Thousands visit Rabbi Kook's grave in Jerusalem

Thousands of Jews from all over Israel arrived at Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook's grave on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, commemorating 82 years since his passing.

Among the thousands of visitors were Beit El Yeshiva Dean Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, Har Hamor Yeshiva Dean Rabbi Tzvi Tau, Deputy Defense Minister Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan (Jewish Home), and other rabbis, students, and yeshiva deans. Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, dean of Merkaz HaRav yeshiva founded by Rabbi Kook is a cohen forbidden by halakha to enter a cemetery. The yeshiva had a memorial evening in Beit HaRav Kook in his memory.

Born in a village in Latvia in 1865, Rabbi Kook received received rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Yechiel Michal HaLevy Epstein, the author of the Arukh HaShulchan at the young age of 19. That same year, he became engaged to the daughter of the Aderet, Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim. She gave birth to a daughter, but died just a few years later. Thereafter, Rabbi Kook married her first cousin, daughter of the Aderet’s twin brother; she bore him two daughters and a son, the famed Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook.

Rabbi Kook was Israel's first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, as well as a rabbinic authority, kabbalist, and philosopher.

He founded Israel's Chief Rabbinate, as well as the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Hoodlums with Shtreimals Protest On Shabbos Outside Home Of Smartphone Monsey Store Owner That Is Trying to Make a Living

Chaim & Faigy Gluck Killed In House Fire On 44 Street Boro-Park

The 3-alarm fire broke out at about 4 a.m. in a two and a half story house at 1174 44th Street early Monday morning.

Firefighters encountered heavy smoke and flames on the first floor.

By the time they got into the home, the fire had spread to the second floor.

The victims, a 61-year-old man and a 59-year-old woman, were found unconscious in a back bedroom.

They were rushed to the hospital by Hatzolah, but both were unfortunately pronounced dead at Maimonides Hospital.

Their 17-year-old daughter was also pulled out of the home, but Boruch Hashem is in stable condition.

The cause of the fire is to be determined by NYC Fire Marshall.

Misaskim has been on the scene since the fire and working closely with the NYC Fire Marshall, the NYC Medical Examiner and the NYPD to ensure proper Kavod Hames.

The couple has been identified as R’ Chaim Eluzer Shulem (ben Tuvia Gedalia) Gluck Z”L and Mrs Faigy Gluck A”H.

A person who Davens with the Niftar every morning called him an extremely special person.  R’ Chaim was the one who arrived at Shul first and was the one to unlock the Shul (K’hal Ohr Chaim) and open the building at 4:30AM every single morning. The entire Shul was crying by 5:30AM when the realized who was killed in the fire….

The Levaya will be held on Monday afternoon at Shomrei Hadas Chaples in Boro Park – exact time will be updated.

Please be Mispallel for Chana bas Chava Faiga, who suffered sever smoke inhalation. She is in Stable condition, but needs our Tefillos.

Kallah Dies During Sheva Brachos Week

The sudden death of the bride Shani Levi-Berdichevsky, just before celebrating her last of sheva brachos, stunned her acquaintances who mourn the great loss. She was electrocuted in her own home R”L.

The bride and her family together with her widowed husband, Danny Berdichevsky, belonged to the “Shaagas Aryeh” community in Tirat HaCarmel headed by Rabbi Yechezkel Rubin, who tells of the couple’s fortune until their wedding together as well as reconstructing the terrible tragedy.

“It’s a traditional family,” Rabbi Rubin says of the bride’s family, “Shani has been in the process of becoming religiously observant for four years, and her husband Danny, has started to grow stronger in the past year. His parents, who are Ukrainian, are strongly opposed. They live in the Krayot and therefore, when his parents would meet with him from time-to-time, Danny wore a kippa sruga due to their strong opposition to him becoming chareidi, feeling this would be less offensive to them.

Rabbi Rubin relates that Danny came to the community of Shaagas Aryeh through his friends who were members of the community and thus began to become stronger in his observance. “From time-to-time he would travel to Jerusalem for a few days to absorb the atmosphere, while telling his parents he was traveling abroad,” says the rabbi.

