Chana Malka Zweig 21, and brother, Yosef Yehuda 18, drown on Lake Michigan.

 A heartbreaking tragedy has struck the South Bend Jewish community with the petirah of Chana Malka Zweig A”H, 21, and her brother, Yosef Yehuda Zweig Z”L 18, following a drowning accident on Lake Michigan.

The siblings were on a family vacation when the incident occurred on Monday while they were boating on Lake Michigan. They were transported to McLaren Northern Michigan Hospital, where they were later niftar.

Chana Malka A”H and Yosef Yehuda Z”L were the beloved children of R’ Yehoshua and Hadassa Zweig of South Bend.

They were the grandchildren of HaRav Yochanan Zweig, shlit”a, Rosh Yeshiva and founder of the Talmudic University of Florida (Yeshiva V’Kollel Beis Moshe Chaim) in Miami Beach.

Iranian rabbi calls to assassinate Trump, Netanyahu

 

By World Israel News Staff

A senior rabbi in Iran castigated Israel and pointed to opposition to military service among Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews, days after calling for those responsible for the death of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be killed.

Rabbi Younes Hamami Lalehzar, a leader of Iran’s Jewish community, made the latest remarks to Iranian media while discussing Judaism, justice and the distinction he draws between the Jewish religion and Zionism.

Hamami said monotheistic religions were founded on compassion, kindness and divine mercy, but argued that mercy must be accompanied by justice.

He cited the biblical account of Cain and Abel and said the deliberate killing of an innocent person was among the gravest possible sins. A person who unjustly takes a life, he argued, must face a fair trial and could be subjected to the death penalty.

Hamami also asserted that the spilling of innocent blood could be atoned for only by imposing justice on the person responsible.

“Mercy and justice are two principles that complement one another,” he said, warning that emphasizing mercy without enforcing justice could allow wrongdoing to spread.

Hamami then accused the State of Israel of committing crimes against civilians and sought to separate Judaism from Zionism.

He described Zionism as a political movement that has faced Jewish opposition since its emergence and claimed that resistance grew after the establishment of Israel.

“A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews opposes the policies of the Zionist regime and is not willing to serve in its army,” Hamami said.

Most ultra-Orthodox opposition to IDF service is rooted in demands to preserve exemptions for full-time yeshiva students and protect the community’s religious way of life. While some small ultra-Orthodox groups are explicitly anti-Zionist, Israel’s major ultra-Orthodox factions participate in the Knesset and have served in numerous Israeli governments.

The remarks came shortly after Hamami participated in an Iranian conference titled “Fulfilling the Promise of Revenge,” which focused on retaliation for the killing of Khamenei.

Khamenei was killed on February 28 in the opening US-Israeli strikes of the 2026 Iran war. His death was confirmed by Iranian state media.

At the conference, Hamami invoked Torah passages concerning bloodshed and punishment while calling for the deaths of those he blamed for the operation.

“The murderers of Supreme Leader Khamenei must be killed,” Hamami said.

He cited a verse from the Book of Numbers stating that land polluted by bloodshed cannot be cleansed except through the blood of the person who spilled it.

Hamami said he preferred to describe Iran’s promised response as “blood vengeance,” arguing that the phrase was more precise than the general term “revenge.”

Iranian state coverage of the conference presented his remarks as an argument that retaliation should be understood as the pursuit of justice rather than an emotional act of anger.

Homayoun Sameh, the representative of Iran’s Jewish community in parliament, has made similar calls for retaliation against Trump and Netanyahu.

Sameh said those who ordered the operation against Khamenei should be punished and urged Tehran to move beyond speeches and slogans by carrying out successful operations against those it held responsible.

“I expect those who ordered the killing of Ali Khamenei to receive their punishment soon,” Sameh said.

He added that Iran’s enemies should understand that the governing principle would be “an eye for an eye and blood for blood.”

Sameh said Iran should cause the people of the US and Israel to “regret and suffer” over the killing of the country’s leader. He described revenge as a legitimate right and argued that failing to retaliate would expose Iran to further attacks and casualties.

At the Tehran conference, Sameh also accused Western governments and international news organizations of applying a double standard to violence carried out by the US and Israel.

“For years, the Islamic Republic of Iran was accused of supporting terrorism,” he said. “Today, they remain silent in the face of attacks by the United States and the Zionist regime against Iranian commanders, officials and civilians.”

Sameh sought to ground Iran’s threatened retaliation in Jewish tradition, referring to the Torah’s demand that punishment correspond to the offense committed.

Iran’s Jewish community is the largest remaining Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel. Estimates generally place its current population at between 10,000 and 15,000, down from roughly 100,000 before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A dangerous deal: Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas

 

By Khaled Abu Tomaeh, Gatestone Institute of Technology

For nearly a year, the international community insisted that there could be no future for the Gaza Strip unless Hamas was stripped of every weapon, every tunnel, every missile factory, and every military capability.

US President Donald J. Trump’s September 2025 peace plan was explicit: Gaza would be demilitarized, terrorist infrastructure destroyed, and weapons rendered permanently unusable.

