(CNN) Rabbi Zale Newman thought no one would show up to Eddie Ford's funeral in Toronto, Canada. The 85-year-old Holocaust survivor died January 29 after being diagnosed with three different forms of cancer. Newman said the elderly man was survived by only a nephew in Detroit. On January 30, the night before the funeral, Newman put out a plea on Facebook asking for at least 10 people to attend Ford's funeral so that the ceremony would have a minyan, or quorum of 10 people to perform the service. "We wouldn't want someone to leave the world alone, so we always have to have 10 together," Newman told CNN Sunday. He received a response from only three people saying they would attend the funeral, Newman said. He called a rabbi friend in California -- who once performed ...
We are members of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), and some of us are former RCA officers and executive committee members. Although we do not speak on behalf of the RCA, we must raise our voices, because a small number of fellow RCA members are violating the well-established RCA resolution that bars members from ordaining, training or hiring female clergy. In the past, individual RCA members violated RCA policy by, for example, officiating at synagogues without mechitza partitions. Such violations, outliers and few though they may be, cannot be ignored, for they misrepresent Orthodox Judaism that the RCA upholds and they dilute the halachic standards of RCA membership. The few RCA members who retain female rabbis (“rabbas” or “maharats”) as c...
Bethel, Alaska - A 16-year-old boy was arrested after he briefly took control of a small plane during a short commercial flight over western Alaska, authorities said. The teen was in the front passenger seat of the Piper Cherokee Six on a recent Yute Commuter Service flight from Napakiak to Bethel, KYUK-AM reported last week. The flight between the two remote communities usually takes about four minutes. The teen grabbed the aircraft controls shortly after takeoff, causing the “plane to enter a steep climb and then a dive toward the ground,” Alaska State Troopers said. A woman sitting behind the teen grabbed him around the neck, pulling him away from the controls, authorities said. The pilot stabilized the aircraft and returned to Napakiak. An agent for the regional airlin...
Instead of clearing the air about the previous antisemitic post, Omar continued with a response: "AIPAC!" US congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a famed Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) supporter, pointed an accusatory finger at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), saying the organization is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel.Omar made the comment in a tweet on Sunday evening American time sparking immediate backlash, with Twitter users accusing Omar of going down a slippery slope by linking AIPAC with the negative antisemitic stereotype of Jewish people's false obsession with money. She was posting in response to a tweet by follower Glenn Greenwald, who wrote that "it's stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign ...
Palestinians resume night clashes along Gaza border with Israel; one mortar launched from Strip lands next to security fence. wo Palestinians died Monday and several others injured after Egyptian troops pumped toxic fumes into a smuggling tunnel stretching into the Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip.The Hamas-run Gaza Interior Ministry was quoted by Wafa news as identifying the two as 39-year-old Hamas officer Abdul Hamid al-Aker, who was killed during a “security mission to inspect the tunnel,” and 28-year-old Sobhi Abu Qarshin. Abu Qarshin was said to have died during a rescue attempt. Several other security personnel were rescued by civil defense teams from inside the tunnel and were rushed to hospital, where they were described as being in moderate condition. The m...
Ethan Lindenberger, frustrated by years of arguments about his mother’s anti-vaccination stance, staged a quiet defection via Reddit. The Norwalk, Ohio, teenager needed advice, he said, on how to inoculate himself against infectious disease and his family’s dogma. At 18, he was old enough, Lindenberger explained. He wanted to get vaccinated. But he didn’t know how. “My parents think vaccines are some kind of government scheme,” Lindenberger wrote days before Thanksgiving. “But, because of their beliefs I’ve never been vaccinated for anything, god knows how I’m still alive.” As anti-vaccination movements metastasize amid outbreaks of dangerous disease, internet-savvy teenagers are fact-checking their parents’ decisions in a digi...