During the conversation, Rabbi Rubin returns to the difficult moments of Sunday, 29 Menachem Av, the last of their sheva brachos, in which the kallah died of electrocution. “The last sheva brachos was supposed to be in their home,” he says. “We gave the kovod to her father as a cantor, to be shaliach tzibur for Mincha. Before Maariv, rumors began to circulate that something had happened.”

“Her husband found her lying in the bathtub,” says Rabbi Rubin. “The water was not even open, but nevertheless, the electric problem was so severe, that only touching the faucet caused electrocution. There were electricity problems there, with the circuit breaker jumping often. The landlord sent them a local electrician who apparently did something temporary, albeit without doing the minimum he should. This is truly death by negligence”, the rabbi concluded.

“She has kept kedusha and tahara all these years,” the rabbi eulogized the kallah in pain, adding “she has been a chareidi for some time already [referring to the nifteres].”

Rabbi Rubin adds that it is hard for him to communicate with Danny’s parents. “It was exactly at the wedding that the relationship between them began to improve and I was amazed at how the father actually wept with excitement and joy, and they just accepted that their son became chareidi,” he added in a pained voice.

The body was released by police and the levaya was on Sunday afternoon in Tirat HaCarmel.

Yeshiva Bochrim From Williamsburg in Serious Car Crash in Israel

A serious motor vehicle accident on Highway 1 in the “Jordan Valley” in Israel has left multiple people seriously injured – including two Yeshiva Bochrim from Williamsburg.

According to a Magen David Adom statement, the accident happened on Highway 1 between the Almog and Arava junctions just before Route 90.

The two vehicles collided head-on, entrapping some of the occupants. Rescue personnel needed to extricate some of the victims. Both vehicles were occupied by Chareidim. One had American Yeshiva Bochrim inside reportedly returning from Meron.

MDA and IDF Paramedics were on the scene treating the victims, and some were airlifted by IDF choppers. A total of four victims (from two cars) were seriously injured. Some were taken to Shaare Zedek and some to Hadassah Hospital.

MDA says that a woman in her 40’s was the most critically injured. Three Bochrim in their 20’s were injured – two of them critically.

Additional victims included a 19-year-old girl, 17-year-old boy and two children ages 16 and 2.

Please be Mispallel for Yitzchak Issac ben Sara Esther, Asher Zelig ben Rochel, and Zev ben Sima.

'Deri is a criminal, has no right to slander religious Zionists'

Harav Dovid Stav Shlitah

Aryeh Deri

Chairman of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization Rabbi David Stav responded this morning to comments made by Minister Aryeh Deri against a number of senior religious Zionist rabbis within the context of their struggle with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

Speaking with Reshet Bet, Rabbi Stav said,

 “I don’t think that you expect that, at the beginning of the month of Elul, the month of forgiveness and mercy, a rabbi heading an organization of hundreds of rabbis working day and night to sanctify life would react to the words of any activist convicted of criminal offenses who dares to slander an entire public and a rabbinical organization numbering hundreds of rabbis. We didn’t convene for the sake of responding to convicted criminals.”

 Deri was convicted of a felony in the past, but served the sentence meted out by the courts. He is being interrogated currently for alleged misuse of funds.

Rabbi Stav called to address essential points, saying that “the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization has struggled against the Conversion Law, whose beginning and end were an act of deceit by that same activist.”

“We all want to prevent the possibility of Sudanese refugees and others from immigrating to Israel under false pretenses. [Deri] tricked government ministers, telling them that he was proposing a law to prevent this possibility, which we all share a desire to prevent.”

"The [Conversion] Law doesn’t talk about the Law of Return or about foreign workers,” Rabbi Stav explained, “but stipulates that the state of Israel will not recognize any conversion undertaken in Israel if it is not carried out within the system of that activist (referring to the Chief Rabbinate, ed.).”

Regarding the assertion that the activity of Tzohar rabbis resembles that of the Reform movement, Rabbi Stav said, “This is ignorance of a man who doesn’t know his right from his left, neither in Torah, halakha [Jewish law], nor in the Reform movement.”

On Monday, Deri had said in a closed conference, "Even those with knitted skullcaps (religious Zionists), in very large communities, are already on the edge of the Reform Movement.”

