense of safety and teamwork that lasts long after the argument ends.

Try This at Home

• Shift your goal. When tension rises, remind yourself that you are on the same team as your spouse, and the goal in your relationship is building a strong bond.

• Reflect before responding. Try summarizing what your partner said before replying. (“So, you’re saying

it feels like I tune out when you ask for help?”)

• Validate without agreeing. Connection doesn’t require consensus. My favorite formula for validation is “if I was in your shoes, what you are saying makes sense because [fill in the blank].” If it still doesn’t make sense to you from their perspective, ask questions to clarify with the goal of understanding. At the end of the day, everything people do makes sense in the context they are coming from, and there is always a way to get to that understanding! When couples learn to reach for understanding instead of agreement, they create the kind of connection where even disagreements can lead to moments of closeness.

Michal Goldman is a licensed clinical social worker in Queens specializing in helping individuals and couples navigate relationship challenges. She can be reached through her website at www.michalgoldmanlcsw. org, via email at michalgoldmanlcsw@ gmail.com, or by phone at 917-590-0258. If you have questions that you would like answered here, you can submit them to the email provided. This content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a replacement for therapy.

A Fulfilled L fe Are You Really Listening? Keys to Effective Communication between Parents and Preschoolers

By Miryam Werdyger and Sarah Ziet

In the heart of every parent-child relationship lies the essence of effective communication, particularly during the transformative preschool years. This is a remarkable phase where children embark on a journey of language acquisition and emotional development. By nurturing open and loving dialogue at this critical time, you are not merely assisting your child in voicing their needs, you are imparting vital life skills such as emotional regulation, empathy, and problem-solving. This endeavor lays a robust foundation of trust and understanding that will serve them well throughout their lives.

The Art of Active Listening and Non-Verbal Communication

For preschoolers, communication extends far beyond the spoken word. These young beings are discovering how to articulate their thoughts and feelings

through a rich tapestry of language, body movements, and gestures. As a parent, your ability to listen actively is just as vital as the words you choose to speak.

Meet Them at Their Level

Bend down or sit with your child so that your eyes align. This simple act conveys your undivided attention, making the conversation feel intimate and approachable.

Demonstrate Engagement

Use non -verbal signals such as nodding, smiling, and maintaining eye contact. By putting away distractions like your phone or turning off your computer, you signal to your child that they have your full attention.

Listen for the Feelings

Beyond their words, strive to grasp the emotions that lie beneath. For in -

stance, if your child expresses, “I’m not playing with Shani anymore,” respond with, “It seems like you might be feeling hurt or frustrated. Can you tell me what happened?”

Recognizing and Acknowledging Emotions

Preschoolers are on a quest to comprehend and manage their intense emotions. As their guide, your role is to help them identify and validate these feelings without judgment by naming feelings.

Use phrases like “You’re smiling so big! You look so happy playing with that toy” or “Your face is red and your hands are in fists. You look angry because you can’t have another cookie.”

This helps them associate a word with their emotions.

Speaking Their Language

Preschoolers are navigating a world

of limited vocabulary and developing comprehension of abstract ideas. To forge a meaningful connection, it is essential to tailor your language to their understanding.

Instead of saying, “Generosity is the quality of being kind and giving,” you could use this approach:

“Generosity is when you share something with a friend, like when you let your friend play with your favorite toy, even when you really want to play with it yourself. Or when you give a snack to your friend who forgot theirs. Being generous makes our friends happy and makes our hearts feel good.”

Utilize Simple and Clear Language

Steer clear of complex terms and lengthy sentences. Break down instructions into bite-sized, manageable steps. Instead of saying, “Tidy up all the

toys and put them in the box,” consider saying, “Please put the blocks in the red box, and then place the cars in the basket.”

Be Concrete

Opt for words that relate to tangible objects they can see, touch, or experience directly. When addressing abstract concepts, employ concrete examples or visual aids to enhance comprehension. For example , when teaching a child to share, an abstract command like “You need to share with your friend” is often ineffective. A better approach is to make the concept concrete: “When you let your friend play with your red truck, you are sharing. Sharing means you let someone else use your toy for a little while, and then they’ll let you use theirs. It’s like taking turns with your toys.” This turns the abstract idea of sharing into a series of tangible actions: “letting them play with your truck” and “taking turns.”

Help Expand Their Vocabulary

When your child uses a one- or twoword phrase, enrich their expression. If they say, “Doggy run,” you might re -

spond with, “Yes, the doggy is running fast!” This not only models correct grammar but also introduces new vocabulary.

The Power of Open-Ended Questions

Encouraging your preschooler to express themselves can be beautifully facilitated through open-ended questions that invite more than a simple “yes” or “no.”

Instead of asking, “Did you have a good day?” try, “What was the most fun thing you did today?” This encourages a richer response and offers a glimpse into their world.

Engage Their Imagination

At this age, play-based learning is vital. Immerse yourself in their imaginative games and inquire about their adventures. “Tell me about the castle you built. Who lives there?” This fosters storytelling and sparks creative thinking.

Promote Problem-Solving

Rather than providing immediate answers, guide them to discover solu-

tions on their own. If they cannot locate their favorite toy, ask, “Where did you last see it?” or “Where do toys like to hide?”

Empathize and Reassure their Feelings

If you notice they are upset after their playdate with their friends, you can say, “It’s OK to feel sad when your friend goes home.” This lesson teaches them that all emotions are acceptable, fostering trust and emotional intelligence.

Set Kind Limits

Acknowledge their feelings while still maintaining boundaries. For instance, “I understand you’re frustrated, but we cannot throw toys when we’re angry. Let’s find another way to calm down.” By embodying patience, empathy, and attentive communication, you not only strengthen the bond with your child but also equips them with the essential skills they need to flourish in all their future relationships.

Mastering the art of communication with your preschooler is one of the most

significant investments you can make in their future. By actively listening and modeling positive behaviors, you are providing them with invaluable tools for emotional intelligence, self-confidence, and strong relationships. The journey of effective communication with a young child is a continuous one, filled with moments of joy, growth, and deeper connection that will last a lifetime. So, check in from time to time and ask yourself, “Are you really listening?”

Have something to share? We’d love to hear from you!

This article was written with insights from Morah Chaya Shapiro of morahchaya.com

Miryam Werdyger and Sarah Ziet are Certified Life Coaches and mentors specializing in effective communication skills for individuals, couples, parents and singles navigating the dating world. They can be reached at coachmiryam@icloud.com or via WhatsApp/text at 516-924-7695.

In The K tchen

Lentil Feta Burger

Dairy / Yields 12 servings

By Naomi Nachman

After weeks of heavy meat meals during the chagim, I try to serve dairy dinners to my family during the weeks following yom tov to balance out our diets. This dairy burger is surprisingly hearty even though one feels like you’ve “had a burger” for dinner!

