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March 23, 2019 at 8:51 pm
According to an internal document of Israel’s Great Rabbinical Court, women are to begin serving as judicial assistants to dayonim within the precincts of botei din. Until now, they only worked in rabbinical courts’ administrative offices.
Opposed in the past by Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman and other gedolim, the change is the result of an agreement between Rav Dovid Lau and the heads of the botei din.
Rav Lau’s office noted that women advisors have been advising dayonim for two years and that the change was made for convenience sake.
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March 23, 2019 at 8:47 pm
About 13 million people in the U.S. could face major flooding this spring in what federal scientists have warned could be a “potentially unprecedented” flood season. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, about two-thirds of the lower 48 states face an increased risk of flooding until May, with 25 states that could be hit with “major or moderate flooding.”
“The flooding this year could be worse than anything we’ve seen in recent years, even worse than the historic floods of 1993 and 2011,” Mary C. Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service, was quoted as saying by The New York Times.
Scientists are reportedly attributing the greater risk to expected “above-average rainfall” in coming months al...
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March 23, 2019 at 8:46 pm
President Donald Trump has a low approval rating. He is engaging in bitter Twitter wars and facing metastasizing investigations. But if the election were held today, he’d likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide, according to multiple economic models with strong track records of picking presidential winners and losses.
Credit a strong U.S. economy featuring low unemployment, rising wages and low gas prices — along with the historic advantage held by incumbent presidents. While Trump appears to be in a much stronger position than his approval rating and conventional Beltway wisdom might suggest, he also could wind up in trouble if the economy slows markedly between now and next fall, as many analysts predict it will.
“The economy is just so strong right now and b...
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March 23, 2019 at 8:44 pm
President Donald Trump said Friday that he would scrap action his administration took only a day earlier to crack down on companies accused of helping North Korea evade sanctions.
“It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” the president tweeted on Friday, though the Treasury announcement he appeared to reference took place Thursday and did not involve “large scale” sanctions. “I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”
In explaining the president’s sudden announcement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be...
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March 23, 2019 at 8:42 pm
U.S.-backed forces have pushed the Islamic State out of its final foothold in Syria, the White House said Friday, making a long-awaited victory announcement but defying eyewitness accounts of continued fighting.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the group’s “territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria.”
President Donald Trump, making brief remarks to reporters after landing in Palm Beach, Florida, showed reporters a map comparing Iraq and Syria at the height of Islamic State power in 2014 with today.
“That’s what we have right now,” he said, indicating areas no longer controlled by the militants.
The announcement, more than four years after the United States launched its first airstrikes...
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March 23, 2019 at 8:41 pm
Jerusalem - Rafi Eitan, a legendary Israeli Mossad spy who led the capture of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann, died Saturday. He was 92.
Eitan was one of the founders of Israel’s vaunted intelligence community and among its most prominent figures in Israel and abroad.
“Rafi was among the heroes of the intelligence services of the State of Israel on countless missions on behalf of the security of Israel,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “His wisdom, wit and commitment to the people of Israel and our state were without peer.”
The 1960 operation to capture Eichmann in Argentina and bring him to trial in Jerusalem was the Mossad’s most historic mission and remains one of the defining episodes in Israel’s history. His trial brought to lif...
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March 23, 2019 at 8:40 pm
A top Senate Democrat on the Judiciary Committee conceded in a conference call with reporters Saturday that when the special counsel's principal findings are released by Attorney General William Barr, there may well be cause for celebration among President Trump's supporters -- many of whom have stood by the president for more than two years amid a torrent of unproven allegations that the Trump campaign illegally conspired with Russia in the 2016 election.
"It's the end of the beginning but it's not the beginning of the end," Delaware Democrat Sen. Chris Coons said, echoing his party's strategy of moving forward on to other investigations, including probes into Trump's financial dealings. "Once we get the principal...
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March 23, 2019 at 8:39 pm
Sydney Aiello, who survived the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, has died from suicide, people close to the family told CNN.
