Five Towns Jewish Home 06.06.25

IDF Soldiers Visit Mercaz

Dear Readers,

It happens almost instantly. The second we turn the calendar from May to June, we’re suddenly in summer mode. That means that the kids are having a harder time doing homework when they come home and can’t seem to go to sleep on time at night. The days are longer and lighter – and who wants to go to bed when there’s only a few more days left to school?

They are already counting down. Just when we finished counting the Omer, we have a countdown to Last Day of School. Yup, it’s capitalized – a momentous day when all their hard work is suddenly realized and secured. They actually did it –“Harry, I’ve reached the top.”

And parents are feeling the pre-summer itch, too, although a lot of that itch is the feeling that if they don’t start ordering all the camp paraphernalia soon, it won’t be delivered on time. Question: how many t-shirts does a boy need when he barely changes his clothes in camp? The answer: a lot. And then, when they come home from camp, all those t-shirts you (lovingly) bought and folded come back folded the exact same way you folded them when

you put them in the suitcase, e.g., they were never worn. But of course, they need so many of them and they need to be new because who fits into the clothes from last summer?

When we start off the school year in September and October, we are kept busy with the yomim tovim and the hecticness of going back to school. But as we close out the school year in June, we’re just as busy with graduations, exams, and trying fit in everything before the wrap-up of the school year. Sometimes, June is so busy that it passes by in a blur of studying and packing, and before we know it, it’s over.

But maybe we can slow it down a bit and get to enjoy the last slice of spring. Perhaps we can intentionally take in all that June has to offer – the longer days, the warmer weather, the chance to be outside with the family. We can make sure to focus each day on the gift that we’ve been offered, wrapped up in sunshine and slushies and the buzzing bees around the barbecue.

Wishing you a wonderful week, Shoshana

Yitzy Halpern, PUBLISHER publisher@fivetownsjewishhome.com

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Cloudy Showers Showers Showers Showers

Dear Editor,

Let’s stop dancing around the truth.

The Jewish community in New York— particularly the frum community—faces a political crisis of historic proportions. This isn’t about whether Andrew Cuomo apologized or whether he was a perfect governor. This is about whether our children and grandchildren will be able to live as Torah Jews in New York a decade from now.

We still feel the pain of the unfair red zones imposed by Cuomo in 2020, which targeted our communities and restricted our way of life with heavy-handed measures. That wound lingers, a reminder of how quickly our freedoms can be curtailed. Yet, despite this pain, we must look forward and consider our future as Jews in New York City, where new threats loom larger than past grievances.

If Zoran Mamdani and the movement behind him succeed, we risk losing everything we’ve built. This isn’t a mere policy disagreement or politics as usual. Mamdani and his allies, backed by the DSA, have made their intentions clear: they aim to defund our yeshivas, strip our neighborhoods of police protection, and vilify support for Israel as a disqualifying offense. These aren’t empty threats. They’re drafting laws, redirecting budgets, and winning elections—all while projecting a facade of goodwill.

After October 7th, while we were still mourning our dead, Mamdani signed a public statement blaming Israel entirely for the massacre. Not a word of condolence. Not a mention of the murdered children or the raped women. That wasn’t a misstep—it was a declaration of values. We must recognize this: if we allow

people like Mamdani to gain power—if we stay home, shrug, and say “Cuomo’s not my favorite”—we’re not just surrendering influence, we’re forfeiting protection. Without a strong political defense, we cannot shield our mosdos from hostile regulations. We cannot keep our neighborhoods safe. We cannot speak out without fear of Retribution.

The DSA movement has no regard for Torah, no room for Zionism, and no tolerance for Jews who don’t conform to their ideology. They view our schools as regressive, our values as threats, and our identity as an obstacle. Their goal isn’t inclusion—it’s erasure, from education, politics, and public life.

If they win this round because we stayed home, who will stop them in the next?

Cuomo is no tzaddik, and no one claims he is. But we’re not choosing a rebbe—we’re choosing a shield. If we don’t seize the shield before us, we’ll be left utterly defenseless.

The reality is stark: in the voting booth, only two candidates can win— Andrew Cuomo or Zoran Mamdani. No one else is close. ( and Eric Adams is not running in the primary - he is on the November ballot)

Choosing not to vote for Cuomo isn’t neutrality—it’s handing Mamdani a victory. That’s a risk our community cannot take.

This moment demands action. If we fail to resist this radical, anti-Torah movement, we won’t be debating policies in ten years—we’ll be debating whether we can still live here at all. We cannot stay silent. We cannot stay home. Not

Continued on page 14

Early voting in the Democratic Primary for Mayor begins on Sunday, June 15th

This isn’t about Cuomo. It’s about us. Our families. Our yeshivas. Our future. Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance

Elkana Adelman

Richard Altabe

Shalom Becker

Bourch Ber Bender

Zvi Bloom

Jack Brach

Mordechai Zvi Dicker

Ruchie Dunn

Joel Kaplan

Dr Moshe Lazar

Moishe Mishkowitz

Chaim Rapfogel

Baruch Rothman

Aaron Zupnick

Dear Editor,

I was visiting our local cleaners here in Lawrence last week. A young mother walked in with her son, about 4-5 years old. He immediately pointed to the candy dispenser machine in the back of the small shop and said, “Mommy, I want a candy.”

Mommy immediately responded. “No. You cannot have a candy.”

“But I really want it,” the little boy answered back.

“I hear you,” says the mother, “but the answer is no.”

They went back and forth several times. The mother, remaining cool and calm, firmly announced, “Sometimes the answer is yes. And sometimes the answer is no. Right now, the answer is no.”

End of conversation.

I was enthralled with this give and take and expressed my admiration to the mother whom I thought handled this very well. I shared with her my take on the interchange between her and her son.

What a lesson for all adults, too. Oftentimes, there are things that we would like. We may feel entitled. We daven. We plead with Hashem. We may even try and bargain. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no.

Doing errands here in Lawrence can be quite enlightening. Miriam Liebermann

Dear Editor,

Thank you for printing Rafi Sackville’s interesting and timely article following Yom Yerushalyim and preceding the anniversary of the Six Day War. The article

and suggested a video that documented the reunion of surviving soldiers who served in the 71st Brigade and captured the Old City interspersed with actual footage of the battle they fought in.

I watched the YouTube video mentioned in the article, also named “Drums on the Walls of Jerusalem.”

Thanks to Hashem’s providence and the bravery of these soldiers – including those who did not survive to see the Kotel – Jews all over the world have free access to the Kotel. In tribute to their courage, please make the time, about 30 minutes, to view this video and share it with others. It is in Hebrew. If you don’t understand Hebrew, consider looking up Rafi’s article online in the 5/29/25 edition of the paper. Shalom and blessings, Shoshana Averbach Brooklyn, NY

Dear Editor,

When guests are invited for a Shabbos meal, a whole lot of activity, planning, shopping goes on behind the scenes. The hostess is thrilled to have joyful Shabbos and yom tov meals – that’s why she invites you. I would like to give my full support and kudos to the hostess (and hosts ) by writing this to honor all those efforts.

If you are lucky enough to be guest in our home: welcome, sit down and enjoy, but also know how much love and attention was expended to give you this culinary event.

Guest list for the hostess:

Keep track of who is married to whom. Ex-spouses are a no-no. The chassidishe guest may not want to sit near a woman, so plan the seating arrangements accordingly. Mrs. X doesn’t want to sit near the air conditioner vent. Here is a real “doozy”: I don’t like “so and so”?

Why didn’t you tell me she was invited? ( In that case, I say politely, “Either sit down and behave like an adult or there is the door.” I don’t have time to deal with poor manners or childishness.

Menu: let’s see if I can make this clear: Planning and executing a meal is creative and fun, but it comes with an encyclopedia of un-printed rules.

This one only drinks diet soda.

This one only drinks regular soda. Don’t serve grapefruit as an appetizer; it conflicts with some guests’ medications.

Gefilte fish: Ms. X doesn’t eat.

This man is gluten-free so have an alternative for his Hamotzei.

Keep track of allergies. One time a hostess made an Italian themed meal but only found out when the guests arrived

that one person was allergic to tomato sauce.

Meat is getting prohibitively experience. Finding an alternative is a challenge. Sometimes serve just a little meat, like meatballs for Friday night or a meatloaf for lunch is less expensive.

People like lots of salads, so that thought might help your menu.

Varying the menu from visit to visit is hard for me. I have my reliable menu that I can serve each week but don’t want to bore the company.

Running back and forth setting the table keeps me fit.

Collecting all the serving platters and utensils is a trip or two from the buffet to the kitchen before the company comes.

Don’t forget all the silver. Kiddush cups, small glasses for each person, etc. Did you take out the salt and challah knife?

Are you setting with cloth napkins? They always look so elegant, but someone’s gotta iron them.

If you love ice, you have come to the right table. We always have a bowl to quench your thirst.

My kitchen is run as a “one man show.” Yes, I know it is more work for me, but I have already worked all week setting up this lunch or dinner, and I don’t want any slip-ups.

If you want to help, thank you, but ask me how you can help before you touch anything. Don’t take over my domain. Please stand out of my way and wait for direction from the chef.

A gift is always sweet and much appreciated.

Having people at our holy table is a blessing. I am glad I can do it. Let us not forget all the widows, widowers, divorcees, and never-marrieds. They need a little Shabbos love that only you can provide – a comfy meal at a table full of lively conversation and other company.

Fern Wunsch

Dear Editor,

In the wake of its passage by the NY Assembly (81-67), every NY State resident is requested to please urge their state senator to actively and vocally oppose Assisted Suicide bill S138 in compliance with the directive of leading rabbis from across the Orthodox community to vigorously oppose all such legislation.

S138*, deceptively dubbed “Aid In Dying,” in reality threatens to legalize aid in killing. It would allow

doctors to actively poison people they claim are (1) “terminally ill” and (2) allegedly expressed the will to die, at some point. This is full-fledged murder – prohibited to all of Mankind. Even worse, this legislation enables unofficial euthanasia – killing patients who never expressed any desire to die. The “protections” included in this bill – ostensibly aimed at preventing the murder of those who don’t wish to die, as well as the provisions protecting doctors from being required to participate in the mandated murders – are all flimsy, at best. Moreover, even those inadequate “protections” stand to be removed over time, without fanfare.

Ultimately, the primary role of those “protections” is to facilitate passage of the bill, by pretending to alleviate the most powerful objections against the bill. What’s urgently needed right now is for every man or woman in NY State –including teens who will be 18 years old by the next NY Senate election in November 2026 – to urge their own NY Senator to oppose this Senate bill, S138. Those senators considering voting Yes need to hear from us that “as much as we’re irreconcilably opposed to assisted suicide in principle – this bill, S138/A136, would go much further – invariably resulting in the killing of many who never wanted to die.”

°° If you’re unaware of who your State Senator is, call: NY Senate Switchboard: 518-455-2800 -- Mon-Fri 9am-5pm or go to https://www.nysenate. gov/find-my-senator

For those who live in Queens, you can contact: Joseph P. Addabbo Jr. (Dist. 15), addabbo@nysenate.gov, (718)738-1111; John C. Liu (Dist. 16), liu@nysenate.gov, 718-765-6675. Toby Ann Stavisky (Dist. 11), Stavisky@nysenate.gov, (718)4450004.

In addition, there’s a bill cosponsor who nonetheless needs to hear from us, because he has the largest Orthodox constituency in Queens: Senator Leroy Comrie, Comrie@ nysenate.gov, (718)454-0162 Rabbi Noson Shmuel Leiter Executive Director Help Rescue Our Children

Poland Elections

Karol Nawrocki managed to emerge victorious in the tight presidential elections in Poland over the weekend, a surprise result that may set the country on a more nationalist course and cast doubt on the viability of the government of Prime Minister Tusk after his liberal ally lost to Nawrocki.

Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote in the race against Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 49.11%, according to the final results of Sunday’s runoff published Monday morning.

By evening, Tusk said he would ask parliament to hold a vote of confidence in his coalition government, a fragile multiparty alliance that includes left-wingers, centrists and agrarian conservatives.

In Poland, the government exists separately from the presidency. Still, the president has the power to veto laws, which will make it hard for Tusk to push through his pro-European agenda with Nawrocki sitting in the president’s seat. The race revealed deep divisions in the country along the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union.

Tusk said in a video posted to social media that there’s a lot of work for the government to do, and its first test would be the vote of confidence held in “the near future.” If Tusk survives the confidence vote, it would show he still has a mandate to govern.

After the win, Nawrocki thanked voters for their support.

“We want to live in a safe country with a strong economy, one that cares for the most vulnerable. A country that matters in international, European, and transatlantic relations. A country that cherishes its centuries-old traditions and respects its history,” he wrote on social media.

Nawrocki will succeed Andrzej Duda, a conservative whose second and final term ends on August 6.

Glacier Buries Town

A village in Switzerland was partially destroyed last week after a huge chunk of a glacier crashed down into the valley.

Blatten had been evacuated a few days before the incident because of fears that the Birch glacier was disintegrating. Still, one person was reported missing, and many homes were completely flattened when the glacier fell onto the village.

Local authorities described the situation on Wednesday as “very bad” and requested support from the Swiss army’s disaster relief unit.

Around 300 people lived in the village, and some of them will not be able to return to their homes.

The disaster that occurred in Blatten is the worst nightmare for communities across the Alps. The avalanche of mud that swept over Blatten sounded like a deafening roar, as it swept down into the valley leaving an enormous cloud of dust. This is not the first time that geologists have warned of glaciers collapsing in the area. In eastern Switzerland, residents of the village of Brienz were evacuated two years ago because the mountainside above them was crumbling. Since then, they have only been permitted to return for short periods.

In 2017, eight hikers were killed and many homes were destroyed, when the biggest landslide in over a century came down close to the village of Bondo.

Dam Floods Town in Nigeria

At least 111 people died after massive flooding submerged the market town of Mokwa in central Nigeria’s Niger State last week. Hours of torrential rain

pummeled the town on Thursday. A nearby dam then collapsed, sending water surging into the community and forced widespread evacuations.

Authorities frantically attempted to rescue villagers, but at least 111 bodies were found. Officials say that number could rise.

Niger State emergency agency spokesman Ibrahim Audu Husseini said on Friday, “More bodies have just been brought and are yet to be counted.”

Around 3,000 homes were submerged from the waters.

The flooding in Mokwa marks one of the deadliest natural disasters in Nigeria so far this year, an example of the country’s vulnerability to extreme weather events and aging infrastructure.

Mokwa is a major commercial hub where southern traders purchase food from the north. This event can potentially disrupt local food supply chains.

Mokwa is situated approximately 140 miles west of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, and lies near the Niger River, making it highly flood prone.

Nigeria frequently suffers from seasonal floods, particularly in rivere communities like Mokwa. The effects are often compounded by poor drainage infrastructure and rapid urban growth.

France Bans Outdoor Smoking

Starting on July 1, smokers aren’t wanted in France. The country will ban smoking in all outdoor places that can be frequented by children, health and family minister Catherine Vautrin has said last week.

The ban will be implemented in areas like beaches, parks, public gardens, outside schools, bus stops and sports venues.

“Tobacco must disappear where there are children,” Vautrin said in an interview published by Ouest-France daily.

She added that “the freedom to smoke must end where the freedom of children to breathe fresh air begins.”

Still, the outdoor areas of cafes and bar – known as terrasses –  will be exempt from the ban, she said.

Those who break the ban will be fined.

For now, electronic cigarettes are exempt from the law. Vautrin said that she was working to introduce limits on the amounts of nicotine they contain.

According to the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 23.1% of the French population smokes on a daily basis – the lowest percentage ever recorded, and a fall of over five points since 2014. Around 13% of deaths in France are from tobacco-related illnesses.

Smoking in establishments like restaurants and nightclubs has been banned in France since 2008.

200 Prisoners

Escape in Pakistan

At least 200 prisoners managed to escape from jail in Karachi, Pakistan, after an earthquake shook the walls of the Malir Jail on Tuesday.

Thousands of inmates broke down doors and the locks of their cells and shattered windows after they felt the tremors.

Police were able to round up 80 of the inmates who had escaped right after the event and were searching for the others. One prisoner was killed during the operation, and two prison officers were injured.

When the earthquake occurred, the prisoners began to fear for their lives, concerned that the building would collapse on them. Police fired warning shots in the air, and many inmates returned to their cells. At least 216 prisoners escaped.

The facility in the Malir district is Sindh province’s second largest prison and is over capacity. While it can accommodate up to 2,200 prisoners, there are at least 5,000 inmates there currently.

4 Million Have Fled Sudan

Sudan has been grappling with a civil war since April 2023. At least four million people have fled the country since then, U.N. refugee agency officials said

on Tuesday, adding that many survivors faced inadequate shelter due to funding shortages.

“Now in its third year, the 4 million people is a devastating milestone in what is the world’s most damaging displacement crisis at the moment,” U.N. refugee agency spokesperson Eujin Byun noted.

“If the conflict continues in Sudan, thousands more people, we expect thousands more people will continue to flee, putting regional and global stability at stake,” she said.

Sudan shares borders with seven countries: Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Central African Republic and Libya.

More than 800,000 of the refugees have fled to Chad, where their shelter conditions are dire due to funding shortages, with only 14% of funding appeals met, UNHCR’s Dossou Patrice Ahouansou said.

“This is an unprecedented crisis that we are facing. This is a crisis of humanity. This is a crisis of ... protection based on the violence that refugees are reporting,” he said.

Many of those fleeing reported surviving terror and violence. Some refugees shared stories of armed groups taking their horses and donkeys and forcing adults to pull their own family members by cart as they fled, Ahouansou revealed.

France to Promote Alfred Dreyfus

Alfred

the

in 1894 on false espionage charges that were a reflection of virulent antisemitism in the French military, reparations have been a long time coming.

For

Dreyfus,

Jewish army captain arrested

The French National Assembly, or lower house of parliament, took a big step in that direction on Monday when it voted unanimously to promote Dreyfus, who was publicly stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment, to the rank of brigadier general. It was an apparent acknowledgment that, after more than 130 years and at a time of repeated desecrations of Jewish sites in France, the Republic’s atonement had been incomplete.

The Senate must still vote for the bill to become law, but it is expected to pass with a large majority.

“We are very happy and moved,” Michel Dreyfus, the great-grandson of the officer, told RTL radio. “He was rehabilitated judicially but never militarily, a wound that led him to leave the army.”

Gabriel Attal, the centrist former prime minister who authored the bill, wrote last month, “Accused, humiliated and condemned because he was Jewish, Alfred Dreyfus was dismissed from the army, imprisoned and exiled to Devil’s Island,” a reference to a penal colony in French Guiana. Attal said the promotion would be “a recognition of his merits and a tribute to his commitment to the Republic.”

The Dreyfus case split France, exposing

divisions that had been festering since the Revolution. A traditional Roman Catholic France strongly represented in the armed forces clashed with the secular believers in a Republic that had emancipated the Jews and that was constituted not by G-d but by the will of its equal citizens.

The battle between those happy to see Dreyfus languish on a remote island and the Dreyfusards clamoring for his conviction to be overturned came to a head in 1898, when Émile Zola, the acclaimed novelist, published his open letter “J’Accuse” in the Aurore newspaper accusing the government of antisemitism.

Dreyfus returned to France in 1899 for a second trial, but it was not until 1906 that the Cour de Cassation, the highest court, exonerated him. He was reinstated with the rank of major but quit a year later, before reentering the army as a reserve officer during World War I and rising to the rank of colonel. (© The New York Times)

S. Korea’s New Leader

On Wednesday, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was sworn in as South Korea’s

next president following snap elections six months after the country’s previous leader declared martial law and plunged the nation into chaos.

Official results showed Lee winning by nearly three million votes ahead of his main rival, Kim Moon-soo of the incumbent conservative People Power Party.

Kim conceded defeat early Wednesday morning, congratulating Lee on his victory in a speech and saying that he “humbly accept(s) the people’s decision.”

Addressing crowds of supporters in Seoul, Lee promised to “work to restore the economy” from day one and to ensure there will never be a military coup.

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on December 3 last year in a short-lived power-grab that was halted after lawmakers pushed their way past soldiers into the legislature and voted to block the decree. Yoon

was impeached soon after and formally removed from office in April.

Since then, the government has been chaotic, being led by a revolving door of interim leaders until snap elections could be held.

The acting leader of Lee’s Democratic Party, Park Chan-dae, said in an interview on Tuesday night that the results reflected “people’s fiery judgement against the insurrection regime.”

Voter turnout was high – around eighty percent – the highest turnout since the 1997 election.

Lee, a divisive figure within Korean politics, emerged early on as the frontrunner, despite recent legal challenges and allegations of corruption and abuse of power. He now faces a host of issues waiting to be tackled.

Lee grew up in a poor family and worked as a factory worker when he was young. He eventually became a human rights lawyer before entering politics. At one point he was the mayor of Seongnam city and the governor of Gyeonggi province.

He survived an assassination attempt in January 2024 when a man stabbed him in the neck during a public event in the city of Busan.

During the campaign, Lee promised

political and economic reforms. He said he also supports small businesses.

Lee has also been embroiled in controversy, including several ongoing trials for alleged bribery and charges related to a property development scandal.

Ukraine Destroys Russian Warplanes

Ukraine recently carried out an operation it called “Spider’s Web,” wherein the country’s military fired 117 drones at four military airports in Russia. The attack, which was planned for a year and a half, destroyed over 40 warplanes in the Russian air bases of Belaya, Ivanovo, Dyagilevo, and Olenya.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, called the operation, which was carried out near an office of Russia’s

Federal Security Service, “absolutely unique.” The successful attack marks a major victory for Ukraine in its deepstrike program, which has seen the country fire drones at Russian territory.

“We will defend ourselves with all available methods,” said Zelensky.

According to Ukrainian intelligence officials, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) first transported the small quadcopter drones to Russian territory before moving wooden containers that hid the drones from Russia. Right before the attack, officials put the containers on trucks and opened them remotely.

Ukraine did not tell the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump before launching the attack.

The attack destroyed several types of aircraft, including Tu-95MS or Tu22M3 planes, which are no longer manufactured. As such, the Ukrainian strikes will significantly impact the Russian military.

India’s Spying Concerns

Since April, manufacturers of CCTV internet surveillance cameras, including

Hikvision, Xiaomi, and Dahua, three Chinese companies, as well as Hanwha of South Korea and the United States’s Motorola Solutions, have been required to allow the Indian government to test their camera’s hardware and software before being allowed to sell them to the public in India.

These rules have been implemented as concerns of foreign spying, including from China, have risen in India. However, camera manufacturers have since protested the new regulations. On April 3, 17 executives from companies that make surveillance technology, during a meeting with Indian officials, explained that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill India’s requirements yet. They asked for a delay, which India rejected, explaining that the new rules address “a genuine security issue.”

Companies fear that revenue will be lost due to the amount of time it would take for the government to inspect the cameras.

Though India hasn’t pointed to a single country as the source of its security concerns, fears of Chinese spying motivated these rules. Likewise, in 2022, the United States stopped all sales from Hikvision and Dahua, two Chinese companies. Australia and Britain implemented similar bans.

Mt. Etna Erupts

On Monday, tourists on the Italian island of Sicily were forced to flee from the slopes of Mount Etna, after an eruption sent clouds of gas, rock and ash billowing into the sky.

So far, no one has reported any injuries from one of Europe’s largest and most active volcanoes. More than 20 percent of the flights arriving at the

nearby Catania Airport were delayed, according to FlightAware, a company that tracks flight information. Authorities said that there was no risk to the local population.

The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said in a statement that the explosions were confined to the summit area, which was closed to tourists, and were of “strong intensity.”

Sicily is a popular tourist destination which welcomes many millions of travelers annually. More than a million of those travelers visit Mount Etna.

Mount Etna, a stratovolcano, or a conical volcano with relatively steep sides, shows almost continuous activity from its main craters and relatively frequent lava flows from craters and fissures along its sides. A previous major eruption had occurred in February.

So Much Pain

On Monday, three IDF heroes lost their lives in a roadside bomb in the Jabaliya area in Gaza. Staff Sgt. Lior Steinberg, 20, Staff Sgt. Ofek Barhana, 20, and Staff Sgt. Omer Van Gelder, 22, served in the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion.

Lior and Ofek were combat medics. Omer was a squad commander.

On Tuesday, thousands gathered across Israel to pay their respects to the fallen heroes.

Ofek’s mother, Leah, mourned her son at Yavne Military Cemetery.

“I always said to him, ‘I’m afraid, Ofek. Take care of yourself,’” she recalled of the times he had headed into Gaza during the war. “He would always say, ‘Don’t worry, Mom, I’m taking care of myself.’”

“Beloved child…it was a privilege to be your mother,” she sobbed. “We didn’t say goodbye properly.”

His father, Mamo, said, “I don’t know how to begin, I have no words to describe the pain. You were only 20, the age when

life begins, and you have departed from it.”

He recalled his son “standing tall with pride” and saying:, “Dad, I will defend the house, the Land of Israel.”

“You told me that when you grew up, you would be a great lawyer. We won’t get to see you fulfill your dream,” Ofek’s father said.

Ofek had four siblings: Oshri, Dana, Liam, and Aline.

Later in the day, hundreds of mourners gathered on Mount Herzl to say farewell to Omer. Omer had wanted to be a doctor. His father Hagai said the two had “often talked about the importance of speech and medicine, and I told you that a doctor should be a person who knows how to talk to his patients.”

“We need to change the way we speak,” Hagai urged, drawing on his son’s values to make a public appeal. “I ask everyone, from the prime minister to ministers, coalition and opposition, and to protesters on both sides — let’s change the discourse, we need to learn how to use our words wisely.”

Omer enlisted in the IDF just two months before the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught, and spent time deployed to multiple fronts over the past 19 months.

“Twenty-two years is not enough,” his mother, Tehillah, mourned. “We talked about you getting married and going on a trip after the army, and everything was cut short. The world lost a pure and innocent light today.”

Lior was buried in the Segula Military Cemetery in Petah Tikvah, where large crowds accompanied his parents, Orli and Anton, and his sister Shira.

“I can’t believe I’m eulogizing you,” said Lior’s mother Orli. “Ever since you were a little boy, you were curious and loved to ask questions. You’ve been a great light to the world — to me, to your father and to your sister.

“After you enlisted, you sent a letter to me that just said, ‘I love you mom.’ When you’d come home from the army, you’d give us more hugs. I can’t believe there will be no more hugs,” she lamented. “Thank G-d for letting me be Lior’s mother, even if it was only for 20 years.”

Lior’s sister Shira also eulogized him.“My little brother, beautiful and pure. You were my only brother. I have nothing without you. I am glad that in the last year we became closer, and you told me everything,” she said.

In a video message to the families of the three Israeli soldiers who were killed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the infantrymen “did not fall in vain.”

“They fell in a uniquely just war,”

he said, “a war in which we will defeat Hamas, release all our hostages and ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”

As Operation Gideon’s Chariots expands in Gaza, Netanyahu says the IDF is making “careful progress to prevent or reduce as much as possible” further troops’ deaths.

The price is heavy, he continued, promising that “we will achieve the goals of the war — all of them — without exception.”

On Tuesday evening, another IDF hero lost his life in Gaza. Master Sgt. (res.) Alon Farkas was killed when a Palestinian armed with an assault rifle opened fire on paratroopers who were operating in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. Another soldier was injured in the attack.

The gunman ambushed the troops from an alley and managed to flee following the assault which seriously wounded another reservist, according to the military.

In a separate incident in the nearby town of Jabalia on Tuesday evening, Hamas used a drone to drop an explosive or a grenade on troops. The explosion moderately wounded two soldiers of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit and lightly injured a Shin Bet officer.

Alon Farkas’s death on Tuesday brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip to 425. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.

Israel’s Laser Defense Success

The IDF announced last Wednesday that a sister system to the Iron Beam laser defense system was responsible for shooting down a number of drones. A day later, the military said that the system, which is now known as Lite Beam, shot down 35 Hezbollah drones during the war in what is seen as part of a system that has neutralized nearly 1,000 drones from Israel’s enemies in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

The media has known about the IDF’s use of laser defense systems for around a year but was unable to report about it until Wednesday. Israel’s laser defense system, which includes the Iron Beam, is more advanced than any laser system in the world and has been praised for its reliability, variable range, and adaptability.

Lite Beam is meant to eliminate small aerial threats, while Iron Beam, if all goes according to plan, will someday be able to handle rockets and long-range missiles. Laser technologies will save Israel and other countries a great deal of money. Israel’s Iron Dome interceptors cost $50,000 to $100,000. Meanwhile, it’s meant to handle Hamas rockets that could be as cheap as $300.

“Our vision for deploying laser weapons was realized during the war with tremendous technological and operational success. IDF combat units displayed boldness in integrating and carrying out the first successful operational deployments of the systems, and the lessons learned will be applied as we deploy more operational laser systems,” said senior Defense Ministry official Brig.-Gen. (res.) Danny Gold. “Laser interception systems will provide an additional layer within Israel’s multitiered air defense array, which has been meticulously developed through the tireless efforts of the defense industries and Israel’s exceptional human capital. We will continue to advance this technology and deliver world-leading systems and capabilities to the IDF, turning vision into security in air, sea, land, and across every dimension.”

When fully realized, Israel’s lasers could even eliminate Iranian drones launched at Ukraine, according to Gold. Israeli officials hope that the Iron Beam will be more in use by the end of the year, though it will take some time for the system to replace the Iron Dome.

“During the war, we deployed several high-power laser system prototypes, resulting in significant achievements, culminating in the world’s first successful high-power laser interceptions on the battlefield,” said Head of the Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Research and Development Brig.-Gen. Yehuda Elmakayes. “Throughout this period, we gained substantial experience in optimizing and operating laser technologies in the field. We are currently integrating these insights into the systems under development while expanding the range of laser-based systems to protect Israeli civilians and IDF forces.”

Ceasefire Talks Stall

Last week, Steve Witkoff, the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, proposed a new ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. If agreed to, it would last for 60 days and see the release of 10 living and 18 deceased hostages in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinians, including 125 convicted terrorists serving life sentences.

The proposal would also reinstate the United Nations as the provider for humanitarian aid to Gaza, replacing a new Israeli aid system that the U.N. has rejected.

However, Hamas, while approving of the ceasefire’s general framework, has thus far rejected the deal, as it does not include end-of-war negotiations. Israel has said it would not accept a deal that keeps Hamas in power.

Right-wing ministers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have also rejected the current ceasefire framework, saying that the terror group is close to surrendering. Among the deal’s opponents are Diaspora minister Amichai Chikli, from Likud; Settlements Minister Orit Strock, who urged Netanyahu to not “fold” since Hamas is “on its knees”; and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said the deal would give “a lifeline to Hamas,” which “is in distress.”

Some hostage families have also come out in opposition to the deal.

Ravid Haim, HY”D

On May 14, Tzeela Gez, a pregnant woman in labor, was murdered by a terrorist in Judea and Samaria while on her way to a hospital. Her baby boy was delivered at Beilinson’s Trauma Unit in an emergency surgery shortly before Tzeela

succumbed to her injuries. Last week, the baby, Ravid Haim, passed away.

Doctors at Schneider Children’s Medical Center fought to save the baby, who was in critical condition. The infant was treated at a neonatal intensive care unit.

“This is a double murder! The world should be shocked. We demand a clear Zionist response of building and more building in memory of Ravid and Tzeela. Israeli citizens demand a military ground maneuver in the village of Bruchin and the demolition of all illegal houses that endanger travelers on the road,” said Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council.

“To our astonishment, this still has not happened. We embrace the family and will stand by them in everything they need. The entire nation of Israel and the world are mourning this barbaric and horrific murder.”

Following the attack, the IDF, Israel Police, and Shin Bet sent forces to find the terrorist responsible for the killing.

The baby was laid to rest on Har HaMenuchot in Yerushalayim next to his mother.

At the funeral, Chananel Gez, the boy’s father and Tzeela’s husband, demanded that Prime Minister Netanyahu work to end terrorism and the deaths of more Jews.

“I ask the prime minister and the Knesset to do everything so that there will be a 100% transfer here and that this cancer that is eating us from the inside will no longer be here,” the bereaved father said, calling for the expulsion of all terrorists from the Judea and Samaria region.

“Bibi Netanyahu, you need to take command of these matters. Don’t listen to the European Union, to the whole world— not even to Trump,” Chananel added. “No country would allow these animals, who murder women on their way to the delivery room, to remain alive.”

“Stop listening to the whole world— and listen to the people who elected you to protect us,” he urged. “We need to wake up and let this be the last day that there are attacks in the Land of Israel.”

Ori Megidish Recounts Captivity

Ori Megidish, a soldier who was abducted on October 7 from the Nahal Oz Base, recounted her time in captivity in an interview with Uvda, a Channel 12 program. After 23 days in Gaza, Megidish was rescued by the IDF.

“The whole 23 days I feared I would die,” Megidish explained. “It never left me for a moment. It is a fear you can’t describe.”

As Hamas invaded, Megidish and other soldiers hid in the base’s bomb shelter, which was then taken over by terrorists, who hurled a grenade into the shelter. One female soldier in the base, who was still in her pajamas, stood at the shelter’s entrance and returned fire. Despite not knowing her, Megidish said, “She is my hero.” That soldier was 22-year-old Cpt. Eden Nimri, who was soon murdered by terrorists.

When around 30 to 40 terrorists came into the shelter, they looked euphoric, according to Megidish.

“I will never forget their smiles,” Megidish said. “I don’t even remember what they looked like, but I remember that they smiled. They looked at us and decided who lives and who dies.”

She made eye contact with a terrorist, which she said was a mistake. Then, he grabbed her and threw her into the back of a car with fellow soldiers Noa Marciano and Naama Levy. After arriving in Gaza, Marciano, a good friend of Megidish, was separated from her and Levy. Marciano was killed, and her remains were later recovered. Levy, on January 25, 2025, was freed during a ceasefire deal.

The terrorists brought Megidish to an apartment in Gaza, where one of the guards would frequently assault and abuse her.

Megidish feared dying in an airstrike from Israel. Three weeks into her captivity, an Israeli bombing caused the roof of the apartment where she was held captive to cave in. The house was set on fire, one of the guards was killed, and Megidish’s skull was fractured. She was then brought to a local medical facility, where a doctor operated on her without any anesthetic, thus causing her “indescribable pain.”

The next day, other terrorists took her to a different apartment, where she was told that she would be murdered if the IDF attempted to save her.

On October 20, Megidish was awoken by her rescuer, an Israeli soldier who brought her to a nearby vehicle, which they used to take her out of the Strip.

12 Injured in Terror Attack in Colorado

On Sunday, when people were gathered at a peaceful event in Boulder, Colorado, in support of the scores of hostages being held in Hamas’ hands, Mohamed Soliman violently attacked them and threw homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails. Twelve people were injured in the terrorist attack, during which Soliman yelled, “Free Palestine.”

He later told authorities that “he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” an affidavit said.

The 45-year-old Egyptian national had planned the attack for a year. Supposedly, Soliman had wanted to commit this act of terrorism earlier, but held back until his daughter graduated from high school.

A Colorado Springs Gazette article published in April profiled a student matching his daughter’s description as a recipient of a scholarship. According to the article, she described in her scholarship application how her family had immigrated to the U.S. after living in Kuwait, noting that her father had undergone a “difficult surgery” when she was young “that restored his ability to walk.” The girl said the incident inspired her to pursue medical school – a dream that would have been impossible in Kuwait but within reach in America.

Soliman was born in Egypt and had lived Kuwait for 17 years before he moved to Colorado. He entered the U.S. in August 2022 as a non-immigrant visitor and in 2023 received a two-year work authorization that expired in March.