Walter B. Jones Jr., a North Carolina congressman who so enthusiastically supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq that he argued for the french fries and French toast served in House cafeterias to be called “freedom fries” and “freedom toast” – a jab at France for its opposition to the war – but who later underwent a dramatic change of heart and emerged as a prominent Republican critic of the war, died Sunday, on his 76th birthday. His office confirmed the death in a statement. It had announced on Jan. 26 that the 13-term lawmaker had entered hospice care, his health having declined after a fall in which he broke his hip. Jones had been granted a leave of absence in late 2018 for an unspecified illness. Jones first ran for Congress in 1992, campaigning uns...
Media outlets in Afghanistan and Iran have reported that Israeli forces were carrying out intelligence activity and intelligence collection near Afghanistan’s border with Iran. Iran’s Tasnim news agency and the Russian news agency Sputnik’s Urdu-language website quoted Israeli expert Semyon Tsipis on Saturday saying that Israeli forces were operating out of a US Air Force base in Shindand in western Afghanistan, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Iranian border. “Of course, the proximity to an enemy state is the principle reason for carrying out such an operation and also provides legitimacy. But beyond that, another objective of the mission is to acquire experience in combat in the local ground conditions and activity against the local population,” Tsi...
The Palestinian Authority’s Minister of Religious Affairs Youssef Ideiss condemned Israeli forces on Sunday for entering a mosque over the weekend while in pursuit of the murderer of an Israeli teenager. According to local watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), the PA’s official daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida reported Ideiss as decrying the incident as a “cowardly attack against a religious and sacred place of worship, without any consideration for its sanctity and its religious and spiritual value.” Ideiss further claimed that the event “constitutes part of a series of daily attacks against our Islamic and Christian holy sites, and particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the pearl of Palestine, by the occupation forces and unbridled settlers and under political cover of...
The Florida triple-amputee veteran who garnered more than $20 million online to help build a wall along the southern US border was filmed being thoroughly searched by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents in Tuscon, Arizona, the Daily Mail reports. A concerned fellow traveler filmed Purple Heart recipient Brian Kolfage, 37, being subjected to an ‘invasive TSA pat down’ on Shabbos morning at Tuscon International Airport, following a ‘We Build The Wall’ rally in Sahuarita, which took place on Friday. ‘They groped and searched under his hips and buttocks, his groin and his half arm searching for what?’ YouTube user ‘james hoft’ wrote in the caption with the video. ‘Brian is an Afghanistan War veteran. They also s...
A charedi woman, a resident of Modi’in Illit, was quite upset yesterday due to the long lines and slow service at a clinic she was visiting. The woman’s perspective changed, however, when she realized that the excessive wait caused her to miss her bus – which turned out to be the 443 bus that flipped over and injured over 40 people, killing two. After the miracle became clear, she returned with a basket of chocolates and handed it to the nurse at the Kupat Cholim. “It turned out that she missed the bus that turned over,” said Maccabi Health Services Marketing Director Moshe Schlesinger. “She heard about the fatal accident and was so moved she decided to buy a gift for the secretary who delayed her.” Read more at Arutz Sheva.
Activists from the Im Tirtzu movement on Sunday hung huge signs across Yerushalayim with the portrait of 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher, who was murdered by a terrorist from Chevron near Jerusalem last Thursday. The signs were accompanied by a Hebrew and Arabic script demanding the death penalty for terrorists, as well as figures hanging on a string illustrating the death penalty. The signs were hung on the walls of the Old City near Shaar Yaffa and Shaar Shchem, on the Chords Bridge, on the Malcha Bridge as well as in Ein Yael, near the site of Ori’s murder. Read more at Arutz Sheva.
West Bank - The Palestinian foreign minister is asking Arab countries to boycott or downgrade their representation at the upcoming U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit in Poland. Riad Malki says that, at the very least, Arab nations should have low-profile delegations, below the ministerial level, at the conference. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are sending foreign ministers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be at the summit. Malki says the Palestinians “view the Warsaw conference as a plot against the Palestinian cause.” He spoke on Monday to the Voice of Palestine as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was to visit Saudi Arabia. Most Arab nations have refrained from establishing relations with Israel without significant progress being made toward peace ...
