During the Second Temple, the Greek empire reigned (over Israel),1 and they (the Greeks) passed decrees against the Jews and (tried) to erase their religion, and did not allow them to carry out Torah (study) or the commandments. They put their hands on their property and their daughters. They entered the Temple, destroyed and made the pure unclean. The Jews were in great distress because of them and were much oppressed, until the G-d of their fathers had mercy on them, delivering them from their hands and saving them. Then overcame, the sons of the Hasmonean High Priest, (the Greeks) and killed them and saved the Jews from their hands. They appointed a king from the Priests, and the kingdom of Israel was restored for more than 200 years until the destruction of (the) second (Temple). When the Jews overcame their enemies and destroyed them, it was the 25th of Kislev2 when they entered the Sanctuary (inner room) and did not find pure (olive) oil in the Temple, except one jar sealed with seal of the High Priest, and it did not contain enough to light except for one day only. But they lit from it the lamps of the Menorah3 for eight days, until they could crush olives and produce a (new quantity) of pure oil. For these reasons, decreed the Sages of that generation that these eight days that begin on the 25th Kislev, will be days of joy and praise. One lights on them lamps at evening at the entrance to the houses, every evening of the eight nights to show off and demonstrate the miracle. These days are called ''Hanukah'' that is to say ''they rested'' (chanu) on the ''25'' ('th of the month) because on the 25th they rested from their enemies. and also because of those days they (re)-dedicated the house (Temple) which their foes had defiled. Also some say that it is a commandment to increase slightly the festive meals on Hanukah. Another reason is because the work of (building) the Sanctuary (in the desert) was completed in these days. One should tell one's children the story of the miracles that were done for our fore-fathers in those days, (see Josephus) However, these meals are not considered as part of the commandment unless one says at the meal songs of praise. One should increase charity in these Hanukah days, for this can help mend any defects in our souls. This charity, should be given particularly to poor Torah scholars. (KSA 139:1)
1) 352 BCE until 70 CE
2) 139 BCE
3) The Menorah was made of gold and had seven branches.
BALTIMORE, MD — There were record temperatures across the region Wednesday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The agency documented two records.
Baltimore tied a record low that was more than 100 years old. There was a reading of 22 degrees Fahrenheit at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, which was also the record low for Baltimore on Nov. 13, 1911, the National Weather Service reported.
At Dulles International Airport, officials said a record low temperature of 19 degrees Fahrenheit was set. The old record was 21 degrees, which officials said was from Nov. 13, 1963.
"A very cold morning across the forecast area," the National Weather Service reported around 10:45 a.m. See the forecast at the end of the article.
Due to the col...
Baltimore, MD – Nov. 2019 - Every Shabbos table offers every Jewish family an incredible opportunity by which they can share their joy for Shabbos, for Yiddishkeit and for HaShem with their children. Unfortunately, our schedules are hectic and many people don’t have the time to prepare themselves to utilize the Shabbos table to its fullest. Therefore, we at ACHIM created TableTalk as a pre-packaged talking points pamphlet which is attractive, fun and has something for everyone. Limited copies are distributed to many shuls on a weekly basis but they are snatched up very quickly. Get yours ASAP or click on the graphic below and print your own.What’s in it and what’s all the excitement about?TableTalk features• Weekly halachic dilemma creating li...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wednesday’s start of public impeachment hearings unfolding in Congress marked the first time that the American public could watch and listen to the witnesses whose testimony is at the center of the Democrats’ investigation.
In several hours of testimony, punctuated by occasional bickering among lawmakers, some memorable moments emerged.
Some key takeaways from the first public witnesses: George Kent and William Taylor.
TRUMP PUSHED FOR BIDEN INVESTIGATION
Hearings like this one can be scripted affairs. But there was an early surprise.
Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, revealed for the first time that his staff members overheard President Donald Trump speaking on the phone to another diplomat about investigations.
Taylor said some of his sta...
Jews were the most targeted for hate crimes among religious groups in 2018, according to an FBI report released on Tuesday.
Some 1,550 reported incidents of hate crimes were motivated by religious bias in 2018, in which 57.8 percent, or 835, of them targeted the Jewish community—a decrease from 938 the previous year.
Overall, the number of hate crimes decreased slightly in 2018, following increases over three consecutive years. There were 7,120 such incidents in 2018, down from 7,175 the previous year.