Ingredients

◦ 1 medium onion, diced

◦ 2 tablespoons canola oil

◦ 1 teaspoon kosher salt

◦ 2 cloves garlic, crushed

◦ ½ teaspoon cumin

◦ ½ teaspoon smoked paprika

◦ 2 eggs, lightly beaten

◦ 2 tablespoons flour

◦ 1 cup panko crumbs

◦ 1 cup uncooked lentils, prepared according to package directions

◦ ½ cup feta cheese, crumbled

◦ Oil, for frying

◦ Spicy mayo, tomato, additional feta, and buns, optional, for serving

Preparation

1. Heat sauté pan over medium heat; add oil. When oil is hot, add onion; sauté for 5 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, and smoked paprika. Sauté for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat; transfer to a mixing bowl.

2. Add lentils and feta to the onion mixture, stirring to combine. Add eggs, flour, and panko crumbs. Stir to combine; set aside to thicken for 20 minutes.

3. In a sauté pan over medium heat, heat 4 tablespoons canola oil.

4. Form the lentil mixture into patties; fry for 5 minutes on each side, until cooked through.

5. Serve on a bun with spicy mayo, a slice of tomato, and a sprinkle of feta, if desired.

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

Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

The hostages are home because Israel slapped Hamas and Hezbollah to Pluto, and President Trump hit Iran so hard that they coughed up bones. Weakness invites the wolves. Every. Single. Time.

- Tweet by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)

One of the guards was a first grade teacher, another was a lecturer at a university, and another was a doctor.

- Released hostage Tal Shoham in an interview with The Times of Israel, disclosing who his guards were during captivity

On this special day as we all gather to fight against blanket auto pen pardons and executive orders, lawlessness, and stealing citizen’s resources for illegal non-citizens, I believe it has worked!! That is no longer happening, so great job everyone.

- Tweet by golf legend Phil Mickelson

Some people have actually said I was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president.

- Kamala Harris, on a recent podcast

Whether you choose pickleball or dancing or whatever, it’s just really important to move your body and stay strong. Especially as you get older, when you feel strong in the body, you feel strong in the mind — they go together and it gives you confidence.

- New Jersey resident Natalie Grabow, 80, after becoming the oldest woman to finish the grueling Ironman World Championship which consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run

This Saturday, nearly 2,700 “No Kings” protests are planned around the country. Which is funny because if we had a king, there would be no protests. Talk about an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem.

- Greg Gutfeld

News media claims 7 million people attended [the No Kings rally], an estimate they received from event organizers. That’s like believing Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) when she brags that she got an 800 on her SAT.

– ibid.

At the rally, protesters wore frog, shark and dinosaur costumes. The one costume they couldn’t pull off? Successful employee.

– ibid.

Former press secretary Karine Jean Pierre said that watching Joe Biden drop out of the race left her angry and sad. She then took down my name after I ordered a Frappuccino

- ibid.

Hackers took over the public address systems at airports to broadcast pro-Hamas messages. Distraught flyers complained that it felt like they were at Harvard.

– ibid.

If you believe in the Second Amendment, if you believe in the Constitution, Black people, Brown people of all stripes, whether you’re an Indian American or a Mexican American or whoever you are, go out in your place where you live and get a gun legally. Get a license to carry legally. Because when you have people knocking on your door and taking you away without due process as a citizen, isn’t that what the Second Amendment was written for?

- Former CNN host Don Lemon on a recent podcast urging people to shoot ICE agents

Avinatan Or, I hope you have a good excuse for not showing up to work at NVIDIA for 738 days.

- From a social media post by Nvidia manager Eddie Goldenberg celebrating the release of hostage Avinatan Or, who is employed by Nvidia

But every Sunday morning for two years, the head of NVIDIA Israel’s HR, Gideon Rosenberg, sent an email to all employees counting the days you were in captivity and calling everyone to join him for a reminder vigil in front of the Kirya gate, held every Sunday evening. Even the global CEO, Jensen Huang, mentioned your name in every quarterly internal meeting, telling 40,000 employees that their colleague was being held captive by Hamas. How wonderful that you’ve returned home… You work at a place that cares for you, and I also have some pretty good news about what’s happened with your stocks over the past two years.

- ibid.

It was a very odd morning. I woke up very early in the morning, dashing to my computer to see what happened with the hostages, and while reading the news about their return, somehow my inbox pops up with like 20 incoming messages that all say “congratulations.” I thought, “What … is this,” as it wasn’t my birthday, and only when I opened some of the emails, which prompted me to check my phone, I saw a missed call from Sweden, called back and was told that I won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

- Israeli-American economic historian Joel Mokyr, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics last week, in an interview with The Times of Israel

Where are the protesters?… Suddenly, the keffiyeh-wearing college kids are very quiet.

- Bill Maher, HBO, after Hamas murdered dozens of Arabs in the streets of Gaza

Political Crossfire

How Trump Got His Gaza Deal Done

War’s end is like waking up from a nightmare. You could see that in the relieved faces of people dancing in the streets in Israel and Gaza on Thursday night in celebration of a ceasefire that appears to be taking hold after two years of terrible conflict.

Israelis and Palestinians – and a world watching in horror – have prayed for the guns to go silent. But it took the imperious, implacable personality of Donald Trump to ram a peace deal home. The blustering, go-it-alone president did it in an unlikely way: by listening to others and organizing a coalition that, by the end, included all major Arab and European nations, as well as Israel and Hamas.

As news broke of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, I thought back to a conversation I had in Tel Aviv with a senior Israeli official a month after Hamas’s horrific Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack. “We are so traumatized by what has happened to us that we won’t make good decisions about how to end this war,” he told me. “We need America to push us to make the right choices.”

President Joe Biden, for all his effort, couldn’t find a way to do that. But Trump did. He decided it was time for peace –and that he wouldn’t tolerate any more foot-dragging from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Hamas. Today, the battlefield is finally quiet.

Trump’s peace plan could fall apart, obviously. This is the Middle East. Key details like disarmament of Hamas aren’t yet resolved. But in achieving his ceasefire, Trump demonstrated skills and used tactics that showed more flexibility and cooperation than are typical of him. He listened to expert advice and changed some of his views. He engaged in subtle secret diplomacy, especially with Qatar.

This wasn’t a diplomatic negotiation as much as a dealmaking consortium. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff didn’t know much about the Middle East. But he and

By David Ignatius

Trump figured out who the smart guys in the room were. That group included Tony Blair, the former British prime minister with many contacts in the region and a Trumpian desire to rehabilitate his image, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s sonin-law and architect of the Abraham Accords, hungry for another chance to make the Israel-Palestinian deal that eluded him in 2020.

