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 - Oct. 16, 2018:
Dear Baltimore community, We have had a very busy year. We knocked on thousands of doors. We raised awareness about our campaign and all we stand for, and we raised the necessary funds to spread that message. We listened to your dreams for our district and your concerns about it too, and we vowed to do what ever we can to make the 41st district a better place for everyone. Finally, we brought out the vote in resounding numbers, and we won the Primary Election. All of this could not have been done without your support, and we are so indebted to you. Now there is just one final hurdle: we need to win the November 6th General Election. Can you help us make one final, strong statement before Dalya Attar is sent to represent us in Ann...
Baruch Hashem, I had the zechus of spending a wonderful Succos with my family in the most beautiful place in the world: Yerushalayim. While it was a truly remarkable and uplifting experience in so many ways, it was sadly tarnished by certain behaviors that I witnessed over yom tov.
As I walked with my wife and children to and from meals over Succos, I could not believe the amount of drinking that was going on by the many students, both boys and girls, who are spending a year (or two or three) in Eretz Yisroel. They were being liberally supplied with drinks at meals and kiddeishim, and I cannot even begin to tell you how many of them I heard speaking openly about the amount of alcohol they had enjoyed, identifying the various bottles by brand, year and price. Some of the ...
London - Google plans to start charging smartphone makers to pre-install apps like Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps on Android handsets sold in Europe, a response to a record $5 billion antitrust fine imposed by the European Union.
The U.S. tech company’s announcement Tuesday is a change from its previous business model of letting manufacturers install Google’s suite of popular mobile apps for free on phones running its Android operating system.
Device makers will also now be able to install rival modified, or “forked,” versions of Android, the most widely used mobile operating system.
The company is taking the measures to comply with the July ruling by EU authorities that found Google allegedly abused the dominance of Android to stifle competitors.
Google is intr...
Tehran - Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday they had killed the “mastermind” behind an attack on a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz last month which left 25 people dead, nearly half of them members of the Guards.
The Guards said in a statement published on state media their forces had killed a man named Abu Zaha and four other militants in Diyala province in Iraq. One news website run by Iran’s state television said Abu Zaha was a member of Islamic State.
Both Islamic State and an Iranian ethnic Arab opposition movement called the Ahwaz National Resistance, which seeks a separate state in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province, have claimed responsibility for the Sept. 22 attack. Neither group has provided conclusive evidence to back up its ...
THE FOLLOWING IS VIA YWNAuthorities are searching for a missing person from North Miami Beach, FL.
Missing is Sammy Kissel, age 30. He was on his way from his home in Jade Winds condominiums around 195th Street and 17th Avenue to Khal Chassidim on NE 10th Avenue for a Malavah Malka he occasionally attends. Unfortunately, he never made it there. He was last seen on NE 10th Avenue at about 173rd Street.At the time, he was wearing a white shirt, dark navy blue pants and black leather shoes. He left his home wearing a black kippah. At the time he was seen, his head was uncovered. He has a reddish-brown beard. He is in dire need of his medication.
Sammy is an alumnus of Toras Emes Academy of Miami.
Chesed Shel Emes of Florida is coordinating the search. Volunteers searched many area location...
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Amber Gee had evacuated from her home in Callaway, a town of about 15,000 in the Florida Panhandle with her two children last week and she assumed her relatives who lived northeast of her had done the same.
They hadn’t.
Gee learned that they were in distress after scouring a map of aerial imagery published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that showed the severe damage from Hurricane Michael in the area. Someone had used trees felled in the storm at her grandmother’s house in Youngstown to spell out “help” in letters big enough to be seen from the sky. She later learned that her uncle, Ernest Gee, had made the message outside the home, which is owned by her grandmother, Emily Bently, Gee told ABC. While Bently had already evacuated, Ernest, hi...
Four train departures on the new high-speed Yerushalayim-Tel Aviv rail line were cancelled Tuesday morning Israel Railways announced, the latest in a string of malfunctions and technical delays that have plagued the line since its opening last month.
On Tuesday, Israel Railways announced the cancellation of four planned train departures scheduled for Tuesday morning.
The company said the cancellations were caused by delays in work being performed by the Semi corporation on the new rail line. Israel Railways vowed that the train line would resume normal service after 7:30.
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon rebuked the U.N. Security Council on Monday for meddling in Israel’s internal affairs and accused it of hypocrisy for opposing the eviction of an illegally built Bedouin village in the West Bank while supporting the eviction of Jewish settlers and settlements.
The rebuke was included in a letter addressed to Security Council members ahead of their weekly session on the Middle East.
In a first, Thursday’s session will feature Hagai El-Ad, the director of controversial left-wing human-rights organization B’Tselem, who has been invited to address the U.N.’s top body.
An official with the Israeli mission to the United Nations said the meeting was likely ...
U.S. President Donald Trump vowed in May to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and signed an executive order in August to re-impose sanctions, which go into full effect on Nov. 4. The European Union, however, appears determined to ignore and circumvent U.S. efforts to force Iran into compliance on its nuclear program, and for the Islamic regime to cease and desist global terror activity.
It appears that Trump’s foreign policy on Iran has raised European ire and some of those countries do not yet seem willing to view Iran’s hegemonic desires as dangerous. As such, European leaders instead seek to bypass U.S. sanctions by continuing to do business with the hostile Islamic regime.
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Beijing - China on Tuesday characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the “modern, civilized” world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones.
The report is the ruling Communist Party’s latest effort to defend its extrajudicial detention of Central Asian Muslim minorities against mounting criticism.
