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May 23, 2019 at 8:51 pm
Prime Minister Netanyahu directed the Foreign Ministry to reach out to nearby countries for “immediate” assistance in putting out the hundreds of fires that were ravaging the country Thursday evening, destroying dozens of houses and forcing the evacuation of some 3,500 from their homes.
Later, the Foreign Ministry said Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Croatia had agreed to send help, but the aircraft would only be able to depart for Israel on Friday morning.
Hours earlier, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan held a situational assessment and instructed fire authorities to prepare for the possibility that a national emergency be declared, with Friday’s temperatures expected to eclipse 100° F throughout the country.
Read more at Times of Israel.
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May 23, 2019 at 8:47 pm
Hate speech written on a shul wall was discovered early Thursday morning in Staten Island.
The words “synagogue of Satan” were visible from Bradley Avenue, written on the Chabad of Staten Island shul, located on Harold Street. Across the street, the letters “SOS” were written with spray paint on the Yeshiva Zichron Paltiel of Staten Island, referencing the aforementioned phrase.
Mendy Katzman, the associate director of Chabad of Staten Island, said that police believe the graffiti was written around midnight. Read more at SI Live
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May 23, 2019 at 8:45 pm
The man charged in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre still wants to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, his lawyer said Thursday.
Judy Clarke told a judge she hopes the case against Robert Bowers can be resolved without a trial. The 46-year-old truck driver wasn’t in court.
Authorities say Bowers killed 11 people and wounded seven at Tree of Life synagogue last October. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in US history. He has previously pleaded not guilty.
Read more at Times of Israel.
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May 23, 2019 at 8:43 pm
Theresa May is expected to announce the date of her departure from thePrime Minister position on Friday, senior cabinet ministers have told the BBC.
Sources say they expect the PM to give a timetable for her successor to be chosen, with 10 June likely to be the start of the official leadership race.
May has been under pressure to resign, after an angry backlash by her own MPs against her latest Brexit plan.
Read more at BBC.
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May 23, 2019 at 8:42 pm
Justice Department officials on Thursday announced 17 additional felony charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
A grand jury in Alexandria, Va., returned the superseding indictment charging Assange with conspiring with former Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning to obtain, receive and disclose “national defense information,” in violation of the Espionage Act.
Assange is also charged with publishing a select range of the classified documents that revealed the names of low-level, local sources utilized by the U.S. government, including Afghan and Iraqi nationals, as well as journalists, human rights activists, and religious leaders.
The charges are unveiled as Assange is fighting extradition to the U.S. after he was arrested earlier this year on a conspiracy cha...
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May 23, 2019 at 8:40 pm
In 2016, the United States Treasury under the Barrack Obama Administration announced plans to replace the portrait of Andrew Jackson on the $20 USD bill with noted abolitionist, Harriet Tubman. The redesigned bill was scheduled to release next year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote. Tubman was a firm supporter of the women’s suffrage movement.
Now, the Trump Administration is postponing the currency’s launch for nearly a decade as announced by the secretary of treasury Steve Mnuchin this past Wednesday.
Despite the delay, Mnuchin claimed that the bill’s security features will still release in 2020. However, the issue surrounding the bill’s appearance “most likely” won’t be brought up to ...
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May 23, 2019 at 8:38 pm
As the recovery from the ransomware attack on Baltimore City systems drags on, a number of city agencies and employees set up temporary Gmail accounts.
On Thursday, some of those agencies found themselves temporarily locked out.
James Bentley, a spokesman for Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young, said a Google algorithm identified the accounts as possible business accounts. While personal Gmail accounts are free, Google requires businesses and organizations to pay.
Bentley said the city would buy a business package, but did not say how long it would take to restore email service or how much the business accounts would cost the city.
It became a moot point Thursday evening, as Google restored access for city officials.
"Our automated security systems disabled the accounts due to the bulk...
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May 23, 2019 at 8:36 pm
President Trump on Thursday night issued a memo giving Attorney General William Barr the authority to declassify any documents related to surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016.
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May 23, 2019 at 8:34 pm
While severe storms moved quickly through central Maryland on Thursday afternoon, the damage left behind in Howard County may take some time to clean up.
In Columbia, which was covered by a tornado warning, the tops of a number of trees were damaged, some highway exits were closed due to fallen debris and at least one home was split by a downed tree.
SkyTeam 11 Capt. Roy Taylor said that that home is north of Route 32 and east of Route 29.
At University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a commencement ceremony was delayed by the tornado warning.
Watches and warnings related to the storm have been canceled.
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May 23, 2019 at 8:32 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — She’s calling for an “intervention” to save the nation from him. He says she’s “crazy.”
The enmity between President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deteriorated Thursday into rude-and-then-some questioning of his fitness for office and her sanity, with personal attacks flowing from both the nation’s top elected officials after a dramatic blow-up at the White House.
However intended, the exchanges left uncertain ahead of the 2020 election whether Trump and the Democrats will be able to work together on serious, must-pass tasks, such as funding the government and raising the federal borrowing limit, let alone thornier issues such as immigration, national security and more.
Pelosi went first, with demure shrugs ...
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May 23, 2019 at 8:28 pm
Maryland’s new House Speaker, the first African American to hold the position, called on Thursday for the removal from the Maryland State House of a plaque commemorating Confederate soldiers, according to The Washington Post.
“History clearly tells us there was a right and a wrong side of the Civil War,” Speaker Adrienne Jones (D) wrote in a letter to the State House Trust, which is responsible for maintenance of the building. “I believe it is our duty to ensure truth in history for what it is, not what some may have wished it to be.”