Article 13 of Trump’s 20-point plan states:

“All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning and supported by an internationally funded buyback and reintegration program, all verified by the independent monitors.

Now, however, that clear objective appears to have been replaced by something radically different.

Instead of eliminating Hamas’s arsenal, negotiators are discussing storing weapons, transferring them to another Palestinian party, and even allowing Hamas members to retain “personal firearms.”

Twenty-Four Million People Will Live in Israel in 2100

 

 Israel, where fertility rates, calculated for both secular and religious Jewish Israelis, has remained above the replacement value. In fact, earlier this year, The Times of Israel reported that the TFR value for Jewish Israelis was 3.07 children per woman in 2024, up from 3.03 in 2022, a number about double the OECD average, and higher than for Arab Israelis.

However, the real surprise, where Israel and world demographics are concerned, are the results of a comprehensive multi-center, multi-authored study published in 2020 in The Lancet, a leading medical journal. The article evaluated fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100. The overall result is the prediction that the global population will peak at 9.7 billion in 2064 and decline to about 8.8 billion by 2100.

The report also predicted that the fertility number for 97 % of the countries studied, will be below the replacement fertility value by the year 2100. A few, such as Niger, Chad and South Sudan, will be among the holdouts, with numbers above replacement, while the predicted value for Israel will be just barely below replacement. In other words, fertility will fall in Israel as well, but at a much slower rate than for any other developed nation.

Twenty-three nations, including, for example, Latvia, Ukraine, Portugal, South Korea and Japan could experience population reductions of more than 50%. In some cases, Ukraine, for example, emigration along with reduced fertility will be the cause. Canada and the US will experience modest population increases because of immigration, while the population of Russia will decrease by about 30%. China’s population will decrease by almost half and Nigeria will overtake China as the country with the second largest population, after India.

What about Israel? Today the population of Israel is a little over 10 million, about 80% Jews (and others) and 20% Arabs. The Lancet article predicts that Israel will have a population of about 24 million by the year 2100. Yes, 24 million! It is important to keep in mind that this value is the average of a range, and the range for Israel is 13 million to 40 million. (The range reflects a 95% confidence interval; meaning there is a five percent chance the range does not include the true value.)

These are predictions, not certainties. The numbers they rely on assume some degree of stability over time and when it comes to the Middle East stability is an oxymoron. Nevertheless, the population numbers predicted for Israel should be taken seriously.

First, Israel is already one of the most densely populated places in the world. How will the country accommodate the increased millions?

Second, study of Jewish demographics in the US indicates that with the exception of the ten percent of American Jews who are Orthodox, Jewish birth rates are even lower than that of the general population. It appears that based on the population data, the population center of Jewish life is shifting to Israel. A Jewish diaspora will continue to exist, but its relevance to Jewish continuity will likely diminish.

Finally, the non-Jewish world will have to accept that Israel and the Jewish people are an integral part of the Middle East. No amount of self-delusion will make this fact go away.

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.

The Zionist State Continues to be the Largest Donor To Moisdois Ha'torah as it Approves Nearly NIS 250 Million for Chareidi Education

 

In a major boost for Chareidi education, the Knesset Finance Committee on Tuesday approved sweeping budget transfers totaling nearly NIS 250 million, with the funds designated for a wide range of educational and family support programs. The package includes long-awaited salary parity for Chareidi kindergarten teachers, transportation funding for major school networks, after-school program subsidies, assistance for at-risk youth, and expanded teacher training initiatives.

The broad funding package is designed to strengthen the Chareidi educational system at every level while addressing longstanding disparities in funding for schools, educators, and student support services. Many of the approved measures have been the subject of extensive debate in the Knesset over recent legislative sessions.

One of the most significant provisions provides, for the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, full recognition of seniority for all Chareidi kindergarten teachers. Under the new funding, their salaries will fully reflect their years of professional experience, bringing them into line with the pay scale of kindergarten teachers in the general public education system and ending a decades-long disparity.

The approved budget also includes substantial funding for student transportation in the Chinuch Atzmai and Bnei Yosef school networks. Transportation has long presented financial and logistical challenges for both parents and school administrators, and the additional funding is expected to ensure safe and reliable transportation for thousands of students.

A Tale of two Cities bordering each other..

 

Somalis Pressure Public Schools to Teach Children in Somali Instead of English

Faribault, Minnesota, is a small city about an hour’s drive from Minneapolis. On paper it should have the smaller crime rate of the alphabetically similar Farmington which is nearly the same size and only a half hour away. Instead, Faribault has more than twice as much violent crime, aggravated assaults, burglaries and car thefts, 30% more rapes, and 8 times as many robberies. Farmington has no arsons, but Faribault has the most arsons of any city outside major strongholds like Minneapolis, St. Paul or Duluth.

Watch Stoliner Boys go Swimming with all their clothes on!

 

Rare Photo of Rav Kook's Journey to the USA 1924

In the photograph, from right to left on the train: Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap, Rabbi Kook, and to the left of Rabbi Kook stands, apparently, Leibush Shuchman, his well‑known attendant.