Her mother, Cara, told CNN affiliate WFOR that Aiello suffered from survivor's guilt after one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern US history and had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Aiello, a student at Florida Atlantic University, died Sunday. Her funeral was Friday in Davie, Florida.
Aiello had been on campus the day of the mass attack but was not in the building where the shootings took place, her mother said, according to WFOR. Aiello, a cheerleader in high school, graduated just months after a troubled teen gunned down 14 students and three teachers there.
The fa...
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March 23, 2019 at 8:32 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr scoured special counsel Robert Mueller’s confidential report on the Russia investigation with his advisers Saturday, deciding how much Congress and the American public will get to see about the two-year probe into President Donald Trump and Moscow’s efforts to elect him.
Barr was on pace to release his first summary of Mueller’s findings on Sunday, people familiar with the process said.
The attorney general’s decision on what to finally disclose seems almost certain to set off a fight with congressional Democrats, who want access to all of Mueller’s findings — and supporting evidence — on whether Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the election and w...
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March 22, 2019 at 6:34 pm
In this week's parsha, the korban todah is discussed. The todah is brought as a thanks to HaShem for one of four reasons discussed by Chaza"l. The todah consists of a sacrifice and 40 loaves of bread. Netzi"v, in Ha'amek Davar points out that even though the todah is a shelamim sacrifice whose prescribed time for eating is a day and a half, the todah may only be eaten that night. This, in addition to the excessive bread requirement will make it impossible for the one bringing the korban to consume everything on his own and thus he will be compelled to make a gathering for all his friends wherein he will praise HaShem in public, in order that he not leave over any of the korban after the night. This, s...
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March 22, 2019 at 5:27 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation (all times local):
5:15 p.m.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report concluding the Russia investigation was delivered by a security officer early Friday afternoon to the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
That’s according to Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec. It was then delivered within minutes to Attorney General William Barr.
The White House was notified around 4:35-4:40 p.m. that the Justice Department had received the report.
The letter was scheduled to be delivered at 5 p.m. to staff members on Capitol Hill.
Rosenstein was expected to call Mueller on Friday to thank him for his work in the last two years.
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5:07 p.m.
Attorney General William Barr s...
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March 22, 2019 at 5:11 pm
WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has delivered a report on his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election to Attorney General William P. Barr, according to the Justice Department, bringing to an apparent close an investigation that has consumed the nation and cast a shadow over President Trump for nearly two years.
Mr. Barr will decide how much of the report to share with Congress and, by extension, the American public. The House voted unanimouslyin March on a nonbinding resolution to make public the report’s findings, an indication of the deep support within both parties to air whatever evidence prosecutors uncovered.
Since Mr. Mueller’s appointment in May 2017, his team has focused on how Russian operatives sought to s...
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March 22, 2019 at 5:05 pm
"When I was wounded, I did not know what life was awaiting me," Dana said. "I went through a long rehabilitation and today, I know that this is it, I won."
23 years after Dana was seriously injured in a terrorist attack on Purim, to the day, she gave birth to her son at the same hospital in which she was hospitalized.Dana was 15 years old when she was heavily injured during a terrorist attack at Dizengoff Center on Ta'anit Ester, 1995. She went to celebrate Purim, but came out in an ambulance headed for Ichilov Hospital. She went through rigorous hospitalization and treatments before gradually being released.
Now at age 37, on the same day that she almost lost her life, Dana has instead brought one into the world at the very same hospital to which she was carted away all th...
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March 22, 2019 at 4:43 pm
Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that he will sue two of his main political rivals for libel over remarks relating to a graft scandal relating to a German submarine deal.
In a video published on Netanyahu’s Facebook page the veteran Israeli leader said he has instructed his attorneys to take legal action against former army general Benny Gantz and ex-defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, both of the centrist Blue and White party.