Before leaving for the attack, Soliman left an iPhone hidden in a desk drawer at home with messages for his family as well as a journal.

Soliman waited while the group was walking with signs and appeared to be a gardener, having bought flowers from Home Depot to complete his faux occupation.

According to authorities, he attacked and severely burned multiple marchers. Soliman was captured on video by bystanders standing shirtless and yelling phrases including “Palestine is Free!” and “end Zionists!” before police arrived and arrested him. Police found a nearby plastic container holding at least 14 unlit Molotov cocktails, the federal complaint said.

Throughout his interview with law enforcement, the terrorist said he “hated the Zionist group and did this because he hated this group and needed to stop them from taking over ‘our land,’ which he explained to be Palestine.”

The group that came under attack, Run for Their Lives, has been gathering for a walk on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall every week for over a year to raise awareness about the dozens of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.

According to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Soliman’s family members have been taken into custody.

“We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it,” Noem said. “I am continuing to pray for the victims of this attack and their families. Justice will be served.”

A DHS official said six people — Soliman’s wife and children — were taken into ICE custody and will now be processed under expedited removal, which allows the government to deport migrants in the U.S. illegally without holding a court hearing.

Smoke Blankets U.S. States

Smoke from Canadian wildfires are affecting residents in U.S. states, with hundreds of thousands of people in four states being told to stay indoors because of the unhealthy air quality.

According to the EPA’s AirNow map, which provides a real-time view of air quality, air pollution rates across Minnesota and portions of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa were considered “unhealthy” on Wednesday.

The agency urged people to reduce exposure to the outdoors. It said that the health risks are greater for those in sensitive groups like children, seniors, and people with respiratory or heart conditions.

Minnesota has been impacted by wildfires this week, adding to the devastation already caused by a string of blazes last month that consumed more than 35,000 acres of land

The Wisconsin cities facing a red warning with Air Quality Index (AQI) scores of between 151-200 (see below) include Eau Claire, La Crosse and Green Bay. The red warning means that “some members of the general public may experience “health effects,” while members of sensitive groups “may experience more serious health effects.”

In Minnesota, the red warning covers Rochester and parts of Minneapolis; in Iowa, Mason City; and in Michigan, Menominee and Iron Mountain.

Meanwhile, the NWS published Air Quality Advisories for millions of people on Tuesday across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine.

Various alerts in different states advised that individuals “consider limiting strenuous outdoor physical activity to reduce the risk of adverse health effects.”

It added that if you experience “symptoms such as shortness of breath, coughing, throat irritation or an uncomfortable sensation in your chest, please consider limiting the intensity and duration of your outdoor activities.”

In some states, Americans were advised to drive less, work from home, wait to mow the lawn, and refill vehicle tanks after sunset.

New Vaccine Recommendations

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, said on Tuesday that the Covid-19 vaccine would no longer be recommended for pregnant women and healthy children 6 months and older.

The announcement, which came in the form of a 58-second social media video, surprised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A one-page letter signed by Kennedy was sent to officials at the CDC five hours after the announcement. However, the secretarial directive added more confusion to the mix, as it was wrongly dated for May 19.

Additionally, some of what was written in the letter contradicted Kennedy’s video announcement.

Kennedy’s directive also seemed to contradict an article written by top Food and Drug Administration officials in the New England Journal of Medicine. In the article, the officials provided details about a new policy by which the coronavirus vaccine would only be recommended for high-risk individuals, including those 65 or older, and those with medical conditions, including pregnancy.

Critics have suggested that Kennedy is attempting to undermine the public’s trust in the CDC.

Ending vaccine recommendations could also make it more expensive for people to get the vaccine, as fewer insurance agencies may cover it.

International Smuggler Sentenced

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim sentenced Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, an Indian national, to 10 years in federal prison for masterminding an international human smuggling plot. An accomplice to the crime, Steve Anthony Shand — a Florida citizen who was allegedly the person who would drive the victims — was also sentenced. The two sentences were handed down in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, last Wednesday. Patel, also known as “Dirty Harry,” enabled dozens of individuals to move from India to Canada on student visas. Then, with help from Shand, he would illegally transport them to the United States. Over three years ago, four of their victims — an unrelated family also named Patel — died while attempting to travel by foot to the United States from Canada. The victims were Jagdish Patel,

39, who was the father and husband of the family; Vaishaliben, the family’s wife and mother, who was in her mid30s; Vihangi, their 11-year-old daughter; and Dharmik, their 3-year-old son. The couple were reportedly school teachers who left their western Indian hometown of Dingucha in search for a better life in the United States.

The family froze to death and was found dead on January 19, 2022, near the Manitoba-Minnesota border. The wind chill was reportedly -36 degrees Fahrenheit. According to Michael McBride, one of the case’s prosecutors, Jagdish perished while attempting to protect his son’s face from the “blistering wind” with his frozen glove. Vaishaliben “died slumped against a chain-link fence she must have thought salvation lay behind,” according to McBride, while their daughter wore “ill-fitting boots and gloves.”

Seven people in the group made it alive, but two wound up in Shand’s van in Minnesota. One survivor needed to go to a hospital due to frostbite and hypothermia, while another said that, before coming to Canada, he had never seen snow before. The survivor testified that their ineffective winter clothes were what the smugglers had given them.

Prosecutors requested that Patel be sentenced to 19 years and 7 months, and Shand to 10 years and 10 months, in prison. Defense attorneys claimed that proof against Patel, who was detained in February 2024 at the International Airport in Chicago, was scarce and that Shand was a mere accomplice who didn’t plan the operation but only acted out of a need for money to support his family.

“America’s Cop” Passes Away

Bernard Kerick, a former NYPD commissioner who became known as “America’s Cop” for his leadership after 9/11, passed away on Thursday after being hospitalized at New York-Presbyterian Hospital with cardiac disease. He was 69.

In 2000, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani

selected Kerick as New York City’s 40th police commissioner, a role he kept for 16 months. He was a hands-on leader and kept order in New York City after 9/11.

Prior to his stint as police commissioner, Kerik was named by Guiliani as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Correction, which was then mired in violence, racial tension, and gang activity—especially at Rikers Island. Kerik cracked down on inmate gangs and emphasized direct accountability from officers. Under Kerik’s watch, inmate-on-inmate violence dropped, staff absenteeism declined, and the system held firm during years when other cities saw their jails descend further into chaos.

Mayor Eric Adams, FBI Director Kash Patel, and others expressed their condolences for Kerik’s death.

“With over 40 years of service in law enforcement and national security, he dedicated his life to protecting the American people. As the 40th Police Commissioner of New York City, Bernie led with strength and resolve in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, guiding the NYPD through one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history,” said Patel. “His legacy is not just in the medals or the titles, but in the lives he saved, the city he helped rebuild, and the country he served with honor.”

Giuliani called Kerik a “true patriot” who was “one of the bravest men I’ve ever known.”

“He became police commissioner when they thought crime couldn’t be reduced any further, yet he reduced it further. His work helped New York become the safest big city in America and a shining example of urban renaissance,” said Giuliani. “Then he faced the worst foreign attack since the War of 1812 on American soil — September 11th. He was at my side within 20 minutes of the attack and never left.”

Before becoming an NYPD police officer in 1986, Kerick served in the army. In 1994, he temporarily transferred from the police department to the Department of Corrections. In 1998, Giuliani selected him as the Department of Corrections’ commissioner. Around two years later, he became the NYPD commissioner. In 2003, President George W. Bush selected the former commissioner to lead a provisional police force in Iraq, following the U.S.’s invasion of the country. The following year, Bush nominated Kerick as the head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Kerick backed out of the nomination after he confessed to having an illegal immigrant nanny. In 2009, Kerick pleaded guilty to eight

federal felonies, including evading taxes for a $255,000 home repair gift and lying to federal officials during his Homeland Security nomination process. He went to federal prison for four years but was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020. In 2021, Congress interrogated him about the January 6 events. In 2024, he became Trump’s crime and national security issues surrogate.

In Kerik’s 2015 book, “From Jailer to Jailed,” he described becoming “America’s Top Cop” after the 9/11 attacks.

“But I’d give anything for that day not to have happened. I wish it hadn’t. But it did,” he wrote. “And I happened to be there at the time. I was there, and I did the best I could do under the circumstances. It’s all any of us did.”

Harvard: The Communist Party School

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would make it more difficult for Chinese students to apply for visas and will “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The move was condemned by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. It is unclear how the Trump administration would determine what counts as ties to the Communist Party.

Harvard University, its Kennedy School in particular, has been a popular choice for Chinese Communist Party officials since the 1990s — so much so that some Chinese officials have branded Harvard their “party school.” U.S. officials are concerned that Communist officials are abusing elite American education for their own gain.

Then the party boss of the central city of Nanjing, Li Yuanchao, who served as China’s vice president from 2013 to 2018 and was a former Politburo member, went to Harvard Kennedy School for midcareer training in 2002. Li later said his training at Harvard helped him handle a mass poisoning in his city.

36 In 1995, Liu He, a former vice premier and top trade negotiator for Chinese President Xi Jinping, graduated from Harvard Kennedy School with a master’s degree in public administration.

The daughter of Xi, Mingze, was an undergraduate student in the early 2010s. While she adopted a different name, the Harvard administration knew who she was. At the time, her father was the vice president of China, next in line for the presidency. She graduated after Xi became president.

Harvard started a program called “China’s Leaders in Development” in the early 2000s, providing a course for Chinese officials partially at Harvard and partly at Tsinghua University, a prestigious institution in Beijing, to “help prepare senior local and central Chinese government officials to more effectively address the ongoing challenges of China’s national reforms.”

who posted the video was also banned from flying for six months. Sounds like they’re being grounded.

Standing Fine

Plane finally landed? Stay in your seat.

Turkish aviation authorities are attempting to crack down on “aisle lice,” those pesky passengers who stand up and crowd airplane aisles while waiting to deboard. They are hoping that a fine of up to $70 will keep people in their seats.

Customers are now required to wait until the person in front of them leaves to begin exiting the aircraft.

Flying High

Peng Yujiang was a little high when he went paragliding last week. The Chinese pilot had been testing out new paragliding equipment at the Qilian Mountains in China’s Gansu province when a gust of wind lifted up his parachute and blew him way up high.

Despite trying to decrease his altitude, the wind blew him 28,000 feet above the clouds.

While around five miles in the air, Yujiang went in and out of consciousness, as oxygen thins with high altitude. He eventually was able to take control of the equipment and landed.

After Yujiang managed to land, the Gansu Provincial Aviation Sports Association launched a task force to investigate what exactly happened. Yujiang was issued a six-month flight ban.

Yujiang’s flight was recorded, and after the incident, another pilot posted the video to social media. It went viral, leading to the investigation. The pilot

“Kirakira” names refer to those that are sparkly and new.

But those names can cause trouble and confusion for schools and hospitals that may not know how to pronounce these newfangled monikers.

New rules came into effect on Monday that will limit parents from giving their babies names pronounced in unconventional ways.

The news was met with mixed reactions; some social media users argued that kirakira names are an expression of individualism, that they’re fairly harmless and don’t warrant government regulation. But many others welcomed the change, lamenting that children with unusual names might face harassment or at the very least complications in administrative tasks like registrations or banking.

this is often state-by-state; for instance, names in California can only use the 26 alphabetical characters of the English language, which briefly posed a problem when Elon Musk named his baby “X Æ A-12.” He eventually changed the name –very slightly – to “X Æ A-Xii.”

In Germany, authorities may strike down a baby name if they find it offensive or potentially harmful to the child’s best interests. For example, they’ve previously barred parents from using “Borussia,” a reference to a soccer team, or “Gastritis,” arguing that the names would “jeopardize the welfare of the child,” according to the official Frankfurt city administration. Meanwhile, New Zealand also maintains strict rules that include bans on references to titles, meaning names like “King” and “Prince” are routinely rejected.

“Please respect the disembarkation priority of the passengers in front of or around you and wait for your turn,” the Turkish Directorate General of Civil Aviation said in a notice sent to airlines, instructing crew members to reprimand passengers who don’t comply Fines to unruly flyers can reach up to 2,603 Turkish lira, or nearly $67.

But airline officials aren’t just cracking down on aisle lice. Flyers who fail to comply with seatbelt indications while the aircraft is taxiing or open the overhead bins before the plane has landed will be fined as well. Aviation officials have described the actions as “strictly forbidden.”

Let’s hope these fines won’t have passengers flying off the handle.

What’s in a Name?

In Japan, you might meet a baby named Nike or a toddler named Pudding. Recently, parents in Japan have been giving their children unique names, rejecting traditional Japanese names in favor of “kirakira” names.

“Why do certain people put kirakira names on their kids? It just causes those kids to be bullied,” one X user wrote. Another joked sarcastically: “Please stop restricting kirakira names. Seeing a child’s name reveals the intelligence of their parents, which is helpful.”

Japan uses three writing systems – Kanji, which is based on Chinese characters, and two other phonetic systems. Names are typically written in Kanji, and this is where the trouble comes in.

Because these Chinese characters were mixed with the existing Japanese language, each Kanji character can be pronounced multiple ways – some with ten or more ways. You decipher the “right” pronunciation based on context clues and the other characters in a sentence or phrase.

In kirakira names, which became more popular from the 1980s onward, parents often choose a name based on the phonetic sound – wanting their child’s name to sound like “Pikachu,” for instance – and pick similar-sounding Kanji characters.

The problem is that those characters might not usually be pronounced that way – making it hard, or impossible, for a teacher or nurse to decipher how to properly say a child’s name just by looking at its written Kanji form.

Girls are more likely to receive kirakira names than boys.

Other countries, like the U.S. and China, have seen an upward trend of unusual names. A 2016 study found that American parents picked more unusual names between 2004 and 2015, pointing to the culture’s “increasing individualism.”

Some countries have rules in place for what names are acceptable. In the U.S.,

What’s the name of the game?

Animal Crackers

What’s a wild elephant to do when it’s hungry? Head to the grocery store, of course.

Plai Biang Lek, a huge male elephant, strolled into a grocery story in Thailand after leaving a nearby national park. The animal managed to get himself into the store, stopping in front of the counter and calmly snatching and chomping snacks.

After gorging on the food, the elephant then backed out of the shop still holding a bag of snacks with his trunk. He left little damage behind, except mud tracks on the floor and the ceiling of the shop.

In a video posted on social media, Kamploy Kakaew, the shop owner, appeared amused as she described the moment the elephant came into her shop. She said he ate about nine bags of sweet rice crackers, a sandwich, and some dried bananas she had bought that morning.

Talk about the elephant in the room…

Around the Community

Yeshiva Darchei Torah Boys Ride for Scholarships at Annual Bike-a-thon

by Naftoli Goldgrab

Photos

YOSS is Tougher-than-Tech

This past week, YOSS held a very special event for 5th-8th grade students and parents who signed up to be Tougher-than-Tech: a commitment to be smartphone free through 8th grade. The event began with a catered BBQ dinner by Traditions. The guest speaker, Rabbi Pinchas Weinberger, Rosh Yeshiva Nishmas HaTorah, praised the boys and families for the courage and

commitment it takes to stand up to the nisayon of our generation.

Following the dinner, Rabbi Zev Davidowitz, Menahel HaMechina, explained to the crowd that “they are not fighting this battle alone!” He then invited everyone into the gymnasium for the main event: a Slam Dunk show performed by the famous Amazing Dunkers. There was a buzz and excitement as the gym began

to fill with talmidim waiting to be dazzled and awed. The Dunkers began by hyping up the crowd, and boy, did they get loud.

From 360 dunks to “Alley Oops,” “oohs” and “aahs” could be heard throughout the crowd.

“Dunking over TIC Commissioner, Rabbi Haber, was the highlight of my night,” said YOSS 7th grade student Isaac Pinchasov. “I could believe he dunked

over 6 YOSS students,” added 6th grader Simi Shetrit.

As an extra treat for participating in this program the boys also received personalized airbrushed footballs. Tougher-than-Tech has taken the entire yeshiva by storm, and its impact is reverberating well beyond the hundreds of participants!

YUHSG Concludes the School Year With Trips & Senior Dinner

The Yeshiva University High School for Girls (Central) community is saying goodbye to this year – and welcoming the next.

On May 23, the school held its annual G.O. elections to select grade leaders for the 2025-26 school year. These leaders will oversee event planning, celebrations, and volunteer initiatives. Eliana Gomberg and Shalhevet Koenigsberg were voted Senior Presidents, with Elianah Aminova and Eliana Sobolev as Junior Vice Presidents and Jackie Marmer and Malky Reznik as Sophomore Senators.

On Thursday, May 29, the class of 2025 was honored with the annual senior dinner, an opportunity to celebrate the past four years and look to the future together.

And on Friday, May 30, after a week that saw the juniors enjoy their class trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania (where they visited, among other attractions, Hersheypark) and the freshmen and sophomores celebrate the year’s end at Six Flags Great Adventure, the entire school began the day with a meaningful event: to celebrate the Siyum Tehillim, a chance to pause and recognize the conclusion of the school’s year-long daily Tehillim project. The occasion was also a chance

to recognize and show appreciation for Ms. Bracha Rutner, who is concluding her time as Central’s Head of School, a post she has occupied since 2020. In her time at Central, Ms. Rutner has served as a trailblazing classroom presence within the Judaic Studies Department in addition to her tenure as an administrator. She has been a source of inspiration and support to Central families and faculty members alike, who wish her well as she begins her appointment as Head of School for Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Baltimore, Maryland.

On Friday, the entire YUHSG community gathered to celebrate Ms. Rutner and thank her for the positive impact she has made on the school, as well as her guidance, her wisdom, and her warmth.

YUHSG’s Associate Principal, Ms. Leah Moskovich, spoke to the extraordinary leadership Ms. Rutner has demonstrated during her time at Central.

“This year’s siyum is especially meaningful, as it is dedicated — with deep appreciation and admiration — to Ms. Rutner, in honor of her final year at Central,” Ms. Moskovich said. “For years, Ms. Rutner has been the driving force behind this very siyum, guiding it with vision, purpose, and heart. We wanted to honor her with a tribute that reflected not only

her love of Tehillim, but also the countless ways she has shaped our growth — as students, as young women, and as Ovdei Hashem.”

Ms. Rutner commented, “This siyum was an especially meaningful experience. When I came to Central and learned about the practice of saying Tehillim daily, it provided me with a new appreciation for the words and messages that David Hamelech provides us. They are messages that have resonated with me and that I have tried to convey to the students, to inspire them to think about themselves and the world around them. I will miss this tradition, among many other rituals in Central and I have so

much hakarat hatov for the years I spent here.”

Also featured on May 30 was guest speaker Shabbos Kestenbaum, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a renowned American Jewish activist. The weeks leading to finals are filled with meaningful events large and small: on June 3 and 4, the senior class will embark upon their final class trip, spending two days at Lake George before their last official engagement – the seventy-third annual YUHSG commencement ceremony, which will be held at Lamport Auditorium on the Yeshiva University campus on Monday, June 9.

HAFTR Shows Spirit

By Erin Nathan

There is nothing quite like the week of student government elections at HAFTR High School. The excitement is through the roof, and everyone seems to have extra shots of adrenaline coursing through their veins. School spirit is everywhere – from the hallways to the classrooms, and everywhere in between. This year, dozens of candidates brought their all to promote their positions. Students campaigned for speaker of the house, spirit head, student-body presidents, and grade representatives.

Candidates were allowed to campaign for the week leading up to election day. They hung posters on the walls and tried to persuade their fellow students to vote for them. On election day, Thursday, May 15, the candidates set up booths in the Scott Satran Arena where they could meet with students and make their final push to secure their campaign. Candidates handed out a plethora of delicious goodies, such as donuts, cookies, coffee, churros, and more. The gym was buzzing with talk over who each student would vote for and the expectations for the year to come. Not long after, the polls were

open and the voting began. The day was filled with energy and excitement. Who would be a part of the new student government?

The winners were announced that night during the annual Lag Ba’Omer bonfire celebration. As students gathered together on the front lawn, everyone anticipated the grand announcement. The festivities were fantastic! Students were able to socialize with each other and bond with friends and teachers. Not only were there great snacks, but there was an energetic live band to celebrate the 33rd night of the Omer. At the

A Night of Heritage, Heart, and HAFTR Pride

Last week, the third grade students of HAFTR Lower School welcomed their families for one of the most meaningful events of the year, our beloved M’Dor L’Dor: Generation to Generation evening. With parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents in attendance, this powerful program brought history to life in a way that was both personal and unforgettable.

The centerpiece of the evening was the students’ thoughtful presentations of cherished family heirlooms and artifacts, lovingly categorized into five areas: Documents, Shabbat & Chagim, Jewelry & Clothing, Daily Mitzvot, and Household Items. These were not just objects—they were stories, memories, and legacies passed from generation to generation. Each student presented a photo of their chosen item along with an explanation of its significance, showcasing the deep connections they feel to their families’ unique histories.

This year-long project combined research, writing, Hebrew language, and interviewing skills, highlighting our commitment to cross-curricular, values-based education. Students worked diligently to

develop historical thinking and storytelling skills, writing museum-style labels, curating their displays, and learning to ask meaningful questions. The result was a moving, museum-like gallery, brimming with pride and purpose. Adding a creative and visual layer to the evening, art teachers Royce Maron and Naomi Elterman guided students in crafting personal family seals that represented each family’s identity. These vibrant, individualized emblems proudly stood beside each student’s display, beautifully and touchingly connecting art with ancestry.

Following the gallery walk, families gathered for a program that opened with heartfelt Tehillim for Israel, a moment of unity and spiritual connection.

end of the night, Dr. Wyner, principal of HAFTR High School. stood on stage and announced the winners. Everyone was so excited to hear that seniors Tehilla Kaffash and Zach Strauss won Co-Presidents, Talya Shalomoff won 10th grade representative, Madison Corney won 11th grade representative, Isabella Scheer and Ayelet Glatt won Spirit Head, and Nate Meyer won Speaker of the House. This entire experience showed the students that if you put your mind to something, you can achieve it. What a wonderful way to celebrate the chagim and the upcoming school year!

Dr. Josh Gold, our Lower School Principal, delivered a powerful message about the difference between what we work to achieve and what we are privileged to inherit. His words framed the evening with a deeper sense of meaning, encouraging us all to treasure our mesorah. The night culminated with a moving musical performance, as students sang songs of gratitude and hope, accompanied by Janet Goldman on piano. The highlight: an excitable rendition of “Tamid Ohev Oti,” with students clapping and getting the audience involved. The crowd responded with cheers and tears, as the moment captured both the pride and perseverance of our people.

Parents called it “a highlight of the

year,” and it’s easy to see why. M’Dor L’Dor is more than an event—it’s a reflection of who we are as a school and a community. It’s a celebration of family, tradition, and the sacred responsibility we all share to pass our values forward.

A heartfelt thank you to our extraordinary third grade teachers: Ms. Noffar Amenu, Mrs. Allison Elfassy, Ms. Shelby Lebo, Mrs. Adina Markowitz, Mrs. Daniella Nierenberg, Mrs. Deena Schwebel, and Mrs. Shayna Ungar, and all the other faculty from the Lower School whose vision and dedication made this evening possible.

At HAFTR, we don’t just teach history—we honor it, we live it, and we pass it on.

HALB at the Anne Frank Museum

The fifth grade at HALB had the incredible opportunity to visit the Anne Frank Museum in Manhattan. After learning about her in school, students got to see a full-scale recreation of Anne Frank’s hiding place with more than 100 original collection items from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, including several never-before-exhibited artifacts.

HALB at the Israel Chessed Center

HALB fourth grade girls raised over $1,000 in lemonade stands to support the chayalim. They donated it to the Israel Chessed Center, and while they were there, they decorated hand-held fans to send to the soldiers in Gaza.

SHS Making an IMPACT

The annual SHS IMPACT Society Induction was held on Friday, honoring dozens of students who went above and beyond the school chessed hour requirement. Admittance into this illustrious group requires at least 50 hours, yet many of the students surpassed even that, logging into the triple digits.

Rabbi Yair Hoffman introduced the ceremony by thanking the girls for coming through in spades whenever he puts out the call for help at a wedding and emphasizing the value of sensitivity in

HALB Design Fab

performing chessed by preserving the dignity of the recipient.

After the students were called up one by one, Eliana Honikman, Gabi Moskowitz, and Shana Steinberg were honored for their exceptional performance. These three seniors have made chessed a prime focus of their lives and have sacrificed their own down time again and again to commit to their respective causes. For four years, they have set an example of excellence for all SHS students, and we couldn’t be prouder of them along with our inductees.

HALB students worked on a semester-long project called Design Fab. Students worked on creating a functional art piece centered on the idea of Hiddur Mitzvah, using 3D printing and design tools. Six groups of seventh grade girls were chosen, for the ingenuity and creativity in their design, to participate in the year end gallery unveiling at the CIJE offices in Industry

City, Brooklyn. They presented their projects, got feedback from industry experts, and had the chance to view projects from other schools. They also were taken to see behind the scenes of an “escape the room” and how the ideas for the puzzles become a reality. It was a great experience and a celebration of modeling, design, commitment, and perseverance!

The students of Lev Chana were busy preparing for Shavuos

Reaching Greater Heights at Yeshiva Ateres Eitz Chaim

On Rosh Chodesh Sivan, the talmidim of Yeshiva Ateres Eitz Chaim were privileged to visit Rabbi Moshe Don Kestenbaum, shlita, Rosh HaYeshiva of Yeshivas Or Yitzchak and renowned mechaber of Olam HaMiddos and numerous other seforim on middos and chinuch.

Rabbi Kestenbaum inspired the talmidim with a heartfelt message about

Screen Free to Ski

the unique opportunity that Shavuos presents — a time to forge the deepest connection with Hashem Yisborach through the acceptance of the Torah.

As a parting gift, Rabbi Kestenbaum generously presented each talmid with a personally inscribed copy of Olam HaMiddos, encouraging them to continue growing in their avodas Hashem.

This year, HALB started their Screen Free to be Me initiative, where students were asked to stay off screens for a certain amount of time each night after school. Throughout the year, participating students got prizes and treats. As the year comes to a close, those students who consistently participated without missing a day have begun receiving their grand prizes. Students in grades 5 through 8 who were consistently screen free went to ski at the American Dream Mall! They not only benefited from the time away from screens each night, they also got an incredible trip as an added perk!

MTA at Yeshiva League Model United Nations

On Thursday, May 22, nine high schools from the Metro area gathered at the Young Israel of Woodmere to practice their skills and demonstrate their knowledge at the third annual Yeshiva League Model United Nations. The event is usually held in one of the participating schools on a Sunday, but because this year there were no Sundays in May available, the conference met on a school day and therefore in a shul with sufficient classroom space to accommodate the program.

YLMUN is the students’ way of saying that they’re not satisfied with competing only once a year at Yeshiva University’s Model UN in February. Since most of the participants tend to be the same sort of students who take AP exams, YLMUN is scheduled for late May, after AP exams are complete.

Mr. Alex Libkind, longtime coach of Model UN, Debate, and Model Congress at HAFTR, is the main organizer of the conference, together with student leaders with multiple years of Model UN experience. He has designed the event to fulfill two wonderful goals: To train underclassmen in Model UN skills, and to allow experienced seniors to move up to being committee chairs, a role reserved for college students at YU’s Model UN.

In MTA’s case, both of these goals were fulfilled wonderfully. MTA brought a team of twelve students, including three veteran seniors who chaired committees and four rookies attending their first Model UN. The results were outstanding, with one of the rookies, Menashe Basalely, earning an Honorable Mention for his work on the Science and Technology committee, and two veterans, Reuben Frieber and Matis Kahn, earning awards for their work on the Middle East Summit and Security Council, respectively. Those three awards combined to earn the team a third place finish among the nine schools.

While the MTA team bids farewell to its seniors, led by captains Amir Gross and Meir Kaller, who chaired committees on the status of women and decolonization, respectively, it has great cause for optimism as it looks to the future. First, the underclassmen have the skills and now the experience to step up, and second, many of MTA’s current seniors will be YU Model UN committee chairs upon their return from a year or two in yeshiva in Israel. They will surely follow in the footsteps of previous graduates who guided and advised the team while down the block at YU.

Lag B’Omer at YOSS is always a blast! The boys had an incredible day of sports displaying beautiful middos and achdus

Around the Community

5TLL Recap

This week, we have to shout out to the league parents for being flexible! To accommodate the Darchei Bikeathon and a 5TLL Mets outing, this week featured Sunday and Tuesday games brought to you by FM Home Loans. The Mets outing was a huge success as nearly 1,000 members of the league attended the game and paraded on the Warning Track! Below is a mini recap of some of the 5TLL action this week.

1st Grade

Maidenbaum 5

Drifters 2

MVP’s Mo Benzaquen showed out with strong play in the field and some good hitting and Joseph Feldman continued some hot hitting with yet another homer! Maidenbaum on top.

Future Care Consultants 12 Elegant Lawns 10

In a high scoring matchup that saw FCC come out with a win, Mayer Fuerst

hit a home run and a triple to take home Smash House MVP honors. Eli Lopiansky was awarded the play of the game award with a really nice fielding play to end the game.

2nd Grade

Hewlett Auto Body 14

Advantage PT 12

Yitz Balter and Dovi Jakubowitz both made some excellent plays in the field to earn MVP awards in this close matchup. Strong play by Advantage PT with the recent addition of Daniel Grabie was not enough this time, but great team improvement, batting in 12 runs.

Marciano Pediatric Dentistry 29

Wieder Orthodontics 9

MVP Aryeh Faska returned from a hernia procedure and didn’t miss a beat, smashing two home runs.

Play of the game went to Gavi Newman for hitting a grand slam!

3rd Grade

New York Custom Closets 17 Smash House 6

NY Custom Closets is one of the hottest teams in all of 5TLL. They marched over Smash House and left with another W. Akiva Abramson flashed his power and speed, crushing a home run and sped around the bases with uncatchable speed putting the exclamation point on this ballgame.

4th Grade

Eden Gardens 5

Target Exterminating 3

In a game where EG’s starting pitcher could not make it, odds were against Eden Gardens. The boys all stepped up and played some high level baseball to pull off a major upset. Yehuda Bender in his debut appearance was the MVP with great pitching and hitting 2 RBI’s. Moishy Sebrow left his 1st base position to fill in as the closing pitcher and came up clutch

to end the game and get out the a jam while the bases were loaded! His upbeat energy, positivity and encouragement was no doubt a big factor in rallying his team.

Bluebird Insurance 18

Drifters 1

The highly anticipated matchup between a couple of top tier teams ended in a blowout win. Bluebird has been rolling all season and can’t be slowed down. By most, they are the favorite to win the 4th grade World Series. Eliyahu Hill hit 2 doubles and a triple to total 6 RBI’s, Tzvi Jarcaig batted in 5 runs on 2 doubles and Pinny Weinstein pitched 4 innings allowing only 1 run!

Town Appliance 1

Extreme Vent Cleaning 0

A battle of 2 great pitchers, Shaya Ribowsky and Shmuli Sitzer both pitched “Extreme-ly” well (pun intended). Town Appliance managed to get 1 run by EVC and that was everything they needed. Shua Zitron returned to play with a brace on his throwing arm after getting injured a couple weeks back and turned an incredible double play with an underhand throw to first base to preserve the shut out.

5th

Grade

Elegant Lawns 8

Posh Home & Bath 5

Naftali Pfeiffer took home the MVP for hitting a grand slam in Elegant’s win over Posh Home & Bath.

Smash House 12

Town Appliance 12

Town Appliance felt good after growing their lead to 10 runs in a big inning that hosted an Eli Oratz grand slam! However, Smash House came roaring back in the final inning scoring 10 runs with 2 outs. A 2 out grand slam is what tied the game for a highlight finish.

Ezra Academy Shines at the 4th Annual Model Chinuch Competition

Ezra Academy is proud to announce the participation of three of its stellar students—Avital Davidov, Emily Baturov, and Daniel Boruchov—in the 4th annual Model Chinuch competition, where they represented our school with distinction and passion. Each student delivered an inspiring dvar Torah, marked by eloquence, creativity, and a deep love for Torah. Their dynamic presentations not only demonstrated impressive public speaking skills but also reflected a genuine desire to engage and inspire others through Torah education.

The Model Chinuch competition, launched just last year by Rambam Mesivta, has quickly grown into a meaningful and prestigious event for aspiring Jewish educators. This year’s competition featured talented students from a range of distinguished schools, including HAFTR,

FRISCH, and of course, Rambam itself. Despite the high level of competition, Ezra’s own Emily Baturov earned the highest honor of Best Teacher and Presentation, a tremendous achievement that speaks volumes about her capabilities and potential. Her poise, warmth, and passion left a lasting impression on both the judges and audience alike.

Much credit is due to Rambam Mesivta for creating and nurturing this powerful initiative. The competition serves not only as a platform for students to showcase their skills, but also as a catalyst for inspiring the next generation of Jewish educators. Special recognition goes to Elianna Goldman, a dedicated high school student whose vision and determination helped spearhead the creation of Model Chinuch. Her leadership has set a shining example for peers across the Jewish edu-

Aleph’s Compass Workshop Reaches

cational world, proving that one person’s passion can ignite a movement.

Ezra Academy continues to take pride in its students, who consistently exemplify excellence in both scholarship and character. Their participation in events like Model Chinuch underscores their dedication to Torah, community, and

Over 2,500 Yeshiva Students Nationwide

The Aleph Institute’s Project 432 has surpassed a significant milestone: its Compass Workshop has now reached more than 2,500 students at over 60 high schools and yeshivas across North America and Israel. This initiative educates and informs talmidim on the importance of yashrus and ehrlichkeit in business and financial decision-making.

Over the past two weeks, the Compass Workshop was delivered to more than 150 students at five yeshiva high schools in the tri-state and Mid-Atlantic regions. Presented by Rabbi Yaakov Goldstein, Se-

nior Lecturer for Project 432, the workshop is part a broader mission of inspiring emerging generations to navigate financial decisions with clarity, achieve the highest Torah and legal standards, and build lives of integrity and peace of mind. The one-hour multimedia workshop integrates halacha, hashkafa, and practical examples to guide students in developing clarity, accountability, and a strong internal moral compass.

Rabbi Sam Rudansky, General Studies Menahel of Mesivta Ateres Yaakov, in Lawrence, NY, remarked: “We were priv-

personal growth. We are especially proud of Emily Baturov, whose outstanding performance not only brought honor to our school but affirmed her bright future in education. She is a true asset to Ezra Academy and, one day, to classrooms everywhere.

ileged to host Rabbi Yaakov Goldstein for a powerful and engaging seminar on business ethics in the frum world. His presentation was clear, insightful, and deeply relevant, emphasizing the importance of acting with integrity and staying within the bounds of halacha and the law. Our senior students were attentive throughout and walked away with practical guidance and a stronger sense of responsibility as future members of the workforce.”

At the Yeshiva of Staten Island, one student correctly identified the inspiration behind the name “Project 432” as the 432nd mitzvah in the Torah: to fear and revere Hashem. This insight encapsulates the core message of the workshop and Aleph’s mission.

Feedback from students and educators has underscored the benefits of this education. “Your presentation is a matana for our generation,” said Rav Pinchos Weinberger, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva

Nishmas Hatorah. “It is so on target and resonates with all. The balance of halacha, hashkafa, legal, and common sense was incredible—all in a very short time frame.”

Aleph’s work in preventative education stems from a clear understanding of the importance of guiding young people to make better choices early on. “Aleph understands the ripple effects that incarceration has – not just for those in prison, but for their families as well,” said Rabbi Aaron Lipskar, Aleph’s CEO. “It’s painful to see how much of that could have been avoided with better decisions. That’s why we developed the Compass Workshop: to give students the skills and perspective they need to make wise choices and navigate real-world challenges confidently.”