A third, pivotal player was someone you’ve probably never heard of: Ali al-Thawadi, Qatar’s minister for strategic affairs.

Photos of the Qatari negotiating team usually feature the skillful prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. But Thawadi, like Witkoff, is a transactional player who likes to stay out of the limelight. He played a critical role in assembling the ceasefire coalition.

This account of the negotiations is based on conversations with Qatari, Israeli and American officials. The Qataris had been key intermediaries since the first hostage-release deal in November 2023. They were able to communicate with Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service with which they have had secret contact for more than a decade, and with Hamas political leaders living in Doha. The Qataris worked closely

with the Biden administration, and they deepened that cooperation with the Trump team, helping mediate the Rwanda-Congo and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts. When Trump decided it was time to end the 12day war between Iran and Israel, Qatar helped broker the deal.

Paradoxically, the breakthrough in the bloody Gaza stalemate came after Israel attacked Hamas leaders in Qatar last month. That shocked the Qataris, but it gave them leverage. They threatened to end their mediation effort unless Israel publicly apologized and the U.S. offered a security guarantee against future attacks. The Qataris got both, which helped them save face in the Arab world – and bolstered their clout.

For Trump, too, the attack on Qatar was a turning point. He had shown Netanyahu in April that he would pursue his own course, with a surprise announcement while they were together in the Oval Office that Witkoff would open nuclear talks with Iran – accompanied by praise for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an antagonist of Israel. (“I happen to like him, and I know he likes me,” Trump said.)

When Trump learned of Israel’s impending attack, Witkoff called Thawadi to warn him – too late, it turned out. In the af-

termath, Trump moved toward this week’s ceasefire despite Israel’s misgivings.

The Qataris took several steps that made the negotiations work. They suggested that Trump meet all the key Arab players – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan – in New York during the U.N. General Assembly. The group hammered out what became Trump’s 20-point plan for a ceasefire and “Board of Peace” to oversee the political transition in postwar Gaza. The Qataris also urged that Turkey, an Islamist state with leverage over Hamas, join the negotiating team.

The final act came last week in Egypt, where Thawadi met with Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s closest aide, to discuss remaining details. Though Dermer has sometimes been a fiery antagonist of Qatar, the conversations were frank and productive, according to a Qatari official. With Trump pushing hard, Israel agreed to procedures for an initial ceasefire and hostage-release deal, even though there’s no agreement yet on the crucial issue of how and when Hamas will be disarmed.

This is a peace deal with many details marked “TBD.” That’s the way Arabs often negotiate, and Israelis, too. Haggling over the precise shape of Trump’s “day after” plan will continue, but no longer with Israeli hostages captive underground. If Israel or Hamas obstruct a peace deal stamped “DJT,” there could be, as Trump likes to say, “[heck] to pay.”

Drawing a strategic balance sheet at the end of a war like this is hard, when the human cost is so high. Israel’s international standing has been tarnished, but its deadliest enemies – Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran – have been ravaged. The biggest winners might be the Arab gulf states, led by tiny Qatar, which have found a champion in the White House unafraid to give orders to Israel.

Political Crossfire

Yes, Trump Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

Not only does Donald Trump deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but there has arguably never been an American president who deserved it more.

Four of his predecessors have won the prize. Barack Obama won seven months into his presidency essentially for not being George W. Bush – and even he said he didn’t deserve it. Woodrow Wilson won for creating the League of Nations, which proved to be a feckless disaster that the United States never even joined. Theodore Roosevelt won for ending a single conflict, the Russo-Japanese War, which began with Japan’s 1904 attack on the Russian fleet in Manchuria (Japan later launched a full invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and then a surprise attack on the U.S. in 1941). Jimmy Carter won in 2002, more than two decades after leaving the White House, for a lifetime of work in peacemaking, beginning with the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt.

Contrast this with Trump’s record. In his first term, Trump brokered not one, not two, not three, but four Arab-Israeli peace accords – the first such agreements in more than a quarter-century. He did it by rejecting the failed conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment, which said that there could be no separate peace without the Palestinians and that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and confronting Iran’s aggression would inflame the region and put peace out of reach. Those moves did the opposite. The Abraham Accords alone were an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has brought leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda together in the Oval Office

By Marc A. Thiessen

to sign a peace agreement in their decades-long conflict that has left millions dead. He helped pressure India and Pakistan to end four days of fighting in May (Pakistan gives Trump credit, India does not). He helped negotiate an end to fighting between Thailand and

the Iran-Israel war after just 12 days of fighting.

Furthermore, Trump maintains that he headed off a war between Serbia and Kosovo (the president of Kosovo backed Trump’s claim, saying that Serbia was planning to attack Kosovo in May before

No president has done more for the cause of peace than Donald Trump.

Cambodia after Thailand launched airstrikes against Cambodia in July. He brought the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the White House to sign a peace framework in their war over Nagorno-Karabakh. In what may be his greatest achievement for the cause of peace, he launched Operation Midnight Hammer obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, and then brought an end to

Trump intervened). And Trump also asserts that he prevented a military conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia in their ongoing dispute over a dam on the Nile.

But even if we set those two aside, that is still one of the greatest peacemaking records of any administration in U.S. history.

And that was before the deal Trump just brokered between Israel and Hamas

to release all the remaining hostages held by the terror group. To create the conditions for an agreement, Trump skillfully maneuvered Hamas into a corner, laying out a comprehensive 20-point plan not just to end the fighting but also to rebuild Gaza and provide those who live there with a path to prosperity. He got Israel and virtually the entire Arab world to sign off on his plan. That left Hamas with no choice but to agree or face sole responsibility for the continuation of Gaza’s suffering. Whether peace will last remains to be seen. Under Trump’s plan, Hamas must effectively surrender, hand over its weapons and agree not to have any role in the governance of Gaza. It is hard to imagine Hamas permanently giving up its goal of destroying Israel. But thanks to Trump, the families of the living hostages will be reunited with their loved ones, while the families of the dead will receive their remains and get much-needed closure. And if the fighting resumes, responsibility will lay entirely with Hamas.

And Trump is not done. He has not given up on his goal of ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, though bringing Putin to the peace table will require coercion in the form of increased military and economic pressure, not just persuasion. And if he succeeds in ending the Israel-Hamas war, then more Abraham Accords are almost certain to follow with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

But this much is certain: From the Middle East to Africa, Asia, the Caucuses and Europe, no president has done more for the cause of peace than Donald Trump. If that does not earn him a Nobel Prize, the prize has no meaning.