“@FBI just released the 2018 data on hate crimes in the US: while the total hate crimes decreased slightly in 2018 after three consecutive years of increases, the numbers are still very disturbing,” tweeted the Anti-Defamation League.
The terrorist organizations on Wednesday evening are intensifying their rocket attacks against the Ashkelon and Ashdod area.
Dozens of rockets were fired within about an hour at both cities, most of them intercepted by the Iron Dome system. One rocket was taken out as it flew over Rechavot.
360 rockets have been fired into Israel between Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening, the IDF spokesperson said earlier.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both hit all-time highs Wednesday, despite a mid-afternoon sag as a result of reports that trade talks with China hit another stumbling block.
While the White House declined to comment, several news outlets reported that trade talks between the U.S. and China hit a wall over farm purchase. The Trump administration has been touting a limited trade deal since last month. But in recent days, optimism has sagged within the farming sector.
China is the world's largest importer of soybeans and bought $12 billion worth of the crop from the U.S. in 2017.
After President Trump announced the promise of a "phase one" deal last month saying China would buy $40 billion to $50 billion worth of U.S. agricultural products.
China...
November 13, 2019
03:44 PM
Islamic Jihad provides ceasefire conditions to Israel: report
Palestinian Islamic Jihad provided its conditions for a ceasefire agreement with Israel: Israel stops targeted killings in the Gaza Strip as well as in the West Bank, bans use of live fire against protesters in Great March of Return border protests, and an end to the blockade on Gaza.
The conditions were set out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah, based in Syria, in an interview with pan-Arabist Al Mayadeen television channel. Nakhalah said his organization had provided its conditions in response to Israel's appeal for a ceasefire.
03:24 PM
Rocket sirens sound in Ashdod, reports of interceptions by Iron Dome
03...
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Attorney General William Barr announced a new initiative Wednesday that would better enforce the U.S. gun background check system, coordinate state and federal gun cases and ensure prosecutors quickly update databases to show when a defendant can’t possess a firearm because of mental health issues.
The push, known as Project Guardian, was unveiled at a news conference in Memphis, Tennessee, alongside officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, on the same day public impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump began in Washington.
As part of the program, U.S. prosecutors will coordinate with state and local law enforcement officials to consider potential federal charges when a suspect is arrested for weapons possession,...
Bring Your Shabbos Table Alive with Your Own Copy of ‘TableTalk’: Vayera
Baltimore, MD – Nov. 2019 - Every Shabbos table offers every Jewish family an incredible opportunity by which they can share their joy for Shabbos, for Yiddishkeit and for HaShem with their children. Unfortunately, our schedules are hectic and many people don’t have the time to prepare themselves to utilize the Shabbos table to its fullest. Therefore, we at ACHIM created TableTalk as a pre-packaged talking points pamphlet which is attractive, fun and has something for everyone. Limited copies are distributed to many shuls on a weekly basis but they are snatched up very quickly. Get yours ASAP or click on the graphic below and print your own.
What’s in it and what’s all the excitement about?
TableTalk features
• Weekly halachic dilemma creating lively discussion
• Parsha thought offering insight into the Parsha
• Mitzvah Meme; a short aphorism with some depth
• Story of a great person and great deeds
• Small riddle related to the Parsha
• An insight to HaShem’s incredible world of science
• Answer to last week’s halachic dilemma
Click on the graphic below for this week’s parasha to read the most interesting 4-pages your Shabbos table will ever experience
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A brutal attack, a shooting outside of a school, and a stabbing next to the Inner Harbor- three violent attacks, and police say what they all have in common is that teenagers are involved.
The picture of a badly beaten 52-year-old man in the emergency room is circulating on social media. According to the police report, the attack happened last Tuesday night.
The victim was taking a shortcut through New Hope Circle when 15 teens surrounded him. He is now recovering at Shock Trauma.
This was the first in a series of violent incidents involving teenagers.
“Out of nowhere, he found himself surrounded,” Baltimore Police Detective Donny Moses said. “They beat him, they punched him, they stomped him and then they robbed him.”
This was foll...
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening (Wednesday, 13 November 2019), at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, met with a senior delegation of AIPAC members.
The Prime Minister updated the delegation members on the situation in Gaza and said: "The most important distinction in international law and specifically about the rules of war is that here is a dividing line. On one side are combatants; on the other side are non-combatants. He added that one "cannot fight people who are innocent civilians. You can cross that line accidentally, but you can’t cross it deliberately. If you deliberately target civilians, that’s a war crime."