The Trump administration has completed its much-anticipated ‘Deal of the Century’ framework for a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Fox News reported Sunday, citing two senior administration officials. According to the report, the final draft of the Middle East peace plan runs between 175 and 200 pages in length. The full text has only been shown to a handful of people – less than five – the two senior Trump administration officials say. President Trump has been briefed on the plan, and approved the “parameters” of the framework, though the White House will likely hold onto the plan until after the Israeli elections, scheduled for April 9th, officials say. Read more at Arutz Sheva.
Washington - Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyber attacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States. In 13 of 26 countries, people listed climate change as the top global threat, with the Islamic State militant group topping the list in eight and cyber attacks in four, the non-profit, non-partisan Pew Research Center said in its report. Worries about climate change have increased sharply since 2013, with double-digit percentage point increases seen in countries including the United States, Mexico, France, Britain, South Africa and Kenya, according to the poll of 27,612 people conducted between May and August, 2...
Washington - President Donald Trump is pushing back against criticisms that a leak of his private schedule suggests he is not working hard. Trump tweeted that it “should have been reported as a positive, not a negative.” He also suggested that when the term “executive time” appears on his schedule, it means he is “generally working, not relaxing.” The president’s work ethic has been a topic of Washington conversation after Axios obtained three months of his private schedules. They revealed that he spent 60 percent of his time in executive time, a term coined by former chief of staff John Kelly for unstructured time in Trump’s day. That time often coincides with when Trump is on Twitter. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the leaker...
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans Monday to withdraw several hundred National Guard troops from the state's southern border with Mexico in defiance of the Trump administration's request for support from border states. About 100 of the 360 troops will remain deployed under California's agreement with the federal government to focus specifically on combating transnational crime such as drug and gun smuggling, Newsom spokesman Nathan Click said. Specifically, they will be tasked with providing intelligence on transnational crime and assist with cargo dock operations and searches of commercial trucks for contraband. Newsom's move comes on the heels of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, also a Democrat, pulling back her state's tr...
Kabul - The Pentagon’s top official made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Monday to meet with U.S. commanders and Afghan leaders amid a push for peace with the Taliban. Pat Shanahan, the recently installed acting secretary of defense, said he has no orders to reduce the U.S. troop presence, although officials say that is at the top of the Taliban’s list of demands in exploratory peace negotiations. Shanahan said he is encouraged that President Donald Trump’s administration is exploring all possibilities for ending a 17-year war, the longest in American history. But he stressed that peace terms are for the Afghans to decide. Thus far the Taliban have refused to negotiate with the government of President Ashraf Ghani, calling it illegitimate. Washington is trying t...
LONDON (AP) — When mysterious operatives lured two cybersecurity researchers to meetings at luxury hotels over the past two months, it was an apparent bid to discredit their research about an Israeli company that makes smartphone hacking technology used by some governments to spy on their citizens. The Associated Press has now learned of similar undercover efforts targeting at least four other individuals who have raised questions about the use of the Israeli firm’s spyware. The four others targeted by operatives include three lawyers involved in related lawsuits in Israel and Cyprus alleging that the company, the NSO Group, sold its spyware to governments with questionable human rights records. The fourth is a London-based journalist who has covered the litigation. Two of the...
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Waving Iranian flags, chanting "Death to America" and burning U.S. and Israeli flags, hundreds of thousands of people poured out onto the streets across Iran on Monday, marking the date that's considered victory day in the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution. On Feb. 11 that year, Iran's military stood down after days of street battles, allowing the revolutionaries to sweep across the country while the government of U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi resigned and the Islamic Republic was born. In Tehran, crowds streamed in the rain from a dozen of the capital's far-flung neighborhoods to mass in central Tehran Azadi, or Freedom Square, on Monday, waving Iranian flags and chanting "Death to America" — a chant that has been standard far...
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