© 2025, Washington Post Writers Group

Political Crossfire After the Joyous Liberation, Trump’s Deal Will Be Tested

By Jonathan S. Tobin

Around the world, Jews and decent people of all faiths and backgrounds greeted the liberation of the remaining living hostages held by the Hamas terrorists with joyous thanks, relief and tears. After two years of agony for those Israelis who were among the last of those kidnapped during the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, they are finally going home.

But once the prayers of thanksgiving are uttered and the hostages are embraced by a grateful nation with an explosion of happiness, what then?

A Seminal Moment

The priority right now is to celebrate the freedom of this last group of the 251 who were taken on Oct. 7 and the end of a long ordeal in which they were abused, starved and tortured by their barbarous captors.

What is happening isn’t a mere homecoming.

In a very real sense, those in Isra -

el and elsewhere who spent the last 24 months praying for this day are also being liberated from the anguish, frustration and anger we collectively felt about the trauma of Oct. 7 and what the hostages were enduring. Combined with the prospect that the longest war in Israeli history is also ending, the reaction to the freedom of the captives is going to transcend past examples in which hostages held by terrorists were let go or rescued and likely be remembered as a seminal moment in modern Jewish history.

And that is exactly what the people who planned, executed and cheered for the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust are counting on.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the terms laid down for ending the war in Gaza and freeing the hostages, which included both an Israeli withdrawal to agreed-upon lines inside the Strip as well as a painful release of imprisoned terrorists with blood on their hands.

But aside from releasing the living

hostages and presumably also the bodies of slain captives they’ve been holding, it’s far from clear that Hamas has any intention of fulfilling the rest of the demands put upon them by Trump, including disarming and giving up their control of Gaza. That’s despite the fact that those points were essential to getting Israel to agree to ending its offensive into Gaza City aimed at wiping out the remnants of the terrorists’ forces.

Hamas Won’t Give Up

Instead, we’re told that Hamas’s surrender will only come about as part of negotiations that have been put off so as not to have them interfere with the achievement of the hostages’ release. That was the upshot of an interview with the prime minister of Qatar published in The New York Times the day before the hostage release.

Many observers have assumed that the hostages were the only leverage that Hamas still had in negotiations with Israel and the United States. But it’s clear

now that this might be wrong. Perhaps with the prodding of their Qatari funders and allies—who have, with the help of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, wormed their way into Trump’s good graces—the terrorists have realized that their cruel insistence on holding onto the hostages was actually an impediment to their potential survival.

How is that possible?

It’s simple. The advantage that Hamas now holds is twofold.

One is that Trump is eager, even desperate, for the ceasefire to hold to keep playing the role of the world’s leading peacemaker. That is a title he will lose if, as he has also promised, he will give the green light to Israel to “obliterate” Hamas if it fails to disarm and give up control in Gaza.

Trump’s Vision

It needs to be stated that Trump deserves enormous credit for the release of the hostages and the ceasefire. Only an

American president who was prepared to lay down terms for the war’s end that mandated both the elimination of Hamas and the immediate freedom of all the captives could have done it. And that’s exactly what Trump did, in stark contrast to his predecessor, President Joe Biden, who was more interested in appeasing supporters of Hamas than in liberating Gaza from Islamist control. In this way, Trump seemed to reconcile two goals that had seemed mutually exclusive: the freedom of the hostages and the eradication of the terrorists.

The hostages would not have been freed without Trump, as well as Netanyahu’s tough-minded refusal to be pressured into letting Hamas win the war it started on Oct. 7.

Yet the hard part in implementing the vision of the U.S. president is what follows the release of the hostages. If Hamas thinks that it can talk and negotiate its way out of surrendering Gaza— and the terrorists have every reason to believe that Qatar will back that up— then Trump’s diplomatic triumph will fall far short of the claims being asserted by the administration.

The thing is, even if we allow for the usual Trumpian hyperbole with which he speaks about anything, it’s clear that the president really wants to believe that he has done the impossible.

In his statements in the last week and those made in his speech to the Knesset after flying to Israel to be on hand to witness and take justified credit for the hostage release, he spoke as if he had not only solved the riddle of how to end the post-Oct. 7 war. He also seems to think that this agreement will allow the revival of the 2020 Abraham Accords—the signature foreign-policy achievement of his first term—and that this will lead to peace breaking out throughout the Middle East. He even mentioned the possibility of a peace deal with the Islamist regime in Iran.

The Conflict Isn’t Over

We should all pray that he’s right about the prospects for peace. Still, the odds are—notwithstanding assurances from Qatar—that the conflict with the Palestinians and Hamas is far from over. So long as Palestinians, whether supporters of Hamas or the supposedly more “moderate” Fatah Party that runs the corrupt Palestinian Authority, still believe that their national identity is inextricably linked to a war on the Jews and Zionism, all the Trumpian optimism in the world won’t matter.

Hamas is doubtless counting on Trump not being willing to admit that the peace he seeks is likely to require continued fighting until the last Hamas operatives have disarmed, fled or been killed. If the talks stall as Hamas digs in its heels, will the president be willing to be smeared as the fomenter of Palestinian “genocide” and to give up the praise that he’s gotten for brokering a deal from many of even his most bitter political opponents?

Those who want a Middle East free of Islamist terror, let alone a secure Israel or a Palestinian political culture

What’s more, flouting a Trump diktat for Israel to hold its fire in the same way that Netanyahu ignored Biden’s demands to halt the war at various points during 2024, with Hamas in a far stronger position, is something that the prime minister would be reluctant to do under any circumstances. And after the joy and gratitude of the Israeli people that is being showered upon Trump now that the hostages are freed, it may be impossible.

If so, then what will happen in Gaza in the coming weeks and months will be a reassertion of Hamas control, with the Islamist group looking to rearm and

The growing chorus of nations taking up the demand for an independent Palestinian state to reward them for their Oct. 7 atrocities will only further strengthen Hamas’s position.

freed of its obsessions with destroying Israel, should hope that he’s sufficiently tough-minded to stick to his insistence that the terms of the deal are non-negotiable. But the Qataris will likely be urging him to demand that the Jewish state not restart the war under any circumstances, even if Hamas doesn’t disarm. The same may apply to members of Trump’s administration who helped broker this ceasefire deal, including Doha’s business partners Witkoff and Kushner. In addition to Democrats who oppose Israel, those in the GOP who would prefer to withdraw completely from the Middle East (a group that may include U.S. Vice President JD Vance, as well as far more marginal figures like the antisemitic Tucker Carlson, former Fox News host and current political commentator) will also be loud opponents of American support for a renewal of fighting to force Hamas’s surrender.

After the hostage release, we should all be prepared for the international community, as well as Qatar and those Americans over whom it exerts some influence, to begin beating the drums again for a process that will lead to a Palestinian state. Trump and most of the Arab states may not actually want that. But it is far from certain that their commitment to a Hamas-free Gaza is greater than their desire to maintain a ceasefire, no matter what the terrorists do.