Prime Minister Netanyahu stressed: "Terrorists, including the terrorists in Gaza do something entirely different. They target civili...
JERUSALEM (JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Blue and White leader and prime-minister designate Benny Gantz, visited southern Israel separately on Wednesday to areas impacted by the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu, who visited the command headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces in southern Israel, threatened to resume targeted assassination operations against terrorists in Gaza.
“The terrorists know we can put a target on them, and we will put a target on anyone who tries to harm us. They know we can get to them in their hiding places with surgical precision,” Netanyahu said, according to the prime minister’s office.
Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who took office on Tuesday, also released a similar statement. “Eve...
The EU’s top court ruled on Tuesday that goods from Israeli settlements must be labeled as produced in occupied territory, a decision hailed by Palestinians and condemned by Israel, which said it would try to persuade countries to ignore it.
The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice said labels must not imply that goods produced in occupied territory came from Israel itself.
Labels must “prevent consumers from being misled as to the fact that the State of Israel is present in the territories concerned as an occupying power and not as a sovereign entity,” the court said.
The case focused on a winery in the West Bank, but the court referred to all territory Israel took control of in the 1967 Six-Day War, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, both of which ...
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said that “it is not antisemitic to criticize the policies of the Israeli government,” adding on to his prior stance that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is “racist.”
In a piece published on Monday on the left-wing site Jewish Currents, Sanders, who is Jewish, wrote that “that it is not antisemitic to criticize the policies of the Israeli government” even though it is “true that some criticism of Israel can cross the line into antisemitism, especially when it denies the right of self-determination to Jews, or when it plays into conspiracy theories about outsized Jewish power.”
In the essay, Sanders, identifying as &ldquo...
Israeli retaliatory strikes in the Gaza Strip killed 12 on Wednesday, the coastal enclave’s health department reported, bringing the total number of dead in the Hamas-ruled territory since fighting broke out early Tuesday morning to 22.
The IDF reported earlier on Wednesday that it was intensifying its operations against terrorists in the Gaza Strip, striking multiple facilities operated by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Among the targets hit are a rocket factory, weapons storage facilities, and terrorist training areas.
A number of Islamic Jihad terrorists have been reported among the dead, including 38-year-old Khaled Awad Farraj, who was killed Wednesday morning by an IDF airstrike.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
Former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley claims in her new book that in late 2017 then secretary of state Rex Tillerson attempted to thwart the White House’s plan to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim.
Titled “With all Due Respect,” Haley describes the former oil executive and others on the National Security Council were vehemently opposed to President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate the US mission to Israel.
“I supported the move. It was simply common sense,” Haley writes. “Embassies are located in capitals. In virtually every country in the world, the U.S. embassy is located in the host country’s capital city. Israel should be no different.”
“But others in the cabinet and White House disagre...
The US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told i24NEWS Tuesday that the US vehemently condemns the rocket attacks on its territory by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
She also took a jab at Iran, saying “we condemn the Iran regime which is ultimately the funder and facilitator of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
Ortagus stressed that Tuesday’s events were to a degree a product of the 2015 nuclear deal, as Tehran did not use the money unlocked by sanctions relief to build schools or hospitals for the Iranian people.
Instead, the funds went to its regional proxies, unleashing terror in the Middle East.
Read more at i24NEWS.
MK Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism) said on Monday that until Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz does not return the mandate to form a government to the president, there is no chance of a breakthrough in the contacts to form a unity government.
“Nothing will happen in the next nine days and no unity government will emerge. If there is a development it will only be in about 21 days and then there will be pressure on us to compromise. We are preparing for this,” Maklev told the haredi radio station Kol Barama.
The charedi MK attacked Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Lieberman, saying, “He calls Arabs terrorists but is willing to give them power. The Arabs will not support any government if they do not receive their wishes and Lieberman will be the one who gives them ...
The Samaria Military Court today sentenced the mother of the Barkan murderer to 18 months in prison, paying a fine of NIS 5,000, as well as paying compensation to the families of the murdered in the amount of NIS 40,000.
The mother was convicted of failing to prevent the attack in the Barkan industrial zone where Kim Levengrond and Ziv Hajbi were murdered, despite knowing her son’s intentions.
At the hearing, the president of the military court said it was of great importance for family members to report relatives’ intentions to carry out attacks. “The defendant genuinely and subjectively suspected her son would carry out an attack, and did not act as required by law to prevent the planned attack.”
In the conviction itself, the judge wrote “the value of hum...