To bring the Compass workshop to your school, please contact Rabbi Yaakov Goldstein at ygoldstein@aleph-institute. org.

Ezra Academy Basketball: A Season of Breakthroughs and Belief

For decades, Ezra Academy basketball endured tough seasons, struggling to find its footing. Last year marked a turning point—finishing 5-5 and earning a play-in berth gave the team its first taste of postseason competition. Though they fell short, the fire was lit. This season, the program took a massive leap forward under new head coach Sherrod Bates, whose tireless dedication and leadership transformed the team’s mindset. The Eagles stormed to an 8-2 regular season and secured their first home playoff win in over 20 years. The run ended in the semifinals, but the team’s rise was nothing short of remarkable.

The year began with a loss, but the Eagles never wavered. Coach Bates instilled belief, discipline, and a championship mindset. At the center of it all was junior guard and team MVP Ben Aranbayev. Known for his unstoppable drives to the basket, Aranbayev added a reliable jump shot mid-season and became nearly impossible to defend. More impressively, he matured into a playmaker, learning to pass out of double teams and involve his teammates more.

Newcomer Yosef Khaimov was a revelation. The sharp-shooting guard hit 40% from three-point range and gave Ezra the spacing it needed. He set a school record with 11 three-pointers in one game and was the most feared shooter in the league. His confidence and ability to score in bunches changed the team’s offensive dynamic.

Down low, Daniel Boruchov emerged as the league’s most dominant rebounder. Once a bench player, Boruchov transformed into a relentless presence in the paint through pure hustle and work ethic. Alongside him, Akiva Katayev anchored the post with strong footwork and consistent scoring, giving Ezra a balanced inside-out attack.

Defensively, Aviel Babaev was a game-changer. Assigned to guard the opposing team’s best player every game, his lockdown defense and relentless energy made him one of the league’s most valuable stoppers. His intensity set the tone for the entire team.

Ethan Yohananov delivered some of the biggest moments of the season, including a dramatic game-winning three in double overtime. Yohananov had a

knack for scoring flurries that swung momentum and gave Ezra critical boosts throughout the year.

Late addition Joey Pinchasov brought toughness and heart. Whether crashing the boards or playing tight defense, Pinchasov consistently gave the team high-energy minutes that sparked runs and steadied the rotation.

Looking ahead, two promising ninth graders—David Avulov and Michael Pinhasov—made valuable contributions. Avulov’s defense and hustle stood out, while Pinhasov flashed strong instincts and creative scoring, hinting at a bright future.

Senior captain Ben Khaimov anchored the defense and provided veteran leadership. A reliable shot-blocker and vocal presence, Khaimov’s impact extended far beyond the stat sheet.

The Eagles’ semifinal exit, due in part to an injury to Aranbayev, couldn’t dim the incredible progress made. With packed gyms, growing school pride, and a young core, Ezra Academy basketball is back—and rising. The school is now aiming to expand its athletic program, including building a girls’ volleyball team and reviving boys’ soccer. The future has never looked brighter.

Mercaz Academy Welcomes IDF Soldiers Through Peace of Mind Program

Mercaz Academy had the profound honor of hosting 14 IDF soldiers and two therapists participating in the Peace of Mind program, and the soldiers’ arrival at the school was nothing short of spectacular. The chayalim entered a building festooned with blue and white balloons and streamers of Israeli flags. They were greeted by cheering students lining the hallways, waving

blue and white pom poms (and even more Israeli flags) and passing out handmade cards in a heartfelt display of solidarity and appreciation. Accompanied by live music provided by Mercaz music teacher Craig Resmovits, the students danced enthusiastically with the visiting soldiers.

A few soldiers visited classrooms to talk about their families and lives in Israel, and students were delighted to meet

some of the soldiers they pray for each morning. “You don’t realize how your prayers from America are in our minds when we’re at the front,” a soldier told them.

The IDF visit to Mercaz Academy was made possible through Peace of Mind’s partnership with Young Israel of Plainview, which provided housing, meals, and activities for the entire group. Peace of Mind, run by the Metiv Israel Psychotrauma Center in Jerusalem, supports active IDF combat soldiers and helps them process the trauma of war. In addition to therapy in Israel, Peace of Mind offers

these brave soldiers a week abroad within a supportive Jewish community. During their stay in Plainview, the IDF soldiers continued to receive daily therapy while enjoying fun activities and the warmth and hospitality of their host community.

The Mercaz Academy students were grateful for the chance to meet in person these heroes defending Israel, while the soldiers were touched by the warmth of their welcome and the students’ appreciation of the sacrifices they make every day in the defense of Israel and its people.

Ateret Cohanim Annual Dinner

Ateret Cohanim/Jerusalem Chai fulfills our generations-old dream of rebuilding and securing a United Yerushalayim, by re-establishing once-thriving Jewish communities that were destroyed by Arab pogroms and countries before 1967. Ateret Cohanim’s projects are centered around the educational, social and recreational needs of the families they place to reside in these areas. The organization provides for our inalienable right to live in peace and security in and around the Old City of Yerushalayim and the surrounding Jerusalem Basin.

These projects are under the auspices of the Executive Council of the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, guided by Executive VP Shoshana Hikind (3rd from left), who works in tandem with Ateret Cohanim Israel, led by Founder and Chairman Mati Dan HaCohen (2nd from right), Executive Director Daniel Luria (not shown), and Chaim Leibtag, Director of Development (4th from

right). Members of the Executive Council pictured (from left) Dr. Steven Rubel, Dr. Joseph Frager, Dr. Gene Berkovich, Dr. Paul Brody, Robbie Koppel and Rubin Margules (far right). Capt. (Res.) Zoe Marks, Director of Overseas Operations, YATAR Israel is next to Shani Hikind.

Ateret Cohanim’s leadership proudly unfurled the Flag of Yerushalayim at its emotional Annual Dinner, to celebrate upcoming Yom Yerushalayim (the 28th of Iyar), on May 21, 2025, at the Seawane Club in Hewlett Harbor, honoring longtime supporters, Jeffrey and Barbara Kelman and social media influencer Emily Austin, who was introduced by the charismatic WABC radio host Sid Rosenberg, one of last year’s honorees.

The Dr. Irving and Cherna Moskowitz z”l Bonei Yerushalayim Award, honoring Ateret Cohanim’s driving forces who joined early on with Mati Dan tbd”l, was inaugurated with a special video tribute to Cherna, who passed away this year, exquisitely narrated by Daniel Luria.

JCCRP Shavuos Distribution

JCCRP had a Shavuos distribution with open warehouse hours. Community members were able to shop with no charge from over 85 different food items including frozen fruits and vegetables, cheeses, yogurts, chicken, fish, fresh NYS apple cider, NYS honey, breads, bagels, fresh produce and tons of regular grocery products such as kedem

grape juice, olive oil, pastas, and so, so much more. Each family was able to select what they needed and wanted.

“Thank you so much for this distribution. This food will carry me through Shavuos and two Shabbats!”

We are grateful to the support of the community that enables us to be able to distribute over $1 million of free kosher

A moving video address by Ambassador Mike Huckabee, perennial advocate for Ateret Cohanim, for almost two decades, was preceded by magnificent vintage footage of his multiple visits to the Old City and its environs, and to Yehuda and Shomron, that were arranged by Dr. Joe Frager and Dr. Paul Brody of Ateret Cohanim’s Executive Council, with the guidance of Mati Dan, Daniel Luria,

Shani Hikind and Odeleya Jacobs

The surprise guest speaker was the profoundly inspirational Johnny Joey Jones, Fox News anchor, who lost both his legs as a bomb specialist in Afghanistan in 2010. Amazingly, he repeatedly proclaimed the he was the one who was truly inspired: by Israel, by the IDF and by the works of Ateret Cohanim.

foods to the community at no cost to the community from the city, state and federal governments. Thank you to our elected officials for ongoing support that allows the JCCRP food program to maintain free distributions like this, UJA-Federation of NY, Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers, Congresswoman Grace

Meng and Met Council for diapers, chicken, fish, blintzes, cottage cheese, City Harvest and Food Bank for NYC.

If you would like to join our warehouse shop, please email info@jccrp.org so we can help alleviate your financial burden by shopping our free warehouse.

Miniature Therapy Horses Bring Healing and Joy to Five Towns Premier

Love, laughter, and healing filled the halls of Five Towns Premier Rehabilitation and Nursing Center on Thursday, May 29, as two miniature therapy horses visited residents through the innovative HORSE ABILITY program. Staff and residents donned festive country western attire as the miniature horses made their way from floor to floor, bringing not only smiles but a special, powerful connection that words could hardly describe. Every resident felt the joy, as the gentle animals offered quiet comfort and deep emotional resonance. The horses’ presence provided more

than just a cheerful diversion—it was a groundbreaking form of therapy that is known to improve the physical, psychological and emotional well being of the elderly. Residents lit up, stories flowed, and the excitement was felt by all.

“The moment the horses walked in, the entire atmosphere transformed,” said Cathy Byrne, Gerontologist/RN. “It was pure happiness, and you could feel something truly special in the air.”

Thanks to Family First Home Companions, this unforgettable visit proved just how powerful and healing human-animal connections can be.

Photo credit: Isaac of Three Star Photography

Around the Community

Last Holocaust Survivor from the Paper Clips Film at the Gural JCC

Alittle over twenty years ago, a teacher in a middle school in the small town of Whitwell, TN, was looking for a topic to learn about with his students. He read about the Holocaust and spoke to the principal and suggested they learn about this period in history that they knew nothing about. What started as a small project about prejudice developed into a passion, eventually a film called Paper Clips, and an incredible experience that changed the lives of every person involved.

Four Holocaust survivors from the Marion & Aaron Gural JCC were invited to visit the school and take part in this very powerful and unique endeavor. This past Tuesday, the Gural JCC hosted a twenty-year anniversary screening of Paper Clips at our Lawrence Harrison-Kerr Family Campus and were incredibly honored and grateful to have with us our beloved Bernie Igielski, the last remaining survivor from the film. Bernie, in his late 90s, and his daughter Helene and several members of their family joined us at the screening. Nearly one hundred commu-

nity members gathered around, awed to be in the presence of this brave survivor. Several books of Paper Clips memorabilia were available for perusing.

We were also thrilled to have with us Yeeshai Gross, one of the Executive Producers of Paper Clips, who has remained connected to the Whitwell community and this project over the past two decades. Mr. Gross graciously stayed after the film ended for a lively and enlightening Q&A session.

At the Gural JCC, Holocaust survivors have been gathering on a weekly basis at our Chaverim program for nearly 25 years. They spend several hours a week together with our amazing and compassionate staff and dedicated volunteers. They come to their home away from home, a safe haven, where they can socialize, exercise, be nourished and be among friends. Hundreds of Holocaust survivors have come through our doors over the years and have been immediately embraced and felt safe, warm and understood here.

Sadly, we have lost so many of these heroes over time, and especially over the

last few years. It was during Covid when our loss was particularly great, that it hit home that this precious population will not be with us indefinitely. We recognized that our job had to be to preserve their stories and their legacies. This is when we launched our SHEMA initiative (Studies in the Holocaust - Education, Memories, Awareness), for second generation survivors to come forward and join us, to share the stories that could no longer be told firsthand by their parents and grandparents, and to continue preserving these invaluable memories and learning tools.

We have since visited dozens of schools and spoken to thousands of middle and high school students – first over Zoom and now in person – and we continue to ask for volunteers to share their family histories with us. Several of our SHEMA members were present at the Paper Clips screening and more than a dozen sample posters featuring the incredible stories we have been privileged to hear about and share were displayed around the room.

The Gural JCC is grateful to receive funding for our Holocaust programs from UJA Federation, Claims Conference and from wonderful community members. Tonight’s event was generously sponsored by the JCC Association of North America, Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism. It is part of the Mithabrim Yamim program.

For more information about our Holocaust program, SHEMA, or any other Gural JCC community initiatives, call (516)569-6733.

MET Council Provides Thousands of Blintzes Ahead of Shavuot

As Jewish families across New York prepared for Shavuot, Met Council once again ensured that food-insecure members of the community could celebrate the holiday with dignity.

Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah and is traditionally observed with dairy-themed foods, will be celebrated this year from June 1-3. In advance of the holiday, Met Council partnered with 75 local agencies to dis-

tribute hundreds of thousands of pounds of food, including over 10,000 blintzes, 12,000 containers of sour cream, and 12,000 tubs of cottage cheese to thousands of Jewish families in need.

“These foods are more than tradition — they represent our values and heritage,” said Met Council CEO David G. Greenfield. “With grocery prices continuing to rise, Met Council is proud to help thousands of families celebrate

Shavuot as part of our year-round food distributions.”

The Shavuot distribution is part of Met Council’s year-round fight against food insecurity. With inflation and economic instability straining households across New York’s five boroughs, the need for kosher food assistance remains at record levels. This targeted distribution allows families to fully participate in Shavuot’s customs in a culturally meaningful way.

The initiative follows Met Council’s massive Passover food distribution earlier this spring, which provided millions of pounds of free kosher food to hundreds of thousands across New York.

As the largest Jewish charity that fights poverty in the United States, Met Council leads year-round food relief efforts in partnership with government agencies, community organizations, and generous donors.

Ezra Mishmar Program

This past Thursday night, Ezra Academy held its final Mishmar of the year—a vibrant evening filled with food, Torah, and prizes. This weekly learning initiative, introduced by the school’s newest addition, Reb Yonah Yehoshua, has quickly become a beloved tradition and a powerful symbol of the school’s mission.

What makes Mishmar at Ezra so unique is that it’s entirely voluntary—yet month after month, nearly 40 boys choose to stay after hours to immerse themselves in Torah learning. This dedication is a testament to the atmosphere created by Reb

Yehoshua, whose passion, creativity, and deep commitment to his students have transformed the Thursday night experience into something unforgettable.

Monday, June 23, 2025, 6:30pm

Lawrence High School 2 Reilly Rd, Cedarhurst

TICKETS: ZAREINU.ORG/CONCERT

Zareinu gives Far Rockaway and Five Towns students with learning differences the chance to thrive alongside their peers in schools.

Sponsorships: concert@zareinu.org

Touro Finance Alumni Network’s Third Annual Event Connects Generations of Finance Professionals

Touro University hosted its Third Annual Touro Finance Alumni Network (TFAN) event, drawing almost 100 students, alumni, and faculty for an evening of networking, mentorship, and career insight at Touro’s flagship campus in Times Square. What began just three years ago as a grassroots initiative sparked by Touro parent Audrey Weitz and alumnus Jason Appleson has since grown into a vibrant annual gathering—one that is fast becoming a cornerstone of Touro’s professional community in finance and accounting.

“This network was built to bring our alumni together to grow with, learn from, and support one another,” said Jodi Smolen, director of career services for Lander College for Men (LCM). Smolen directs TFAN and organized the event with the help of Rabbi Eliezer Feder, LCM’s director of special projects. “Whether you’re looking for a new job, exploring new partnerships, or thinking about how to give back to Touro, this is the place to start.”

Real Talk on Faith, Work, and Balance

The night featured a panel moderated by Appleson, and included Audrey Weitz, managing director at Old City Investment Partners in midtown Manhattan, and Judah Sokel, Senior Vice President of Finance at Vialto Partners. Both shared candid perspectives on their career paths, current industry trends, and the delicate balance between professional success and

religious values.

Sokel spoke openly about how his Orthodox observance has shaped his professional life.

“From day one, I made it clear to my CEO and CFO what it means to be religious—what Shabbos entails, when I’ll be offline. Communication and setting expectations are key,” he said.

Weitz emphasized the importance of knowing your priorities and maintaining integrity in the workplace.

“I am a wife first, a mother second, and a businesswoman third,” she told the crowd. “Being consistent with who you are earns you respect in any setting.”

Alumni Share Career Journeys and Advice

For students and young alumni navigating the early stages of their careers, the event was also a chance to hear directly from those a few steps ahead.

Jonathan Kurayev, a recent graduate of Touro’s Lander College for Men and soon-to-be consultant at PwC, credited both his Touro education and Touro career services with helping him land his position.

“I interned at four different firms, one of them being Old City with Audrey. Each role built on the last,” Kurayev said. “Jodi [Smollen] helped me get my first internship, which set everything in motion. I’m here to help others the way others helped me.”

Elleshevah Rybstein, a 2021 graduate

now working as a senior audit associate at Forvis Mazars, also spoke to the value of the night.

“It was great meeting others in the audit world and even better to help students navigate the job market,” Elleshevah said. “I met a few who I’d be happy to recommend at my firm.”

For Sharon Botnick, a 2015 graduate and senior leader at Fitch Ratings, the event offered an opportunity to pay it forward.

“When I was at Touro, the finance major was small, especially among women. I love seeing how much that’s changed,” she said. “If I can give people advice and encourage women to go into finance, I’m all for it.”

Botnick, who now runs a global analytics team in Fitch’s risk department, spoke about how her Touro math and finance education laid the groundwork for her success.

Celebrating Priority 1: “Vision Forward”

Priority 1 is proud to announce its’ upcoming 2025 Dinner Celebration, an inspiring event themed “Vision Forward,” reflecting its yeshivas’ – both Yeshiva Zichron Aryeh in Far Rockaway and Yeshiva Ohr Hatzafon in Yerushalayim – unwavering commitment to Torah, Mussar, and community leadership.

The Dinner will take place on Monday evening, June 30, 2025, at The Space at Westbury, and promises to be a meaningful evening of hakaras hatov, unity, and inspiration.

This year’s honorees are Mr. & Mrs. Yaakov Ginsparg of Hollywood, FL, and Mr. & Mrs. Nechemia Edelstein of Far Rockaway, distinguished alumni

and cherished members of the Yeshiva family, whose steadfast dedication to the Yeshiva’s mission and values have left a powerful and lasting impact.

Our honorees represent the beautiful trajectory that Yeshiva Ohr Hatzafon and Yeshiva Zichron Aryeh make possible — beginning their journey in Yerushalayim, continuing their growth upon returning to America through Yeshiva Zichron Aryeh, and many of them ultimately settle in the vibrant Bayswater community that has blossomed around the Yeshiva. Their path reflects the Yeshiva’s vision: not just to educate talmidim, but to guide them through every stage of life — building bnei Torah, strong families, and thriving Torah communities.

“The analytical thinking and finance vocabulary I learned were key,” she said. “Now I help train entry-level analysts and watch them grow. It’s incredibly rewarding.”

Building Careers—and a Stronger Alumni Network

The evening ended with speed networking sessions organized by industry sector: asset management, capital markets, alternative investments, real estate and financial services, and others. Alumni swapped business cards and contact info, shared career advice, and perhaps even scouted potential hires.

And as always, the TFAN event highlighted not just individual success stories, but the power of a shared mission.

“This isn’t just about jobs,” Smolen told the attendees. “It’s about reconnecting to Touro, helping each other, and building a legacy of support and opportunity for the next generation.”

The event will be chaired by proud Yeshiva parents Rabbi & Mrs. Eli Riesel, whose support and involvement exemplify the deep bond between the parent body and the Yeshiva’s leadership.

Under the visionary guidance of Rav Shaya Cohen, shlit”a, Priority 1’s yeshivos and initiatives have flourished into institutions that do more than educate — they transform. For decades, Priority 1 has stood at the forefront of revolutionizing both communal and Yeshiva education, pioneering programs that respond to the evolving needs of Klal Yisroel with compassion, relevance, and uncompromising Torah values. Its impact reaches far beyond the walls of the Yeshiva, shaping leaders, strengthening

families, and building communities.

More than just centers of learning, Yeshiva Zichron Aryeh and Yeshiva Ohr Hatzafon represent a way of life — where each blatt learned, every middah refined, and each relationship nurtured contributes to the molding of bnei Torah who are poised to lead with clarity, passion, and compassion.

The entire community is warmly invited to attend this monumental event. To make reservations or place an ad in the commemorative dinner journal, please visit www.priority1.org/dinner Join us as we honor the past, celebrate the present, and move our VISION FORWARD — together, as one.

American Friends of Leket Israel Event at YILC YCQ Visits Washington, D.C.

Last week, American Friends of Leket Israel held its first event in the Five Towns. The Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst (YILC) featured Fruit Platters and More’s Chaia Frishman for a pre-Shavuot fruity fun-raiser. Thanks to YILC Sisterhood’s Yael Gurevich for planting the seeds to create this sweet evening for dozens of local friends to enjoy together.

Attendees learned about the mitzvah

of “Leket,” which is the perfect tie-in with the holiday celebrating Zman Matan Toraseinu and Megillat Ruth. Many heard the term “agricultural terrorism” for the first time, understanding more about the food insecurity crisis and the urgency to help Israel’s needy. Participants watched a lively and entertaining demo by the Frishmans followed by samplings of delicious fruity sorbet, fresh fruit soup and tasty fruit leather.

Rep. Gillen Meets with Rambam Students

Congresswoman Laura Gillen (NY-04), a member of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism and the Congressional Abraham Accords Caucus, recently visited Rambam Mesivta in Lawrence to meet with students in the RamPAC club. Known for their dedication to activism, civic responsibility, and leadership, the Rambam Mesivta students invited Rep. Gillen to meet with RamPAC to discuss the U.S.-Israel relationship.

“I was so honored to meet with students of Rambam Mesivta,” said Rep. Gillen. “Their passion for civ-

The YCQ Class of 2025 enjoyed an unforgettable two-day trip to Washington, D.C. from May 28 to 29, filled with learning, inspiration, and fun.

After an early departure from YCQ, students boarded the buses and began their journey to D.C. with a stop in Cherry Hill, NJ, for a beautiful Rosh Chodesh tefillah. Once the group arrived in Washington, students visited the National Holocaust Museum and Memorial, where they engaged with powerful and moving exhibits that deepened their understanding of the Shoah and Jewish resilience. Students then had the opportunity to see the U.S. Capitol building up close. They also heard from one of Congresswoman Grace Meng’s staff members, giving them a unique insight into government and civic responsibility. The day continued with a monument tour, a photo stop at the White House, and souvenir shopping. The evening featured dinner and a fun time at Dave and Buster’s.

On Thursday, the class spent the day at Six Flags Great Adventure, enjoying thrilling rides, games, and time with friends. The trip was a perfect combination of inspiration, education, bonding, and celebration, creating lasting memories. Thank you to Mr. Jacob Grossman and the chaperones for making the trip so successful!

Friendship Circle Recap

Even as the school year draws to a close, the Friendship Circle fun continues!

ic engagement is truly inspiring. They are the next generation of leaders and I’m proud to see their dedication to countering antisemitism and standing up for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Since taking office, Rep. Gillen has been a leader and champion for legislation aimed at addressing the rise in antisemitism, making her a trusted voice among members of Congress in the fight against anti-Jewish hate. In recognition of her efforts, Rep. Gillen was awarded the Distinguished Statesmanship award from COJO of Flatbush.

We recently hosted an exciting meetup for participants of Friends @ Home, a program that pairs children and teens with special needs with volunteers who visit them weekly for an hour of fun. Our latest gathering took place at Woodmere Lanes, where everyone bowled and had a blast.

At this past T-YAD, our monthly social program for teens and young adults, we went on a very meaningful trip to the Ohel. During this powerful visit, we davened for everyone’s health and well-being. It was a deeply special experience for all who attended.

Looking forward, the Friendship Cir-

cle is excited to host more events this month. On June 8, we will be hosting an end-of-year appreciation ceremony in honor of the volunteers who make our programs possible. Then, on June 15, the Friendship Circle will be hosting a Family Fun Day at Chabad of the Five Towns with cotton candy, arts and crafts, face painting, moon bouncing, and more exciting activities for all ages. The event will also include an exciting martial arts class, courtesy of Warren Levi. To RSVP or learn more, please contact Batsheva@ chabad5towns.com.

For more information about programs and volunteer opportunities at the Friendship Circle, please visit fc5towns. com.

Mercaz Academy Principal’s Message to Students Goes Viral on Instagram

Aheartfelt message from Mercaz Academy, an independent Modern Orthodox Jewish elementary school in Plainview, New York, has captured widespread attention across social media platforms this week. The brief video clip, which had garnered more than 400,000 views over the last week, shows Principal Rabbi Kalman Fogel addressing students as they prepare to depart for a school trip.

In the viral footage, Rabbi Fogel reminds the Mercaz Academy students that when they travel into the wider world, they carry the responsibility of representing not only themselves and their families but also their school, their faith, and the Jewish people as a whole. He reminds them that especially at this time of war in Israel, it is important that they represent Judaism positively, and that their politeness and thoughtful behavior will be remembered as an example of how Jewish children behave by the people they encounter.

Much to their surprise, this simple message – which Rabbi Fogel has delivered before every trip dating back to before the school went independent – has resonated with viewers far beyond the Mercaz Academy community, garnering more than 10,000 likes on Instagram as well as hundreds of comments praising Rabbi Fogel’s guidance and the values he instills in his students.

“It’s gratifying that this message of simple courtesy and derech eretz has resonated with so many people,” said Rabbi Fogel. “The fact that this has been viewed and shared so often and so quickly means that these values are important to so many others, too. Our school reinforces these ideas each day and we trust others will do so as well.”

The viral moment highlights the school’s commitment to developing students who understand their role as ambassadors of their community and their faith, both within and beyond the classroom.

Rabbi Sternhill’s second grade class at Siach Yitzchok celebrated a siyum with the Menahel on Parshas Vayeitzei

Super Bowl Championship Week at 5 Towns Flag Football League

What a final week it was in the 5 Towns Flag Football League.

The Semi-Finals featured three games that went to overtime, and so many games were decided on last second drives. The effort by all the players was incredible as they willed themselves to try to win.

The Championships were no different, with games being decided in the last seconds. We would like to congratulate Yeruchum Brazil and his Panthers team that defeated Coach Feit’s Eagles Squad in the final moments with a goal line stand. MVP Sod had 4 sacks and was

reminiscent of Lawrence Taylor out there on the field. In the 3rd and 4th grade, Coach Pine and his Vikings won in amazing fashion defeating the steelers with a last second sack of Coach Weider as they were about to score. In the 5th and 6th grade league, Moshe Brazil and his Vikings defeated Coach Orzle’s Patriots in another great game. MVP Mo Freidman played a great game.

It was a fantastic season with a great ending. Looking forward to next season with registration now open at www.5townssports.com

JSL/5TLL Breaking News

JSL and 5TLL are excited to announce that Moshe Feintuch has joined the leagues in a minority ownership role. Moshe is the premier sports coach of the Five Towns with his company Mo’s Sports Training Co. He has worked with hundreds of individual boys in the Five Towns, and he has coaching roles in Darchei, Siach, TAL Academy, and other schools.

JSL is excited to bring him aboard with a focus on expanding and improving the leagues’ sports development. His goal is to help JSL and 5TLL create more programs, clinics and offerings that ensure the league is developing boys’ skills and confidence from an early age and ensuring that they improve each season!

The new programs being launched include a summer morning 5TLL baseball season. Boys love the spring little league and 5TLL always gets requests for an-

other season! The benefit of this shorter summer season is that with less teams and all games at LMS, coaches and staff can focus on development. All games are Sunday mornings so families can still enjoy their summer outings. The league will also be offering bonus clinics like Swing Coaching by Moshe Feintuch and Chaim Homnick at Five Towns Batting Cages! This season, brought to you by FM Home Loans, is sure to be a great one! In terms of Fall JSL, the league is adding more development clinics like a new K/P clinic slot for boys who want to develop hockey skills but who aren’t ready to participate in league games yet. There will also be bonus clinics like Goalie Clinics, Basketball shooting clinics and more.

Parents can see info and sign up at 5tll. com and 5tjsl.com.

Knicks Playoff Trivia

In honor of the Knicks’ great “playoffs run”

1. Patrick Ewing missed a finger roll in Game 7 at Madison Square Garden that eliminated the Knicks in the 1995-1996 season. Who beat them?

a. Pistons

b. Heat

c. Pacers

d. Bulls

2. In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals between the Knicks and the Pacers in 1995, how many points did Reggie Miller score in 8.9 seconds?

a. 5

b. 7

c. 8

d. 9

3. How many 3-pointers did John Starks miss in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals?

a. 6

b. 7

c. 11

d. 13

4. Which Knicks player missed four straight layup attempts in the final seconds of Game

5 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Knicks and Bulls, giving the Bulls a 3-2 lead in the series, after the Knicks has originally been up 2-0?

a. Charles Oakley

b. Anthony Mason

c. Greg Anthony

d. Charles Smith

5. In which years did the Knicks win the NBA Championship?

a. 1970, 1973

b. 1973, 1978

c. 1970, 1978, 1984

d. 1976, 1979, 1985

6. Which New York Knicks player won the NBA Finals MVP award in 1970 and 1973, and then went on to coach the team in 1977-78?

a. Phil Jackson

b. Willis Reed

c. Earl Monroe

d. Bill Bradley

7. Who did the Knicks lose to in the 1999 NBA Finals?

a. Spurs

b. Jazz

c. Lakers

d. Suns

Answers:

1) A

2) C-With 18.7 seconds remaining and the Pacers trailing 105–99, Miller took the inbounds pass from Mark Jackson, made a 3-pointer, stole

the inbounds pass from Anthony Mason, dribbled back behind the arc and tied the game with another 3, stunning the crowd at Madison Square Garden. On the ensuing possession, Knicks guard John Starks was fouled by Sam Mitchell. Starks missed both free throws, and although Patrick Ewing managed to get the offensive rebound, his shot was just a bit long and hit the back rim. Miller got the rebound and was fouled with 7.5 seconds left. He made both free throws.

3) C- Starks, who scored 27 points in Game 6, shot 2-for-18 from the field, including 0-for-11 from threepoint range in Game 7. Knicks coach Pat Riley famously said after the loss: “You go with your players; you go up with them, and you go down with them.”

4) D

5) A

6) B

7) A

Scorecard:

6-7 correct: You are like John Starks in Game 6 of the 1994 Finals!

4-5 correct: You are not a bad sixth man.

0-3 correct: You are like John Starks in Game 7 of the 1994 Finals!

With a Starting Roster Like That…

Which one of the following people was not on the Knicks roster when they became an NBA team in 1946?

Leo “Ace” Gottlieb

Sidney “Sonny” Hertzberg

Oscar “Ossie” Schechtman

Ralph Kaplowitz

Nat Militzok

Ralph Kaplowitz

Hank Rosenstein

Walt Frazier

Answer: Walt Frazier. Four of the starting five players were Jewish, and there were two additional Jews coming off of the bench. (Amar’e Stoudemire may be onto something here!)

You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Yankel and Sara loved spending the beautiful days on their boat. Yankel did most of the driving but got concerned about what might happen in an emergency. One day out on the lake, he said to Sara, “Take the wheel, dear. Pretend that I have a migraine headache. You have to get the boat safely to shore and dock it.”

Riddle Me This

Deenie’s address has three digits. When she challenged her friends to guess it, they guessed: 135, 780, 785, and 732.

Deenie said, “You’ve each guessed exactly one digit correctly and in its right place!”

What is Deenie’s address?

Guess #4 has a correct digit which must be its third – 2.

incorrect. Therefore, from guess #3, the second digit is 8.

The other digits in guess #1 (i.e. 3 and 5) must be

The first digit must be 1 or 7. It can’t be 7 as only one digit is correct in each guess. So it’s 1.

Answer: 182.

Sara took the wheel, drove the boat to shore, and safely docked it.

Later that evening, Sara walked into the living room where Yankel was lounging on the couch. She sat down next to him and said to him, “Please go into the kitchen, dear. Pretend I’m having a migraine headache’ and set the table, cook dinner and wash the dishes.”

Torah Thought

Parshas Naso

By Rabbi Berel Wein

The words of the rabbis that “one who sees the shame of the woman who was unfaithful should thereupon abstain from consuming wine” are well known and oft-repeated. The obvious meaning of this message is that in life everyone must drive defensively. Let no one allow oneself to be found in compromising circumstances and to think that somehow one is immune from its consequences.

In our current world, there are numerous shameful and sad examples of people in high office and great achievement who have been brought to shame and grief by the revelations of their indiscretions. The

rabbis in Avot stated that there always is “an eye that sees us”– a constantly recording surveillance camera, if you will, that captures our movements and behavior. The public revelation of another’s sin should serve as a reminder to all of the consequences of that sin. The Torah that ordinarily is very protective of one’s right to privacy, even the rights of a sinner, chose to publicize the fate of the unfaithful woman in order to impress upon others the necessity of care and probity in all matters of life.

One should never say: “This can never happen to me.” When it comes to the areas of human appetites and desires,

there are no automatic safeguards. Rather, only care, vigilance and avoidance of risk and compromising situations are the unique tools of prevention readily available. There is a clear connection that the rabbis make between witnessing sin and imbibing too much wine. Just as driving an automobile under the influence of alcohol and drugs is legally forbidden, so is life generally to be lived free of those types of influences. Addiction to alcohol was a rather rare occurrence in Jewish society over the ages. However acculturation and assimilation over the past cen-

that lurk in everyday life. It is essentially foolish for any human being to ignore these omnipresent temptations and dangers.

Again, we read in Avot that one should not trust oneself even until the final moment of life. An abundance of overconfidence in one’s ability to withstand temptations of all sorts will always lead to unforeseen problems and sad consequences. All of human experience testifies to this conclusion.

Much of the modern world, including much of the current Jewish world as

Let no one allow oneself to be found in compromising circumstances and to think that somehow one is immune from its consequences.

tury have made alcohol a problem in our current Jewish world. The idea of abstinence from wine as described in the parsha regarding the regimen of the nazir is meant to be taken generally as a message of moderation and good sense.

Like many other things in life, a little alcohol can be pleasurable and beneficial but a lot can be harmful and even lethal. The Torah holds up the faithless woman and the nazir as examples of the dangers

well, mocks and derides any type of defensive driving in personal life matters. The concept of personal freedom has morphed into a lifestyle where any restraints on personal behavior, reasonable as they may be, are attacked and derided. Fashions and mores may change with the times, but human behavior does not, and the moral restraints the Torah imposes on us remain eternally valid and cogent.

Shabbat shalom.

The parsha begins with the conclusion of the census process which occupied the majority of the previous parsha, Bamidbar (Bamidbar 4:1-49). At this point in the Torah, all of our prestigious families and tribes have been defined and counted. The Torah describes the encampments and flags of Kohen, Levi, Yisroel, and all of the tribes. It counts the members of the subgroups within the tribe of Levi, Gershon, Kehos, and Merari. The parsha then continues (ibid. 5:1-4) with the purification of the Jewish encampments accomplished through the temporary expulsion of those suffering from certain types of impurity. And then, seemingly out of left field, the Torah swivels from the establishment of holy Jewish tribes, families, and encampments to the law of gezel ha’ger. Normally, if one steals, he returns the stolen funds plus a 20% fine to the one from whom he stole. And if that person has

From the Fire

Parshas Naso

The Best Yichus

By Rav Moshe Weinberger

Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf

passed away, he returns the money to the victim’s inheritors. But if someone has no family, like a ger who died without having children after his conversion, the halacha is that the funds must be paid to a kohen (ibid. 5-8). How does this obscure law fit into the flow of the Torah’s recounting of the borders, definitions, and boundaries defining the various parts of the Jewish people?

Why Did Boaz

Take Note of Rus?

Before returning to answer this question, let us first learn more about what makes a ger unique. When Rus began gleaning grain in Boaz’s field, he asked someone, “To whom does this young woman belong?” (Rus 2:5). When he learned more about her background and gave her priority access to gather grain more easily, Rus could not believe it. She asked Boaz, “Why have I found favor in your eyes that

you should take note of me, and I am a stranger?” (ibid. 10).