Israelis are War-Weary

And that leads us to the second reason why Hamas thinks it can still hold onto Gaza even after the hostages are freed.

Israelis are, for understandable reasons, weary of the two-year war they were forced into on Oct. 7. The maintenance of the large army of called-up reservists has placed an enormous strain on these heroic soldiers and their families, as well as on the Israeli economy.

Sending the Israel Defense Forces back into the maelstrom of Gaza to ensure that Hamas doesn’t reconstitute the terrorist state they ruled before Oct. 7 would be an enormous letdown for Israelis. It will also likely prompt the same political opponents who have been demonstrating in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square every week—where they acted as if it was Netanyahu rather than Hamas who was the kidnapper—to try to bring Israel to a standstill. Even without the cover provided by grieving hostage families, the “anti-Bibi” political coalition will, just as it did throughout the two-year war, prioritize its hatred for the prime minister and its determination to topple him over achieving the national war goal of eliminating Hamas.

use the large part of the tunnel system underneath the Strip that was not destroyed during the war to dig in, much as they did in the years before Oct. 7.

Even during the days before the celebration of the hostage release, the world already witnessed the way Hamas was doing just that by openly killing dissidents and members of clans that opposed their rule in Gaza.

It’s not just that Hamas is doing its best to sell the agreement to Palestinians as a victory for them. That would ring hollow if the Islamists were really going to disarm and/or be forced to flee Gaza. The release of many terrorists with blood on their hands in exchange for the hostages in far greater numbers than the Israeli captives will make that claim seem credible. The homecoming celebrations for the released terrorists are, in effect, Hamas “victory” parties. The growing chorus of nations taking up the demand for an independent Palestinian state to reward them for their Oct. 7 atrocities will only further strengthen Hamas’s position.

And that’s when those aspects of Trump’s scheme that require Gaza to be ruled by what may be an entirely mythical group of nonpolitical Palestinian technocrats and policed by an international force, including some troops sent by the Arab world, will begin to seem more and more unrealistic.

Most Israelis agree with Netanyahu’s position on ending the terrorist organization and making sure that it cannot make good on its promises to keep on committing more Oct. 7-style massacres to achieve its genocidal goal of Israel’s destruction. Yet restarting the war against Hamas once Israelis have had a taste of peace and Trump is basking in the glow of his diplomatic success will be a lot harder than it was to continue it prior to the hostage deal.

These sobering thoughts are not what will be on most people’s minds as the freedom of the hostages is celebrated. And it is definitely not something most of them want to hear.

Unless Trump is prepared to be as tough-minded as he often claims to be, and Israelis are ready to resume a war they’d prefer were over, these are the factors that may cause Hamas to refuse to budge from Gaza and to think they can get away with it. What follows the release of the hostages will be joy; however, the assumption that it will be peace or anything like it may not only be wrong, but a path toward a revival of the Hamas-run Palestinian state in Gaza that is a guarantee of more massacres like the one that took place two years ago.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate).

Political Crossfire What Israel Should Learn From Two Years of War

By Bret Stephens

If the war in the Gaza Strip ends this week — not a sure thing — it will be followed by a long battle about its lessons. Here are mine:

“Believe people when they tell you who they are.”

Maya Angelou’s classic warning should have been believed in 1988, when Hamas declared in its founding covenant its intention to slaughter Jews. Instead, Israel continued to tolerate Hamas out of a combination of ideological convenience — it suited Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to have a divided Palestinian polity — and international reluctance to topple the group. That was until Oct. 7, 2023, too late for the 1,200 people slaughtered that day.

Brilliant technology is never an adequate substitute for sound strategy.

Successive rounds of fighting between Hamas and Israel never altered Israel’s policy of containment toward Gaza. Why? Because, as Yaakov Katz, a co-author of the excellent new book “While Israel Slept,” wrote me, technologies like the Iron Dome gave Israel the false sense that “it was impenetrable.”

Yet when Oct. 7 came, Israel’s high-tech marvels in signals intelligence, missile interceptors, smart fences and underground barriers proved useless against Hamas’ low-tech paragliders and bulldozers.

“Weakness is provocative,” said Donald Rumsfeld. So is the appearance of weakness.

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ late leader, already believed that Israel was weak when he and hundreds of other Palestinian prisoners were released for the sake of a single Israeli hostage, the soldier Gilad Shalit. But Israel had never looked so weak in the months that preceded Oct. 7, thanks to the Netanyahu government’s heedless push for a judicial “reform” that looked to millions of Israelis like a lunge toward authoritarianism. As it turned out, it was the stumble before the fall.

Israelis are better than their government.

Nobody typifies this better than Noam Tibon, a retired general in his 60s who, with his wife, Gali, drove to the rescue of his son Amir and his son’s family in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which had been overrun by Hamas. “We un-

derstood that if we will not go and get them, nobody will,” the elder Tibon told The New York Times the next day. Noam fought his way into the kibbutz, rescuing his family, while Gali ferried wounded Israelis to safety. There are scores of similar stories. The Talmudic injunction “All of Israel are responsible, one for the other” — that is, communal responsibility — is what saved the Jewish state on Oct. 7.

Israel doesn’t have a public relations problem. It has a narrative problem.

It’s an unwitting irony that anti-Israel activists from Montreal to Melbourne, speaking European languages and living on land that was often stolen from the original inhabitants, have alighted on Hebrew-speaking Israel as the epitome of settler-colonialism. In fact, Zionism is among the oldest anti-colonial movements in history, featuring struggles against overlords from Babylon, Greece, Rome, Constantinople, Istanbul and, until 1948, London.

The argument Israel’s supporters need to make is about the country’s indissoluble right to exist as a Jewish state — no different than, say, the right

of the Irish to an Irish state or Greeks to a Greek one. It can’t be a debate whether Jews or Palestinians are the greater victim. Israel came into existence to end Jewish victimization, not showcase it. Antisemitism suffuses anti-Zionism, and anti-Zionism tends to produce antisemitism.

After a British man named Jihad al-Shamie rammed his car into a Manchester synagogue in an attack that killed two people on Yom Kippur last week, police said they were “working to understand the motivation behind the attack.” Really. The attack illustrates how, outside of academic seminars and left-wing journals, the distinction between “Jew” and “Zionist” is either invisible or pretextual to those who mean one or the other harm.

This point bears on the previous one: Even if Israel’s defenders were to accomplish a miracle of persuasion by shifting attitudes toward the country — or if Israel had fought a much more limited war in Gaza — it would still face a chorus of ill-disguised bigotry, which would seek to accuse it of the worst crimes on the slimmest bases.

Palestinian suffering is unde -

niable. Hamas is its principal author.