China’s resistance to Western pressure over the camps highlights its growing confidence under President Xi Jinping, who has offered Beijing’s authoritarian system as a model for other countries.
A U.N. panel and a human rights group have estimated that around 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities have been arbitrarily detained in internment camps in Ch...
Washington - A senior FBI official accepted two tickets to a sports event from a television reporter who regularly covered the bureau, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Tuesday.
The official did not pay for the tickets despite having initially claimed under oath to have done so, according to the watchdog, which said the official’s actions violated federal regulations on gifts.
The official, who was not named in the report and has since retired, had previously accepted a ticket to a different sporting event from the same reporter as well as a ticket from a different reporter to another sports event, the inspector general said. The watchdog said it found no evidence that the official had paid for the tickets, and the official produced no proof.
The interaction wa...
Manhattan, NY - A graffitied swastika that appeared on a freshly paved Harlem street has been rendered unrecognizable just three hours after it was reported to the Department of Transportation.
Gregory Locke came across the swastika on Morningside Avenue between W 119th and W 120th Streets just before 10 AM this morning.
Taking to Twitter, Locke notified the DOT, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office and Public Advocate Letitia James of the hate symbol tweeting “Hi @NYC_DOT! Any idea why your line painting contractors are including swastikas on Morningside Ave? Is that a new traffic symbol I am not familiar with?”
Locke, a 29 year old attorney who lives in Harlem, included pictures of the swastika that was painted next to guide lines that had been marked on the recently ...
Shanghai - It’s now possible to check in automatically at Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport using facial recognition technology, part of an ambitious rollout of facial recognition systems in China that has raised privacy concerns as Beijing pushes to become a global leader in the field.
Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport unveiled self-service kiosks for flight and baggage check-in, security clearance and boarding powered by facial recognition technology, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
Similar efforts are underway at airports in Beijing and Nanyang city, in central China’s Henan province.
Many airports in China already use facial recognition to help speed security checks, but Shanghai’s system, which debuted Monday, is being billed as the ...
Washington - The co-founder of a political research firm that was behind a dossier of allegations about President Donald Trump’s connections to Russia refused to speak to two House committees during a closed-door interview Tuesday.
A lawyer for Glenn Simpson said in a statement that he had exercised his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions from the GOP-led House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees, which are investigating decisions made by the Justice Department in the run-up to the 2016 election. Republicans on the committee have criticized the department, echoing Trump’s repeated claims that officials there were conspiring against him as they investigated his ties to Russia and cleared his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, in a sepa...
New York - World stock markets are rallying Tuesday, and U.S. stocks are on track for their second-largest gain in 2018 following strong earnings reports from major U.S. companies in finance and health care. Technology companies are also rising after their recent slump. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose as much as 546 points.
Even with the big gains, major indexes are still broadly lower for the month following a two-day rout last week that erased nearly 1,400 points from the Dow.
Investors were encouraged by some good news on the economy. The Federal Reserve said output by U.S. factories, mines and utilities climbed in September despite the effects of Hurricane Florence, and the Labor Department said U.S. employers posted the most jobs in two decades in August while hiring continued...
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was trading sharply higher midday Tuesday, putting blue chips on track to book the best one-day gain since March. The Dow (DJIA) was up about 492 points, or 2%, at 25,739. Tuesday's rally was partly on the back of a surge in shares of component UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) which was delivering a roughly 70-point jolt to the price-weighted equity gauge.
Share rises for UnitedHealth come after the health-care company raised its full-year earnings outlook and said it continues to see growth in health-care plan membership and premiums. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 indexSPX, +1.82% was climbing 2% at 2,804 and the Nasdaq Composite IndexCOMP, +2.49% advanced by 2.6% to 7,620. Wall Street investors appear to be focusing upbeat ea...
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials on Tuesday reported a jump in cases of a rare paralyzing illness in children, and said it seems to be following an every-other-year pattern.
At least 62 cases have been confirmed in 22 states this year, and at least 65 additional illnesses in those states are being investigated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Similar waves of the same illness occurred in 2014 and 2016.
CDC officials say they haven't found the cause. Some possible suspects, such as polio and West Nile virus, have been ruled out. Another kind of virus is suspected, but it's been found in only some of the cases.
"This is a mystery so far," the CDC's Dr. Nancy Messonnier said in a call Tuesday with reporters.
About 90 percent of the ca...
NEW YORK (AP) — World stock markets are turning higher again Tuesday, helped by strong earnings reports from major U.S. companies in finance and health care. Technology companies are also rising after their recent slump, and the S&P 500 index is on track for its biggest gain since early April.
The Federal Reserve said output by U.S. factories, mines and utilities climbed in September despite the effects of Hurricane Florence, and the Labor Department said U.S. employers posted the most jobs in two decades in August while hiring continued to increase.
KEEPING SCORE: The S&P 500 index jumped 45 points, or 1.6 percent, to 2,795 as of 1 p.m. Eastern time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 411 points, or 1.6 percent, to 25,661.
The Nasdaq composite climbed 164 points, or 2....
NEW YORK (AP) — If Instagram is the dream vacation you’ll never go on and Facebook is Thanksgiving with too many relatives arguing over politics, Pinterest is sitting on the couch by yourself, watching a home-improvement show and absent-mindedly flipping through an old issue of Gourmet magazine.
Pinterest has long shunned being labeled a social network. Because of that, it doesn’t push users to add friends or build connections the way rivals have done to grow quickly. But while this has meant that Pinterest is smaller than, say, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, the service has also avoided much of its peers’ troubles around misinformation, hate and abuse.
“Social media is about sharing what you are doing with other people,” Evan Sharp, Pinterest’...