Boaz answered, “It has been told to me all that you did for your mother-in-law after your husband died – how you abandoned your father’s and your mother’s house and the land of your birth and went to a nation that you did not know before. May Hashem reward your deeds and may your repayment be in full from Hashem, the G-d of Israel, because you came to take shelter under His wings” (ibid. 11-12).

What does “may your repayment be in full” mean? The commentaries explain that “in full, shleima” is a hint to Shlomo HaMelech, who was a descendant of Rus. In fact, we understand that Moshiach will be a descendant of Dovid HaMelech through his son Shlomo (Rambam, Perush HaMishnayos, Hakdama to Ch. 10). So the reward to the woman who said about herself “and I am a stranger” is that she would be the mother of the greatest

source of yichus, pedigree, in the Jewish people, Dovid, Shlomo, and, eventually, the redeemer of the Jewish people and all worlds, Moshiach.

Chazal even teach us that in her old age, Rus merited to sit beside Shlomo HaMelech as he sat on the throne and that she was called “Mother of Royalty” (Bava Basra 91b). We can only imagine the memories of Moav, Naomi, Boaz, and gleaning fields as a poor stranger which passed through her mind as she sat with her great-grandson in that palace. There are many levels when it comes to yichus in the Jewish people. When one reads the invitation to a chassidish rebbe ’s child’s wedding, it usually recounts the chosson’s yichus, generation after generation, all the way back to the Baal Shem Tov, and the kallah’s family all the way back to, perhaps, another tzaddik like the Noam Elimelech.

If a descendant of a great tzaddik is

highest on the totem pole of great pedigrees, then perhaps the “lowest” is a ger or giyores. And among geirim , the worst of the worst is to be a giyores from Moav, who is barely and only controversially even allowed to marry into the Jewish people (Yevamos 77a). Because of what Rus did, she ascended from the weakest possible yichus to become the source of the greatest yichus on earth, Dovid HaMelech, Shlomo HaMelech, and Moshiach.

How did she accomplish this? How did she break every boundary, limitation, and glass ceiling? Quoting Boaz’s explanation to Rus, Rabbi Chasa says that she merited everything she did “because you came to take shelter under His wings” (Rus Raba 5:4). This is incredible. How do we break through the boundaries of what is natural and normal? By showing up. By showing up to learn in the morning. By showing up for minyan. By overcoming the overpowering inertia of being passive spectator to Yiddishkeit. That is how Dovid HaMelech went from “the stone which they builders have despised” to become “the cornerstone.”

Full Circle

How do we understand the place -

ment of the law of gezel ha’ger? After the establishment and the census of all of our tribes, after every part of the Jewish people was assigned a flag and after even the impure people were separated from the camp, there was one person standing in solitude – the ger or giyores. He or she has no tribe, no special status or encampment, and no flag. At this moment, Hashem suddenly swoops in with the law of gezel ha’ger What is the underlying concept of this law?

First, the Torah expresses the fact that the ger has no inheritor by saying, “And if the man has no redeemer” (Bamidbar 5:8), a phrase highly reminiscent of the role of redeemer Boaz took on for Rus (Rus 3:9, et sec.). It then states that if the ger has no inheritors, the money should be returned “to G-d, to the kohen” (Bamidbar 5:8). In other words, the money must be returned to G-d directly, but since G-d does not have a physical presence, the thief must return the money to the kohen as G-d’s agent. Why must the money due to the ger go to Hashem? The Chizkuni explains that the money is paid “to Hashem, the father of converts.” G-d Himself is the closest living relative of the ger, so the

money must be returned to Him.

Through the law of gezel ha’ger, in the context of these parshios, Hashem is telling us that “because you came,” showing up, and sacrificing one’s own comfort and an easy lifestyle, breaks through all boundaries and limitations. The same applies to baalei teshuva , whether born into non-observant or from frum homes. Hashem wants us to understand that by sacrificing and going beyond what is comfortable, all boundaries and borders are nullified.

A few years ago, Ami Magazine published several poems by Ruth Lewis a”h , a Breslover baalas teshuvah and author of the beautiful book of poetry, “Memo to Self.” One of those expresses this point powerfully:

“Deprived”

When they play Jewish Geography, it’s got nothing to do with me

“Oh, you’re from Detroit? You must know my Tante Perel!”

“You’re from Netanya? I knew your Zeide Berel!”

“I know who you are! I know your mother!

Her second cousin married my uncle’s brother!”

“Your sister taught me in Sem!” Such a great game for them! Poor them!

They have frum parents, relatives, Teachers, friends tried and true, while I have no one but You!

The ger, giyores , and anyone who “shows up” in Yiddishkeit with self-sacrifice has the greatest yichus in the world. Hashem is telling them that whether or not they have brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, or grandparents in their communities, He is their Father, and that is the greatest yichus of all. With connections like that, they can accomplish anything.

May Hashem reveal His closeness to everyone who feels alone, and may we all see how everyone fits into His plan to bring the world to the point when it is ready for the rule of Rus’s great-greatgrandson, Moshiach, may he come soon in our days.

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.

After years of research and preparation, James had finally secured a slot to speak at a prestigious international physics conference. He would be presenting his studies in the field of quantum mechanics and was looking forward to the largest event of his life. He had never before presented at an official conference, let alone one of such prestige. It had taken every ounce of courage within him to even submit his work to such an event, and he knew that a successful lecture could change the trajectory of his career.

When the day of the presentation arrived, James awoke feeling nervous but excited. He was about to present his life’s work before a crowd of the foremost researchers in his field. After preparing his lecture notes carefully, he strode into the conference room. The room was completely empty. “Strange,” he thought. “Maybe the

Think. Feel.Grow.

Follow the Leader

What is True Leadership?

By Rabbi Shmuel Reichman

previous sessions went overtime...”

He briefly reviewed his notes and then looked down at his watch again. It was now five minutes past the start time, and not a single person had shown up. A bead of sweat rolled down his neck as he weighed his options. “Maybe this was all for nothing!” he thought anxiously.

“Maybe I should just pack up and leave!”

“No, just give it another minute or so,” a calmer voice in the back of his head insisted.

Just then, an elegant looking gentleman, probably in his mid-sixties, walked into the room. He slowly strolled to the front row and took a seat, focusing his piercing blue eyes on James.

Slightly taken aback, James forced a smile and began his lecture, surprised by how engaged his single audience member was. Upon concluding his speech, the man came over and thanked James profusely for sharing such an en-

lightening presentation.

“Wow! I’ve been to countless conferences, but this was the greatest presentation I have ever been privileged to hear! You have a bright future ahead of you, son. I wish you all the success in the world and can’t wait to see all the incredible things you accomplish with your life.”

James floated out of the conference, inspired and confident to begin his next big project. While unpacking from his trip, he found a crumpled-up copy of the conference brochure. He proudly looked at it again, when he suddenly noticed something, someone, staring back at him from the cover of the glossy pamphlet. It was his blue-eyed friend. As he looked closer, he remembered feeling that the blue-eyed audience member looked familiar.

“Of course, he looked familiar!” he gasped, as he realized that this man was

the keynote speaker, the featured scientist who had been flown in from London to lead the conference. This was one of the most respected and revered figures in the scientific world, and he had come to James’ speech!

James spent the next several hours tracking down this man’s phone number. When he finally got him on the phone, James couldn’t contain himself: “I don’t understand! You are the greatest quantum physicist in the world. You knew everything I said and infinitely more. Why did you even bother coming to my presentation?”

There was a small pause, and then a gentle reply: “I will tell you the truth. Thirty years ago, I was a young, ambitious scientist who wanted to make a big impact on the world. I got an opportunity to present at a conference very similar to the one we just came from. This was the most exciting opportunity

I had ever been given, and I prepared night and day for months in advance. When it was time for my presentation, not a single person showed up. I was crushed, defeated, and dejected. I seriously doubted my self-worth and almost gave up on my aspirations altogether. It took me years to overcome the emotional hurt. Yesterday, when I finished my keynote address, I was on my way back to the airport to present at another conference. However, when I passed by your room, I saw you standing there in an empty room, and it was like looking at a mirror. A reflection of my past emerged, and I saw myself standing in front of an empty lecture hall. I knew that the best way to encourage you, to teach you, and to ensure that you would continue striving forward was to sit in on your presentation and show you respect, make you feel heard. The greatest form of leadership is empowering others to be leaders.”

James never forgot that conversation. The topic of leadership is both fascinating and fundamental to human society. The Torah discusses the three categories of Jewish leadership: the Melech (king), the Sanhedrin (courts), and the Kohanim (priests). What is the Jewish approach to leadership, and how does it compare to other perspectives on leadership?

Leadership to Serve Yourself

The most primitive form of leadership is selfish leadership, driven by the desire for power and selfgratification. In such a system, the leader represents only himself and his own selfish desires. He demands power, craving it for himself, and generally maintains control over his people through fear. In such a system, the leader demands the allegiance of his people and makes promises of food, shelter, and perhaps power and honor in return for respect and obedience.

This was the system of old, where kings, tyrants, and oligarchs ruled large provinces. Wealth, birthright, or rebellion served as the right to leadership, and the purpose of leadership was focused solely on the leader; the goal was to give the leader increased power, respect, and control. This system is inherently corrupt and resulted in endless bloodshed, as the king killed anyone who stood in his way. There were pointless wars, as kings sent the young men of their kingdoms to die for no reason other than their own territorial expansion and glory. In essence, the king

answered to no one other than himself.

Representing the People

In response to such corruption, there became an increased desire to shift the focus of power. As history unfolded, leadership moved toward democracy, toward a balance of power. In such a system, the power belongs to the people, not the leader. The leader is appointed to serve the people. If he fails to do so, he is removed and replaced with someone who better fills the people’s needs. This is a far better system than the previous one, as it stabilizes power and creates

pletely subject to the will of the people. They walk ahead, pretending to lead, while they are, in fact, merely puppets. Whatever the people want, they will do. They create their policies and campaigns around the people and polls, not based on their internal values. They would change their policy in an instant if it meant more votes.

A true leader stands for the truth and for their inner values, regardless of opposition. He or she walks ahead and doesn’t look back. Even if no one follows, they push onward. They never sacrifice their ideals for public approval.

“The greatest form of leadership is empowering others to be leaders.”

a society focused on the needs of the people, rather than of an individual king or elite few.

Nevertheless, there is still a fundamental problem with democracy: a leader becomes nothing more than a puppet of the people. The flaw in this is apparent. Imagine if parents lost their parental license as soon as their child got upset with their decisions. As soon as the parents put their child to bed, they’d be out of a job. When a leader is fully subject to the will of the people, it is impossible to lead. Democratic leaders may appear to be leading, but in essence, they are following. (It is important to note that this speaks only of ideals. In today’s day and age, the ideal political system is democracy. Additionally, not all democratic leaders share this pitfall. It is only a likely possibility, not a guaranteed outcome.)

The Gemara (Sanhedrin 97a) states that Moshiach will come at a time when “the face of the generation is like the face of a dog.” Rav Elchanan Wasserman, zt”l, explains the depth behind this statement: when you see someone walking a dog on a leash, it appears as though the dog is leading. He walks ahead of his owner; he appears to be calling the shots. However, this is an illusion. The dog is completely subject to the will of its owner. One small tug, and he changes direction. The dog is the follower in an illusory position of leadership.

Many democratic systems suffer from this flaw. Leaders are appointed by the people and are therefore com -

ment and manifestation of Hashem in this world, negating his ego and revealing Hashem in this world.

The Sanhedrin maintains the Jewish ideals in society, ensuring that the Jewish People live up to their purpose. The Kohanim are charged with guiding the Jewish People in their spiritual and religious journey, helping them build and perfect their relationship with Hashem. The Kohanim both help the Jewish People connect to Hashem and help properly manifest Hashem into this world.

A true leader creates a direction for a greater future, a pathway to individual and collective greatness, and inspires people to strive for that ideal. This is the nature of Jewish leadership. Let us briefly explore this topic.

True Leadership: Connecting to Something Higher

A Torah leader does not represent himself, nor does he represent the will of the people; he represents Hashem. A Torah leader is an emissary of Hashem in this world, and he will lead the people toward the truth and toward their true destination. Of course, the leader cares for and empathizes with each individual, and deeply so, but the foundational goal of leadership involves driving people toward a transcendent goal.

Traditional kings represented themselves and were therefore no greater than their limited selves. Democratic leaders are chosen by the will of the people and are therefore usually no better than the people who choose them. A true leader is one who strives toward perfection and leads others on their own individual and collective journeys toward perfection as well.

There are three categories of Jewish leadership mentioned in the Torah, and each works toward this goal. While they all serve both a practical and spiritual role, each category maintains its own unique purpose in enabling the Jewish People to fulfill their mission and connect to Hashem.

The Melech serves as an embodi -

In our next article, we’ll delve deeper into this fascinating topic and study some of the key qualities and characteristics of great leaders. In the meantime, it’s important to remember that a leader is anyone who is on a mission, who empowers others, and who always looks for ways to contribute to the greater good. Leaders are great parents, great teachers, and great friends. We are all potential leaders; we are all potential revolutionaries. We can all create change in the world. But to create any external change, we must first learn to develop ourselves and live with higher ideals.

Let us all be inspired to become the greatest version of ourselves with the hopes that our own journey of growth will inspire others to become the greatest version of themselves as well.

Rabbi Shmuel Reichman is the author of the bestselling book, “The Journey to Your Ultimate Self,” which serves as an inspiring gateway into deeper Jewish thought. He is an educator and speaker who has lectured internationally on topics of Torah thought, Jewish medical ethics, psychology, and leadership. He is also the founder and CEO of Self-Mastery Academy, the transformative online self-development course based on the principles of high-performance psychology and Torah.

After obtaining his BA from Yeshiva University, he received Semicha from Yeshiva University’s RIETS, a master’s degree in education from Azrieli Graduate School, and a master’s degree in Jewish Thought from Bernard Revel Graduate School. He then spent a year studying at Harvard as an Ivy Plus Scholar. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife and son where he is pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago.

To invite Rabbi Reichman to speak in your community or to enjoy more of his deep and inspiring content, visit his website: ShmuelReichman.com.

Rav Mordechai Finkelman, mashgiach of Yeshivas Ohr Hachaim, received a generous offer from a friend. The friend offered to build Rav Finkelman a sukkah that would be part of his house. For Sukkos, he would simply remove the roof, replace it with schach, and have an almost instant sukkah. Rav Finkelman demurred; he wanted to build the sukkah from scratch every year himself. He said, “I want to schlepp the boards”. Such is Rav Finkelman’s love for mitzvos.

What type of mitzvah is building a sukkah? Is it a mitzvah itself or just a preparatory action to enable one to fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in a sukkah? The Mishna in Shavuos implies it is its own independent mitzvah. The Mishna teaches us that oaths made not to fulfill mitzvos are not valid. For example, if someone swears he will not eat matzah on Pesach night, the oath is invalid. One example cited explicitly in the Mishna is

Delving into the Daf

A More Mehudar Mitzvah

By Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

an oath not to build a sukkah. If someone declares he will not build a sukkah, the oath is invalid.

The apparent question is, why does one have to build a sukkah? One may be obligated to sit in a sukkah on Sukkos, but can you say that one is obligated to build a sukkah? Why can’t a person just sit in someone else’s sukkah? The Netziv posits that Rav Achai Gaon holds that indeed there is a Torah mitzvah to build a sukkah. According to his ruling, the Mishna can be understood simply.

Most other opinions feel that building a sukkah is just a preparatory mitzvah to enable one to sit in a sukkah. Some suggest that it all depends on context. Indeed, if there are communal sukkahs available, his oath not to build a sukkah would be binding. Our Mishna discusses a scenario where it is highly unlikely that the person making the vow will find another sukkah to use.

There is no question that the harder

a mitzvah is to fulfill, the greater reward a person receives. This is a clear Mishna in the fifth Perek of Pirkei Avos. Additionally, the Arizal notes that when one sweats while performing a mitzvah, it has special atonement powers. The Mishna Berura cites this concept in the context of baking matzos. Certainly, sweating while schlepping boards for the sukkah is praiseworthy. Yet, many Admorim and Rabbanim have opted to have sukkahs built into their houses. While there may be practical reasons for doing so, this author would like to suggest an alternative explanation.

The Gemara states in Shabbos (133b), “Beautify yourself before Him in mitzvos. Even if one fulfills the mitzvah by performing it simply, it is nonetheless proper to perform the mitzvah as beautifully as possible. Make before Him a beautiful sukkah, a beautiful lulav, a beautiful shofar, beautiful tzitzis strings, beautiful parchment for a To -

rah scroll, and write in it in His name in beautiful ink, with a beautiful quill by an expert scribe, and wrap the scroll in beautiful silk fabric.”

What if there is tension between two dictums: exerting efforts oneself to do a mitzvah or having a nicer finished product? Which option should one choose?

The Chaya Adam raises this question regarding a Sefer Torah. Writing a Sefer Torah is a mitzvah. One can fulfill the mitzvah through an agent, but it is preferable to accomplish it oneself. Which path should one choose? Write a Sefer Torah himself that will be simply kosher, or hire an expert scribe who can produce a beautiful Sefer Torah?

The Chaya Adam leaves this question unresolved. Yet the Doveiv Meisharim conclusively rules that one should hire an expert scribe and beautify the mitzvah. Rav Vozner, zt”l, concurred. Faced with the two options, we choose the nicer mitzvah rather than the effort.

Shut Machsheves Kodesh discusses a similar question. What if one can only afford wax candles to light Chanukah lights? Alternatively, he can pay his friend to partner in the lighting of his olive oil lights. He would thereby fulfill his obligation with his friends’ lighting. Which is preferable: lighting oneself with wax or performing the mitzvah via an agent in a more mehudar fashion, with olive oil? The Machsheves Kodesh rules that he should join in with his friend’s olive oil lighting.

Rav Zilberstein discusses another Chanukah question. A sick patient can only light Chanukah licht near his bed. Alternatively, he can have an agent light for him by the window. Lighting by the window is preferable because it publicizes the miracle. Should he light by the bed or have an agent light by a window? Rav Zilberstein concludes he should appoint an agent to light for him by the window. In all these scenarios, these poskim rule that we prioritize a nicer mitzvah over one’s own involvement in the mitzvah.

It is somewhat challenging to compare the quality and the comfort of an “indoor” sukkah to an outdoor one. For

starters, an outdoor sukkah is open to the rain. It is uncomfortable to sit in a wet sukkah after the rain stops. The sukkahs built indoors have been professionally constructed with retractable roofs. True, one could create such a contraption for their outdoor sukkah as well. However, there are some horror stories about how people destroyed their sukkahs with shlocks. It is usually

regulated in an indoor sukkah for both heat and cold. If one avoids sleeping outdoors due to the cold weather, the indoor sukkah is truly incredible.

True, one does lose much of the effort involved when using an “indoor” sukkah, but he has a more mehudar mitzvah experience.

Late on Erev Shabbos, a man rushed into a store and managed to grab the

The Arizal notes that when one sweats while performing a mitzvah, it has special atonement powers.

more comfortable sleeping in an indoor sukkah in terms of safety. A neighbor sleeps in his outdoor sukkah with a knife under his pillow. Indeed, some raise the question whether one fulfills the mitzvah of eating in a sukkah if it is built in a place where one is too scared to sleep there. The temperature is more

last white challah –only whole wheat remained. A second customer arrived moments later, despondent at finding only whole wheat, lamenting, “My wife will be furious – she’ll say that I should have shopped sooner.” Seizing a chance to promote shalom bayis, the first man kindly handed over his white challah

and settled for a whole wheat loaf, although he knew another white challah was waiting at home.

At the ensuing Shabbos meal, which loaf should be used for the bracha? Although the whole wheat challah was acquired through an act of self-sacrifice, generally, halacha views the white challah as preferable. Yedidi, Dr. Akiva Bergman, personally asked this question to several poskim – including Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman, zt”l. They unanimously ruled that one must use the white challah. In halacha, the white loaf is inherently more “mehudar,” and that preference overrides the merit of how the loaf was obtained. The man’s generous act will surely be rewarded, but for the bracha, the white challah takes precedence.

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

Moving Day and Halacha

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

“Really? There are halachos about moving? You cannot be serious, Rabbi.”

Well, we are serious, and during Moving Day, there is a little-known halacha that, very often, does apply. But first, a short introduction. There are, generally speaking, always two ways to move:

• One can hire movers, at a total cost of about $4,000-$5,000.

• Or one can rent a truck ($100 at the local chassidish-owned Penske Truck Rental) and then hire workers across from Seasons Express ($18 per hour for 12 hours times 4 people) – at a total cost is $1,000.

Usually, if one opts for the second choice – one should provide them with lunch – and here is where the little-known halacha comes in.

When you are moving, you are not going to cook up some mac and cheese. You can drive them to pick up food, and generally speaking, they are going to opt for the local Popeyes or order Uber-Eats – not the takeout section of Seasons Express. Most people offer to pay for lunch, but if you do, you have to give them the cash – do not give them your credit card or put it on your credit card somehow. The reason for this (aside for theft concerns) is that when it goes on your credit card, it is you that is the one making the transaction with non-kosher food, and that is a halachic problem as discussed in Siman 117 in the Yore Deah section of Shulchan Aruch.

The Name of the Prohibition

The name of the prohibition is “Schorah b’maachalos asuros,” and it is found in both the Mishna in Shvi’is the Gemara in Psachim 23a – where the pasuk in Vayikrah (11:11) is understood to prohibit having anything to do with that which is non-kosher, “And they shall be an abomination for you. You shall not eat of their flesh, and their dead bodies you shall hold in abomination.”

The Debate As To Its Origin

Indeed, the Baalei Tosfos (Psachim 23a, “Amar”) hold that it is a full-blown

Torah prohibition. The Trumas HaDeshen (Siman 200), however, cites the Gilyon Tosfos that the citation of the pasuk is merely an asmachta – generally understood as a biblical allusion to a future Rabbinic enactment.

The Rashba (responsum Vol. III SIman 223) explains that the reason for the prohibition is so that one not come to eat of it accidentally himself. Even though the phraseology of the Rashba seems to indicate that it is of Rabbinic origin, the Taz does rule that even the Rashba holds that it is a Torah prohibition.

What the Prohibition Applies To

What is the halacha if we are unsure as to whether the food item is forbidden by actual Torah law? It seems that the poskim hold that the prohibition still applies (see Mishne LaMelech Hilchos Maachalos Asuros 8:18 and Rabbi Akiva Eiger responsum #74 and the Beis Meir, beginning of Siman 117).

What about fruits that got wormy? The Pischei Teshuvah (YD 117:2) cites views that forbid it since the fruits are forbidden to consume. There is a large body of poskim with a dissenting opinion cited in Darchei Teshuvah (117:6). The Pri Magad-

im questions how they could dissent since the entire reason is that one may come to consume it and that certainly applies with wormy fruit.

The Shulchan Aruch rules that the prohibition is limited to non-kosher items whose main purpose is for food consumption. This is based on a Yerushalmi in Shvi’is (7:7) which states that one is permitted to raise donkeys and camels if one is doing so for the labor that they perform.

Based upon this, Rabbeinu Tam ruled (Bava Kamma 82b “lo yigdal”) that one is permitted to raise donkeys for the purpose of tanning hides with their fat.

The Bais Yoseph and the Shach, however, both cite the dissenting view of the Rashba (responsum Vol. III SIman 223) who forbids it.

There are certain animal fats called “chailev, “the consumption of which involves a punishment of kareis. There is a debate among the poskim as to the disposition of doing business with these fats [see Shaivet HaLevi (Volume VI Siman 113) for a full discussion of this.] The reason why chailev may be more lenient is because there is a pasuk in the Torah (Vayikrah 7:24) that seems to specifically permit doing business with it. The Darchei Teshuva (117:34) writes that since the main use of

chailev in contemporary times is solely for work purposes and not for food, it is permitted according to all opinions.

Rav Aharon Felder, zt”l, in his Rishumei Aharon (Vol. I 117:5) cites the view of Rav Moshe Feinstein that one would be permitted in doing business with horse hair.

If The Food Could Once Have Been Kosher

The Pischei Teshuvah (YD 117:6) cites a possible debate between the Chavas Yair and the Chasam Sofer as to whether there is a biblical prohibition of doing business with food that once had a time of its possibly being kosher. All chicken, kosher or not, would have had a time where it could have been kosher. Thus, in the aforementioned case where the Popeye’s food was placed on a Jewish man’s credit card, the Chavas Yair would hold that only a rabbinic prohibition was violated, while the Chasam Sofer may hold that a Torah prohibition was violated. One may ask as to what difference it would make whether it once could have been kosher or not, since, at the end of the day, it would still be forbidden by rabbinic law? The answer, believe it or not, lies in whether or not there is an obligation to do teshuvah on an accidental violation (shogeig) of a rabbinic law. Rav Yaakov Lorberbaum, zt”l, in his Nesivos HaMishpat (CM 243:3) writes that there is no need for atonement. The Mishna Berurah (334:76), however, disagrees and cites the view of the Eliyah Rabbah (334:26) that it definitely requires atonement. And speaking of atonement, this author would like to ask forgiveness from the hardworking neighbor who worked all day moving only to be subjected to a discussion of the halachos dealt with above. May they have nachas, bracha, and success in their new abode. We will certainly miss them.

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

Igrew up in a post Holocaust world that was surrounded by “greena.” My family mostly lived in a tight circle of blocks that began in Williamsburg, moved to Crown Heights, East Flatbush and Canarsie, all in Brooklyn. My cousin/sister Miriam, even after we both got married, always lived within walking distance.

We had family in Israel who served as the pioneers who paved the way for others to follow. Everyone’s favorite Israeli cousin was Natan; he was the oldest son of my mother’s sister Raizel. She also had two daughters, Bella and Tzvia.

Tante Laya and Tante Raizel were clones of each other; everyone loved them.

We kept in touch with each other through thin blue aeroplane letters – do they even print those anymore? – and very expensive sporadic phone calls. During the ‘70s, Raizel came to visit. The whole family took turns taking her around New York City. My parents had never even seen the Empire State Building until Raizel came to town.

We were heartbroken when it was time for Raizel to go home. She packed her two-suitcase allowance to the brim. On each of her wrists, she layered six or seven watches. On her back, she wore four coats. We had to stand on each side of her as she made her way out to the car.

Somehow, she made it seamlessly through security.

Natan became a high-tech engineer and built an amazing business called NirOr (after his son who grew up to be a rock star fronting a group called Infectzia). Penina, Natan’s wife, was his partner in life and in business. When Josh and Rachel, our kids, wanted to move to Israel, we made it a condition that they have some kind of job. Natan offered these two dreamers with no engineering background a spot in the company.

It tickled “Big” Penina that Rachel and Josh’s baby Penina had her name.

I can’t say we were thrilled by the offered opportunity, but that’s almost 23 years under the bridge. We did get to see our dear cousins year after year when we would come to visit our kids.

School of Thought

Natan

By Barbara Deutsch

Natan and Penina were not observant at all, yet they made every effort to make us comfortable when we would visit. Ironically, we bought them their first challah knife, and Bob’s havdalah after a Shabbat spent with them was the first and probably only one they ever heard.

Sadly, Natan passed away last year, right before our aliyah.

This week, we hired a cab driver to the tune of 500 shekel to take us to Petach Tikvah, the biggest cemetery we ever visited, for Natan’s azkara. There was never a question as to whether we would go as we did not make it to the funeral – Josh and Rachel did attend – and we needed to say our goodbyes to this lovable gentle giant. Natan stood over 6 feet tall, had flaming red hair, and a warm, “light up your face” kind of smile.

An Israeli citizen is entitled to a burial place in Israel, a promise made long ago and now hard to keep. To help alleviate the crowding, giant mausoleums are being built to house the departed. There are hundreds of storage drawers to house the bodies. Each drawer has enough room for a body, a name and a short quote. There is even a place for mementos and flowers. We have a plot in Beit Shemesh; we don’t need a drawer.

The cemetery in Petach Tikvah is divided by neighborhood, schunot. We drove

around and around until we located Natan’s grave; an old-timer, he too has a plot. The sun baked hot, and we heard a jumble of words that we did not understand. How does one conduct a religious ceremony where you need to describe a bigger than life person who you do not know and with whom you had no connection?

The ceremony did Natan no justice.

In the weekly women’s-only class that I attend, we discussed preparing for Shavuot, the gift of Torah and having bitachon. Since retiring, I have had to adjust my worldview lens about what I read and study. I have always had a more secular perspective on curriculum topics in education. For the social and emotional perspective, I have leaned into Torah.

Maybe it’s an outgrowth of all of the walking that we do in a land where every brick and block resonates? Perhaps it’s because getting older and seeing how the wear and tear of life is impacting my contemporaries; this one can’t walk, that one can’t see, and another one is losing it.

Time is slipping away; with it our physical ability to master new athletic skills as well as the stamina to sit through hours of Ulpan grammar rigor (had to slip that in).

While we can, we have to make every minute count.

In Israel, we think nothing of hopping on the 17 bus at 6:00 p.m. to ride to Hebrew

University on Mt. Scopus. Get off the bus on a cold and windy night, walk a mile to an outdoor venue high above Jerusalem, and get to enjoy a panoramic view of our glorious city. We were invited to a unique educational program, Nitzavim, where gap year students who will be going to secular colleges in the fall work together weekly on building their resilience and learning skills to combat and handle antisemitism on their campuses.

Each cohort is tasked with creating a program that will help their campus-mates grow in their Jewish identity and connection to Israel.

Twenty-four projects were submitted, and six were chosen to vie for the $5,000 prize awarded to the winning Impact Project. There was a winner – it doesn’t matter who it is – all of the presenters were talented, smart and passionate about their idea.

As lifelong educators, Bob and I were warmed by the knowledge that the future is in very capable young hands. What we both found amazing is that in one of the groups, four of the five participants are choosing to give up plans of Harvard, Yale and Brown and staying in Israel to join the IDF.

That night was the first time since we got here, 11 months ago, that I felt the tug. At 10:00 p.m., it was time to head home. We got a lift to the gate and froze at the hilltop bus stop with some of the guests and contestants.

Contemporaries Lenny and Bobbee stood waiting with us. At some point, I turned to them and asked, “Are we nuts? We are old and should be in bed reading!” Israel makes you alive. The Torah shows you how to live; learning new things every day makes for the best way to spend the days you are granted.

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.

At 4:12 a.m., the shrill cry of a siren pierced the silence. We jolted upright. The kids, disoriented and groggy, stumbled from their beds as we guided them toward the bomb shelter. Seconds later, the house shook, faintly, not violently, but enough to make the walls remember what it feels like to absorb fear. This time it was from Yemen. Again. These nighttime attacks are no longer rare. They happen regularly now. Sometimes at night, sometimes at dawn, sometimes mid-morning while our children sit at their desks, learning math and history and how to breathe through fear. Yemen, of all places, has become an unexpected part of our daily routine. Their rockets sail across countries and seas to remind us that geography no longer protects anyone.

But if you’re not here, if you’re not living it, you wouldn’t know.

Because while we run with barefoot children in the dark, the world sleeps. Literally and figuratively. There are no special broadcasts. No press conferences. No emergency UN sessions. Not when the Iron Dome intercepts. Not when the Arrow succeeds. Not when, technically, nobody dies.

So it becomes business as usual.

We drop the kids off at school after the morning sirens. We drink our coffee after checking the news for red alerts. We laugh with neighbors while updating one another on the latest barrage, where it came

Israel Today

While You Were Sleeping

By  Aron Schoenfeld

from, what got intercepted, whether it was Yemen again or somewhere else. Trauma has learned to wear a smile.

And yet, we carry it.

Every siren leaves a mark. Every sprint to shelter chips away at something. Some children now need therapy just to fall asleep. Others have stopped reacting altogether. They don’t even flinch anymore, as if fear itself got tired of screaming and decided to go numb. These are not symptoms of resilience. They are symptoms of saturation. Of exposure without pause. Of living in a world that constantly says “at

not abstract. Suddenly, the world looks up and says, “What happened?”

As if we hadn’t been telling them all along.

We say these systems save lives. And they do. But they also allow the world to look away. To believe that quiet equals peace. That interceptions equal immunity. That our silence means we’re okay.

We are not okay.

We are grateful. We are proud. We are resilient. But we are not okay. Because none of this is normal, and none of this is sustainable. A nation that raises its chil-

It is a test of how long we can go on like this without breaking.

least no one was hurt,” as if that erases the fact that everyone is changed.

We have become so good at surviving that we’ve forgotten how fragile survival is.

Because it only takes one.

One rocket that doesn’t get intercepted. One piece of shrapnel that finds a crack in the system. One moment when the Arrow or Dome is two seconds too late. And then the story changes. Suddenly, the sirens are not just routine. Suddenly, the trauma is

dren to run from rockets before they run toward dreams is not a nation at peace. It is a nation surviving in a vacuum of global indifference.

And so, we carry the weight. Of night after night. Siren after siren. The soft padding of small feet down staircases at 3:00 a.m. The whispered reassurances. The silent prayers. The reality that each missile is not just an act of war. It is a test of how long we can go on like this without breaking.

The truth is: we cannot go on like this forever.

Because every rocket from Yemen, every warning shot, every intercepted strike is not just a failed attempt. It is a countdown. A drumbeat. A reminder. That this reality is neither safe nor stable. That while the world is sleeping, the danger is not.

The world may not see it. The headlines may not cover it. But in the dark, while our children sleep in shelters instead of beds, we feel every vibration. We hear every boom. We measure every breath.

We know what is at stake.

And one day, if the world continues to sleep, it may awaken not to another intercepted missile, but to a tragedy that cannot be undone.

So while you were sleeping, we ran. Again. While you were sleeping, we prayed. Again. While you were sleeping, a missile was shot down. Again. And next time?

We don’t know.

But we hope the world wakes up before it finds out.

Aron Schoenfeld, a resident of Modiin, Israel, is the founder of Smiles for the Kids, a grassroots non-profit bringing joy and support to children facing life challenges. He is passionate about community impact and creating meaningful connections through giving.

Insider Insights Into Israel An Interview with David Gilor

By Dr. Joseph Sturm

Dov Gilor brought his family to Israel on aliyah in 1973, three months before the Yom Kippur War.

For the twenty years that followed, he wrote a column for the Jewish Press, entitled, “Focus on Israel,” in which he brought to his readers positive news about happenings in Eretz Yisrael.

We recently had a chance to sit down for dinner with his son, David Gilor, who has lived in Israel for 50 years, visits the U.S. frequently, and works for the Israeli defense industry. He considers himself Dati Leumi, but he is exposed to both right-wing and left-wing co-workers. After sharing a lovely dvar Torah, David answered our questions about current events in Israel with many thoughtful and insightful answers.

Here is the gist of what he said:

David, how has Israel changed over the years culturally compared to the U.S.?

First of all, if you raised your hand at work 20 years ago to report that you had conservative/right-leaning views, you were considered some kind of fringe lunatic. That is not the case anymore.

On the other hand, there is an axiom that “whatever starts in America reaches Israel ten years later.”

While there are some exceptions to this rule, such as the widespread usage of cellphones and Waze by Israeli society long before American society, the main cultural trends of the United States have definitely now arrived in Israel – a lot of the bad political and media behavior that began in the America ten years ago has now reached Israel. For example, there is no shame anymore about lying in politics or in the media. The progressives, both in the USA and in Israel, now feel that the end justifies the means. One’s ideology is paramount, and anything that advances the “correct” cause can be done. Broadcasts can be slanted to extreme degrees , as long as they advance the “proper” cause. Now, for both politicians and news reporters, there is no such shame.