For those who spent the past two years chanting “ceasefire now” at anti-Israel rallies, they neglect to mention (as Hillary Clinton pointed out) that there was a ceasefire before Oct. 7, 2023, which Hamas violated in the most grotesque way possible.

As for those who rightly decry the suffering of Palestinian civilians, they must equally rue the fact that Hamas continually and deliberately put ordinary Gaza residents in harm’s way by waging war beneath, behind and between them. This war could have been ended at any time in the past two years by Hamas laying down its arms, which even now it is reluctant to do. Why did so many so-called peace protesters, who made incessant demands of Israel, never make any demands of Hamas?

There will be no Palestinian state if Hamas or other militant groups survive as a military or political force.

Feckless diplomatic gestures, such as the recent recognition of a Palestinian state by France, Britain and other countries of diminishing relevance, will do nothing to pressure or persuade

Israelis that they should replicate their Gaza experience — withdrawal followed by endless war — on the vastly greater scale of the West Bank.

The only viable path to a sustainable Palestinian state is a cultural revolution among Palestinians that ends, once and for all, the fantasy of Israel’s destruc -

cies of Israel? Hug it close. Why did Netanyahu acquiesce to Donald Trump and call off attacks on Iran, or agree to Trump’s 20-point peace plan? Because most Israelis believe — based on his decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and

The Talmudic injunction “All of Israel are responsible, one for the other” — that is, communal responsibility — is what saved the Jewish state on Oct. 7.

tion. That’s as much the work of educators and imams as it is of Palestinian politicians and foreign diplomats. And it requires an end to Hamas or to any armed group prepared to enforce a militant orthodoxy over other Palestinians. What, one might ask, are Britain and France prepared to do for that?

Want influence over the poli -

bomb Iran’s nuclear sites — that he’s the best friend they’ve ever had in the White House. If leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Keir Starmer wanted to be similarly effectual, they’d take the lesson rather than play to their peanut galleries.

For all its undoubted horrors, this war may ultimately be re -

membered as liberating.

Liberating for the Lebanese, who, for the first time in two generations, have a realistic chance to free themselves from the yoke of Hezbollah’s insidious control over their politics. Liberating for Syrians, who would not have been able to topple Bashar Assad’s regime if Israel hadn’t first decimated Assad’s helpers in Hezbollah. Liberating for the Druse of southern Syria, who are being protected by the Israeli military. Liberating, potentially, for Iranians, whose leadership is now at its weakest point in decades thanks to the military humiliation it experienced at Israeli and American hands in June. Liberating for Gaza residents who suffered under Hamas’ Stasi-like domestic apparatus and its willingness to start wars it knew would bring suffering.

For Jews, within or outside of Israel, the war should also be a warning.

After more than 3,000 years of history, the Jewish condition remains the same: precarious. And while friends and allies are nice, something else hasn’t changed: We are alone. Survival means learning to live with it.

© The New York Times

Political Crossfire Why Israel Won the War

By Bret Stephens

Though it seems absurd in retrospect, there were many in Hamas who believed the group’s massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, would succeed not just in wounding Israel but in destroying it.

They believed this out of religious fervor. They believed it because they hoped to inspire Hezbollah and Iran to join the battle with their own full-scale attacks. And they believed that Israel, for all its high-tech wizardry, was weak. The belief turned out to be wrong — and fatal. But it wasn’t unfounded. “After 20 years, you will become weak, and I will attack you,” Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Oct. 7, told his Israeli prison dentist about 20 years ago, according to reporting by The New Yorker ’s David Remnick.

What Sinwar and others in Hamas saw in Israel was a country prepared to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including Sinwar himself, for the sake of a single hostage. A country whose leaders talked tough but tended to be risk-averse for fear of upsetting the Israeli public’s thirst for prosperity

and calm. A country with deep internal fissures — religious versus secular, Jews versus non-Jews, supporters of judicial reform versus opponents. A country anxious about what the rest of the world thought of it.

All this Sinwar gleaned from closely reading Hebrew-language newspapers, a habit he picked up from his many years in Israeli prisons. That may have been his biggest mistake. Journalism in a democracy, particularly Israel’s, tends to neglect what’s healthy in a society while obsessing over everything that’s not. (In autocracies, it’s the opposite.)

The result is that Sinwar was better acquainted with Israel’s many self-advertised faults than with its underlying strengths.

We’ll probably never know whether Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli troops a year ago this week, ever came to grips with the scale of his misjudgment. Israelis did not crumble in the face of his butchery, which he appears to have specifically ordered against soldiers and civilian communities alike “so as to evoke fear in Israelis and destabilize the

country,” according to a recent report in The New York Times. They did not limit themselves to several weeks of fighting, as they had in previous wars, or buckle to unceasing international pressure, or surrender most of their war aims for the sake of releasing the hostages.

Instead, Israelis rallied and won — at least inasmuch as a lasting victory is ever possible in the Middle East.

They have changed the game with Lebanon and Syria. They have humiliated and defanged Iran, whose regime, as Karim Sadjadpour notes in a new essay in Foreign Affairs, is tottering. They have gotten back their remaining living hostages without giving up their most important leverage in the Gaza Strip, which is the control of its inner perimeter. They have secured the commitment of Muslim countries to a Gaza free from Hamas’ governance: If that fails, they have some assurance that Palestinians in Gaza will resist future attempts by Hamas to drag them into another calamitous war. They have maintained diplomatic relations with friendly Arab states. And, for all the global street

protests, hostile op-eds and meaningless arms embargoes, they have the full-throated backing of the only foreign government that matters: America’s.

For all this, there’s been a heavy price. A shattered Gaza, with many thousands of civilian deaths and terrible suffering for those trapped in the crossfire. Rising antisemitism. A generation of Western progressives — joined by growing numbers of cohorts on the far right — who think of the Jewish state as the apotheosis of evil.

Maybe all that could have been avoided, though I doubt it: Israel had already been judged guilty of war crimes by all the “sentence first, verdict afterward” critics in the earliest days of the war. I also doubt most Israelis or supporters of Israel would seriously want to trade Israel’s current position for its opposite: strategic defeat in exchange for Western tea and sympathy. Centuries of persecution and discrimination followed by interludes of pity and accommodation are what drove Jews to establish the state of Israel in the first place.

It’s also what drove them, in this war, to win. Much of the analysis of Israel’s military strategy has been focused on the hows: How did Israel carry off the pager operation against Hezbollah? How did the Mossad smuggle a bomb into the safe house in Tehran, Iran, where Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was staying? How did Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, persuade Donald Trump to join in the attack on Iran? And how did Trump use Israel’s attack on Hamas’ leadership in Doha, Qatar, to engineer the diplomacy that stopped the war?

