Who was Ben Hecht?
"The German mass murder of the Jews, recently begun, brought my Jewishness to the surface"
“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” Rav Kook z"l
Who was Ben Hecht?
"The German mass murder of the Jews, recently begun, brought my Jewishness to the surface"
Have you heard of Rivka Anikster, the first woman writer of the Old Yishuv?
The story behind her sefer will break your heart.
From a young age, Rivka Anikster was drawn to writing. Her father and five brothers used to write and print their works. She herself was a merchant and lived in great wealth with her husband, Rabbi Meir Anikster. They lived in the town of Krakynova, where they lost seven of their children.
In 1862, the couple decided to immigrate to the Land of Israel alone, because living in the Holy Land was considered a segulah for long life. They believed that through this segulah, their remaining children would stay alive.
They parted from their young children, who remained in the town and were raised by other relatives. “Our journey to Jerusalem was very heavy. The "nisayon" was like the binding of Yitzchok… and this "nisayon" is equal to the trial of the Akedah… and through these troubles we merited to come here,” Rivka wrote.
She described leaving her children:
“And what shall I say, when you were little chicks whose feathers had not yet grown. And when I went far from you, my compassion overflowed and I wondered where I had left my motherly mercy, for I left you small, and from my great sorrow my old illness was awakened.”
She traveled from Krakynova to Slonim, to Ruzhin, then to Karlin, and from there to Odessa, from which she sailed to the Land of Israel, docking in Jaffa.
Upon arriving in the Land of Israel in 1862, she and her husband immediately went to Jerusalem. They visited all the holy sites.
After reaching the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem, her husband was appointed director of the Vilna Kollel and was responsible for distributing most of the charity funds in the city. He was also the financial manager of the Talmud Torah and the Etz Chaim Yeshiva.
In the Land of Israel, the family experienced great poverty. They lived in a small house with no light or air, next to the home of Rabbi Shmuel Salant, the rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem.
Like many women of the Old Yishuv, Rivka devoted herself to acts of kindness. She made sure to feed and clothe widows and orphans, spun tzitzit threads for the children of the Talmud Torah, and more.
Five years after her arrival, Rivka traveled to Tiberias and the Galilee to pray at “the grave of our holy relative, the Ari, of blessed memory, and his son Moshe who is buried beside him.”
She visited more than ten graves of tzaddikim in Safed and the surrounding area, which made her feel energetic and healthy. Bathing in the hot springs of Tiberias also contributed, she said, to improving her health.
In the Tiberias region she visited additional graves: the Rambam, Rabbi Akiva, Yitro, and others. She felt a deep closeness to the prophets, Tannaim, and sages buried in the Land of Israel.
Rivka was a sickly woman even before immigrating, and the fact that she survived twenty years after her arrival was, in her eyes, a miracle.
As her surviving children grew older, they left their hometown and emigrated to America. Contact with them was lost, and she did not know their addresses.
Rivka came up with a remarkably original idea for how to reach them — to publish a sefer, hoping that one copy would somehow reach them and awaken them to write back to her.
This was an extremely unusual step in the Old Yishuv. Only men wrote and published books — not a woman.
Thus Rivka became the first woman in the Old Yishuv to publish a sefer:
Kuntres Zekher Olam.
The sefer was written in Yiddish and translated into Hebrew by an anonymous translator. The first edition was published in both languages in 1882.
The book was a huge success. Within two years the edition sold out, and she added more pages and published a second edition in 1884.
Those copies also sold out, so in 1891 she published a third edition.
Such a thing had never been seen in the Old Yishuv — a woman publishing a religious sefer, and three printings.
So what is the sefer about?
Zekher Olam is a collection of Rivka’s guidance and teachings for her children, after they had emigrated to America and contact with them was severed.
She embedded her educational and religious messages within autobiographical writing about her experiences in the Diaspora and in the Land of Israel.
She hoped that the printed booklet would reach her lost sons and that she would receive letters from them.
Rivka Anikster’s groundbreaking project, as the first woman author, made waves in the Old Yishuv of Jerusalem. Two other women were inspired by her: Reitze Chen-Tov and Toibe Pesil. Both published printed booklets not long after her. The first, Reitze, explicitly mentioned Rivka Anikster in her book.
In her later years, Rivka lived in Jerusalem with her daughter Rachel, who was born in the Land of Israel, and with her grandchildren, after her husband passed away in 1885.
Rivka died in 1893 in Jerusalem. After her death, additional editions of Zekher Olam were published.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Donald Trump to pursue diplomacy with Iran while using their phone call to once again criticize Israel over its military operations in Gaza.
Erdogan told Trump it was essential to “make the utmost use of diplomacy” amid tensions between Washington and Tehran, offering Ankara’s support for peace efforts. At the same time, he accused Israel of stepping up operations against Palestinians as the US pushes to advance the next phase of its Gaza plan.
The Turkish leader also praised the new Turkey-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan defense pact as a powerful step toward regional security. Trump has welcomed the alliance himself, calling it a “big, bold, and important first step” and saying it shows the Middle East is “coming together.”
Palestinian Authority officials are increasingly alarmed after US envoy Jared Kushner met directly with senior Hamas leaders in Cairo, warning that Washington is sidelining Mahmoud Abbas while giving the terrorist group new political relevance.
The irony is that the talks focused on Hamas’s disarmament and removal from power — both long-standing PA demands. But Ramallah’s concern is who has a seat at the table: Kushner is talking to Hamas in Cairo and Israel in Jerusalem, while bypassing Abbas in Ramallah.