Before October 7, many on the Israeli left were of the view that if we only we were more conciliatory to our Arab neighbors, peace would inevitably follow. After having citizens, many of them left-leaning, who were extremely

kind to the Gazans, dragged from their homes on October 7, what is the left thinking about this concept now? Does the left still advocate for a Palestinian state?

The left is currently guided by one overriding principle called R.L.B. – Rahk Lo Bibi, anything but Bibi. All the problems were caused by Netanyahu. They say: just get rid of him, give us back the government, and we will figure it out. What is the exact plan? We don’t know, but we are very smart and we will come up with answers.

Does the same dynamic exist for the Israeli court system?

“If you raised your hand at work 20 years ago to report that you had conservative/ right-leaning views, you were considered some kind of fringe lunatic.”

Indeed. The secular left that controls the supreme court feels “we know best” and has cleverly built an impenetrable moat around their progressive ideologies. All decisions are based on what they deem to be “savir ” (reasonable). Of course, reasonable to them is based on leftist ideology. And once the Bagatz (supreme court) renders such an opinion, which, ironically, they call “halacha,” no one in the Knesset can pass a law against a supreme court ruling. If anyone tries to raise a law that the majority of the country wants but has supreme court precedent against him, he will be shouted down in the Knesset as an “ ohkeyf Bagatz,” a circumventer of the supreme court.

This entire system is upside down, gives supremacy to the unelected court over the people’s representatives, and will somehow have to be changed.

Do you feel that the right and the left are treated equally by the justice system?

On the opposite side, I don’t believe the right has a clear vision for the future either. The Arabs of Yehuda V’Shomron have been sitting home for almost two years, unable to work in Israel. Tactics, such as aerial bombardment and missile strikes, never before seen in Yehuda V’Shomron, are becoming more necessary and frequent. This makes for a tense situation, and the only answer for the future that the right gives is “somehow we will manage.”

And, by the way, this paternalistic condescending attitude of the secular left has been present since the state was founded. Back then, the Ashkenazi elite from Europe looked down on their less sophisticated Sephardic brethren and always said, “Listen to us. We know best.” The Ashkenazi elite would have been much better served had they asked Sephardim, “You have lived among the Arabs for so many centuries. What tactics work best to deal with them?”

Certainly not. When the police respond to a charedi demonstration, they are prone to use water cannons, often with “skunk water” that ruins clothes and makes them stink. I’ve never seen this forceful tactic used against left-wing protests. Moreover, any bad acts by the right are heavily covered by the media, while bad acts by the left are either glossed over or not covered at all.

How were you personally affected by October 7 and its aftermath?

Our Yishuv, Chashmonaim, unfortunately has its share of fallen soldiers. Like everyone else, I dread hearing the phrase on the news, “hootar l’pirsum,” released by the army for publication, which is always followed by the names of the recently killed soldiers. And like everyone else, wherever I am, I’m always calculating the distance to the nearest bomb shelter. I sometimes watch games televised from Yankee Stadium – a place where sirens mean something totally different – but when the Yankee Stadium home run siren goes off, people in my house can’t help but jump.

On a more trivial note: my son was about to begin construction on a patio outside his house right before

David with his children and grandchildren

Sukkot in 2023. The Arab workers who were supposed to do the job were then no longer allowed into Israel, and the materials for construction sat unused in the front yard for 18 months.

Your dad always shared good news about Israel. What positive news do you want to convey?

For starters, since I work in the defense industry, I want to emphasize that Israel is the only country in the world that has ever successfully defended itself against a ballistic missile attack. Furthermore, from my perspective, many high-tech industries are booming in Israel, including cybersecurity, cutting edge medicine, and other fields.

Additionally, more and more people have a religious connection after October 7, and the general view of the religious that serve in the army is much more positive as well.

What do most people outside of Israel not know about the healthcare system there?

There is a two-tiered system. If you are a top doctor, you can arrange with the Kuppah (clinic) that you will see clinic patients twice a week and for the other three days you will see patients privately. So, if I call the Kuppah now, in May 2025, and ask for an appointment with top-doctor X, I will be given a date of February 2026. But what if I want an earlier appointment? “Sure,” the clerk says, “come in this Thursday, but you will have to

pay top dollar out of your own pocket.”

Why does the government allow this?

The government wants to keep the top doctors in Israel. If this wasn’t allowed, the best providers would leave. Of course, this creates a situation where a select few physicians are earning extremely high incomes, while the majority of doctors earn a quite middling salary. And, by the way, in Israeli hospitals, most of the male nurses and many of the female nurses are Arabs. This can be quite unsettling for some people.

What is your view on charedim serving in the IDF?

It’s more of a complicated discussion than people realize. The top brass of the army beckons the charedim to enlist and promises that certain religious standards will be maintained, i.e., no women officers, proper kashrut standards, etc. But think about it – all the top officers in the IDF are hardcore secular leftists who certainly don’t know much or care much about religious standards and in many cases actually despise the charedim. Does it make sense that these people can be relied on to ensure that the charedi boys will remain religious at the end of their service? Here’s an example to point: this past Pesach, a unit of charedi boys sat down for their promised Seder. At the meal, they were given only fruits and vegetables – no matzah, meat, or any other required items for the Seder. Of course, the army investigated the matter and promptly sent over the shmura matzah to the charedi soldiers – nine days later!

This underscores the point – you can be promised all you want, but once you are in the army, there is nobody to talk to. If I was a charedi leader, I would think long and hard about entrusting my boys’ religious future to hardcore secular leftists (and FYI all of my family members who were physically able did serve in the IDF).

The prime minister has been criticized for buckling under to pressure from the American government. Some have defended Netanyahu by saying that he was privy to consequential information not available to the public. Do you have any insight on this subject?

I can tell you for a fact that this is true.

What makes you hopeful for the future?

The demographics are working in favor of the religious in Israel. While the secular Israelis are getting married in their thirties and having two kids, the religious are giving birth in their early twenties and having six kids. So not only are more religious children born, but for each two generations of secular Israelis, there will be three generations of the Dati and charedi. As an example, baruch Hashem, I have 20 grandchildren, while my secular co-workers, who are the same age as me, are still waiting for their first grandchild. The religious will outpace the secular exponentially – not to mention that many of the secular are leaving the country. Eventually, the religious will have a greater majority in the Knesset and more influence on how the state develops.

Inspired Living

Raizy FR ied Talks abou T Cooking, Conne CT ing, and Maxi M izing you

R ko C hos

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f all the kosher cookbook writers and food content creators you know, how many run their own educational web platform and have a self-help book?

For many years, Raizy was a cookbook author, recipe developer, and blogger, showcasing and creating spins on traditional chassidishe recipes, as well as homemaking content. Now, Raizy has a hard time fitting in all of the titles she considers herself: speaker, author, host, storyteller and content creator with close to 60K followers. Though recipe developing and food blogging was already a large enough career in and of itself, Raizy’s become known for far more than her recipes.

Why wasn’t a growing, niche career in food enough?

Raizy had what she considers a “typical” chassidishe upbringing: growing up in Boro Park, Brooklyn, she went to a “typical” Belz chassidishe school. But Raizy’s love of creativity, novelty and curiosity made her atypical. From a young age, she recalls having strong intellectual curiosity, which she often felt went unmet in her studies at school.

“We heard a pasuk, followed by what Rashi, Metzudas David, Ramban said, and everyone was just content with these answers and would be writing, writing, writing in their notebook; but a lot of times the translation or answers didn’t satisfy me,” she recalled.

“In school, my classmates would be talking about how cute their baby siblings are, or about other people; I was always bored by these surface level conversations and was craving more,” she shared.

This made it difficult to find like-minded peers; Raizy recalls having only one friend who shared some of her intellectual interests.

“Everyone seemed satisfied playing in the streets with neighbors, sitting and shmoozing in the pizza store,” she said. “I was always inside, trying to find something creative to do. I wanted to go to Manhattan, travel, see new things.”

Raizy found outlets for her creativity, like scrapbooking and creating her school’s yearbooks, and her parents sent her to graphic design courses and piano lessons. But besides for pining for more in day-today life, Raizy felt dissatisfied internally. She now knows what she was yearning for was personal and spiritual learning and growth, but talking about growth and spirituality was something she recalls being considered “nerdy.”

“It was like: you’re either a rebbetzin, so you talk about spirituality, yearn for to become better, to know more, etc. Or, you’re not a rebbetzin, and so you should just know the information you learned in class, memorize it, and do well on your Chumash and Navi test.”

Raizy’s creative inclination didn’t land her in the kitchen until marriage. After getting married straight out of high school, Raizy worked as a graphic designer and later trained as a hairstylist and bridal makeup artist. But now that cooking and entertaining was such a frequent and natural part of life, Raizy wanted more out of it.

“Most people maybe just wanted to cross cooking off the list, but I wanted to make it into an experience,” she said. “I would set the table nicely and present food in different ways. I was always looking to create something to celebrate; we even had a ‘30 days

married’ party that I made.”

In 2015, Raizy found Instagram, still in its beginning stages, and would post her food, recipes, styling and tablescapes. With Instagram still being new and the kosher food content market being quite unsaturated, it didn’t take long for Raizy to become noticed: especially as her focus was to present chassidishe food, which was niche. Starting off with the screen name Ray Zee, Raizy passively posted her content for a year or two, until a friend in marketing encouraged her to make a brand out of her work. Soon, with brands starting to reach out to work with her and getting her own column in a magazine, she dropped her hair and makeup work and focused on blogging and recipes. Once features like stories and reels made headway, things picked up speed and the anonymous “Ray Zee” became “raizyscookin,” with a brand and a face.

Though most women in Raizy’s community didn’t have their face and name in the public eye anywhere near the same degree, she doesn’t recall getting much pushback.

“At the time, Instagram was still very new,” she said. “Those who didn’t have it wouldn’t have known what I was doing, and those who did have it and followed me, well, had Instagram themselves.”

But while her career began to develop, she began to realize that she had a larger battle at hand than just finding creative outlets: a battle within herself.

“I felt like a trainwreck. I was anxious, having a hard time navigating family situations, and still felt this gaping hole inside of me – I felt there was more to life than what I was sharing.”

With a combination of internal and medical issues that developed, Raizy began meeting with a coach.

“It was an eye-opening experience: she was talking about self-esteem and inner beliefs, things that I had never talked about or explored before.”

Though she already had a career that was evolving in food, Raizy realized that her self-concept hadn’t developed along with it.

“I started to realize what makes you a good wife, a good mother, a good homemaker isn’t how good your meat is, how nice your table looks: it’s how well you can stay in control of your emotions, your ability to stay calm, whether you have interests and are constantly learning and growing,” she shared. “I would get into bad moods because I was up all hours of the morning making homemade dips for Shabbos and was exhausted. Really, no one cares whether the dips were homemade or not – you can buy food, but you can’t buy a calm and happy mother and wife.”

With her newfound social and emotional knowledge and after five years of recipe creation, food styling and photography, Raizy published her first cookbook, Lekovod Shabbos Kodesh, in 2020, and her second, Lekoved Shabbos Kodesh for Kids and Kids at Heart, in 2021.

But after her second cookbook was published, things started to shift. Though Raizy felt deep satisfaction from being able to engage in creativity as a career and share it with others, she was still fascinated by the area of self-exploration and self-concept after seeing how much it had changed her life. And with constant discussion of food and time spent recipe testing for so long, at some point, it began to feel shallow.

“I was realizing, yes, I need an outlet for my creativity as part of my happiness and fulfillment in life, but creativity by itself wasn’t going to fill that gaping hole I had inside,” she said.

The result was creating what she was lacking in childhood and adolescence: the engaging, stimulating, intellectually and spiritually satisfying “girl-talk” conversations she had always wished for, through her platform Inspired Living. Her goal was to expand her

life past food creation and recipe development and put cooking in the context of a more broad goal: creating the most beautiful and meaningful life possible. Raizy wanted a place she, and other Jewish women, could explore the vast topics and conversations that permeate day-to-day Jewish life, and a platform that could be a place of learning and self-development.

“I’ve learned that whatever you talk about, whatever you spend a lot of time on, becomes you,” she observes. “When I look on Instagram, and I see someone only talks about fashion or only talks about hair….it reminds me of that idea, because I’ve learned when you focus on one area, it becomes you. You have to make sure you’re constantly growing as a person and in your interests, both inside and outside of your career.”

Raizy gives the same advice about preparing for yom tov: “If your whole yom tov preparation is about cooking, you’ll feel like a slave. Many women come to yom tov, especially Pesach, depleted, because Pesach became about crossing things off of a list, and it’s all you’re involved in.

“It’s important to stay stimulated intellectually and spiritually during yom tov season,” she advises. “Everyone has to do the physical preparation and cooking, but whether you feel like the whole yom tov is about food prep will depend if you’re involved in anything else. I make sure to listen to podcasts or a shiur while cooking something to add meaning, or to stimulate my mind through the tasks.”

When thinking of how the concept of Inspired Living would play out, Raizy made the decision to take the platform outside of Instagram. Raizy was grateful to and valued Instagram for giving her a voice at a time when, in the kosher food industry, it would have been difficult to get published or make head-

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way without protektsia. Instead, she got to create her own public portfolio on her own terms. But the more social media grew, she felt it becoming less of a place for healthy connection, a place less conducive for effectively sharing educational or meaningful content.

“In my eyes, it was growing more towards a place of being a platform conducive for doom scrolling.”

Raizy also had her community in mind when thinking about the location for Inspired Living: though Youtube would have been a conducive place for the types of content and discussions she wanted to have, she knew many in her community wouldn’t be able to access it because of internet filters. Eventually, she decided on a website and app-based platform that would be accessible to all.

“It’s like Netflix for the Jewish woman but more educational.”

Launched in 2022, Inspired Living is now a video-based subscription service with over 150 videos, with content put out weekly, on a wide range of topics, including homemaking; parenting; marriage; Yiddishkeit; nutrition; psychology; and of course, recipes. On it, you can learn to bake challah with Raizy; make creative mishloach manot; watch how to design children’s bedrooms on a budget; tour a new facility for new mothers; or watch her host experts on parenting teens, shidduchim, or building confidence.

Raizy often picks topics she’s passionate about, experiences she knows her friends are going through or sometimes casually asks friends what would be interesting for them to hear about. She also talks about issues relating to various life stages in women’s lives or marital issues that she knows won’t be talked about in mainstream publications.

“It’s important to talk about certain topics in the right place,” she shares. “But if we don’t have a space to talk about these topics at all, we, and our children, never hear about the proper hashkafa on these topics; people start to go elsewhere, and the only places you have to see how people handle these issues are secular forums.”

Raizy sees the platform as the right in-between, with it being accessible but not necessarily public and “out there” for anyone to see.

Although women’s magazines at times discuss these topics, Raizy feels the anonymity of the writers and lack of faces make it hard to connect, relate, and feel validated.

“On the Inspired Living platform, you’re watching two people, in real life, talk about these issues; you can nod your head along with us, you can see our emotions and can relate to our feelings in a way that you can’t in a magazine column. By having both an expert, and me, being a regular person, discuss topics in real time together, we can use plain language that everyone can relate to and understand.”

She adds, “The feedback we get is that people feel like we’re talking directly to them.”

Raizy’s recent book, Anatomy of Yenta, received a lot of the same response; although it discusses many psychological and religious principles, it’s written by someone who is not a professional in those fields, and the plain language and frank discussions have made readers feel like they’re “having a conversation with a friend, while they’re reading.” Although she doesn’t share exact numbers, Raizy says Inspired Living subscription numbers are in the thousands.

Through a new side of her career came much new professional learning. Raizy quickly learned the crucial importance of finding the right person to talk about a given topic.

“There are many people who are experts in their field or have amazing stories, but the presentation falls flat when on camera; this is a video-based platform, so the person has to be engaging,” she observes.

Before inviting someone on the platform, she’ll often have a video conversation with them or an interview on Zoom.

“If I’m bored during the interview, I know it’s likely others will be, too,” she explains.

She’s also learned a person’s overall aesthetic and approach matters in terms of how the content they are presenting will come across.

“When I grew up, the only role models there were to look up to in the area of learning and spirituality were morahs or rebbetzins. But they didn’t look like you, dress like you or how you wanted to, and so if one of them was giving a lesson about tzinius, it doesn’t get across the same way as if you hear a lesson about tzinius from someone you feel similar to, or someone who dresses beautifully or stylishly,” she notes.

“It matters who presents the idea and how it’s presented. If someone comes to talk about how you shouldn’t martyr yourself for Shabbos and cook so much, but they themselves hate cooking, how effective will that message be? It’s more effective if you have someone who loves cooking and loves making things beautiful, someone who can understand you but also guide you in how to properly spend your time.”

Some people have questioned the helpfulness of the almost perfect, “Marth Stewart-esque” aura of Raizy’s content. When you watch how Raizy creates Melava Malka every week, with a well designed video taking you around her beautifully set, Motzei Shabbos table; her children dressed impeccably and creatively presented foods; or watch her prepare perfectly balanced family dinners and school lunches while being well-dressed and put together for every episode, it’s easy to wonder how it’s all possibleand whether it’s beneficial to make life look so perfect. Some have questioned whether it’s more valuable to show more of the realistic “mess” of the day-to-day.

“If I’m going to take my phone and do an Instagram story while I’m a mess: how does that help anyone? Maybe someone feels better about themselves because they say, “Well, if she’s a mess, it’s okay that I’m one, too.’

“But showing yourself and your life is a mess doesn’t help you to

come out of that place; it’s not constructive,” she asserts.

“I believe in being vulnerable. I share a lot on my platforms and in my books about my personal struggles. There’s a way to be vulnerable and real: but do it in a dignified, constructive way. I personally don’t want to watch other people be a mess, I don’t want to see them fighting with their kids, or see their messy homes: so why would I create that? My platform is about learning how to create a beautiful life. I want to create things that uplift me and that I myself want to see. I don’t enjoy seeing someone else looking like a trainwreck, even though, of course, I myself look like that sometimes.”

In 2024, Raizy published her book Anatomy of a Yenta: both a memoir of sorts and a self-help book for those trying to graduate from being a “yenta,” someone weighed down by being engrossed in gossip and surface level aspirations, into becoming a woman of substance, interests, and elegance. The book offers a combination of life experiences, research, and practical tips on working towards one’s potential and becoming someone most aligned with their potential.

Though she never intended on writing a book per se, Raizy has always considered herself a “writer,” collecting her thoughts and experiences through her life journeys and experiences, both on paper and simply on her notes app on her phone. Though she toyed with the idea of formally collating her thoughts into a book for some time, it was Raizy noticing there was not much in the Jewish book world that could offer what her book could, especially marketed towards women, that made her take the plunge.

One of Raizy’s biggest pieces of advice for women and young women from Anatomy of a Yenta is a reflection of the journey of her career: keep expanding your interests and always be learning something. She cautions that in the absence of women learning and growing, and in the absence of those things being valued for women, a vacuum of space and time develops that can easily be filled with gossip and valuing surface level things; ultimately, “yenta” behavior is likely to follow.

She says, “I myself am a work in progress, and I’m always making sure that I am working on something and learning something new. Right now, I’m trying to learn how to do the right thing, and be giving and be there for people when they need help, but not letting my own emotions be dictated by their reactions. For example, if I work hard to try and make a shidduch and someone yells at me for the suggestion, I’m working on not getting so affected by their negative response, and focusing on the good that I tried to do.”

For Raizy, her early career in food and her current involvement in motivational speaking and meaningful content creation are not a contradiction or separate from each other: they’re all part of the same goal.

“For me, food, recipe creation, tablespaces, lifestyle content – all of the topics that I still talk about and present on – they’re all part of how to live and create the most beautiful and meaningful life that we can. Food happens to be a part of that, but it’s not everything.

“My message in my book and in my content is: women are multidimensional,” she says. “There’s no reason you can’t shine in every area of your life. It’s not a contradiction to set a beautiful Shabbos tablescape and also be well versed on the parsha. Do them both. Use all of your kochos with the goal of creating a beautiful, meaningful life. If you are very into your looks and how you dress for that purpose on its own, it will become you. But if you focus on presenting yourself beautifully for your family, for being an ambassador of Hashem, then it just becomes part of a larger goal. If we women could believe we could be a combination of growth-oriented, well-read, educated, but also ‘with it’ and put together, how much better would it be for the next generation of girls?”

Though Raizy still has ideas for future cookbooks and recipes, she no longer feels that’s a big part of her calling.

“There’s no shortage of people giving good recipes,” she says. “But there is a shortage of frum women talking about important topics in an appropriate place: women’s health, emotional intelligence, how to discuss body issues with your children – normal struggles that need a healthy place to be discussed.”

Finally in a place where she feels her thirst for creativity, meaning and self-growth are being actualized, Raizy wishes she could go back and tell her younger self how it’s specifically the differences she was ashamed of that led her to where she is.

“High school and elementary school are hard because you can’t choose who’s around you. It’s hard if you don’t find anyone on the same page as you; it can be isolating, and it can make you doubt whether being different is a good thing,” she observes.

“But as life goes on, you attract your own tribe, your own group, and they can be from different locations, different communities. My close friends now are all types of women: they travel, run businesses, and have many interests. I have a lot of friends who are coaches and therapists, because they share my interests and goals. My life right now is so interesting and engaging: there’s always something going on and something new I’m involved in. And I realized it’s because, if you’re a meaningful, interesting person, and you work on yourself and keep looking for new life experiences, you’re eventually going to attract a life that reflects that. You’re going to find and attract others who also work on themselves and who want an exciting life.”

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nspiration Nation

WChana Devorah Mishler A Former Pastor’s Journey to Judaism

By Eliyahu RosEnBERg

hen Chana Devorah was a young girl — back when her name was still Arelys — she thought her family was, to say the least, intriguing.

She was raised, in her words, as a “hardcore Catholic.” She and her family would attend church services every Sunday. She received a Catholic school education. And as a teenager, she worked as a church teacher for Catholic children. Plus, her family’s favorite pastime seemed to be reading the Christian Bible. So, in a sense, they were your typical Catholic family.

In Her Words…

It wouldn’t be far off to say that Chana Devorah’s younger years revolved around Catholicism, almost like the Earth orbits the Sun. But saying that would fail to capture the full picture of her childhood. It seemed as though, in addition to Christianity, there was another faith her family — her grandmother, in particular, whom she grew up with — lived by. There was this imperceptible, nearly invisible force that seemingly governed parts of their world. And yet, despite its power, no one knew what it was.

“In my house, I used to see a lot of stuff that was out of the ordinary — that

i believe 100% in hashgacha pratis. hashem puts everything in front of us. he orchestrates everything behind the scenes. a nd we can’t see or understand everything. We just have to follow him. Trust in hashem 100%. surrender. a nd just tell him, ‘ you are the Boss, and you are in control.’ a nd everything will be better.

hashem is one Who gives me the strength to keep going every day.

in Judaism, we know we have to do mitzvot. not for the sake of being rewarded, but because we love hashem. a nd because he loves us so much, we want to reciprocate that love by serving him and trying to imitate him in every possible way. That’s why we have so many mitzvot.

I didn’t see any other family doing,” Chana Devorah Mishler recounts. “We were Catholics, but my grandmother would light candles on Friday before sunset. No bracha. No reason. So, I asked her, ‘Why do you light candles?’ And she would tell me, ‘Oh, I learned it from my mother.’”

When the family lost a loved one, Chana Devorah recalls her grandmother draping the mirrors with large towels. “When you’re mourning,” her grandmother would say, “you cannot look at yourself in the mirror.” Additionally, Chana Devorah’s grandparents taught her Ladino, a language spoken nearly exclusively by Sephardic Jews that combines Spanish, Hebrew, and other languages.

There were other irregularities, as well. Christians can definitely be charitable, but when it came to tzedakah, her grandmother seemed to be from another world entirely.

“In my house, we used to feed from 15 to 20 people every day — people who didn’t have what to eat,” shares Chana Devorah. “If I would go out and find a hungry child on the street, I would bring that child to my house. I would offer them a shower, a change of clothes, and food to eat. That’s the family that I come from.”

Chana Devorah’s grandmother would often exclaim, “Don’t pray to [Yoshke]. Pray to G-d.” To us, that seems obvious. But when a girl hears her trinity-believing grandmother say that, it comes across as contradictory.

And then there was her grandma’s odd little catchphrase: “Remember, everywhere you go,” she would tell Chana Devorah, “that you are a child of

the covenant.” Chana Devorah would, years later, learn what her grandmother meant by that.

* * *

From a young age, Chana Devorah Mishler always felt uneasy about Christianity.

“I’m not a person who could believe blindly, but I am a person of conviction,” she shares. “If I don’t see it and you don’t prove it to me, I can’t believe in it. That’s why I had such a hard time being a Christian. Because, when you’re a Christian, they want you to follow everything blindly.”

Yet, little contradictions haunted her. She would look at the “New” Testament, as they call it, and then she would read the “Old” Testament (the Torah), and she couldn’t wrap her head around how the two books could be compatible. In the Christian Bible, it says that Yoshke died for everyone; that he served as a human sacrifice to atone for all of humanity’s sins. But then, you look at the Torah, which Christians also believe is the word of G-d, and you see clearly that: 1) Human sacrifices are an abomination in Hashem’s eyes, and 2) nobody, other than you, can pay for your sins.

Chana Devorah wasn’t quiet about her doubts, not out of rebellion, but because she genuinely wanted answers. In church, she would frequently question the sermons. Once, the preacher declared, “Anyone who was born and died before Yoshke is burning in [gehenom] for eternity.”

When Chana Devorah heard that, she rose from her seat.

“Excuse me? Did I mishear you?” she asked incredulously. “Are you telling me that Moses and Abraham, who were

counted among the most righteous people on Earth, are burning in [gehenom]?”

The preacher immediately got defensive. And she was left without an ounce of clarity.

Still, it wasn’t immediately clear to Chana Devorah that Christianity wasn’t for her. Though she felt disconnected from her faith, she initially blamed that on Catholicism. So, in her 20s, she became a different type of Christian: a Protestant evangelical. When that didn’t feel right, she thought that if she dug deeper, she would find the spark, the answers she’d been searching for. So, she became a pastor.

“I moved to Canada because I married a Canadian. In Canada, I went to a Christian church. Same things, same ritual,” she recalls. “One Sunday, it was what they called Pentecost Sunday, and I arrived at church, and I started crying. I couldn’t stop crying. I had this feeling of guilt in my heart, like I was doing something really wrong.”

It didn’t make any sense to her. She was doing everything she thought she should. Yet, despite her high position in the church, at that stage in her life, she never felt further from G-d. She went home. She continued crying. “G-d, please tell me. What am I doing wrong?” she pleaded. “Why do I have this feeling of guilt, like I’m doing something very wrong? Please, G-d. Please show me the way.”

“A few days after that, I had a dream. I’m sitting on the staircase of my house in Ottawa, Canada. And I see the resemblance of an angel,” Chana Devorah recounts. “And he talks to me and tells me, ‘You know why you feel so uncomfortable going to church? Because you don’t belong there. Do you know that there is a covenant between the people of Israel and G-d? The covenant was given at Mount Sinai, and it’s called the Torah, or the ketubah between G-d and the Jewish people.’ That was the first time I heard a Hebrew word in my

whole life. He told me, ‘The reason you feel this way is because…you are part of the people of Israel.’”

Chana Devorah woke up with tears streaming down her face. “This is crazy,” she thought. She bolted to her computer and Googled the word “ketubah.” She stared at her screen in disbelief. What was happening to her? What did her dream mean?

She started researching Judaism. Soon thereafter, she stumbled upon “The Last Sephardic,” a documentary about the expulsion and forced conversion of Sephardic Jews during the Spanish Inquisition. While watching it, she heard a very familiar language: Ladino, the language that she thought only her grandparents spoke.

* * *

Chana Devorah thought about Judaism for a while. She even spoke to her mother about it. Indeed, all the evidence — the random Friday night candle lighting, the mourning customs, their rare Sephardic language, her grandmother’s wisdom — pointed to a Jewish lineage obscured by time.

“I believe my family comes from the Anusim, or Marranos,” she says, referring to the Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity in Spain or Portugal but continued to practice in secret.

“I’m sure they were forced to convert.”

Later, during her formal conversion process, that suspicion was confirmed by a conversation she had with one of the rabbis of the beis din.

“One of the chief rabbis in Canada asked me in the first meeting, ‘Do you speak Ladino?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I learned Ladino from my grandparents.’

And we started having a conversation in Ladino,” Chana Devorah recalls. “And he told the other dayanim, ‘She’s definitely Jewish. Nobody on Earth would speak Ladino if they didn’t come from the Inquisition from Spain or Portugal.’”

The moment she uncovered her Jewish heritage, something clicked. She knew, without hesitation, that this was her path. But she wanted there to be no

doubts halachically about her Jewishness. As such, she went to the strictest Beis Din in North America — the charedi one in Toronto — and underwent the formal conversion process. Around one year later, on September 18, 2016, she officially became Jewish, becoming known as Chaya Chana Devorah.

But her conversion wasn’t only about her identity. In a way, she felt like she was reclaiming the Jewishness her family had been robbed of. After centuries of spiritual distance, she was finally bringing her family back to its roots. Indeed, her favorite mitzvah is the one her grandmother performed every Friday: lighting Shabbat lights.

“When I light Shabbat candles, I feel like I am making up for all my past generations,” she declares. “And I feel like I’m bringing light to the world.”

* * *

Make no mistake. There were challenges along the way. Changing one’s faith is hard for anyone. But transforming one’s life is especially difficult when it’s done practically overnight, as it was for Chana Devorah Mishler. At times, she felt she was progressing at a dizzying pace, and she prayed to G-d to slow her down. Abandoning Christianity also took some time for her to get used to.

“In Christianity, they teach you that Yoshke paid for all your sins and you don’t have to do anything anymore, because you are saved by grace,” she explains. “In Judaism, we know we have to do mitzvot. Not for the sake of being rewarded, but because we love Hashem. And because He loves us so much, we want to reciprocate that love by serving Him and trying to imitate Him in every possible way. That’s why we have so many mitzvot.”

There were other struggles as well. Although her then-husband converted with her, she soon realized that their marriage couldn’t last due to incompatibility issues. She would later meet and get remarried to her current husband.

But through her challenges, she found deep comfort in her flourish -

ing relationship with Hashem. Having grown up in a single-mother home, Chana Devorah truly felt that Hashem was her one and only Father. And so, she always found herself, no matter the time or place, in dialogue with G-d. “Hashem is one who gives me the strength to keep going every day,” she declares.

At the time of her conversion, her son was a teenage boy. Because he was past the age of bar mitzvah, her conversion wouldn’t be enough to make him Jewish. Indeed, he would have to go through the geirus process, too.

“I gave him the option,” Chana Devorah recalls. “I told him, ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I know it’s a lot to learn, and I don’t want to put pressure on you.’ So, he answered me, ‘Mama, this is where I belong. This is who I want to be.’”

* * *

Today, Chana Devorah Mishler’s son is 23 years old. “He was the only son that Hashem gave me,” she says. “He’s a miracle child.”

Indeed, for quite some time, Chana Devorah couldn’t have children. Her doctors told her that it would be absolutely impossible for her to have a child. Her only option, they suggested, was to adopt. Although she wasn’t yet officially Jewish, she had tremendous emunah. She declared: “No. G-d can do anything. And I know He will make me a mother.” And He did. When she gave birth, her doctor told her, “You are living proof that G-d makes miracles.”

When her son converted, he chose the name Shmuel. She, on the other hand, became Chana, naming herself after Shmuel HaNavi’s mother, who struggled for years with infertility.

“I believe 100% in hashgacha pratis. Hashem puts everything in front of us. He orchestrates everything behind the scenes. And we can’t see or understand everything. We just have to follow Him,” Chana Devorah concludes. “Trust in Hashem 100%. Surrender. And just tell Him, ‘You are the Boss, and You are in control.’ And everything will be better.”

Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

I’m 25 years old and have been dating for four years. The guy I’m dating now is a really nice guy but much more on the nerdy side than what I wanted. Our deep conversations are great, and we align on almost everything important. I just wish he was less nerdy. Recently, he told me the plan for our date was to go to D.C., get something to eat and go to the mall. I was excited to go to the mall until I realized on the date he meant the National Mall (to go see historical sites, etc.) – just another thing that highlights our differences.

Could such a difference still work in a relationship? I would love the panel’s perspective…

Aliza*

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.

It could definitely work. Keep dating and see if you like him more. Get to know him better and understand where his interests come from. Work out some dating location ideas together. Is he open to exploring new hobbies, experiences, and interests? Does he respect your interests and differences? Is he flexible? Caring? Are you enjoying your time together? How is the communication going? Are you able to work out disagreements and conflicts? Keep going. Nerdiness is neither terminal nor permanent. At the same time, don’t think you will change another person’s core. Nerdiness is not necessarily core, however, and it is relative. Find out.

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

Dear Aliza,

Dating is truly a learning experience. While some people marry the first person they date, others need more time to figure out what really matters to them. Learning from each relationship, what worked and what didn’t, is an essential part of the process.

You’ve been dating for four years, and from what you describe, this may be the first time you’ve connected with

someone on a deeper level. That says a lot. It sounds like many of the core elements you’re looking for are already in place.

As for him being nerdier than you’d like, try to embrace it. If his clothes are outdated, there’s nothing wrong with guiding him. You can offer to take him to the mall (the type with Macy’s, not monuments) and help him pick out some clothes that are more fashionable. It could be that this is one thing he appreciates about you specifically!

More importantly, try reframing how you think about his personality. Instead of saying, “Of course he wanted to go see historical sites instead of Sephora,” tell yourself, “How amazing is it that I’m with someone so curious, so thoughtful, and so smart?” The way we talk to ourselves has real power. It can shape how we feel about others and even influence how our relationships unfold. If you respect him, share values, and enjoy meaningful conversations, that’s a strong foundation. With the right mindset and mutual effort, this kind of relationship definitely has potential.

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey

Galler

Are you serious? You’ve been dating for four years and still haven’t figured out that nerds make the very best husbands and fathers?

The boyfriend that you’re describing sounds wonderful. If we would publish

his email address, I am willing to bet that several dozen single, young women would immediately send him their resumés.

Here’s a suggestion: Why not tell him that for your next date together, you would like to do all the planning by yourself. Give him a chance to experience and enjoy your creativity and spontaneity.

By blending, or integrating, his nerdy, serious, academic personality, with your more social, extroverted, and impulsive personality, it sounds like a marriage made in heaven. This would be a wonderful marriage where you could both grow and expand your horizons together.

For fun, I searched online for quotes from women who married “nerdy” guys and were asked how it “turned out” for them. Here’s a sampling of what I found:

You’ve been dating for four years and still haven’t figured out that nerds make the very best husbands and fathers?

*“I married a nerd. Turns out, I married a really good problem-solver. My husband is amazing at fixing things, from the Wi-Fi to my life.”

*“My husband is a nerd, and he’s obsessed with Star Wars. Turns out, ‘May the Force Be With You’ is a good motto

for married life, too.”

*“My husband is a nerd, and he loves playing video games. Turns out, he’s also really good at patience and strategy.”

*“My husband is a nerd, and he knows every trivia question. Turns out, he’s also great at remembering important dates, like anniversaries and birthdays.”

*“My husband is a nerd, and he loves to read. Turns out, he’s also a great listener.”

*“I married a nerd, and it turns out that I was guaranteed a lifetime of logic, love, and endless debate about the best sci-fi series.”

Best wishes to the two of you in navigating a healthy balance between stability and adventure.

Reader’s Response

Isaiah Cox, the Curmudgeon

Dear Aliza, Differences are good! After all, aren’t the differences between men and women (not just the obvious physical ones) what make marriage interesting in the first place? Indeed, the deepest relationships we are supposed to have are between husband and wife, and between ourselves and Hashem. Wouldn’t you say there are some pretty stark differences there?