But the how questions are ultimately less revealing than the whys. Why, contrary to what Sinwar believed, did Israel not collapse on Oct. 7? Why did Israelis persevere through mass murder, forced internal displacement, ballistic missile attacks and international isolation? Why was Israel determined to win rather than settle for a premature end to the war that would have left Israel’s major enemies mostly unscathed?

The answer came to me on an Israeli military base near Gaza, where I met a sergeant who went by the nickname Cholo. Cholo had been DJ’ing raves in

Brazil but returned to Israel immediately after Oct. 7 to serve. “I am not supporting this government,” he told me.

“But I will go to the army.”

The word for this is patriotism, or what Mark Twain called “supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it.” Many

made clear that the stakes were existential. What’s more, the gleeful support those aims and methods instantly engendered worldwide made clear that, even now, there’s still no safe harbor for Jews. Not Australia. Not Canada. Not Britain. Not France. Not Germany. And perhaps not America.

All this Sinwar gleaned from closely reading Hebrew-language newspapers, a habit he picked up from his many years in Israeli prisons.

of the Israeli soldiers who fought and fell in Gaza and other fronts were surely marching against Netanyahu during the protests over the judicial reform.

But they came from nearly every political quarter to fight not out of ideological or partisan conviction, but because Sinwar’s aims and methods on Oct. 7

Do earnest progressives really think that if the Jewish state were to vanish tomorrow, to be replaced by some utopian binational state, the anti-Jewish furies in the Middle East, Europe or North America would somehow abate? Or would those furies simply find easier targets?

Nor did Israelis fight only because they were faced by an existential threat. They also faced an existential lie: the lie that Israel is a settler-colonialist state, a nonnative invasive species that has no place in that land. It’s a lie that’s taken hold everywhere, even if a 3,000-year historical record disproves it. And it’s a lie that, as it’s grown bolder, attacks the very roots of Jewish identity. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem …” wasn’t simply meant as literary metaphor. To prove the point, Israelis had to fight and win the war.

The current ceasefire brings a set of difficult questions about what comes next — for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else invested in their future. But it should settle important questions, too. Are Israelis weak? Is their state built on foundations of sand? Is their attachment to their beliefs slight?

Yahya Sinwar and those who followed him thought so. The grave he made for himself should settle the questions for good.

© The New York Times

Forgotten Her es Shipbuilding During World War II

By Avi Heiligman

When the U.S. was drawn into the war after being attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the number of American of ships, tanks and planes wasn’t adequate to fight to the Axis powers on multiple fronts. At the time, the American GDP was greater than all of the Axis powers combined, but it took the American entry into the war for their manufacturing prowess to be fully mobilized. By the end of the war, the American production of war materials was so massive that it totally overwhelmed anything the Axis could counter with.

Here are some the incredible numbers and stories of the American war production during World War II.

The Japanese high command was aware of the American war production capabilities and tried to deliver a knockout blow to the U.S. by striking Pearl Harbor. However, they miscalculated, and even though the battleships docked at Pearl Harbor were sunk or damaged, the aircraft carriers were out at sea. Soon, it became the primary focus of shipyards to produce ships like carriers that would change the tide of the war. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto understood the American industrial power. Some attribute this quote to him: “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

In 1939, the U.S. only had 375,000 tonnage of merchant shipping available, but at the end of the war, they had produced close to 34,000,000 merchant shipping tonnage. The numbers were similar for other war machines as well. America had just over 2,100 military aircraft in 1939, and six years later that number was over 300,000. These included some of the best planes in the skies, and designs that went from just a concept on paper to their first flight in just 102 days (P-51 Mustang). North American Aviation built more than 15,000 of the P-51 Mustangs, and by 1945, its facilities were finishing a plane every hour.

One of the most influential and important figures in war production was American industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. He started a construction company in 1906 and soon his firm expanded into building roads and dams. In the 1930s, his firm was one of six construction companies contracted into building the Hoover Dam. During World War II, he was most famous for the Kaiser Shipyards. This group of seven large shipbuilding facilities built an incredible 1,490 warships during World War II.

The Liberty Ship was designed to be a low-cost, mass-produced cargo ship, and more were built than any other design of ship during the war. 2,710 of them were completed by a total of 18

shipyards. Henry Kaiser and his shipyards were very much involved with the manufacturing of these vital ships, and his shipyard in Richmond, California, was at the forefront of the process. They were built using prefabricated sections on an assembly line style of production and replaced riveting with welding. The SS Robert E. Peary was built in just 4 days, 15 hours and 29 minutes at the Richmond Shipyard, making it the record holder for the fastest time it took to complete a Liberty Ship.

At the outset of hostilities on December 7, 1941, the U.S. Navy had eight aircraft carriers. Of the seven operational carriers, three were in the Pacific at the time of the attack, while the others were operating in other areas. The pressure to build more carriers became even greater with the loss of four fleet carriers by the end of 1942. The Kaiser Shipyard in Vancouver, Washington, answered the call and launched its first carrier, the USS Casablanca, in April 1943. For the next sixteen months, the shipyard produced 50 escort carriers with the last launching in June 1944. Escort carriers were smaller than fleet carriers but were crucial in many battles, including the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-boats and the Battle of Leyte Gulf against the largest ships in the Japanese Navy.

Construction of larger capital ships

could take years as was the case of the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63). She was built in the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard that had been in use since 1801 and had built the Union Navy’s first ironclad, the USS Monitor, during the Civil War. During World War II, the yard employed 75,000 people at its peak including the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, zt”l, who worked on the wiring of the battleship. He was trained as an electrical engineer and used his experience to draw diagrams of the wiring for the ship. Many other Jews worked at the yard which became the go-to place to repair damaged ships and refitting non-military craft for military use. In addition to the Missouri , the Brooklyn Navy Yard also built the battleships USS North Carolina and the USS Iowa as well as four large aircraft carriers.

Shipbuilding was just one of the major areas of war production during World War II. The numbers and the stories behind the war effort in America is history 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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ZEVIZZ WOODTURNING JUDAICA

Challah knifes, batei mezuzah, besamim holder, kiddish cups, havdalah candle holders, yad for sefer torah, pens, stenders, bowls and more  952-356-2228

MY MOTTO IS DON’T WAIT TO buy real estate

Buy real estate and wait

Your realtor for life

516-784-0856 Alexandra at Realty Connect USA

HOUSES FOR SALE

REAL ESTATE MANAGEMENT

Services – Do Not Manage Your Properties Alone!