 Rabbi Kook’s Train Photograph from His Journey to America (1924)

The documentation center at Beit HaRav Kook has this special photograph, recently discovered among the belongings of Rabbi Yitzhak Arieli zt”l, a close disciple and friend of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook zt”l.

In the winter of 1924 (Hebrew year 5684), Rabbi Kook set out on a journey to the United States together with Rabbi Avraham Dov Kahana Shapira, the rabbi of Kovno, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, head of the Slabodka Yeshiva, and other rabbis.

The purpose of the trip was to raise funds for yeshivot in Europe and the Land of Israel and to strengthen the connection between American Jewry and the deep, authentic Judaism of Israel and Europe.

Rabbi Kook’s route to America began at the Jerusalem train station, where he boarded a train bound for Alexandria, Egypt. His close companions who accompanied him were permitted to travel with him only as far as Gaza, the last station within the Land of Israel.

From the port of Alexandria, Rabbi Kook boarded a ship to Naples, Italy, and from there continued through several stops until reaching the United States.

In Naples, a moving story took place:

 Rabbi Kook met an acquaintance from the Land of Israel who told him that his wife was dying in the city and that even the doctors — including a professor brought specially from Vienna — had given up on her life.

Rabbi Kook visited her and blessed her with a full recovery. The woman recovered and lived in Jerusalem for more than twenty additional years.

In the photograph, from right to left on the train: Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap, Rabbi Kook, and to the left of Rabbi Kook stands, apparently, Leibush Shuchman, his well‑known attendant.

Photo courtesy of the Arieli family.  

Massive Protests in front of the Home of R' Yaakov Farber After His Shiva

 

These animals didn't let him live and now they don't let him die in peace!

A day after the completion of the shiva for the founder of the "Ma'alot Tzur" organization, Yaakov Farber z"l, dozens of Chareidim  arrived at the home of the late Yaakov Farber z"l, a prominent figure in the Chasidic community in Be'er Sheva, to protest. 

The protest was massive, unprecedented, and took place in front of his house, with crowds from all over the country.

As we recall, last week, after a serious illness, the late Yaakov Aharon Farber z"l, a prominent figure in the Chassidic community in Be'er Sheva, and only 32 years old at the time of his passing, passed away leaving a widow and six orphans 

The deceased z"l was ill for the past year and received many prayers for his recovery, but his condition worsened in recent days, and on the night between Sunday and Monday last week, when Tehillim  and the Shema Yisrael were recited around his bed, he returned his pure soul to its Creator. (Kikar HaShabbat).

Saudis gravitate toward Middle East basket cases when it should join US’ fight against Iran

 

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly called President Trump on Saturday and implored him to hold off on striking the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Trump acquiesced and punted on a massive American bombing raid that could have potentially turned the tide of the war.

Admittedly, Saudi Arabia is in a tough spot: The Iranian regime continues to hammer the kingdom with drones and missiles, threatening its oil and water resources.

But the Saudis have not gone unprotected. American warfighters and even Greek air defense teams have ensured the safety of the Saudi state throughout this conflict.

Yet rather than aligning more closely with us, the Saudis have started to gravitate toward an alliance of basket cases in the Middle East.

The alliance is now referred to as “STEP”: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan.

These are all theoretically American allies. But they are not exactly working for American interests right now.

They view the weakening of the Shiite regime in Iran as an opportunity to reassert Sunni state dominance in the Muslim world.

At the same time, they are not eager to see the widening of the war because it would wreak more havoc, which is why they keep calling for diplomatic agreements.

By now, however, it should be clear that the Iranian leadership is not interested in a diplomatic agreement.

Every time one is brokered, the regime carries out aggressive actions in the Strait of Hormuz or it attacks our Persian Gulf Arab allies. And that’s not likely to change. So when the Saudis ask America for restraint, they need to offer clear alternatives, not platitudes.

Better yet, the Saudis should join the fight.

Admittedly, the Saudis last month launched one strike against Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

And according to recent reports, the Saudis may be preparing for military action against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, particularly if the group tries to shut down Saudi shipping in the Red Sea.

The Saudis have a history of conflict with the Houthis; Riyadh launched a war against the group in 2015.

That war garnered a huge amount of criticism from US lawmakers, primarily due to errant strikes that led to high civilian casualties.

But that was then and this is now. A wider war has erupted across the Middle East.

Iran and its proxy network are fighting America and its allies on multiple fronts, and America should not be expected to fight on its own.

The Israelis have stepped up when asked. They’ve put skin in the game.

It’s time to ask the Saudis to do the same.

The kingdom boasts a vast arsenal of American-made planes, helicopters, tanks and other weapons.

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Saudis must decide

Its forces are clearly equipped to fight, even if questions linger about the readiness of Saudi fighters, who have not seen much action on the battlefield.

In the end, however, it boils down to will.

Now, whenever the war heats up, the Saudis seem to want to cool it down — a significant shift from the beginning of the conflict, when Saudi officials quietly backed Trump’s effort.

With the war at an impasse, and the Iranian regime looking increasingly emboldened by that, Saudi Arabia must be put to a choice.

There’s no time for fence-sitting.

The president should send our allies in Riyadh a clear message: It’s time to either join the fight, foot the bill, or get out of the way.