After all, as long as two different people agree on the Big Questions (the few truly non-negotiable items), then they should be willing to give in on everything else – and get married!

Pulling It All Together

The Navidaters

Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists

Dear Aliza,

Thanks so much for writing in.

When you say he’s “nerdy,” I find myself wondering what that means to you. Is it about energy? Interests? A vibe that feels different from what you pictured for yourself? Sometimes “nerdy” is just code for “not my usual type,” and it’s worth getting curious about what that brings up.

Before I go on, I want to take a moment to speak directly to anyone reading this who has ever been called nerdy – maybe by a date, a partner, or even by yourself. I know that word can bring up a lot. It might touch on old wounds

or moments when you felt dismissed for loving what you love or showing up with sincerity and depth. Please know, I see that. This isn’t about mocking or reducing anyone. Some of the most thoughtful, creative, and deeply alive people I know might call themselves a little nerdy.

Now, back to your question. It’s completely valid to want a partner who shares your idea of fun. For some people, aligning in how you spend time together feels essential. If you’re noticing that the differences in your styles or preferences are starting to chip away

I think you are asking the wrong questions. The right questions are:

1) Are you communicating well; and 2) Can you respect each other?

Communication: There seems to be a rather huge gap: you thought the DC Mall was a place to go shopping, and your young man thought it was an opportunity to look at art and discuss history and culture. It is clear that you are not speaking the same language!

I know you say that you agree on the Big Questions, writing, “We align on almost everything important.” But if you are not speaking the same language, how do you know that you are, actually, aligned? You might have been entirely misinterpreting what he has been saying all along! This would not be as rare as you might think: an entire area of academic scholarship has been devoted to the ways in which men and women (fail to) understand each other.

Start with that. And see if you are actually as well aligned as you thought you were.

Respect: You also need to ask a

at your connection or chemistry, that’s something to take seriously. These things matter.

Because at the heart of any lasting relationship is chemistry, desire, and respect for who your person truly is.

That’s the glue. When those elements are alive, even the differences can feel interesting or expansive. When they’re missing, even the shared interests can feel flat.

That said, not every couple enjoys all the same things. And that can be okay. Differences can stretch us in meaningful ways. You might learn to take turns, laugh at the mismatches, or create space

much more fundamental question. You have already volunteered that you look down on men who are “nerdy.” This is a problem. Can you respect him? Because if you cannot, then you do not belong together.

And he has to ask the very same question about you. Is he capable of respecting you and your very different perspective on life? That answer also has to be a resounding “yes.”

If you cannot both respect the other person and their interests enough to constructively engage and bridge the gap between you, then I am afraid you will not going to be able to build a successful marriage.

for your own interests while still returning to each other with love and curiosity. What matters is how those differences feel over time. Are they pulling you apart or inviting you to grow?

Every relationship is a balance between shared joy and respectful space. The more honestly you explore what works for you, the more you’ll be able to build something grounded, connected, and real or exit a relationship that is not meant for you.

Warmly, Jennifer Nerdiness is neither terminal nor permanent.

Walk into any health food store or scroll through social media wellness pages, and you’ll see it everywhere: the word “natural.” Natural teas for sleep. Natural pills for stress. Natural mushrooms for depression.

In a world where prescription medications come with long labels and side effect warnings, natural remedies seem like the gentler, cleaner, safer choice. And sometimes, they are.

But the truth is that just because something is natural doesn’t automatically make it safe, especially when it comes to treating mental health symptoms.

This isn’t about bashing herbs or plants or saying pharmaceuticals are always better. It’s about being realistic. Some of nature’s gifts are powerful – and with power comes responsibility. The idea that “if it’s natural, it must be harmless” is a comforting myth. But it’s still a myth.

Let’s talk about why.

Nature is Powerful— for Better and Worse

Many plants and natural substances really do affect the brain. That’s why people take them! Some calm the nerves, others lift the mood, and a few might even spark profound insights or altered states of consciousness. But that same power can also cause side effects, especially when these substances are taken without medical guidance.

Take St. John’s wort, a flowering plant used for mild depression. Some research supports its benefits. But it also messes with how your liver processes medications. That can mean your medication stops working…or your antidepressant dose becomes dangerously high…or your HIV treatment stops being effective.

Health & F tness Natural

The Most Misunderstood Word in Wellness

By Rivka Kramer, PMHNP-BC

And then there’s kava, a root from the South Pacific known for its calming effects. It’s helped some people with anxiety, but in rare cases, it’s also been linked to serious liver damage, including liver failure. Some countries have banned it entirely. Yet in others, it’s sold over the counter as a “natural chill pill.”

Natural? Yes. Harmless? Not always.

You Don’t Always Know What You’re Getting

Unlike prescription drugs, which are regulated for quality and dosage, natural products often come with very little standardization. That means what’s in one bottle or capsule might be completely different from the next, even if the label looks the same.

One common example: psilocybin mushrooms, used in some cultures and now in scientific studies to treat depression or PTSD. Even within the same species, the amount of psilocybin can vary a lot. So can the experience. One mush-

room might give you a calm, eye-opening insight. Another might cause hours of fear and confusion.

The same goes for many herbs and supplements – valerian root, kratom, ayahuasca, you name it. The strength, purity, and presence of contaminants like pesticides or mold can vary. And without regulation, you just don’t know.

Even trusted companies can have lapses in quality control, and independent lab testing isn’t always done – or shared. That leaves consumers with the burden of trust and risk.

What Works for One Person Might Not Work for You

Here’s something we sometimes forget: our brains are incredibly unique. Your reaction to a substance depends on a whole web of factors: your genetics, your gut health, your sleep habits, your existing medications, and even your past traumas.

For one person, an herbal tea might

take the edge off anxiety. For another, it might cause grogginess, heart palpitations, or an unexpected mood shift. And someone with bipolar disorder who takes a stimulant-like natural product could be pushed into a manic episode.

Mental health symptoms can be complex. And even with the best intentions, a plant or mushroom that helps one person might worsen things for someone else.

That’s not a failure of nature; it’s just a reminder that there’s no one-size-fitsall solution, natural or not. Personalization matters – so does monitoring.

Watch Out for Interactions

Another layer to all this: natural doesn’t mean “won’t interfere with my meds.”

A lot of people trying natural remedies are already taking prescription medications for things like anxiety, depression, or sleep. And mixing the two can be tricky – even dangerous.

For example:

• St. John’s wort + antidepressants = risk of serotonin syndrome (a potentially life-threatening overload of serotonin).

• Valerian root + sleeping pills = risk of over-sedation or next-day fog.

• Ayahuasca or magic mushrooms + SSRIs = unknown or unstable effects that could be overwhelming.

And then there’s CBD, often marketed as a cure-all. While it helps some people, it can change how your body processes other medications, especially antipsychotics and blood thinners.

The point? Even though these are natural substances, they can act like drugs in your body – and they can clash with other substances you’re taking.

Natural Remedies Can Delay Real Help

One of the biggest risks isn’t even

a side effect. It’s what happens when people delay getting professional care because they’re relying on natural fixes. This is especially true in mental health. When symptoms creep in – low mood, irritability, lack of sleep, disconnection – it’s tempting to try a supplement and hope it passes. Maybe you don’t want a diagnosis. Maybe therapy feels too big. Maybe meds feel too scary.

But sometimes, relying only on natural options can mean pushing back the moment when you actually get the help you need. And that can make recovery harder in the long run.

Natural remedies might take the edge off symptoms, but they often don’t get to the root of what’s going on. And in some cases, they can mask symptoms in

Nature has given us some of the most incredible medicines on earth: aspirin (from willow bark) and morphine (from poppies). But those same plants can also be dangerous when taken without proper knowledge or support.

The good news? There’s a way to bring natural and pharmaceutical approaches together—safely and effectively.

A growing number of psychiatrists and healthcare providers now use an integrative approach. That means combining supplements, lifestyle changes, and traditional medications in ways that are backed by evidence and tailored to each person.

Supplements like omega-3s, magnesium, probiotics, or B vitamins can

It’s just a reminder that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, natural or not.

a way that makes it harder for a doctor or therapist to understand what you’re really experiencing.

Marketing Doesn’t Always Tell the Whole Story

Let’s be honest: the wellness industry is booming. And “natural” has become one of its favorite buzzwords.

You see it on Instagram: calming capsules, mushroom microdoses, herbal nootropics – all with dreamy branding, soft colors, and glowing testimonials. The message is subtle but powerful: this is clean. This is ancient. This is safe.

But here’s what the marketing doesn’t always show:

• The clinical trials that haven’t been done yet.

• The people who had adverse reactions.

• The products that were recalled due to contamination.

• The fact that “natural” isn’t a legal or scientific guarantee of anything.

Again, this doesn’t mean these products are useless or bad. It just means that we need to ask more questions before jumping in – especially when it comes to our mental health.

So, What’s the Takeaway?

This isn’t about picking sides between natural and pharmaceutical. It’s about being smart, informed, and realistic.

sometimes boost the effectiveness of medication or reduce side effects. But the key is to do it with supervision. A professional can help you avoid harmful interactions, find the right dosage, and track what’s actually working.

This is about shifting from guesswork to guided care – and that can make a world of difference.

Final Thought

We live in a world where people are seeking more natural, connected ways to heal – and that’s a beautiful thing. But healing isn’t just about what’s “natural.” It’s about what’s safe, what’s effective, and what’s right for you.

Natural remedies can be part of that journey. But they’re not magic, and they’re not risk-free. Just like anything else that affects the brain, they deserve respect, research, and caution.

So the next time someone says, “Don’t worry, it’s natural,” it’s okay to pause and think: what does that really mean – and is it right for me?

Rivka Kramer is a Board Certified Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. She has a psychiatric private practice based in Cedarhurst, NY. She serves as a member of the board of JANPPA, the Jewish American Nurse Practitioner Psychiatric Association. She can be reached at 516-945-9443.

Parenting Pearls

The Parenting Pendulum

By Malkie Bobker, LMHC

Perspectives on parenting, oftentimes in alignment with general societal perspectives, tend to undergo extreme shifts – or pendulum swings – over the years. While evolving perspectives is a generally positive thing, extremes typically are not, because swinging all the way to one extreme by nature means that we are completely ignoring any perspective that the other extreme has to offer. I am sure it will not come as a surprise when I tell you that the healthiest approach in almost every aspect of life is a balanced one. How to achieve a balance in our parenting, though, is no easy feat.

Diana Baumrind named three parenting approaches: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. A fourth approach – uninvolved/neglectful – was later added, but for the purposes of this article, we will explore the first three. Each approach is distinguished by its levels of responsiveness and demandingness. While each set of parents tends toward an approach they connect with, societal trends can play an important role in influencing where parents fall on this spectrum.

An Authoritarian Approach

An authoritarian approach is characterized by a high level of demandingness and a low level of responsiveness – an “It’s my way or the highway” way of thinking. It is almost exclusively parent-driven, without collaboration with the children. Boundaries and rules are strict and rigid and do not take into account a child’s emotional or behavioral needs.

The benefit of authoritarian parenting is that it establishes very clear lines between parent and child. Parental authority is established, home-life is structured and orderly, and it creates a template for children to respect authority and rules out of the house. That being said, there are some definite downsides. If we do not take children’s emotional and behavioral needs into account, then

we are essentially ignoring crucial aspects of what makes each of our children unique. For example, what works for Child A may not work for Child B, but there is not much room for flexibility in an authoritarian approach which means that Child B will suffer. Furthermore, boundaries and rules that are too rigid tend to backfire because it increases the likelihood of the children rebelling in a big way, and the whole approach can spark an unbalanced fear of the parent.

This style is considered by many to be “old-fashioned” and “outdated” and was far more popular at a time when paying attention to emotional wellbeing was not a priority and pre-dated a more modern understanding of trauma and the effects of childhood experience on later adult life. It should therefore come as no surprise that the pendulum swung to its polar opposite approach – a permissive style – as those understandings started to grow and shift.

Permissive Parenting

Permissive parenting is characterized by a low level of demandingness and a high level of responsiveness. It

is child-driven, there are few limits if any, and rules are either not enforced or enforced inconsistently. Permissive parents tend to abdicate their parental authority for the sake of relationship. Meaning, they are looking to be friends with their children, and they avoid conflict and discipline because they do not want it to interfere with their friendship. They prioritize warmth and perceive themselves as placing a high value on their children’s emotional needs.

The benefit of this is that the importance of a positive parent-child relationship is not to be overstated, and this approach champions a warm and loving style. Because rules are much looser, children may be given more freedom and independence and perhaps feel more comfortable with various forms of self-expression.

On the flipside, a lack of structure and boundaries create chaos and instability. Think about it: the relationships and situations that we as adults feel most secure in are the ones in which we have consistently experienced some measure of predictability and our various needs being met. How much more so then for children, who are learning

about the world around them? Most children need some routine, clear expectations, and consistent boundaries. Furthermore, permissive parents tend to try to remove all adversity from their child’s life so that they have an easy, happy life. Unfortunately, some adversity (in measured doses) is necessary for building grit and resilience (another topic for another article, perhaps).

A permissive parenting approach has grown in popularity as society itself has leaned toward increasing permissiveness, as well as an increased awareness of emotions and their importance. As time goes on, some are starting to witness some of the pitfalls of this method of parenting and are calling for a return to toughness. And the pendulum swings once more. Before we do that, though, we might want to look at what might have paved the way for permissiveness to become so prevalent and popular in the first place.

Many who grew up in a more authoritarian household struggled with feeling like their emotional needs were not met. They were not provided with a language to name their feelings, nor the space to express them. The difficulty with that experience is that our emotions are very much a part of who we are – when appropriate space is not provided to name or express them, children feel like an important part of them has been ignored or rejected. When adults come to terms with this piece of their childhood, they often take the complete opposite approach with their own children. They want their children to have it better than they did – after all, don’t we all want better for our children? The challenge, of course, is that going from one extreme to the other does not allow space for any potential strengths there were to offer, and it is just as unbalanced as the previous way of thinking. Authoritative Style

An authoritative style offers a more balanced approach, seeking to combine

the strengths of both authoritarian and permissive parenting. It has both a high level of demandingness and responsiveness and champions a combination of warmth with clear boundaries and expectations. It places a high priority on the parent-child relationship, without abdicating parental authority. Authoritative parents are looking to foster independence, self-expression, and emotional wellbeing while also maintaining structure, routine, and developmentally appropriate standards.

While authoritative parenting promises the best of both worlds, living it is not as simple. This style requires self-awareness, a keen understanding of each child’s needs, insight, and discernment, particularly when faced with situations in which you need to decide whether it is best to be flexible or to hold steadfastly to your rules.

Let us look at two big advantages to this parenting style:

Boundaries and Independence –Every developmental milestone creates some measure of independence for a child, until they eventually reach adulthood. Children need to feel comfortable exploring the world around them and

are looking to develop a sense of autonomy. However, they are not actually looking to be in charge, no matter how much it might seem that way. It would actually be frightening to children to be given the reins in an absolute way. The children who feel the safest to explore are the ones who are given space but also know that the adults around them are going to hold the line and not allow

of and are responsive to others’ needs. A baby, for example, is dependent on attunement by caregivers. Their parents need to recognize cries for hunger, sleep, or the need for a change in order to meet that need. As our children get older, attunement might look like understanding when our child needs space versus a hug; needs a solution to a problem versus validation; needs to go

Most children need some routine, clear expectations, and consistent boundaries.

things to devolve into chaos. Healthy boundaries foster healthy independence.

Attunement – From birth through adulthood, we are all looking for the people in our lives to predictably and consistently meet our various physical and emotional needs. Attunement is the process by which we become aware

to sleep on time versus staying up late for an event; or when to enforce a rule versus being more flexible, etc. When children experience consistent and predictable attunement, it builds trust and creates stability. The priority that an authoritative style places on emotional wellbeing, while also ensuring that the home is not chaotic, allows for consis -

tent attunement between parent and child, thereby establishing a foundation for a strong parental relationship. It is important to remember that these styles all exist on a spectrum. While one seems to be ideal, the same style of parenting will likely look differently in each household. Some parents who practice an authoritative style might be stricter, while others might be more permissive. Where parents fall on the spectrum oftentimes comes down to personality and one’s own upbringing. The key here is to remember that even though parenting in an extreme might seem simpler – and we might not even realize that we are doing it –parenting with balance will ultimately set the stage for our children to grow into healthy, competent, and happy adults.

Malkie Bobker is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with a private psychotherapy practice in Cedarhurst, NY. She works with adolescents and adults struggling with anxiety, social skills, life transitions, and parenting. She can be reached at malkiebobker@gmail.com or (516) 946-9601.

Parenting Pearls Kids on Wheels

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

It feels like a yearly ritual. The warmer months hit, the kids come out, and the bikers go wild. Seeing the kids outside and running free makes us wonder how they ever handled being indoors for months.

I am all for kids being outdoors enjoying the beautiful weather. I have personally been taking advantage of daily walks, and I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to refresh themselves while enjoying the beautiful world Hashem gave us. Walking is even something that can be done on Shabbos!

Along with the change of seasons comes the need to remind our children of the safety rules of summer. Many children won’t remember from year to year, and some kids are too young to have ever been taught.

Bikes and Scooters

It is a special moment for a child when they walk their bike out of its humble shed (or similar location), sit themselves on it, and bike with the wind blowing in their face. It’s a freedom and joy that is remembered into adulthood.

Cycling and scooting are wonderful for children. It is fun, healthy exercise and gets them where they need to go. It’s the perfect set of wheels for someone too young (or even old enough) to drive. I hope our community’s children will continue to take full advantage of the warm weather and enjoy this small life pleasure.

Kids need to wear helmets and have them on correctly. Helmets do not do their job if they are carried in a child’s hand, swung over the handlebars, tied loosely or not secured at all. Helmets must be worn snugly secured to their heads. If it can move off to the side, then it’s not on tightly.

Children need to exercise caution around pedestrians. They are not to swerve around, come right up behind, or move quickly around others. If you think I am being dramatic, I can personally testify to having kids on bikes do all of these unsafe maneuvers around me. Walkers belong on sidewalks – not

bikes. If children are too young for the street, then they need to understand that they must give priority to pedestrians. Remember, pedestrians get the right of way. Special caution needs to be exercised around certain groups, such as very young children and the elderly.

Bikes and scooters should not be used in busy areas, such as shopping centers, or wherever many people are congregated. It’s safer and more enjoyable for kids to use their bikes and scooters in open areas.

I heard “move!” screamed behind me moments before the boy passed by on his bike. This is not the proper way, and derech eretz should never get thrown aside. We represent the am hanivchar wherever we go, and children need to be taught how to behave appropriately in all situations. There are inexpensive bells for purchase, children can be taught to use these and other ways to respectfully make their presence known.

Adding Electricity

Electric bikes and scooters are entirely different from their more humble, kid-pedaled counterparts. Parents need to think very carefully before giving these to their child. They are far more dangerous and come with many hesitations. The most notable difference is they go much faster and never get tired. Usually, a child can only go as fast as they can push their little bodies, their speed increasing with age and maturity. Now, a child of any age can zoom faster than they can control or be responsible for.

It is dangerous – and terrifying – to encounter electric motorists on sidewalks. They zoom by at alarming speeds, barely maneuvering between pedestrians. I was walking in a crowded shopping area and narrowly missed being hit on a number of occasions. In many states, it is illegal to use electric bikes or scooters on sidewalks. Ensure that your child is of an age and maturity that they can handle using them. From what I’ve been observing, too few children are ready to ride the vehicles they’ve been given. If you permit

your child to use these electric devices, then please carefully educate them on safe usage.

Despite the increased risk of electric scooters and bikes, I’ve noticed even fewer children wearing helmets when operating these vehicles. This is alarming and absurd. Parents can insist their child wears a helmet at all times when in motion.

Black hats are wonderful for davening, but they don’t do the job of a helmet. There are now hat boxes that can be worn as backpacks and allow your child to look b’kavodik for davening while still being safe. Safety should not be sacrificed for style.

One perk of biking and scooting has always been the exercise and health benefits children get while commuting. Electric versions may be more practical in certain limited situations, but they don’t provide the same workout. Children gain so much from working their bodies in the fresh air, and it’s a shame that fewer children are getting to enjoy this simple pleasure.

It’s my humble opinion that children who ride without helmets or regard for the safety of others forfeit the privilege of using electric bikes and scooters. Truthfully, this applies even to their non-motorized counterparts.

General Reminders

Children should keep a water bottle with them at all times – certainly before a nice bike ride. Parents need to monitor their child’s intake to ensure they are actually using it.

Sunscreen is important, as is wearing clothing with coverage. Remember to wear a hat, making sure their ears are covered, too. Parents of fair-skinned children need to be extra cautious. Children are not meant to be the color of lobsters. Little children are unsafe outside unattended. They are fast and don’t recognize the danger of going in the street. They are also unaware of the risks of wandering off. Keep your little one within sight or hands-reach if near the street. We need to teach our children how to cross the street safely and model the behavior ourselves. They need to look both directions and make sure it’s clear before crossing. They should not be on their phones or distracted by any devices. As a motorist, it is very frustrating and frightening to see how many people randomly walk into traffic without even realizing it. Let’s teach our kids better!

Children should know their address and an emergency contact number. I taught my kids to recite it with a tune. It was so cute watching them sing the numbers.

Enjoy the beautiful weather and fresh air! Adults should also take the time to be out in the sun and relax a bit. Use this opportunity to bond with your child and watch them build memories that will last far into the first snow.

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,

Our daughter was just diagnosed with a specific learning disability, and we are trying to arrange for her to get the help she needs. We are relieved to finally get the answers to questions we have had about her ability to understand material in school.

Our older children have been asking questions, and we have been telling them it is not their business or concern. Do you think we are right in not sharing her diagnosis with them?

- Wondering

A:Dear Wondering, You’re already doing something so valuable for your daughter by getting her evaluated and beginning to arrange the support she needs. For many families, reaching that point brings enormous relief! The confusion starts to lift, and you can finally start addressing her needs in a thoughtful and effective way. It’s clear you’re a caring parent, tuned into what your children need. And now you’re trying to figure out how best to support the rest of your children while protecting your daughter’s privacy. That’s a deeply loving instinct.

Right now, your older children are asking questions, and you’ve been telling them that what’s going on is “not their concern.” Understandably, you want to preserve your daughter’s dignity and avoid labeling her in front of her siblings. Many parents feel this same pull: the desire to maintain normalcy, to prevent any teasing or tension, and to give a struggling child room to grow without judgment. But what child development experts and family psychologists have learned over time is that silence, even when well-intentioned, can actually do more harm than good. Children, even young ones, are incredibly perceptive. They might not know the exact words for what they’re sensing, but they notice when something shifts in the home. They see that their sister gets more help with homework, that you’re going to appointments, that you seem worried or more focused on one child’s progress. When no one explains why, their imaginations tend to step in and fill the gap, and those imagined explanations are often much scarier or more confusing than the reality.

Dr. Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a leader in child and adolescent development, emphasizes that children need what he calls coherence, a way to make sense of the world around them. When parents keep quiet about something that is clearly affecting the family, that coherence breaks down. Kids are left to wonder, speculate, and sometimes internalize the stress.

They may even worry that something is seriously wrong, or that they’ve done something to cause the changes they’re sensing. Dr. Siegel explains that open, honest communication, tailored to a child’s developmental level, actually helps build emotional resilience, not take it away.

Dr. Larry Silver, in his foundational work The Misunderstood Child, describes the emotional landscape of siblings when a brother or sister has a learning or developmental difference. He outlines several reactions that parents commonly see when children are kept out of the loop. The first is anxiety. When kids aren’t told what’s happening, they often become unnerved. They notice that something is different and may imagine worst-case scenarios. They worry, not just about their sibling, but about how this “mystery problem” might affect them, too.

Then comes resentment or anger. Without a clear understanding of what their sibling is going through, they may see any special treatment as unfair. Why does she get help with homework? Why doesn’t she have the same chores? Why do you seem to spend more time with her than with me? These feelings are common and valid, and they tend to build when children feel like they’re on the outside of something important. Sometimes that frustration turns inward, and the child begins to feel guilty for being frustrated or for succeeding in school. They might even feel guilty for not having a closer relationship with their sibling. Some children even go so far as to hide their own achievements to avoid making their brother or sister feel bad.

Dr. Silver also writes about how these feelings, left unaddressed, can lead to acting out, provoking, teasing, or scapegoating the sibling with challenges, which is what parents were trying to avoid in the first place. This isn’t out of cruelty. It’s often just the only outlet a child sees for complex emotions they’ve been told not to express. He also shares stories of children who hold themselves back, like the girl who didn’t attend her graduation because her older brother, who had a disability, didn’t get to attend his. While that gesture might seem noble on the surface, it’s actually a signal that a child is carrying too much emotional weight, too much guilt, and not enough guidance on how to balance

care for others with pride in themselves.

All of these reactions, anxiety, anger, guilt, acting out, even self-sabotage, are natural. But they don’t have to become dominant forces in your family life. In fact, they can be significantly softened and often avoided when parents choose to be open, age-appropriate, and clear in their communication.

Research published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies shows that siblings who are given honest, developmentally appropriate explanations about a brother or sister’s special needs tend to respond with more empathy, more patience, and more cooperation. They feel more included, more trusted, and less afraid. Instead of seeing their sibling as “different” or getting special treatment, they begin to understand that everyone in the family has different needs and that those needs are met with love and respect.

This doesn’t mean sitting your children down and giving them the full diagnostic report. It means gently and clearly letting them know what’s happening. You might say something like, “Your sister learns a little differently than you do, and we just figured out what’s been making some things harder for her. We’re helping her get the support she needs now. She’s still the same person she’s always been, and you can always come to us if you have questions.” That kind of language is simple, respectful, and powerful.

When you open the door to conversation, you’re not burdening your other children, you’re including them in a way that makes sense and builds connection. You’re also giving your daughter with the learning disability the benefit of growing up in a home where differences aren’t hidden or tiptoed around and talked about with kindness and confidence.

So, you don’t have to tell your older children everything. But yes, they deserve to know something. Because this affects them, too. And giving them the truth, gently and honestly, helps them become more compassionate and more connected to one another.

Isn’t that what every family wants?

Hatzlacha!

- Etti

Fd for Thought

Casa Tevere

By Nati Burnside

As a restaurant columnist, I am frequently asked for recommendations. Sometimes, it’s what restaurant to go to; other times, it’s what to order at a particular restaurant.

The places that I’m asked the most about are ones where the menu isn’t that of your standard kosher restaurant. Such is the case with Casa Tevere, a new authentic Italian eatery on the Upper East Side. Not only is the menu in Italian, but it’s fairly small as well. Those two factors lead some people to panic about choosing the right thing. The good news is, I’m here to help. The better news is that the food at Casa Tevere is amazing.

When I was invited to visit Casa Tevere, I was struck by how intimate the setting was. The restaurant isn’t large, has low lighting, and has a slight buzz of quiet conversations. The white tablecloths help establish the elegance that is backed up by the decor, a kind of sleek vibe that includes a bar with seating that is often utilized due to the high demand for reservations.

For me, the focal point of the menu here is the entrée section. Nevertheless, if it’s an appetizer you want, I’d recommend the Polpette. As an authentic Italian restaurant, Casa Tevere uses much more veal than you will see on most menus, so it shouldn’t surprise you that this trio of meatballs are made from veal instead of the standard beef. They are served on top of a creamy polenta and a light tomato sauce, a nice combination so that neither of the other two elements detracts from your focus on the meatballs. The veal taste is certainly distinct, and it probably stands out even more given that you likely haven’t had veal meatballs recently. In the event that you take some of my later advice and order something that isn’t veal, this would be a good thing to order so you have fulfilled your obligation.

Nothing is more Italian than pasta, and you probably won’t have many chances to order house-made tortelli -

ni. That’s why I recommend you try the Tortellini Alla Boscaiola. The tortellini are stuffed with a blend of lamb and veal which tastes mostly of lamb (due to lamb having a much stronger taste) but has the advantage of the texture component from the veal so as to be less gamey. The sauce is made from a blend of mushrooms, and the flavors complement each other perfectly. The earthy taste of both the lamb and the mushrooms is a nice pairing that comes close to the edge of being too much without falling off.

Moving on to the main part of the menu, you’ll notice that many of the choices are just different iterations of proteins and preparations. This is common in Italian cuisine, but I’m here to guide you with how you should order what dishes. Most of the entrées come with peppers, potatoes, and green beans to round out the plate, and those side dishes are trustworthy accompaniments to whatever you choose to order.

Firstly, if you are looking for something lighter, go with the Salmone Piccata. One of the best pieces of fish I’ve had in a while, this dish somehow succeeds in making the fish very light and flaky while the sauce is reduced down and nicely thickened leading to a brilliantly acidic punch with every bite. The salmon is sautéed in a white wine sauce that carries an addictive blend of lemon and caper flavors. This is the rare piece of fish that could please a meat-eater because it is the best way to experience a flavor profile that simply works best with fish.

That said, the Pollo Modenese might be even harder to convince a patron to order. Not as light as the fish and not the specialty of the restaurant like the veal, the chicken is in a kind of middle ground that might lead to it being overlooked by most. Truthfully, that’s fine…unless you love balsamic vinegar. Personally, balsamic is one of my favorite flavors, and these chunks of dark meat sautéed in the vinegar were irresistible. The texture was

perfectly tender, the flavor was powerful, and I was impressed by the consistency of the sauce that coated the chicken. This is one of the few dishes I’ve had while writing this column that I vow to attempt to make myself (even if there’s no chance I’ll succeed to the degree of the version I tasted).

Saving the best recommendation for last, you have got to try the Scaloppine Di Vitello Al Marsala. This is why you walk into Casa Tevere. There’s just no way that I could ever imagine making veal scaloppine. Not only would I fail miserably, but even a moderate success wouldn’t approach the perfection of this dish. The traditional marsala preparation is executed perfectly on the slices of lightly coated veal, and the mushrooms are almost as delicious as the meat itself. Using some of the leftover sauce to pair with the vegetables on the plate enhances their value as well. This is the kind of plate that you have to actively remember to savor every bite so you don’t just scarf down the whole

thing in two minutes and forget to experience the finer points of the dish. When it comes to dessert, I’m not really going to tell you what to do. The three choices are a chocolate mousse, a napoleon, and a tartufo. If the deep chocolate flavor is what gets you going, go with the mousse. If pastry and cream is more your style, try the napoleon. If a meal isn’t complete without ice cream, then it has to be the tartufo. Whichever one you pick, you’ll be pleased, so go with your gut. The best compliment I have for Casa Tevere is that going there is a great way to avoid buying a plane ticket to Italy. You might need to visit the restaurant a couple of times to try everything on your list, but the good news is that the commute is a little closer than Rome.

So go to Casa Tevere, and eat as the Romans eat.

Meat - Italian - Waiter Service 1207 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10028

(347)-352-2297

CasaTevereNYC.com

Jersey Shore Orthodox Rabbinate (JSOR)

Scaloppine Di Vitello Al Marsala

Polpette

Salmone Piccata

Pollo Modenese

Toretellini Alla Boscaiola

In The K tchen

Lemon Butter Herbed Fish

Dairy / Yields 6 servings

By Naomi Nachman

I included this recipe in my cookbook Perfect Flavors when it was published a few years back. I love this recipe and always add it to my menu for Shavuot.

I once joined my friend Alison Gross and her family on a sunset fishing trip off the coast of Long Island. While I didn’t catch anything but motion sickness, her sons and nephew caught a few fish. The boys liked the idea of catching the fish more than eating them, so she gave the fish to me. This is the recipe I made for the fresh, delicious fish caught only hours earlier.

Ingredients

◦ 6 (6-ounce) red snapper fillets

◦ ½ cup cornstarch

◦ 1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon lemon pepper, divided

◦ 2 Tablespoons canola oil

◦ 2 Tablespoons butter

◦ 2 Tablespoons flour

◦ 1½ cups white wine

◦ 1 fresh lemon, juiced

◦ Kosher salt, to taste

◦ Small handful fresh parsley finely chopped.

Preparation

1. In a small bowl, mix together cornstarch and 1 tablespoon lemon pepper.

2. Coat fish in the cornstarch mixture. Set aside.

3. In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat; working in batches if

necessary, add fish. Cook for 3 minutes on each side, until lightly browned. Place the fish into an ovenproof dish; set aside.

4. Preheat oven to 350°F.

5. Prepare the sauce: Over moderate heat, in the same saucepan, melt butter; then add flour to make a roux, stirring constantly until it thickens. The sauce will get thicker as it gets closer to boiling point.

6. Add white wine and lemon juice; add 1 teaspoon lemon pepper and salt to taste.

7. Stir constantly until the sauce thickens; stir in the fresh parsley.

8. Pour sauce over fish; bake for 20 minutes, uncovered.

Note: A roux is created by cooking wheat flour with oil or butter. It is the thickening agent used when making sauces.

To tell if fish is done, use a fork to flake the fish in the thickest part. If it flakes easily, it’s ready.

You can also use salmon, striped bass, cod, and Nile perch in this recipe.

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?!”

If [Comey] wants to go after me? No problem. I’ve been living rent free in that guy’s head for years, and that’s just a bonus.

- FBI Director Kash Patel responding to disgraced former FBI Director James Comey criticizing him

Do you know how many copycats we’ve had to investigate as a result of that beachside venture from the former director? Do you know how many agents I’ve had to take offline from chasing down child … predators, fentanyl traffickers, terrorists, because everywhere across this country, people are popping up on social media?

- ibid., talking about Comey’s social media post “8647” which in criminal vernacular is a call to assassinate Pres. Trump, even though Comey claims that he didn’t realize that when he posted it

[They] think that a threat to the life of the president of the United States is a joke, and they can do it because he did it? That’s what I’m having to deal with every single day. And that’s what I’m having to pull my agents and analysts off because he thought it was funny to go out there and make a political statement.

- ibid.

I never think of death. To be alive is to know that you’re going to die because life is a fatal disease. And so I live it.

- Neurologist Dr. Howard Tucker, who is still practicing medicine at 102, in an interview with “The Today Show”

If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I have a suggestion for them — carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state.

- U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee criticizing France, which is planning on recognizing a – non-existent – Palestinian state in Israel

Here’s the harsh truth: If Israel is forced to stop, EVERY TERROR ORGANIZATION ON EARTH WILL USE HUMAN SHIELDS, because it brings them victory. This is the moment to support Israel in our thankless but vital task of fighting the worst terror groups on earth.

- Social media post by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett

This morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack, universities are under attack, freedom of speech is under attack .

- “60 Minutes” anchor Scott Pelley during his Wake Forest University commencement speech

Did Scott Pelley mention that 60 Minutes edited Kamala’s campaign interview, and they helped her answer questions ??? Until he does that, his credibility is ZERO.

- One of many responses on X

This “Free Palestine” movement is nothing more than a domestic terror organization.

- Scott Jennings, CNN

We are in this to stand for what we stand for.

- Kamala Harris at a recent left-wing rally

I had faith that Hashem was by my side, watching over me, and would get me out of there. I would ask a question, like if I’m supposed to get out of here, let there be a boom. And then there was a boom. There were all sorts of signs.

- Ori Megidish, the first hostage who was rescued from captivity in Gaza, in a recent interview

Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon.

- Tweet by the White House, announcing that the family of the Colorado terrorist, who threw Molotov cocktails at pro-Israel protesters, are illegally in the U.S. and will be deported

The Mysterious Drop in Fentanyl Seizures On the U.S.-Mexico Border

- Washington Post headline

It’s a real mystery. Perplexing, baffling, inexplicable even. What could have possibly changed in the last few months to cause such a bewildering drop in fentanyl seizures along our southern border? The hard-hitting journalists at Wa-Po are on the case!