Contact Aliyah Suites for all your real estate management needs and affordable office space near you! (516) 366-1049

Management@aliyahsuites.com

Marc Jeret (MJ) Team Leader & Licensed Real Estate Agent

in Inwood & Cedarhurst Utilities, Internet & Parking incl. with some Kosher kitchen - Minyan Next to LIRR - No broker fee Call/text/Whatsapp: 516-206-1100

Classifieds

COMMERCIAL REAL ESATATE HELP WANTED

CEDARHURST

Prime Restaurant Location For Lease.

For more information:

Call/Text/WhatsApp Owner:

(516) 206-1100

Don’t Get Stuck With a Two Story House Ya Know, It’s One Story Before You Buy It But a Second Story After You Own It!

Call Dov Herman For An Accurate Unbiased Home Inspection InfraredTermite Inspection

Full Report All Included NYC 718-INSPECT Long Island 516-INSPECT www.nyinspect.com

ASSISTANT TEACHER, AFTERNOON POSITION

Join our Specialized team at Zareinu. Looking for a warm and caring teacher assistant to work with an experienced teacher in a small 7th and 8th grade girls’ class in Shulamith. Great Pay! Great Opportunity! Warm environment with administrative support!

Email resume: jlepolstat@zareinu. org or call 516-993-2142

DELIVERY PERSON NEEDED

to deliver this Newspaper every Thursday  morning to locations in Brooklyn. Must have Mini van or SUVand availability to work Consistently every week. Good pay - Please email gabe@fivetownsjewishhome.com or call (917) 299-8082

HELP WANTED

REGENTS EXPERT

Tutoring regents in Algebra and Geometry A Darchei Torah instructor. Guaranteed results Text 347-491-8045 WhatsApp 347-767-1755

HELP WANTED

SEEKING ELEMENTARY TEACHERS and assistants for General Studies for the ‘25-’26 year. Assistants should have skills to take over for teachers if needed. Far Rockaway area boys’ school, M-Th, PM hours, strong support. Excellent salary. Send resume to teachersearch11@gmail.com.

Reach Your Target Market

Classifieds

HELP WANTED

YESHIVAT KOL YAAKOV

In Great Neck, NY, is seeking general studies teachers for both the elementary and middle schools, for the upcoming academic year. Mon-Thur afternoons. Competitive salary, warm and supportive environment.  Send resume to m.kalati@kolyaakov.org

MDS REGIONAL NURSE

5 Towns area Nursing Home management office seeking a Regional/Corporate level MDS Nurse to work in our office. Must be an RN. Regional experience preferred. 2-3 years MDS experience with good computer skills required. Position is Full Time but Part Time can be considered. Great Shomer Shabbos environment with some remote options as well. Email: officejob2019@gmail.com

HELP WANTED

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT

A multi-tasker needed for general office work. The ideal candidate is someone who is detail-oriented, responsible, and can take ownership. Looking for someone who is eager to learn, and expand his/her skill set while possessing the ability to work independently and as part of a team. Experience with Excel required. Five Towns location. In-office position only, not remote. Please send resume to 5tpart.timecareer@gmail.com

BOOKKEEPER

A Five Towns Real Estate Company is seeking a full-time Bookkeeper. The right candidate must be proficient with QuickBooks and Excel. They must also be self-motivated, organized, detail oriented, reliable, and able to work independently or as a team player. Warm, frum office environment with excellent salary & benefits. Please email resume to HR@capsprop.com

HELP WANTED MISC.

REBBE, SUNDAY POSITION

Join our Specialized team at Zareinu!

Looking for a Rebbe to teach a small class of second and third grade. You will be working with experienced assistants.  Great Pay! Great Opportunity! Warm environment with administrative support! Email resume: jlepolstat@zareinu.org or call 516-993-2142

HEAD ENGLISH TEACHING POSITIONS

Join our Specialized team at Zareinu! Looking for a qualified teacher to teach a modified English curriculum for a small group of 4th grade girls in Far Rockaway. Great Pay! Warm environment! Great administrative support!   Email resume: jlepolstat@zareinu. org or call 516-993-2142

WINE NEWS!

The new ‘Noble Wines’ catalog has arrived, featuring our latest selection of premium wines. Request your free copy by mail. Just text or email your address and we’ll deliver it straight to your door. Text: (845) 716-8306 or e-mail: news@noblewinesinc.com

HASHAVAS AVEIDA Apple airpods found on Wednesday morning on the way to the Woodmere dock. To claim, 516-351-8105.

SHMIRAS HALASHON

Text 516-303-3868 with a time slot of your choice to be careful on lashon hara. Be a part of the 1,000 people for klal yisroel!

BEIS HAMEDRASH CONG. Chasdei Uvois Oshpitzin Talmidei chachomim are willing to learn mishnayos, say kaddish and be the shliach tzibbur to daven for the umid on the yartzeit yom hashanah of your parents or close relatives or loved ones  To arrange please call Rabbi Miller 917-445-6220

Life C ach

Aufruf Messaging

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

What’s the aufruf – defined as being called up – all about? Calling someone up to the Torah for an aliyah before they get married, in order to honor them.

So how did the event turn into a “groom roast”?

This tradition of having friends speak and share a very unappealing side of the groom seems a brutal way to enjoy the Shabbos before his wedding.

And the strangest part is that the groom attends it willingly and enthusiastically.

One can speculate that this strange ritual might have been created by others who went before him.

It seems they might be preparing him for something that is to come – the possibility that the person they love may at times be somewhat critical.

The ritual of this preparation is often a little harsh, though delivered good-naturedly and with humor. Maybe that’s the idea. To prepare him not to take the constructive criticism that’s shared at times in marriage too harshly. It’s simply part of the initiation into married life.

There will be those times his behavior is commented on, but it’s not usually coming from a bad place.

It may only be his overreaction to it that makes it go south. It’s good if he can hear it and still interact amiably.

Let’s look for a minute at the Shabbos kallah, in contrast. That is the bride’s pre-wedding friends’ weekend.

It’s a whole different vibe: love and support and comfort food. Positive speeches, promises of continued friendship, and loyalty. Recognition of great qualities and strengths that the bride possesses.

She’s being prepped for what the gals think should be coming her way.

Well, if the guy can get the message for him at the aufruf and simultaneously be a fly on the wall at the Shabbos kallah, he probably has a great chance at being a real success in his marriage.

If not, you’ve come to the right place: Rivki Rosenwald here, dating coach and marriage and family therapist.

Honestly, it’s good for each partner to have accurate expectations, wholesome preparation, and learning the correct process of interaction in making a relationship a success.

Whether you’re called out or put down, the secret is to develop the right tone and tools to navigate the ups and downs and ins and outs of a relationship. Mazal tov!

Rivki Rosenwald is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist working with both couples and individuals and is a certified relationship counselor. Rivki is a co-founder and creator of an effective Parent Management of Adolescent Years Program. She can be contacted at 917-705-2004 or at rivkirosenwald@gmail.com.