The plaque in question commemorates soldiers on both sides of the war and was installed in 1964. It reads in part “in commemorating the centennial of that great struggle between the citizens of the temporarily d...
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May 23, 2019 at 8:00 pm
Parshat Behar effectively concludes the legal section of Vayikra- the sefer with the highest degree of halachik density. The entire book of Vayikra contains only two stories which interject in an otherwise unceasing stream of halachot. The beginning of the parsha presents the the intricate laws of shemittah and stresses their delivery at Sinai. This unnecessary tagging of shemittah laws to Har Sinai is noticed by Chazal, who famously assert that shemittah is actually a prototype meant to reflect a general pattern regarding all mitzvoth. Just as the laws of shemittah were delivered- both in generalities and in detail – at Sinai similarly the entire halachik corpus was entirely delivered at Sinai. Not only were general themes provided but the entire networked system of halachik m...
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May 23, 2019 at 7:00 pm
Baltimore, MD - May 23, 2019 - As many community members are already aware, last week (parshas Emor, 05/13–05/17) Eruv of Baltimore, Inc. was confronted with a serious challenge to the integrity of the Eruv.
Since its inception, Eruv of Baltimore has used the fence surrounding Druid Ridge Cemetery as part of its boundary (with the permission of the Cemetery). This fence ran along Park Heights Avenue from the Beltway to Old Court Lane; right along Sudbrook Lane; and then right along Old Court Road out to Reisterstown Road (see the Eruv map in this year’s Eruv List). In recent years, this fence has been in a state of disrepair, and very often R’ Yonah Ribiat (Eruv’s steadfast checker and repairman) would have to construct makeshift patches to connect those parts of...
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May 23, 2019 at 5:39 pm
Baltimore, MD - May 23, 2019 - When planning an outdoor event in May it is always with a bit a trepidation -- especially when the weather forecasters are calling for afternoon thunderstorms and your outdoor activities are from 2:30-5:00 p.m.! Well, thankfully Mother Nature knew better than to ruin Shoresh’s 18th annual Barbecue Banquet on Sunday, May 19th. This year’s BBQ celebrated 40 years of meaningful Shoresh programming. What started as a camp with 19 kids in Frederick, has grown into a full-scale outreach organization for kids, teens, and adults.
The Shoresh 107-acre campus in Adamstown was filled with activities for everyone to enjoy including a hayride, rock wall and zip line, archery, skeet shooting, petting zoo, face painting, all types of sports, and so much more. T...
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May 23, 2019 at 4:51 pm
There is an ancient masoretic tradition to find a word or name which is numerically equivalent to the number of verses in the weekly portion.
At the end of Behar it records two such parallels. The name חטיל equals 57, the exact number of verses in Behar. It also offers the word לאחוזה, literally translated as ‘holdings’, used nearly exclusively in the context of an ancestral heritage of real estate - land. This exact wording however appears, in its single exception, in association with the ownership of gentile slaves, which is equated with land both in its method of transaction and it being inherited by children.
The more intriguing aspect of this connection is the fact that this word is numerically equivalent to 57 only if it is written with a ו, לאחוזה, whe...
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May 23, 2019 at 4:43 pm
Washington - President Donald Trump rolled out another $16 billion in aid for farmers hurt by his trade policies, and financial markets shook Thursday on the growing realization that the U.S. and China are far from settling a bitter, year-long trade dispute.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said that the first of three payments is likely to be made in July or August and suggested that the U.S. and China were unlikely to have settled their differences by then.
“The package we’re announcing today ensures that farmers do not bear the brunt of unfair retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and other trading partners,” Perdue said.
The latest bailout comes atop $11 billion in aid Trump provided farmers last year.
“We will ensure our farmers get the relief they ne...
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May 23, 2019 at 4:34 pm
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Thursday, 23 May 2019), at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, met with Eric Bacos, son of the late Michel Bacos, the pilot of the Air France jet that was hijacked to Entebbe in 1976.
Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed sorrow over the passing of Eric's father and congratulated him on receiving an aviation citation on behalf of his father at an event held this morning.
The Prime Minister heard from Eric that the national anthem of the State of Israel was played at his father's funeral and said that Michel Bacos was very brave. Eric added that even after 40 years his family owes a debt of gratitude and appreciation to the IDF operation and the actions of Yoni Netanyahu.
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May 23, 2019 at 4:34 pm
This time of year is an interesting one. For the next several months or so, already starting right after Pesach, and lasting all the way almost up until Tisha B’Av, the Jewish world will not be aligned. No, I am not referring to constellations, but rather to the weekly parasha. A simple innocuous question of “What’s this week’s parasha?” will elicit a different response depending on where in the world the question is being asked. This is because the parasha will not be the same regularly scheduled one in Chutz La’aretz as it is in Eretz Yisrael.
Truthfully, this type of dichotomy actually happens not so infrequently, as it essentially occurs whenever the last day of a Yom Tov falls on Shabbos. ...
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May 23, 2019 at 3:45 pm
Jerusalem, Israel - May 23, 2019 - President Reuven Rivlin hosted a 24th session of the Bible Study Group of 929 on Tuesday, 16 Iyar. The beginning of Sefer Shoftim, was the subject, “In those days, there was no king in Israel.”
Rabbi Benny Lau began 929, an initiative to daily study a chapter of Tenakh. In its second cycle, 929 has grown, with a website of new material daily, with a long list of writers, including rabbis and scholars, and with international study groups. After the first cycle in 929 days was completed, an English cycle has been included as well as Hebrew, in this second cycle.
The President was the first speaker, "togetherness, craving for the king develops late in the period of the judges, stems not only from the desire f...