– Tweet by the Heritage Foundation

Liberals are more than twice as likely to say they have poor mental health — while conservatives are more than twice as likely to say their mental wellbeing is “excellent.” Is it any wonder? Conservatives promote family and religious values and pro-community messaging. The left is the party of grievance politics and “Yes you can’t” messaging.

– Rikki Schlott, New York Post

Greta Thunberg is on a Flotilla towards Gaza… If there is one thing the IDF fears is a humorless Scandinavian with a bold cut and crazy eyes.

– Greg Gutfeld, Fox News

Then again, she’s the only one that can unite the region…against Greta Thunberg.

- ibid.

She may even get Hamas to kill themselves.

– ibid.

She is the perfect shill – loud, resentful and spoiled by the culture she hates.

– ibid.

The administration is looking into those reports… Unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas with total truth. We like to look into it when they speak… I suggest that journalists who actually care about truth do the same to reduce the amount of misinformation that’s going around the globe on this front.

- White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt after a reporter asked what the White House thinks about reports from Hamas of Israel firing on Palestinians getting aid

It makes law enforcement look disorganized and it makes the FBI look so juvenile, like why are you getting ahead of the police chief who says, “I don’t know what this is?”

– CNN’s Juliette Kayyem criticizing FBI Director Kash Patel for calling the Boulder terror attack…a terror attack

They don’t have a clear idea… who was there, how they were attacked with fire, and what the purpose or the motive of that attack might have been. So it’s hard to imagine that the FBI has more or better information at this point to kind of rush out with the conclusion within, like, ten minutes after we all started hearing about this that it’s a targeted act of terror.

- Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who was fired for orchestrating the Russia hoax) on CNN, agreeing with Juliette Kayyem and criticizing FBI Director Kash Patel

The guy shouted “Free Palestine” while throwing fire bombs at a crowd of Jewish people. We correctly referred to an investigation of terrorism, will continue to do so and we have zero interest in what either these CNN guests have to say. Kick rocks.

- Ben Williamson, an assistant director for the FBI’s public affairs unit, responding on X

Jews are targeted with violence and it’s the same virtue signal post time and time again. What have you done to confront those calling for intifadas in NYC? Until you create a plan of action, your repeated virtue signaling after the violence occurs holds no weight.

- Former Major League Baseball player Kevin Youkilis publicly criticizing U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for her non-response to the recent firebomb attack on Jewish marchers in Boulder, Colorado

Why do I take this job so seriously? Why do I get emotional and lose my temper in front of Congress or on news stations? Because I’m sick and tired of meeting Angel Moms and Dads who buried their children because they were killed by illegal aliens.

- Border Czar Tom Homan on Fox News

Political Crossfire Congress Can Give Trump the Leverage to Coerce Putin

By Marc A. Thiessen

Instead of negotiating peace with President Donald Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin is escalating his attacks against innocent Ukrainian civilians. “He’s sending rockets into cities and killing people,” Trump said this week, “I don’t like it at all.”

It is clear that Putin does not want peace; he has to be forced to end the war. To do that, Trump needs greater leverage. Congress can give it to him by passing the Sanctioning Russia Act, a bipartisan effort led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas).

The bill, which has a whopping 82 co-sponsors in the Senate, would impose “bone-crushing” sanctions on Russia. Right now, Russia is suffering double-digit inflation, skyrocketing interest rates, and catastrophic labor shortages. The only thing keeping the country’s economy from collapse is

revenue from oil and gas exports. This legislation would shut off the most important source of cash for the Kremlin by barring energy transactions with sanctioned Russian banks (which President Joe Biden allowed to continue), and imposing a 500 percent secondary tariff on any country that purchases Russian-origin uranium, oil, natural gas, petroleum, or petroleum products and petrochemical products. This would give Trump the power to effectively drive Russian energy sales from the global market, which would crush the Russian economy and deny Putin the funds to continue his aggression against Ukraine.

Most important, it would provide Trump with strong bipartisan backing as he tries, one last time, to persuade Putin to stop his massacres of Ukrainian civilians and negotiate a permanent end to his brutal, senseless war.

Signing the bill does not mean Trump has to implement the sanctions immediately. The proposed sanctions take effect only after the president issues a formal determination that Putin is engaging in sanctionable acts as described in the bill, such as “refusing to negotiate a peace agreement with Ukraine.”

If Trump is not comfortable making that determination, there is another option: He does not have to sign the bill immediately after Congress approves it. Once a bill is sent to the president, he has 10 days to sign or veto it. But nothing requires Congress to send the president a bill it has passed. Indeed, after it is approved in the House and the Senate, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) can hold the bill at the desk indefinitely, rather than sending it to the White House – giving Trump as much time as he needs before signing it.

There is precedent for this. In 1998, both the House and Senate both approved Sen. Jesse Helms’s (R-North Carolina) legislation paying U.S. arrears to the United Nations in exchange for reforms. But President Bill Clinton threatened to veto it over some modest pro-life policy provisions in the bill. Helms had the bill held at the desk, hoping to convince Clinton to change his mind. When Clinton refused, Helms waited for months and had it sent it to the president for his promised veto at the most embarrassing moment – the day he addressed the U.N. General Assembly.

Thune could use the same procedure to hold the Russia sanctions bill at the desk after both houses pass it, this time sending it to Trump at the most opportune moment.

This would dramatically increase Trump’s leverage with Putin, giving

him a sword of Damocles to hang over the Russian leader’s head – backed by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority in Congress. It would empower Trump and strengthen his hand in the negotiations, by giving him the power to inflict crippling, sanctions against Russia at a moment of his choosing. And it will underscore that the United States is united politically with Trump in backing the approach.

The bill’s passage would make Putin’s choice clear: agree to peace or suffer the most destructive sanctions ever imposed by the United States – sanctions that would send his already struggling economy into a tailspin. It would also create an incentive for China, India and other countries that would be subject to secondary tariffs to press Putin to agree to peace.

Indeed, Congress could give Trump even more leverage by adding a provision to the sanctions legislation that would authorize the sale of U.S. weapons to Ukraine, using Foreign Military Financing (FMF) direct loans, like those we provide to our allies and partners around the world. Such loans would cost

taxpayers nothing – indeed they would earn a profit, because the loans come with interest that must be paid to the U.S. government. Congress could also create a transfer authority that permits frozen Russian assets to be used by Ukraine to buy U.S. weapons.

The combination of sanctions and

all oil coming out of Russia.” And in an interview with me last year at Mar-aLago, he said that if Putin refused his peace efforts, he would give Ukraine more weapons than they’ve ever gotten before.

Right now, Putin is hoping that Trump will grow frustrated with the

The bill’s passage would make Putin’s choice clear: agree to peace or suffer the most destructive sanctions ever imposed by the United States.

arms is precisely what Trump promised he would do if Putin did not agree to peace. In March, he declared: “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault. … I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on

peace process, throw up his hands and move on to other things – leaving Putin free to prosecute his brutal war without the United States supporting Ukraine or penalizing him. This misperception by Putin is one reason Trump has not been able to persuade Moscow to agree

to a ceasefire. Putin appears convinced that all he has to do is sit tight, agree to nothing and the U.S. will reward him by giving him a free hand.

Putin needs to be disabused of this notion, and shown that if Russia says “no” to peace, but Ukraine says “yes,” Trump will punish Russia and arm Ukraine. Approving a bill to do just that would make clear to Putin that rejecting Trump’s peace efforts is not an option he wants to choose – and provide a demonstration of political consensus and resolve that will, hopefully, enable Trump to finally negotiate the peace he seeks.

Trump has been right to give Putin time and make every effort to negotiate a voluntary end to the war. But Putin has made it abundantly clear that he won’t stop his conquest willingly; he needs to be coerced. A bipartisan majority in Congress stands ready to give Trump the tools to coerce Putin and impose severe consequences on Russia if Putin still refuses. The votes are there. All Trump has to do is give Congress the green light.

© 2025, Washington Post Writers Group

Trump Dislikes “Forever Wars,” But Israel is Stuck With One Political Crossfire

Despite denials from Jerusalem, the U.S.-Israel relationship has hit a bump in the road. The panic among some in the pro-Israel community about the way the Jewish state seemed to be an afterthought during President Donald Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East may have been an overreaction. But recent reported comments from Trump about his “frustration” about the intractable nature of the conflict with Hamas and concern about the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have made it clear that the two nations are, at best, not on the same page.

You don’t have to be a Washington insider to pick up the signals. The decision not to send Vice President JD Vance to Israel after attending the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV in Rome was due to what Axios reported as a desire not to have him in the country at a time when the Israel Defense Forces were ramping up operations there against the terrorists. Subsequently, sending Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on a solidarity visit was a poor substitute for Vance or Trump, had he chosen to make a stop in Israel on his Middle East tour.

But Noem, who is not considered a player in the making of foreign policy, was not just there to make nice. The fact that her office described her conversation with Netanyahu as “candid” (diplomatic language for an open disagreement) spoke volumes. Apparently, she was, among other things, tasked by Trump with reminding the prime minister not to do anything that might upset the administration’s talks with Iran about which the president is currently expressing optimism, however ill-founded that sentiment might be.

“No”

By Jonathan S. Tobin

Tehran’s nuclear facilities anytime soon— before Russia can help repair its air defenses that were destroyed last year by Israeli airstrikes—is fanciful. Despite reports about Israel threatening to attack the Iranians even without American cooperation or support and as much as Netanyahu may see the threat from Iran as the most important challenge facing his nation, he is not going to risk an open breach with Trump.

As was the case with Trump’s trip, these differences should not be exaggerated.

The president himself told Fox News’ Bret Baier that he wasn’t frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and praised his bravery in leading his country during a war that was forced on it by the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

For his part, Netanyahu has sought to stay as close to the Americans as possible. During a news conference, he vowed to continue embracing Trump’s plans for Gaza and voicing no public criticisms of his stance on engaging with Syria, Qatar

or even the negotiations with Iran, though they appear to be leading the United States to a rerun of Barack Obama’s appeasement of the Islamist regime.

Yet as every report about the conversations being held between the two allies seems to confirm, there are clear and obvious disagreements that can no longer be denied.

For those who have longed for a return to more “daylight” between Washington and Jerusalem—something that was an open objective of the Obama administration and pretty much the opposite of what happened during Trump’s first term—this is very good news. Headlines like the one in The New York Times on May 26 that read, “Trump’s Comments on Gaza Reflect Israel’s Growing Isolation,” illustrate the eagerness of the foreign-policy establishment and left-wing media to assume the worst about the White House’s attitude toward Netanyahu and his government.

The “Forever” War Problem

The problem isn’t necessarily the tendency toward “America only” rather

than “America first” among some of his councilors. It is Trump’s impatience with being involved in any armed conflict, especially those he labels as “forever” wars, even if U.S. troops are not involved, as is the case in Gaza.

The fact that Israel is in the middle of a shooting war with Hamas and other Iranian terror proxies is the big difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. Of course, throughout his first term (and on every day of the 77 years since the modern Jewish state was founded), Israel has faced deadly threats from Arab armies and terrorists. For his part, Trump has been willing to use force against terrorists or to strike enemies.

Still, it’s important to remember the issues that launched him into politics: opposition to illegal immigration, bad trade deals and “forever” wars, such as those that the United States fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The president fancies himself a great dealmaker, and by extension, a peacemaker. Given his success in helping to forge the Abraham Accords during his first term, he has more cause to claim that title than any other recent president, though he gets no credit for it from the international community and is about as likely to win a Nobel Peace Prize as to be elected pope.

Trump believes wars to be wasteful and often pointless, and he’s not wrong about that. Above all, he simply has no patience to stick with generational conflicts that require democracies to expend military resources with no real end in sight. The price for continuing to fight in Afghanistan wasn’t comparatively high in terms of blood and treasure; it was a conflict that couldn’t be won because of the persistence and popularity of the Taliban, combined with the incompetence of America’s allies. And so, Trump worked

to end America’s commitment there, though to his credit, he never agreed to the sort of disgraceful rout that Biden presided over.

Similarly, Trump opposed the open-ended commitment to Ukraine that Biden agreed to after Russia started its war in February 2022. Trump knows that there’s an obvious compromise solution that can end the fighting. His frustration over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to stop it may lead Trump to increase sanctions on Moscow, something that no one thought was likely when he returned to office in January.

The Palestinians Won’t Stop

The situation facing Israel, however, is different from the past war in Afghanistan and the current one in Ukraine.

Trump opposes the continuation of Hamas as a ruling power in the Gaza Strip. And unlike the Russia-Ukraine situation, he has felt no need to obfuscate which party is the one responsible for the war. While European nations and Canada have become effectively neutral about the campaign to eradicate the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, Washington makes no secret of standing with Israel, even proposing to clear out the Strip and resettle Gazans elsewhere in order to rebuild it into an American-run resort.

But getting from the present situation to that very different Gaza of the future is something that won’t happen overnight. It will require Israel to conduct a longdrawn-out battle against terrorists still embedded among civilians and determined to control access to food for the Palestinians under their control. They still hold 24 living Israeli hostages that they are using to try to extort a ceasefire to enable them to remain in place. Their goal is a permanent halt to the fighting, when Israel will be forced to retreat across the border, setting up the possibility of yet another terror assault such as the one that started the current conflict on Oct. 7, 2023.

What Israel needs from the United States is not just the continued flow of arms that enables it to keep fighting, without them being slow-walked, as was the case under Biden. It also needs American support for efforts to restrict Hamas’s ability to control the supply of food to the Strip. Above all, Jerusalem needs Washington to ignore the drumbeat of Hamas-orchestrated propaganda about genocide or famine that has helped mobilize Europe and Canada to condemn and isolate the Jewish state. Doing that for a short period of time

doesn’t seem to be a problem for Trump. But the possibility that the fighting will continue for many more months without a ceasefire or peace agreement involving the release of the hostages (for which the president can take credit) is a problem for the White House.

Part of that may involve Trump being influenced by the media campaign against Israel that shows pictures of suffering children, even if much of it can’t be trusted. But the real problem is Trump’s allergy to wars that have no end in sight.

There’s no disguising the fact that Israel is stuck with a forever war. Trump might like to expand the Abraham Accords, free the hostages and turn Gaza into an engine of prosperity—as the Palestinians themselves should have done when Israel withdrew from it in 2005, instead of turning it into a terrorist fortress—and bask in praise for being a peacemaker.

But the Palestinians have demonstrated time and time again that they have no interest in peace. Both Hamas and their supposedly more moderate Fatah Party rivals, which run the Palestinian Authority that governs Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, have made it clear that they simply won’t accept any peace agreement that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders may be drawn.

More to the point, Hamas will never willingly surrender its control of Gaza. That’s because it is ideologically committed to endless war against Israel and because they believe that the West will sooner or later force the Jewish state to end the current conflict with the terrorists still in control. That’s a conviction that is reinforced by every “free Palestine” demonstration in the West and every condemnation of Israel by a Western government that is motivated by proHamas disinformation about conditions in Gaza and the real reason why the conflict continues.

No Quick Fix

There’s no quick fix or an economic or trade agreement from which America can profit in the offing in Gaza. The bestcase scenario would mean Israel achieving its objective of eliminating Hamas, which is a group of terrorists that can be defeated rather than, as Israel’s critics wrongly claim, an eternal idea. That will mean a long, hard slog that will require Israel’s government to have the will and the political room it needs to avoid folding to pressure to take a hostage deal, even if that means victory for Hamas.

They also need the United States to have the patience and will not to bail on the Jewish state because of presidential impatience to get the war over soon.

For all of the trust that Trump has earned from the pro-Israel community and his obvious feelings of goodwill toward the Jewish state, that may be something he isn’t capable of providing. That leaves open the possibility that his impatience will lead to the U.S. pushing, as it did in January, for a ceasefire-hostage release agreement that will harm Israel’s security and undermine American interests by strengthening Iran and terrorist groups that seek to destabilize the region.

This is a point of disagreement between the United States and Israel that is distinct from the one about negotiating with Iran. That contention is based on Jerusalem’s belief that any deal with Tehran will be a bad one, and Trump’s not entirely unreasonable desire to exhaust all diplomatic alternatives before giving up and letting Israel deal with the problem militarily.

It’s possible to envision Trump feeling ill-used by the Iranians and eventually going along with Israel’s desire to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program,

though it remains to be seen if he will stick to his demands or abandon them as Obama did.

But on Gaza, Trump doesn’t want to be on the hook for a war against Hamas that is likely to drag on for some time if it is to be finally defeated. And that is true even if he doesn’t labor under the same illusions about the Palestinians and their cheerleaders in the international community or buy into genocide blood libels against Israel.

The result has been the “daylight” that Israel’s critics are celebrating.

If there is one thing that a century of conflict against the Palestinians has made clear, it is that they aren’t giving up on their fantasy of destroying the Jewish state. That is the ultimate forever war. If Trump wants to hold onto the title that he rightly earned in his first term as the most pro-Israel president to ever sit in the White House, then he’s going to have accept that supporting the Jewish state involves a recognition that this is one forever war from which neither Israel nor the United States can withdraw.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate).

Political Crossfire Biden Is a Scapegoat. The Democrats Are the Problem.

By Carlos Lozada

In the summer of 1973, in the thick of Watergate, Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee posed a memorable question about Richard Nixon: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” The answer turned out to be, to put it charitably, quite a lot and early on.

After every presidential election, journalists rush to write books on the campaign that was — covering primaries and conventions, voters and polls, strategies and infighting. But books about the 2024 race also prompt a new variation on Baker’s question: What did the Democrats know about Joe Biden’s physical and mental decline, and when did they know it? And, if historical appropriation permits a corollary: Once they knew, why didn’t more of them speak out about it?

The answer to the first question, once again, appears to be quite a lot and early on. The answer to the second is more complicated, involving a mix of denial, partisanship, political calculation and the peculiar blindness that results from

family lore and political mythology. The result is a unique category of campaign book, about the race that was until it suddenly wasn’t — and about a political party eager to find a scapegoat, in the form of one Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., for its electoral troubles.

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s “Original Sin” is already the big political book of the moment, even before its formal May 20 publication. The authors depict a Democratic Party, a White House staff and a Biden campaign that, though aware to varying degrees of the weakness, forgetfulness, confusion and incoherence afflicting Biden, remained largely silent about it, opting instead to accommodate and rationalize. And they describe a president and inner circle so enamored with the Biden mythology — defiant against tough odds, resilient against adversity, solely capable of vanquishing Donald Trump — that any skepticism was forbidden.

In an authors’ note, Tapper and Thompson highlight the book’s 200 sources — lots of lawmakers and cam-

paign and administration insiders — most of whom agreed to talk to them only after the election. “Some spoke to us with regret that they hadn’t done more, or that they had waited so long,” Tapper and Thompson write. “Many were angry and felt deeply betrayed, not just by Biden but by his inner circle of advisers, his allies and his family.” In campaign books, guilt, blame and notmy-fault-ism are standard impulses of the losing side.

“Original Sin” is not definitive on when Biden’s diminishment began, except to say that signs were frequent and spanned several years, often seeming to worsen around periods of family turmoil. For some, it started in earnest in 2015, with the passing of the president’s eldest son. “Beau’s death wrecked him,” one senior White House aide tells the authors. “Part of him died that never came back after Beau died.” The later legal troubles surrounding Biden’s son Hunter — particularly the collapse of a 2023 deal on tax and gun charges — also proved an “inflection point,” Tap -

per and Thompson write, citing Biden aides, “where the president suddenly and steeply declined.”

Instances of Biden’s decline make up big chunks of “Original Sin.” In 2019, during a bus tour in Iowa, Biden struggled to remember the name of Mike Donilon, a campaign strategist and White House adviser who had worked with him for nearly four decades. In March 2020, Biden forgot the words of the Declaration of Independence. (“We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created by the, you know, you know the thing.”) One day in the White House in 2022, he could not summon the names of his national security adviser (Jake Sullivan, whom he called Steve) and his communications director (Kate Bedingfield, whom he called Press), both of whom were standing near him. And at a Hollywood fundraiser in 2024, Biden did not recognize George Clooney — among the more recognizable faces on the planet — and had to be reminded who he was.

These are just a few of the copious

examples Tapper and Thompson report, all in advance of Biden’s halting and confused performance in his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024. “What the world saw at his one and only 2024 debate was not an anomaly,” Tapper and Thompson write. “It was not a cold; it was not someone who was underprepared or overprepared. It was not someone who was just a little tired.”

The authors call out a close circle of top Biden aides — Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, among others — for insisting either that the president was fine or that his health was not a major problem. When Biden was running in 2019 and 2020, senior aides treated his age “as simply a political vulnerability, not a serious limitation on his abilities,” Tapper and Thompson write. Four years later, they told themselves that even a reduced Biden would be better than a Trump redux. “Biden, his family and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify an attempt to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years,” the authors write.

Anyone questioning or even inquiring about Biden’s physical or mental competence faced intense pushback from the White House. When a reporter from a national news outlet began asking about the president’s forgetfulness and confusion, Ricchetti, who served as a counselor to Biden, called her and said the story was false, and that he knew because he was in constant meetings with the president. The reporter, whom the authors do not identify, inferred that if she pursued the story she’d be branded a liar. (“The tacit threat worked,” Tapper and Thompson write.) And when David Axelrod, a former strategist for Barack Obama, publicly raised Biden’s age as a liability, he got an irate phone call from Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff. “Who’s going to beat Trump? President Biden is the only one who has done it. You better have a lot of certainty about a different candidate before you say the president should step aside. The future of the country depends on it!”

It’s a tortured logic — stick with a flawed and deteriorating candidate precisely because his victory is essential — but it made sense if you assumed that the shortcomings of Biden’s opponent, not of Biden himself, would prove decisive. “Biden had the mindset that what Trump was saying was so outrageous and so stupid that if the American people saw them side by side they would realize Trump was unfit,” Tapper and Thompson write. What Biden and his

team did not seem to grasp was that the campaign was becoming a referendum on Biden alone, and two numbers — the price of groceries and the age of the candidate — were both moving in the wrong direction.

When the American people considered the two men side by side, it was Biden who looked increasingly unable to handle the job.

Tapper and Thompson chronicle many ways in which the Biden campaign and the White House masked the president’s condition, even as the signs

ry emphasis, moving beyond what happened and focusing on why.

To Allen and Parnes, who also cowrote books about the 2016 and 2020 presidential races, Biden’s motives for staying in the race as long as he did were more self-serving. They quote Donilon speaking to a prominent Democrat: “Nobody walks away from this. No one walks away from the house, the plane, the helicopter.” The authors point to Jill Biden, who in 2004 had discouraged her husband from running but now struggled to let go. “After eight years as the

It’s more tortured logic — if we admit that we can’t run the country, they won’t let us run the country! — and shows how the imperatives of partisanship can put a nation at risk.

dodging questions about the president’s mental competence and about possible alternatives should he depart.

After the debate, the Biden family offered conflicting excuses, arguing that advisers had left the president “unprepared” for the event, but also that “overpreparation” was Biden’s problem, that “his team had filled his head with so many facts, figures and scripted lines that he couldn’t process everything in real time,” Allen and Parnes write. (Tapper and Thompson offer a simpler explanation: Biden took lots of naps during the days he’d blocked out for debate prep.)

were becoming clearer. These are some of the most compelling portions of their story, showing how efforts at concealment are not necessarily planned out; sometimes they just happen. For example, White House speechwriters began to simplify the texts they prepared for the president. “Everything got shorter: speeches, paragraphs, even sentences,” Tapper and Thompson report. “The vocabulary shrank.” This was not some mandate from on high; the speechwriters “were also slowly adapting to Biden’s diminished capabilities.”

Biden began relying more on teleprompters and note cards even for simple gatherings. Members of his Cabinet recall meetings that were “terrible” and “uncomfortable” and “so scripted,” even early in his term. “It was like talking to your grandpa,” said a former leader of a European country who saw Biden in 2021. And during a trip with the president in 2022, one Biden Cabinet member dismissed the possibility of reelection while chatting with another member: “There’s just no way. He’s too old.”

The power of “Original Sin” is its relentless marshaling of such insider scenes — the admissions, regrets and recriminations within the White House and the campaign — as the president continued to falter. In “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” published last month, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes offer a complementa-

second lady and nearly two more as the first lady, the trappings of the most elite levels of Washington power had grown on her,” Allen and Parnes write.

In the eyes of some Democrats, hiding the truth about a diminished Biden became a self-fulfilling political necessity. After the Trump-Biden debate, some Biden allies began to wonder not only whether he should continue in the race but also whether he was even fit to carry on as president. “But if Democratic officials spoke of the latter publicly, if they told voters the sitting president was in no shape to run the country, they would surely forfeit any chance at winning in November, whether it was Biden or another Democrat at the top of the ticket,” Allen and Parnes write.

It’s more tortured logic — if we admit that we can’t run the country, they won’t let us run the country! — and shows how the imperatives of partisanship can put a nation at risk. (In a sign of how entrenched the mistrust of the Democrats has become on this issue, even Biden’s Stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis, announced last Sunday, has elicited questions about when the president first learned of his disease.)

In “Original Sin” Donilon emerges as a principal villain; in “Fight” it is Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who served as chair of the Biden campaign (and later the Harris campaign) and who “enraged” Democratic donors following Biden’s fateful debate, Allen and Parnes write,

Late in the campaign, as the president pondered whether to stay in the race, Donilon continued to tell him that the polling remained tight, that Biden was still competitive, even when the campaign’s pollsters disagreed. Tapper and Thompson report that multiple Democrats, including Obama, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sen. Chuck Schumer, worried that Biden was not getting good information from his campaign regarding the public’s concerns over his performance. Pollsters complained that they delivered their data to Donilon, who would put his own positive spin on it when sharing it with Biden. When Schumer told Biden in mid-July that the president’s own pollsters believed he only had a 5% chance of winning, Biden had a one-word response: “Really?”

It’s one of the most damning moments I found in these books: Not only did Democrats keep the public in the dark about Biden, they also kept Biden in the dark about the public.

There was a final argument Democrats used for keeping Biden in the race, an odd one considering whom Biden would later endorse as his replacement. The Democrats had to ride or die with Biden, his allies contended, because his second-in-command, Kamala Harris, just wasn’t up to the job. “Biden’s advisers did not fully trust her,” Tapper and Thompson write, considering her too cautious, reluctant to take on politically tough assignments and overcomplicating simple ones. (Before a Washington dinner party with journalists and socialites, the authors report, Harris aides were so anxious that they held a mock party with members of her staff playing the role of the guests.)

So Biden’s allies talked Harris down to skittish donors, and party luminaries such as Nancy Pelosi and Obama quiet-

ly expressed misgivings about the vice president, preferring an open process to sort out the top of the ticket. According to Allen and Parnes, Obama imagined pairing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan for president and Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland for vice president, “a combination that would still allow Democrats to rally around a woman and a person of color.”

Biden’s enduring resentments against Obama — for preferring Hillary Clinton in 2016, for not endorsing him in the 2020 primaries — may explain in part why Biden supported Harris as his replacement. Yes, party unity in coalescing around a Black female vice president was a factor, but the “most satisfying” part of Biden’s choice was that it would undercut his old boss, Allen and Parnes write. “At that moment, you have very few things you control, and that’s the one thing he had control over, and he chose to stick it to Obama,” a person close to both men told the authors.

On such pettiness are tickets chosen and history upended.

Biden had once imagined himself a “bridge” to a new generation of Democratic leadership. As Allen and Parnes put it, “in the end, Biden was, in fact, a

bridge — from one Trump term to the next.”

This is an assumption , implicit or explicit, underlying these books: that by waiting too long to leave the race, or by seeking a second term at all, Biden “delivered the election directly into Trump’s hands,” as Tapper and Thompson put it.

But if Biden had exited stage left earlier, would the Democrats necessarily have retained the White House? It’s not hard to imagine the party somehow ripping itself apart in a rapid-fire primary.

Any Democratic nominee might have struggled mightily under the weight of Biden’s record on inflation, the border and Afghanistan. Perhaps the anti-incumbent forces across the globe would still have overpowered the Democrats, no matter if Biden or Harris or Whitmer or Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom or Insert Fantasy Democrat Here had been the nominee.

“We got so screwed by Biden as a party,” says David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and advised Harris’ race last year, in “Original Sin.” Maybe. But blaming Biden for everything is too simple —

Trump does much the same for whatever goes wrong in his second term — and lets the rest of the party off too easily.

For too long now, the Democrats have identified mainly as the anti-Trump party, proclaiming what they are against more than explaining what they’re for. Primary campaigns typically provide the chance for key policy debates and ideological self-definition, but the Democrats seem disinclined to see such a process through.

In 2020, Biden hardly represented the new ideas, energy or future of his party; he lost big in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada before resurrecting his campaign in South Carolina. But he won the nomination because party leaders coalesced, in desperation, around someone they thought could beat Trump. He was Uncle Joe, reliable and familiar and not a curmudgeonly socialist from Vermont. Four years later, when Biden gave up on dreams of reelection, his party again missed the chance to clarify where it stood, simply handing the baton to the closest outstretched hand.

“She had not spent the previous four years doing the reps, engaging in tough interviews and mixing it up with voters

who might be inclined to view a fancy San Franciscan skeptically,” Tapper and Thompson write of Harris. “She never did the work of erasing the far-left positions she’d taken to win the nomination in 2020.” As Allen and Parnes put it, Harris lacked “a core cause for her candidacy.”

Instead, her campaign was all about the risks Trump posed: “We’re not going back.”

Americans now know what it’s like to go back to a Trump administration — but it’s less obvious what they make of his Democratic opposition. Biden’s victory in 2020 allowed the Democrats to paper over their differences, and his implosion in 2024 lets them do it once again. After all, it’s easier to find a scapegoat than an identity. But self-definition is a critical challenge for a party that must offer something more than fervent anti-Trumpism, however crucial resistance feels today.

The vital question Biden’s party faces is not about the former president. What must the Democrats know about themselves, and when will they know it?

(© The New York Times)

Dehumanizing the Jews, Then and Now

By Rafael Medoff

Before Mrs. Tzeela Gez, the latest victim of Palestinian Arab terrorism, was even buried, the process of dehumanizing her was well underway.

Chananel Gez was driving his ninemonths-pregnant wife to a hospital on May 14 to deliver their fourth child when terrorists raked their car with gunfire.

The official Palestinian Authority news agency, Wafa, did not report the murder of Mrs. Gez. It did quote an Israeli cabinet minister calling for a forceful response to the attack—but it did not explain what he was responding to. That’s one way to dehumanize a victim—pretend she does not exist.

The Qatar-funded, pro-Hamas news agency Al Jazeera likewise focused on the cabinet minister’s statement but used a slightly different approach. A sub-heading in a 31-paragraph article declared, “We Have to Flatten the West Bank,” but in the 28th paragraph, readers learned that the minister actually spoke of flattening “terror hubs,” not flattening “the West Bank.” The article then noted in half a sentence that he was referring to the region “where an Israeli settler was killed.”

Used in this way, the term “settler” robs the victim of her human identity. Mrs. Gez is not identified as a woman, as a wife, or as a mother of three—she is a thing, not a person, and her only noteworthy characteristic is that her very existence is an illegitimate encroachment on somebody else’s land.

The Israeli community where the Gez family resides, Bruchin, happens to be located in the area that the Oslo accords designate as Israeli-administered. Nothing in the accords—which were signed by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel—forbids Jews from residing there.

In any event, the terrorists who mur-

dered Mrs. Gez and wounded her husband had no way of knowing whether their victims were “settlers.” Highway 446, on which they were traveling, is used by motorists of various faiths, nationalities, and residential preferences. The killers knew only that the people in the car probably were Jews.

Palestine Chronicle, another prominent English-language news site advocating the Palestinian Arab cause, is headed by the former deputy managing editor of Al Jazeera. The Chronicle reported that “a settler” (no name or gender) was “targeted by the resistance.”

The Chronicle also published a statement by a Hamas spokesman saying he “blesses the heroic shooting operation.”

Ma’an, a Palestinian Arab news agency that claims to be independent but closely toes the extremist line, de -

amply from a letter that Khalil wrote to his newborn child. One wonders how many news agencies would give equal space to a letter from Chananel Gez to his infant son, who is in critical condition and will never know his mother.

The Palestinian Authority and its collaborators find it necessary to dehumanize Jews because the terrorists who wage war on Israel were not born killers. Neither were children in Nazi Germany. They had to be educated that way in order to carry out the ruling regime’s violent agenda.

Significant numbers of Palestinian Arab teenagers and children—some age 10 or even younger—participated in the atrocities of October 7, according to security camera footage and survivors’ testimony. Those children studied in schools and attended summer camps,

That’s one way to dehumanize a victim— pretend she does not exist.

scribed the murder of Mrs. Gez as “a shooting incident,” in an article focusing on Israeli efforts to capture the shooters. Ma’an characterized those efforts as “aggression.”

None of these reports mentioned that Mrs. Gez was nine months pregnant and was on her way to the hospital to give birth. Acknowledging those facts would have humanized her.

By contrast, journalists frequently referred to the pregnancy of the wife of Hamas supporter Mahmoud Khalil, during the recent controversy over his pending deportation from the United States. Many media outlets also quoted

ing Jews to scrub the streets of Vienna with toothbrushes in 1938, to gunning down Jews swimming from sinking boats in the German harbor of Lubeck in 1945. While most branches of the Nazi apparatus collapsed or surrendered in the final days of World War II, the fanatically loyal Hitler Youth remained devoted to their Fuhrer until the very end.

Auschwitz survivor Menachem Weinryb, who was part of a death march from Poland to Germany, later described how when they reached Belsen on April 13, 1945, the German guards went to a nearby town “and returned with a lot of young people from the Hitler Youth [and local police officers]...They chased us all into a large barn...we were five to six thousand people...[They] poured out petrol and set the barn on fire. Several thousand people were burned alive.”

where they were taught that Jews are evil sub-humans who deserve to be slaughtered. They heard speeches by PA and Hamas leaders comparing Jews to vermin. Once Jews were dehumanized, killing them became not only permissible but admirable.

In Nazi Germany, too, schools and summer camps were used as breeding grounds for an entire generation of violent antisemites. They were taught that Jews were dangerous rodents and parasites who had to be eliminated.

As a result, teenage and even pre-teen members of the Hitler Youth movement often participated in atrocities, from forc-

The Palestinian Arabs who burned Jews alive in southern Israel on October 7, and those who murdered a pregnant woman on Highway 466 this week, likewise were products of an educational system that seeks precisely that outcome. This dehumanization process, whether utilized by the Nazi regime in the 1930s or by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas today, is the necessary prelude to murder.

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is America and the Holocaust: A Documentary History, published by the Jewish Publication Society & University of Nebraska Press.

Political Crossfire

The Inside Story of Trump’s Search for a New Air Force One

By Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Adam Rasgon and Eric Schmitt

President Donald Trump wanted a quick solution to his Air Force One problem.

The United States signed a $3.9 billion contract with Boeing in 2018 for two jets to be used as Air Force One, but a series of delays had slowed the work far past the 2024 delivery deadline, possibly beyond Trump’s second term.

Now Trump had to fly around in the same old planes that transported President George H.W. Bush 35 years ago. It wasn’t just a vanity project. Those planes, which are no longer in production, require extensive servicing and frequent repairs, and officials from both parties, reaching back a decade or more, had been pressing for replacements.

Trump, though, wanted a new plane while he was still in office. But how?

“We’re the United States of America,” Trump said this month. “I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”

The story of how the Trump administration decided that it would accept a free luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to serve as Air Force One involved weeks of secret coordination between Washington and Doha, Qatar’s capital. The Pentagon and the White House’s military office swung into action, and Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, played a key role.