“It harms the PA’s representational status and gives Hamas new cards to play,” one Palestinian official warned, raising fears that direct US-Hamas diplomacy could further erode the PA’s already weakened standing.
Spain denied overflight permission to an Israeli rescue team en route to Colombia Saturday. The aircraft was forced to reroute through Moroccan airspace, taking a longer route to reach its destination.
Open-source intelligence and other reports have indicated that the Israeli military aircraft avoided Spanish airspace after Spain allegedly denied it passage.
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The Home Front Command and humanitarian delegation included 80 experts drawn from the reserves and active duty and arrived in Colombia Saturday to aid in rescue efforts following a devastating magnitude 7.4 earthquake last week. Despite Spain’s refusal of overflight permission, the team arrived in Colombia and immediately began assisting in rescue operations.
Spain had passed a comprehensive ban on Israeli military materials, and the aircraft that bore the delegation belonged to the Israeli military. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has also strictly forbidden any access to foreign aircraft that bear any connection to the conflict in Israel.
Spain has fiercely criticized Israel during the war in Gaza, and it has backed up its rhetoric with action, joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, implementing an arms embargo against Israel, recalling its ambassador from Tel Aviv, recognizing Palestinian statehood, and imposing strict restrictions on Israeli military and fuel shipments through its airspace.
In 1914, Rabbi Kook, then Rabbi of Jaffa, was invited to attend the Agudat Yisrael Congress which was to take place in Berlin. The Rabbi of Jaffa could not decide whether to travel there or not. On the one hand, he did not want to leave the Holy Land, even for a short official visit abroad. In addition to his marriage-like love for the Cherished Land, he was busy day and night with his many educational endeavors, Rabbinical duties, as well as his Halakhic and philosophical writings.
On the other hand, the conference could influence the Zionist cause in a positive way, or, Heaven forbid, adversely, and conceivably damage the further settlement of Eretz Yisrael.
Many important Rabbis looked favorably upon the Zionist enterprise, while other influential Torah leaders viewed the efforts of the secular pioneers with skepticism and outright disdain.
Rabbi Kook felt that his presence at the large assembly could encourage the Rabbis to support the resettlement of Israel, or at least persuade them not to discourage Diaspora Jewish communities from making Aliyah. In addition, he believed that by attending the convention, he could find people who could help him raise the funds needed to hire religious school teachers for the struggling moshavim in Eretz Yisrael which were supplying the fruits, vegetables, eggs, and poultry for the growing Jewish population.
In a letter to his son, Tzvi Yehuda, who was in Europe, studying at a yeshiva, Rabbi Kook wrote:
A horrifying stabbing attack in Beit Shemesh on Monday afternoon left 7-year-old Hillel Mordechai Dadon z”l dead and his 4-year-old cousin wounded, with police arresting a 25-year-old neighbor suspected of carrying out the attack.
The attack occurred at a home on Emek HaZeitim Street during a family birthday celebration. According to the initial investigation, the children were outside near an inflatable pool when the suspect, a neighbor of the family, entered the property and allegedly stabbed them.
A 15-year-old relative who had been watching the children was reportedly present and witnessed the attack. The father of one of the children later arrived and found the two boys wounded near the pool. The mother had reportedly gone out to purchase items for the birthday celebration.
Magen David Adom and United Hatzalah personnel rushed to the scene and treated both victims before transporting them to Hadassah Ein Kerem.
Hillel Mordechai was evacuated while undergoing resuscitation efforts and arrived at the hospital without signs of life. Doctors subsequently pronounced him dead.
His 4-year-old cousin arrived conscious and was taken into surgery. Hadassah said his condition was moderate.
Police apprehended the suspected attacker, a 25-year-old neighborhood resident, shortly after the stabbing. Investigators believe he fled after attacking the children.
Police are examining several possible motives, including whether a previous dispute existed between the suspect’s family and the victims’ family. Reports also indicated that the suspect has a history of mental health issues. His father was questioned at the scene as part of the investigation.
Jerusalem District Police Commander Avshalom Peled arrived at the scene and held a situation assessment with senior commanders. Forensic investigators collected evidence from the property, and the investigation has been assigned to the Jerusalem District Central Unit.
ZAKA identified the murdered child as Hillel Mordechai Dadon z”l and said its legal department was assisting the family with efforts to expedite his release for kevurah.
The murder came during an exceptionally tragic afternoon in Beit Shemesh. In an unrelated incident elsewhere in the city, Asher Anshel Fish z”l was killed after being struck by a vehicle in Ramat Beit Shemesh Daled.
Beit Shemesh Mayor Shmuel Greenberg said: “Beit Shemesh has experienced two difficult and painful incidents in the past hour, in each of which the life of a child was cut short. In the terrible incident on Emek HaZeitim Street, a child was killed, and in the traffic accident in Ramat Beit Shemesh Daled, another child was killed.”
“These are extremely difficult moments for the entire city,” Greenberg added. “Our hearts are with the families who lost what was most precious to them, and we daven for the welfare and recovery of the injured.”
Your eminence, the overwhelming majority of violence in Judea and Samaria (I assume you have no issue with the Biblical reference to this territory) is initiated by Palestinian thugs. Respectfully, should fully investigate the facts before damaging your credibility with posts… https://t.co/deK4KRIFvo
— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) August 16, 2026
If it doesn’t belong to you, maybe don’t test the borrowing policy. pic.twitter.com/mGmaXRy7K6
— The Best (@TheBestqueenx) August 16, 2026