Israel faces elections on April 9. Netanyahu faces no charges in the submarine matter, but possible indictment in three other corruption cases. He has denied all wrongdoing and accuses his opponents of carrying out a politically motivated “witch-hunt.” Read more at Reuters
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March 22, 2019 at 4:42 pm
[Ed. Note] Out of the respect and recognition of the impact made by longtime BJL friend and contributor, Reb Shaya Gross, z’l, we will maintain a living memoriam to Shaya through the sweet words and thoughtful insights of his Divrei Torah. BJL readers will remember his weekly column on the Parsha and on various Torah ideas and concepts. These meaningful words will help us remember this special young man who will be sorely missed and for those who did not merit to know him, this will be the most appropriate way for them to become familiar with who he was.
Feeling despondent that all of the joy of Purim is over? After Purim, one of my Rebbeim would always quote a Rashi in Gemara Taanis that says we should increase our joy in Adar. Rashi goes on to explain that this in...
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March 22, 2019 at 3:55 pm
The Israeli Rabbinate is increasingly using DNA testing to help decide the Jewishness of individuals seeking to marry. In almost all cases, this involved immigrants from the former Soviet Union or their offspring.
About half a dozen complaints against the practice were filed over the past year with the ITIM organization, which helps immigrants and converts navigate religious bureaucracy.
Officially, the Rabbinate only uses DNA results to buttress evidence of a person’s ancestry, but never relies on it exclusively.
Yet not everyone is happy with this. Rabbonim of Yerushalayim’s Eretz Chemdah Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies DNA have been pushing for the acceptance of testing of mitochondrial DNA that is inherited exclusively from a person’s mother as conc...
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March 22, 2019 at 3:51 pm
Majdal Shams -Druze Arabs and Israeli settlers on opposite sides of the dispute over U.S. President Donald Trump’s support for Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights agree on one thing - it won’t change matters on the ground.
The fertile hillsides of the Israeli-occupied Golan are scattered with villages inhabited by 22,000 Druze, an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam. Many still have relatives on the Syrian side of the fortified boundary.
In Majdal Shams, older residents remember being part of Syria before Israel captured most of the heights in the 1967 Middle East war, occupying and later annexing it in 1981.
That annexation was not recognized internationally, and although they have lived under Israeli rule for more than half a century and shopfronts bear ...
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March 22, 2019 at 3:48 pm
Poland - Warsaw is likely to refuse Holocaust denier David Irving entry to Poland later this year, the foreign minister said on Friday, citing local legislation that bans denying the genocide.
Israel had urged Poland to deny Irving entry after reports that he planned to lead a tour of Nazi concentration camps in the country. The author of several books, Irving has denied that the Nazis murdered six million Jews during World War Two.
Irving confirmed to Reuters by email that he had planned to visit Poland later this year, as he has in the past.
“Negation of the Holocaust is not allowed by Polish law, therefore he will not be welcome here in Poland if he wants to come and present his opinions,” Jacek Czaputowicz told reporters at a press conference.
Irving sued an American hi...
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March 22, 2019 at 3:47 pm
Town Of Ulster, NY - The arrest of a New York man on charges of harassing a Jewish co-worker at a health food store is the latest in a rising number of anti-Semitic episodes reported in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday.
The Democrat joined state police Superintendent Keith Corlett for the announcement of the arrest of William Sullivan, 21, of Saugerties, on a misdemeanor count of aggravated harassment.
Police said the conflict occurred March 11 at Mother’s Earth’s Storehouse in Ulster, outside Kingston, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Albany. The female employee was in the produce cooler with another co-worker when Sullivan appeared in the doorway, shut off the lights and told her, “You’re in the gas chamber now,” and then insulted her Jewish faith ...
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March 22, 2019 at 3:45 pm
United Nations - The U.N.‘s cultural agency said Friday it is considering whether to remove its recognition of a Belgium carnival as a valuable piece of cultural heritage following accusations of anti-Semitism during a parade.
UNESCO, Jewish organizations and European authorities have condemned the supposed anti-Semitic and racist nature of a parade float at the Aalst Carnival that featured puppets of Jews earlier this month. Another group paraded in Ku Klux Klan hoods and robes.
“It’s not the first time that these racist and anti-Semitic floats parade in this festival,” the agency’s director-general Audrey Azoulay said, adding that its duty is “to be vigilant and uncompromising regarding such occurrences.”
A few days after the March 3 parade, E...