Soon after Trump took office, military officials started to discuss how the United States could buy a temporary plane for Trump to use while Boeing’s work creaked along, an investigation by The New York Times found. But by May 11, when the president announced on social media that Qatar would be providing the plane to the United States, he characterized it as “a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE.”

There are lingering questions about how much financial sense the still-unsigned deal would make, given the costs of refitting the plane for presidential use and operating it over the long run — or even whether the plane could be ready

for Trump to use before the end of his second term.

The outlines of the arrangement that emerged have also drawn condemnation from Democrats and Republicans in Washington, as well as ethics lawyers, who said it looked either like Trump himself was taking the gift or that the Qataris were using it to curry favor with the administration.

And it remains unclear exactly how a plan that Pentagon officials and others inside the administration initially assumed would involve buying the plane from Qatar morphed into a proposed gift by the Middle Eastern nation.

Qatar has denied any intention of using the transaction as part of an influence campaign, and Trump has said he would not use the plane after leaving office. Some elements of the effort to acquire the plane were reported earlier by CNN.

Interviews with 14 people involved in or briefed on the search for the replacement plane say it started when the White House Military Office, which oversees presidential travel, worked with Boeing and the Defense Department to compile a list of every late-model 747 on the market with a busi-

ness-jet layout, which could more quickly be retrofitted into a presidential plane.

There were only eight planes in the world that fit the bill, including a flashy double-decker jet that Qatar had been trying to sell for several years, with no luck.

A brochure for the aircraft advertised just the kind of opulence Trump favors. There were “soft fabrics of the highest quality” in the bedroom, along with “luxurious leather and exquisite wood veneers” and a “lavishly designed” bathroom that is “almost a piece of art.”

The emir of Qatar had donated the same make and model to Turkey in 2018 as a gesture of support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan had stood by Qatar as the country’s bitter rivals in the region cut off diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar, effectively isolating it.

But this second 747 was still available for sale.

Witkoff, an old friend from Trump’s early days in New York real estate, knew the Qataris well. The country’s sovereign wealth fund had bailed him out in 2023 when a real estate deal on Central Park South went bad.

So Witkoff got in touch with the Qataris to ask about the plane.

Love at First Sight

By mid-February, Qatar had agreed to send the jet to Florida when Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago resort, so he could see the plane firsthand.

The plane arrived on the morning of Feb. 15, after a nonstop flight from Doha to West Palm Beach, Florida, according to flight tracking records. Trump left his club for the short drive to the airport and stepped out of his limousine about 10 a.m., to lay eyes on a plane that once had been used by the Qatari royal family.

“Every surface and detail in this room reflects the opulent design,” the sales brochure said. “The highest level of craftsmanship and engineering prowess was applied to outfit the interior meticulously.”

The upper deck has a lounge and a communications center, while the main bedroom could be “converted into a complete Medical Patient Transport Unit with direct oxygen supply.” For the staff, there was a “business class” section with 12 fully reclining seats.

“It’s a big beast,” Marc Foulkrod, an aerospace engineer who at one point tried to help Qatar sell the plane, said in an interview Friday.

“Boeing made a great airplane, and it’s a classic piece when you do the VIP version,” said Foulkrod, who has a consulting firm that helps wealthy clients and heads of state buy jets.

But such planes have a limited number of buyers. “You might find that one-off guy that has a super ego that wants to buy one and ride around it,” Foulkrod said.

Major airlines were not interested in buying the plane because it was not configured for commercial use. And 747s are less popular these days even for heads of state. The planes have four engines and are expensive to maintain and operate. Getting parts over time will become more difficult

Qatar’s jet at Palm Beach International Airport

as well, because the planes are no longer manufactured.

Even flying the plane to the United States so Trump could kick the tires was a wildly expensive endeavor. The cost of operating such a plane is an estimated $25,000 per hour, according to one trade magazine. The hourly cost to charter a jet like this is even higher, about $35,000. That means the round trip flight from Doha to Florida of about 30 hours in the air — not including the time on the ground — could have cost perhaps as much as $1 million for a charter.

The White House suggested at the time that Trump’s tour of the Qatari plane was intended to put pressure on Boeing to speed its work on its new presidential jets.

After Trump looked at the plane, one thing was clear: It was love at first sight.

Flying back to Washington on one of the existing Air Force One 747s, he marveled at what he had seen of the interiors of the Qatari jet and talked about the plane as if getting it for his own use was a done deal. A new paint job, his allies in the White House figured, and few other quick upgrades, and it could be ready within the year for Trump to fly.

The talks about acquiring it intensified.

The Boeing jets that the United States had paid for became a secondary focus for the White House. Elon Musk had been tasked with pushing Boeing to move faster on them, but Air Force officials were projecting that it would now be 2027, at the earliest, before the first of the two new planes would be ready for Trump.

Officials from Qatar had been trying to sell its spare 747 since at least 2020. The jet, which was delivered by Boeing in 2012, is worth $150 million to $180 million in its current state, Foulkrod estimated.

But it turned out that Qatar wouldn’t be selling the plane, after all.

“A Gift, Free of Charge”

By the time Trump toured the aircraft on Feb. 15, discussions about how to acquire it had changed. The talk among senior aides to Trump shifted from a government-to-government sale to a donation.

That was a surprise to Air Force officials. At no point, Pentagon officials said, did the Air Force propose that the plane be donated.

One senior administration official told the Times that Qatar raised the option of a potential gift, or at least that Qatari officials were “agreeable” to the idea of a no-charge, government-to-government transfer when it came up. A second official said Witkoff, for one, always believed the transaction would be a donation.

Another official said Qatari officials volunteered the idea of a donation, an account that Qatar has declined to address. Some administration officials had a simple reaction: If Qatar was willing to give it as a gift, then why wouldn’t the United States take it?

Other administration officials and lawyers came around to the idea that a donation would be simpler and quicker than a sale.

Government officials in Qatar — who had long wanted to unload the plane — had a different version of the sequence of events, according to a person familiar with their timeline.

They were willing to send the jet to Florida for Trump to take a personal tour. But the expectation was that the plane would be sold to the United States, not offered as a gift.

What is clear is that the ties between the United States and Qatar are extremely close, in large part because of the sprawling air base there, where the United States has one of its largest operations in the Middle East. And it is a relationship that involves major spending on both sides.

Just since 2003, Qatar has invested more than $8 billion building out the Al Udeid Air Base for use by the United States, according to estimates by the State Department. “These contributions are indispensable to supporting U.S. military operations throughout the region,” a State Department report issued in January said.

Qatar has been willing to spend so much to support the United States’ military base within its territory in part because the American presence helps keep Qatar’s rivals, including Saudi Arabia, at a distance, U.S. military officials said. In fact, during Trump’s visit to Qatar this month, he announced that Qatar is now preparing to spend another $10 billion at the air base there.

Witkoff also has strong personal ties to the Gulf kingdom that go back several years. Aside from the bailout by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, attended the wedding of one of Witkoff’s sons.

“I have a personal relationship,” Sheikh Mohammed said in an interview this year with Tucker Carlson, around the time the plane negotiations were underway, describing his ties to Witkoff.

Ethical and Practical Complications

The initial reports that Qatar would donate the plane generated an outcry. The plane would be one of the biggest foreign

gifts ever received by the U.S. government, for use by a specific person, with no plans to seek congressional approval.

Democratic lawmakers and good-government groups expressed outrage over the substantial ethical issues the plan presented. Trump insisted that the planned donation was not a personal gift to him, but to the Defense Department, and that it would go to his presidential library after he leaves office.

Trump cited the fact that President Ronald Reagan’s library had a decommissioned older model of an Air Force presidential jet on display as precedent for his foundation to take possession of a still-operational aircraft. After leaving office, he said, he would not use the plane as a private jet.

In response to a request for comment, a Qatari government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with protocol, said that no decision had been made yet about transferring the plane to the United States and that legal teams at Qatar’s Defense Ministry and the U.S. Defense Department were still reviewing the issue.

But no specific terms of the planned deal have been made public, and the ability of a future Trump library to take possession of the plane remains murky. And ethical issues are not the only complication.

Even if the terms of the transfer are finalized, current and former Air Force acquisition officials have cautioned that getting the Qatari plane ready to be used by Trump would not be easy.

Boeing has spent five years transforming the standard 747 planes the Pentagon had bought into Air Force One jets, with upgrades including communications capabilities, missile defense systems and other measures to protect the planes from an electromagnetic pulse that could be caused by a nuclear bomb.

Dozens of small cracks in the body of the planes — which are commonly found in the 747-8, the model of the Qatari plane as well — also had been identified and repaired.

The Qatari plane has a luxurious interior. But considerable work would be necessary to prepare the plane to serve as a true Air Force One — including ridding the jet of any hidden electronic listening devices and adding advanced communications equipment and specialized systems to protect the plane from a missile attack or other threats. And even if the plane is donated, the cost of those retrofits would be enormous, according to current and former Pentagon officials: at least $1 billion.

Foulkrod said preparing the new plane

for use by a U.S. president would take years — pushing any chance for Trump to use it out past 2027.

“It is ridiculous,” Foulkrod said of the idea that the Qatari plane could be a quick fix, adding that the existing Boeing projects could probably be accelerated more.

“That’s a better dollar value than trying to take an airplane from somebody else and trying to make it into a presidential plane. It makes no sense.”

The Qatari plane is in San Antonio, according to photographs of the plane and flight records examined by the Times.

No new appropriation for any work on the plane — or to maintain it and supply a crew — has been approved by Congress, which would be sure to scrutinize any deal completed with Qatar.

White House officials have said they are considering hiring L3Harris, a military contractor, to handle the work needed on the Qatari plane, although the source of the money to do this work, or even the total price tag, has not been made public.

Trump could also waive requirements for advanced security systems on the plane — although former Pentagon officials said this would be a mistake, as the plane is an essential part of the nation’s military defense during wartime.

Sheikh Mohammed has in recent days defended the move, calling it a routine government-to-government transfer, not unlike military assistance the two nations provide each other.

Recently, at a conference in Doha, he rejected the idea that it was a bribe or an attempt to buy influence, calling it a “normal thing that happens between allies,” predicated on a “very institutional relationship” between the two countries.

Sheikh Mohammed also suggested that criticism of the proposal was based on the “stereotype of seeing Qatar as a small Arab nation” that “cannot find its way without buying it with money.”

Andrew Hunter, who until January served as Air Force assistant secretary supervising the Air Force One effort, said that once the plane was acquired — by gift or purchase — it would represent a major new cost for the federal government.

Paying for the crew alone of an Air Force One jet costs more than $37 million a year, and the total annual operating cost is $134 million a year, Pentagon documents show.

“No one other than a nation-state — or an airline — could afford to operate this plane,” Hunter said. “It’s wildly expensive.”

(© The New York Times)

Artem Shmyrev had everyone fooled. The Russian intelligence officer seemed to have built the perfect cover identity. He ran a successful 3D printing business and shared an upscale apartment in Rio de Janeiro with his Brazilian friend and a fluffy orange-and-white Maine coon cat.

But most important, he had an authentic birth certificate and passport that cemented his alias as Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, a 34-year-old Brazilian citizen.

After six years lying low, he was impatient to begin real spy work.

“No one wants to feel loser,” he wrote in a 2021 text message to his Russian wife, who was also an intelligence officer, using imperfect English. “That is why I continue working and hoping.”

He was not alone. For years, a New York Times investigation found, Russia used Brazil as a launchpad for its most elite intelligence officers, known as illegals. In an audacious and far-reaching operation, the spies shed their Russian pasts. They started businesses, made friends and had relationships — events that, over many years, became the building blocks of entirely new identities.

Major Russian spy operations have been uncovered in the past, including in the United States in 2010. This was different. The goal was not to spy on Brazil, but to become Brazilian. Once cloaked in credible back stories, they would set off for the United States, Europe or the Middle East and begin working in earnest.

The Russians essentially turned Brazil into an assembly line for deep-cover operatives like Shmyrev.

One started a jewelry business. Another was a blond, blue-eyed model. A third was admitted into an American university. There was a Brazilian researcher who landed work in Norway and a married couple who eventually went to Portugal.

Then it all came crashing down.

For the past three years, Brazilian

Political Crossfire

The Spy Factory

By Michael Schwirtz and Jane Bradley

counterintelligence agents have quietly and methodically hunted these spies. Through painstaking police work, these agents discovered a pattern that allowed them to identify the spies, one by one.

Agents have uncovered at least nine Russian officers operating under Brazilian cover identities, according to documents and interviews. Six have never been publicly identified until now. The investigation has already spanned at least eight countries, officials said, with intelligence coming from the United States, Israel, the Netherlands, Uruguay and other Western security services.

Using hundreds of investigative documents and interviews with dozens of police and intelligence officials across three continents, the Times pieced together details of the Russian spy operation in Brazil and the secretive effort to take it out.

Dismantling the Kremlin’s spy factory was more than just a routine bit of counterespionage. It was part of the damaging fallout from a decade of Russian aggression. Russian spies helped shoot down a passenger plane en route from Amsterdam in 2014. They interfered in elections in the United States, France and elsewhere. They poisoned perceived enemies and plotted coups.

But it was President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 that galvanized a global response to Russian spies even in parts of the world where those officers had long enjoyed a degree of impunity. Among those countries was Brazil, which historically has had friendly relations with Russia.

Brazil’s investigation dealt a devastating blow to Moscow’s illegals program. It eliminated a cadre of highly trained officers who will be difficult to replace. At least two were arrested. Others beat a hasty retreat to Russia. With their covers blown, they will most likely never work abroad again.

At the heart of this extraordinary defeat was a team of counterintelligence

agents from the Brazilian Federal Police, the same unit that investigated Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for plotting a coup.

From their modern glass headquarters in the capital, Brasília, they spent years combing through millions of Brazilian identity records, looking for patterns.

It became known as Operation East.

Ghosts in the System

In early April 2022, just a few months after Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, the CIA passed an urgent and extraordinary message to Brazil’s Federal Police.

The Americans reported that an undercover officer in Russia’s military intelligence service had recently turned up in the Netherlands to take an internship with the International Criminal Court — just as it began to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

The would-be intern was traveling on a Brazilian passport under the name Victor Muller Ferreira. He’d received a graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University under that name. But his real name, the CIA said, was Sergey Cherkasov. Dutch border officials had denied him entry, and he was now on a plane to São Paulo.

With limited evidence and only hours to act, the Brazilians had no authority to arrest Cherkasov at the airport. So, for several anxious days, the police kept him under heavy surveillance while he remained free at a São Paulo hotel.

Finally, the officers

got a warrant and arrested him — not for espionage, but on the more modest charge of using fraudulent documents.

Even that turned out to be a much harder case to make than anyone expected. Under questioning, Cherkasov was cocky, insisting that he was Brazilian. And he had the documents to prove it.

His blue Brazilian passport was authentic. He had a Brazilian voter registration card as required by law and a certificate showing that he had completed compulsory military service.

All were genuine.

“There was no link between him and great Mother Russia,” said an investigator at the Federal Police, who spoke, as did others, on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still open. It was only when the police found his birth certificate that Cherkasov’s story

Photos of six of the Russian spies

— and the entire Russian operation in Brazil — began to crumble.

In the past, Russian spies have often obtained identification documents by assuming the identities of dead people, frequently babies.

Not in this case. Victor Muller Ferreira, the agents determined, had never existed at all. Yet he had a real birth certificate.

The document indicated that Victor Muller Ferreira had been born in Rio de Janeiro in 1989 to a Brazilian mother, a real person who had died four years later.

But when the police located her family, agents learned that the woman had never had a child. The authorities never found anyone matching the father’s name.

The discovery raised startling questions. How had a Russian spy obtained genuine documents under a fake name? Most important, the police wondered, if one spy could do it, why couldn’t others?

Federal agents began searching for what they called “ghosts”: people with legitimate birth certificates, who spent their lives without any record of actually being in Brazil and who appeared suddenly as adults rapidly collecting identity documents.

To find these ghosts, agents began looking for patterns in millions of birth records, passports, driver’s licenses and social security numbers.

Some of that could be automated, but not all Brazilian databases can be easily linked and searched digitally. Much of it had to be done by hand.

That analysis allowed Operation East to unravel the whole Russian operation.

“Everything started with Sergey,” a senior Brazilian official said.

Putin’s Special People

All spies, no matter what country they work for, face the same challenge: creating a fake identity that will stand up to scrutiny.

For generations, undercover operatives used fake passports, stolen names and well-rehearsed cover stories. The digital age, in which nearly everyone has an online history, has made things much more complicated.

This is a particularly acute problem for Russia. That’s because, while all spy services employ undercover operatives, most rely on networks of local informants to do the grunt work of intelligence collection. Russia is unique. Dating back to the earliest years of the

Soviet Union, deep-cover officers have committed to a lifetime of service, living and working as completely different people.

Putin himself has acknowledged overseeing Soviet deep-cover spies while posted in East Germany as a young KGB officer at the end of the Cold War.

“These are special people of a special quality, special convictions and a special character,” he said in a 2017 television interview. “Leaving behind your former life, leaving behind your loved ones and your family, leaving behind your country for many, many years to dedicate your life to serving the fatherland, is not something everyone can do. Only the chosen can do it, and I say this without any exaggeration.”

Brazil seemed an ideal place for Putin’s chosen spies to build their lore. The Brazilian passport is one of the world’s most useful, allowing visa-free travel to nearly as many countries as the American one. Someone with European features and a slight accent is unlikely to stand out in multiethnic Brazil.

ing, Shmyrev had built a cover identity so convincing that even his own girlfriend and colleagues had no clue. He spoke perfect Portuguese, tinged with an accent that he explained was the result of a childhood spent in Austria.

He seemed to pour everything he had into his printing company, 3D Rio, which he built from scratch and appeared genuinely to care about, according to former colleagues. He spent long hours at work on the 16th floor of a high-rise in central Rio, a block away from the U.S. Consulate. Sometimes he sent employees home so he could work alone.

“He was a work addict,” said Felipe Martinez, a former client who befriended the Russian he knew as Daniel. “He thought big, you know?”

The company became a success, a former employee said, winning clients like TV Globo, a television network, and the Brazilian military. (The employee, who asked not to be identified, said Shmyrev was never invited onto any bases).

The Russians essentially turned Brazil into an assembly line for deep-cover operatives.

And while many countries require verification from a hospital or doctor before issuing birth certificates, Brazil allows a niche exception for those born in rural areas. The authorities will issue a birth certificate to anyone who declares, in the presence of two witnesses, that a baby was born to at least one Brazilian parent.

The system is also decentralized and vulnerable to local corruption.

With a birth certificate in hand, it’s just a matter of applying for voter registration, military papers and, finally, a passport.

Once this is obtained, a spy can go nearly anywhere in the world.

A Break in the Case

One of the first names to surface when investigators started their search was that of Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich. He seemed to fit the pattern. His birth certificate indicated that he was born in Rio in 1986, but he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere in 2015.

By the time agents began investigat-

“No real achievements in work,” Shmyrev wrote in one text message to his wife. “I am not where I have to be for 2 years already.”

His wife, Irina Shmyreva, another Russian spy texting from half a world away in Greece, was unsympathetic. “If you wanted a normal family life, well you have made a fundamentally wrong choice,” she responded.

But she acknowledged that the lives they were leading were not what they had expected.

“Yes, it is not as it was promised and it is bad,” she texted him. “They basically trick ppl into it and I see it as a bad thing. It is dishonest and not constructive.”

But there were oddities, friends and colleagues said. He never kept his computer connected to the internet when he was not using it. And he seemed to have more money than his business could provide.

He took sudden trips to Europe and Asia, and joked about conducting “industrial espionage” against competitors. He sometimes posed as a customer with other printing companies, and once sent one of his employees to intern at a rival business and report back.

He also seemed terrified of cameras and so disliked having his photograph taken that one former employee recalled joking that he might have been “wanted by the Federal Police.”

Shmyrev panicked when a local newspaper published a photograph of him standing across from Rio’s mayor at the opening of a technology hub, Martinez recalled.

But only in hindsight did all this seem significant, friends said.

Privately, Shmyrev was bored and frustrated with undercover life.

The texts are part of a cache of documents that were shared with foreign intelligence services and seen by the Times. They were sent in August 2021 and were recovered later from Shmyrev’s phone.

Six months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, intelligence services around the world were working together and making it a priority to disrupt Kremlin espionage. The lives of Russian spies deployed worldwide were thrown into upheaval.

First came Cherkasov, the intern who was arrested weeks after the invasion. Then Mikhail Mikushin, who had been under Brazilian investigation, turned up in Norway and was arrested. Two Russian deep-cover operatives were arrested in Slovenia, where they lived under Argentine cover identities. By late 2022, Brazilian investigators were closing in on Shmyrev.

Federal agents had peeled back the Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich persona and discovered that his mother was dead and had never had a child by that name. His father could not be found.

By late December, the agents were almost certain that they had unearthed

Only Sergey Cherkasov remains in prison

a deep-cover Russian spy.

If Shmyrev was spooked, he gave no indication of it. One afternoon that December, he dined with a colleague in Rio’s trendy Botafogo neighborhood. He seemed relaxed and said he was leaving for a monthlong trip to Malaysia, according to the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He slipped the country just days before the Federal Police unraveled his identity. The agents were stunned. All that work, and they had missed him.

Shmyrev had a return ticket dated Feb. 2, 2023. So the agents obtained arrest warrants and search orders for his addresses. When Shmyrev landed on Brazilian soil, they would be ready. But he never came back.

“What’s Worse Than Being Arrested?”

Shmyrev wasn’t the only Russian spy to slip through the Brazilians’ fingers. Every time the agents uncovered a name, they seemed to have been too late.

A married couple in their 30s, living as Manuel Francisco Steinbruck Pereira and Adriana Carolina Costa Silva Pereira, had decamped to Portugal in 2018 and vanished.

A bunch seemed to be in Uruguay. A woman ostensibly named Maria Luisa Dominguez Cardozo had a Brazilian birth certificate and later obtained a Uruguayan passport. And there was another married couple: Federico Luiz Gonzalez Rodriguez and his wife, Maria Isabel Moresco Garcia, a blonde spy who posed as a model.

The Brazilian agents’ best hope for an arrest seemed, for a time, to be a jeweler named Eric Lopes. The police discovered he was actually a Russian spy named Aleksandr Utekhin.

His business had been featured in a 2021 Brazilian television program called “Successful Entrepreneurs,” which referred to him as an “expert in precious stones.”

But the presenter said in an interview with the Times that Lopes had paid for that television spot. Lopes, she said, was odd. He spoke “gringo Portuguese,” she noted, and refused to go on camera. An employee who went on air on his behalf knew so little about the business that he kept feeding her lines.

“I thought: ‘Wow, is there something going on?’” the presenter added.

When the federal agents arrived at the shops, they found no trace of Lopes or the gold or gemstones he had advertised on Instagram.

His shop in Brasília is now occupied by an insurance company. The address in São Paulo, opposite a branch of Brazil’s military police, is home to a real estate company.

Investigators believe his business existed only as a front to bolster his Brazilian credentials. A Western security official with knowledge of the case said that, after leaving Brazil, Utekhin had spent some time in the Middle East. His precise location is unknown, though intelligence officials say they think he and others are back in Russia.

It is unclear if any one event spooked the officers into heading home. But with so much focus on Russia after the Ukraine invasion, intelligence experts said that perhaps the bosses in Moscow concluded that the world had become too dangerous for them.

The Brazilian agents running Operation East had spent countless hours uncovering the names and still had no case except for the false document charge against Cherkasov.

with an audacious idea. They could use Interpol, the world’s largest policing organization, to burn Putin’s spies.

It was an ironic revenge. Putin has, for years, manipulated Interpol’s databases to harass dissidents and political opponents.

Last fall, the Brazilians issued a series of Interpol blue notices — alerts seeking information on a person. The notices circulated the names, photographs and fingerprints of the Russian spies, including Shmyrev and Cherkasov, to all 196 member countries.

Interpol, as an independent body, does not deal with politicized issues like espionage. To get around that, the Brazilian authorities said that the Russians were being investigated for using fraudulent documents.

Uruguay issued similar alerts, seen by the Times, for those suspected of being Russian spies who had turned up there under Brazilian identities. Their real names, intelligence officials said, were Roman Olegovich Koval, Irina

“We just put our heads together and thought, ‘What’s worse than being arrested as a spy?’”

But they shared what they had learned with the world’s intelligence agencies, whose officers cross-checked that information against records of known Russian intelligence operatives. And they found matches, which in some cases allowed the Brazilians to attach a real name to the fake Brazilian identities.

The couple living in Portugal under the name Pereira, for instance, turned out to be actually Vladimir Aleksandrovich Danilov and Yekaterina Leonidovna Danilova, according to two Western intelligence officials.

Brazil has long maintained neutrality when it comes to geopolitical divisions. Even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Brazil maintained a friendly relationship with Moscow. So the Kremlin’s use of Brazilian territory for a large-scale espionage operation was seen as a betrayal. The authorities wanted to send a message.

“We just put our heads together and thought, ‘What’s worse than being arrested as a spy?’” the senior Brazilian investigator said. “It’s being exposed as a spy.”

To do that, investigators came up

tial that he be held in prison even longer so the police could investigate. He might otherwise have been released by now. But he remains in a Brasília lockup.

“You’re Going to Hear Things About Me”

For a time after leaving Brazil, Shmyrev checked in regularly with friends and his Brazilian girlfriend. But in early January 2023, his text messages stopped.

“Weeks went by, and we didn’t know what to do,” said Martinez, his friend.

Shmyrev’s girlfriend posted to a Facebook group called Brazilians in Kuala Lumpur seeking help in finding him.

“We started like some detective work,” Martinez said. “We would go online. We called the police stations, the embassies, hotels in Kuala Lumpur, trying to go after him. And we couldn’t find him.”

Alekseyevna Antonova and Olga Igorevna Tyutereva.

Koval and Antonova, the married couple, had suddenly left Brazil on a flight to Uruguay in 2023, investigators said. Tyutereva’s last known location was Namibia, according to the senior official.

The Interpol notices do not include the real names, but include the photographs and other identifying information. With their identities logged in police databases, and their true names flagged by spy services, the operatives most likely will never be able to work as foreign spies again.

Of all the spies, only Cherkasov remains in prison. He was convicted of falsifying documents and sentenced to 15 years, but his sentence was reduced to five years.

In an apparent gambit to get him home early, the Russian government claimed that he was a wanted drug dealer and filed court documents asking to have him extradited.

But the Brazilians swiftly countered. If Cherkasov was a drug dealer, the prosecutors argued, then it was essen-

When Shmyrev did not take his return flight to Brazil, the police moved in. Agents found that he had left behind several electronic devices that contained crucial personal details, including the texts with his Russian spy wife. He also left $12,000 in cash in his safe. Those are indications that he had planned to return. As with the others, the questions of what spurred him to leave and what kept him away remain mysteries. Around that time, his Russian wife suddenly left her espionage posting in Greece. She was later outed by Greek authorities.

Despite everything, friends said they miss him.

“Sometimes I think like one day I’m going to go there, to Saint Petersburg,” Martinez said. “I’m going to be at the counter. I’m going to ask for a vodka. And then, like, he’s going to be on the other side.”

In his fantasy, Martinez nods at Shmyrev, and Shmyrev nods back.

The last known contact Shmyrev had with Brazil was a phone call to his girlfriend after he had left. As relayed to Martinez, his friend was sad, perhaps crying.

“You’re going to hear things about me, but you need to know that I never did anything that bad. Like I never killed anyone or something like that,” he said, in Martinez’s recollection.

“My past caught up with me,” he said.

(© The New York Times)

Forgotten Her es Daring Israeli Pilots

By Avi Heiligman

Early Israeli Air Force pilots were recruited from around the world and were often veterans from World War II. After the Israeli War of Independence ended in 1949, the first classes of pilots began graduating from flight schools in Israel. Within a short period of time, Israeli pilots gained a reputation for their aerial skills, levelheadedness in combat, and high kill rate of enemy aircraft. Many of these pilots have stories of heroism in the air but aren’t often talked about by the public.

Avraham Yaffe was one of the first fighter pilots trained in Israel. Born in Eretz Yisrael in 1923, his military career began with the Palmach in 1941. Two years later, he joined a transport company in the British Army, and after World War II, he assisted Holocaust survivors making their way towards Israel. He returned to Eretz Yisrael in 1947 and was recruited for secret missions in Europe. Together with Moti Hod, a future commander of the Israeli Air Force, Yaffe took aviation lessons in Italy before being sent to Czechoslovakia to learn how to fly fighter planes. After returning to Israel and taking the air force’s first pilot course, Yaffe became a fighter pilot with the 101 st Squadron at Hatzor Airbase.

During the next few years, he took command of another squadron, went to the U.S. for a command and staff course, and was appointed commander of the 101 st Squadron. He flew a P-51 fighter during the 1956 Sinai Campaign and led a bombing raid on Egyptian targets. Yaffe spent time overseas and worked for the Mossad while in France as an air attaché. He passed away in 1969. In 1981, his son Dovi Yaffe was one of the pilots who took part in the 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor.

Pilots with years of experience are valued in the Israeli Air Force, and at the age of 47 Shlomo Hagani was the most senior pilot flying during the Yom Kippur War. Hagani’s military career started with the Haganah, and he fought

in the Israeli War of Independence. In 1951, he formally joined the IDF and fought in the Battle of Tel Motila. Two years later, he went to flight school and joined the 101 st Squadron as a Spitfire fighter pilot. During a training flight in 1955, one of the plane’s controls malfunctioned. Ezer Weizmann, the base commander, ordered him over the radio to abandon the plane and parachute to safety. Despite the command, Hagani spent 25 minutes in the air developing a plan to land. Hagani realized that he could land the damaged plane safely and did so without further incident. He was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service for saving the plane and his own life.

Hagani semi-retired from the IAF in 1955. A year later, he went to France as part of an operation to bring recently purchased Dassault Ouragan fighter jets to Israel. As an experienced pilot, Hagani was called upon to fight during the Six Day War in 1967 and again in the War of Attrition after switching to flying Douglas A-4 Skyhawks. In 1973, he was a reserve pilot in a Skyhawk squadron and flew as the oldest combat pilot in combat in the Yom Kippur War. His second Medal of Distinguished Service reads in part: “He flew 31 sorties under fire during the Yom Kippur War, includ-

ing the difficult and dangerous sorties conducted by the squadron. Major Shlomo Hagani served as a role model for pilots who were decades younger than him – in his appearance, maturity, courage, composure and level of performance.”

Uri Gil is another long-serving pilot in the Israeli Air Force and is recognized as the oldest combat pilot in history. A year after joining the IDF, he graduated flight training in 1963 and fought during several wars and air battles. These included the Six Day War, Operation Rimon 20, and the Yom Kippur War. He continued flying fighter aircraft until the age of 60 and is credited with 7.5 kills. The ace pilot is also recognized for shooting down a Syrian MiG 21 during the Lebanon War in 1982 in difficult flying conditions.

Helicopter pilots often start their flying career in fighter planes. This was case for Kochav Hess who first flew for the 109 Squadron out of the Ramat David Airbase. When his term of service was up, Hess decided to stay in the IAF on the condition that he could train to become a helicopter pilot. Together with two other pilots, he was sent to the U.S. to train, and soon he was flying in a Sikorsky S-58 helicopter with the 124 Squadron. Hess was sent on many missions with Special Forces and

received a medal in 1965 for his role in Operation Kahal. The operation was an intelligence gathering mission deep into Egyptian territory by the Seyeret Matkal.

During the Six Day War, Hess undertook a dangerous mission to rescue a downed pilot. Fighter pilot Yaakov Zik was shot down by anti-aircraft fire near the west Jordanian town of Karameh. Zik parachuted near the Allenby Bridge but was being chased by the Jordanians. Hess got the call to go on the search and rescue mission and took off along with a doctor and a technician. As they crossed the Dead Sea, the helicopter was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Fuel began flowing from the aircraft, but Hess continued flying towards the location as everything else inside was working properly. They were the only helicopter in the area that could rescue Zik, and his last known location was not far away from where Hess’s chopper was hit. Sure enough, they soon spotted the downed pilot and flew down to rescue Zik. They then flew to Lod Airport where it was determined that the helicopter was no longer in flying condition – Hess and his crew had to take a car back to their airbase. For his actions in saving the downed and stranded pilot, Hess was awarded the Medal of Courage.

In the current war against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, the identities of the pilots and the full scope of their missions are not known to the general public. Slowly their missions may be declassified, and like the pilots written about in this article, their aerial heroics will be recognized. The pilots of the IAF and their operations are history that deserves to be remembered.

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

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Life C ach When Can 5 Equal 10?

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

We are starting the book of Bamidbar, in the reading of the weekly Torah portions. Yet, in English, it is called “Numbers,” which is not its translation.

Now I ask: who’s doing the interpreting?!

Bamidbar means “in the desert.” So how’d they come up with the translation “numbers”?

I guess it’s that if you’re stuck in the desert, all you can think about is numbers. The number of days you might survive! The number of hours that you will have to keep going. The number of mirages you have grasped at and seen dispelled. Actually, the combination does send a meaningful message: that though one may be in a tough situation such as dragging through the desert, you can still thrive. You can count!

G-d kept account of us and kept counting us. We counted even in the difficult times.

We can also observe that when there are less distractions, as in a desert, one can truly make their mark and count.

It may be interesting to look at the dual names of the other four books of the Torah and see what messages we might glean from them.

Vayikra, Book 3, is called Leviticus. In Greek, it means “of the Levites.” Yet,

in Hebrew, the name is “Vayikra/to call” referring to G-d “calling” Moses to detail for all the Israelites the acts and actions for connecting.

So, which is it? Who is the book talking to? Is the focus on “the small group of Levites,” who had to serve in the Temple and inspire the other members of the nation or the nation?

Interestingly, the two names, again, can work together to give a message.

Role models, such as Levites, are just people whose job it is to exemplify prop -

one know, without looking it up? Admirable, if you do! It means “second book,” in Greek. The Hebrew name is Devarim, which means words.

Devarim “speech” or “words” refers to Moses, who was a “Levite” and “our role model” in “the desert” helping us “to count.” In the book, he shares his “words” in order to highlight all G-d communicated to us right from…The Beginning.

Which leads us to Book number one.

Let’s not forget those first two books. The first book named in Hebrew, “Bere -

“essence.” We are directed to create an essence. But in Greek, it’s called Exodus, which means departure.

So does that have to do with anything?

We see that to “create “ ourselves and make a name for ourselves and define ourselves, we must “depart” the ways that are holding us back and embrace newer, healthier ones.

When there are less distractions, as in a desert, one can truly make their mark and count.

And then that way we can proceed to explore our CALLING (Book 3); and go in to get through the challenging times – the desert-like experiences – and still see we can COUNT (Book 4); and throughout, employ Moses’ WORDS of wisdom (Book 5) to continue to GENESIS/self-create (Book 1); and ergo actualize our ESSENCE (Book 2).

Around and around again. And that is why we continue to read these chapters year after year.

er living and unfortunately live with the pressure not to mess up. Yet, as a general member of the population, one can always opt in and attain the status of a role model, as well. Just because one is assigned a role, doesn’t mean others can’t assist, emulate, or embellish it.

The name Deuteronomy, the fifth book, always fascinated me! Catchy name, but what does it mean? Does any-

ishis, in the beginning,” also sports the Greek name Genesis, meaning Creation.

We get the dual message that “in the beginning of anything” we must genesis/create/take action. Nothing happens without input. That’s our wakeup call –we need to be proactive.

To do what exactly?

Which then leads to Shemot, the second book, whose title means “name” or

We see that from the five books that we can ascertain ten: ten messages that help us turn ourselves into a Ten!

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 917705-2004 or at rivkirosenwald@gmail.com.