"Anyone who knows how the synagogues and prayer services are run there...there are really big changes. True - there are more kippot and they are more Israeli, but they are on the edge of the Reform (referring to some groups within liberal Orthodox Jewry, ed.)."

Minister Deri's recording of the conference was broadcast on Channel 2 news. 

He also referred to the conversion law and said that "the greatest fighters against this law were Tzohar rabbis, together with the Reform movement, because they knew that the goal was to destroy. They enjoyed the tolerance of others, in order to slander the rabbinate and to look for all the faults."

The Shas chairman attacked the Tzohar movement. "Everything is free (referring to Tzohar's performing marriages without charge, ed.), with a smile, with a bright face, when we all know the truth."

Entire Prominent Beit Shemesh Family Goes "Off the Derech"

Cheli Heller after becoming Modern Orthodox

A flood of ugly rumors were the final straw that pushed Yisrael Heller to flee the strict, ultra-Orthodox community with his family, in the dead of night. The Hellers are part of a wave of Israelis who are severing ties with the Haredi world.

Evening was beginning to fall on the playground that one sees from the balcony of the Heller family home in Beit Shemesh. Six-year-old Pini entered the house excited, his cheeks flushed. “Mom, I played with the ball,” he declared, speaking in Yiddish. There was an unmistakably triumphant tone in his words.

Yisrael Heller and his wife, Rachel “Cheli” Heller, exchanged a quick look. They were sitting at a table on the balcony, their 1-year-old baby cavorting between them. It looked like another ordinary day, as though a boy coming into the house holding a ball was an everyday event. In fact, it was one more sign of the revolution the family is undergoing.

In the closed Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community in which the Hellers lived until not long ago, children only came home from school at this time of the day, playing with a ball was beyond the pale and Hebrew was the language of the “Zionist heretics”: 

To speak it was strictly forbidden (other than as the holy tongue).

A few months ago, the Hellers and their four children left Ramat Beit Shemesh, a Haredi neighborhood within Beit Shemesh, a city between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They stole out from their apartment late at night, without telling family or friends. Their move had been preceded by an ugly wave of rumors, accompanied by pressure that pushed them into a corner and made their lives intolerable, until they were forced to leave ignominiously.

The target of the firestorm was Yisrael, head of the household and a man of power in the community. He had trimmed his beard and had gradually started to deviate from the community’s stringent dress code, referred to as the Yerushalmer [that is, "Jerusalemite," which is also the name of the sect] style. The members of the community are quick to spot the slightest change in shirt style or hat size; such behavior is considered a gross infringement of the rules and traditions to which it adheres.

“Within a single day, rumors spread that I was becoming a ‘questioner’ [giving up the religious life],” Heller relates now. “That I was studying ‘The Guide for the Perplexed’ [a forbidden text even though it is by Maimonides, the 12th-century Torah scholar].

 In Jerusalem every Sabbath eve, that men and women attended the tisch [a gathering of Hasidim around their rebbe] I went to, where I was playing a musical instrument. I started to receive threats, questions from functionaries. I realized that I was under surveillance.”

In their former small, insular community, identified with the most extreme sects of Haredi society, the disappearance of the Heller family is perceived as desertion, the crossing of a red line. Still, everyone expected them to return. Within hours, all 12 employees of his consulting firm resigned. Heller was not surprised: The move was intended to signal him that his livelihood would be harmed if he didn’t return to the straight-and-narrow. But he did not yield, nor did he beg for mercy.

“There is a great deal of fear. But after you contend with it, you feel good,” he says, a thin smile on his lips.

Brave new world

Michael Savage Slams Rabbi Haskel Lookstein & Liberal Rabbis Over Anti-Trump Comments

Trump supporter wearing Israeli flag told to 'get the f--k out' of Boston by hecklers

Among the eclectic throng of demonstrators in Boston on Saturday, a supporter of President Trump found himself surrounded by protesters who yelled profanities at him.

A man wearing an Israeli flag as a cape can be seen in a video shared by Univision's Jessica Weiss, walking through a crowd of protesters. One person rips off his "Make America Great Again" and throws it away.

"You shouldn't be afraid to go outside and say you're conservative," he added "And it's pretty sad that things like this happen."

Thousands of protesters descended on Boston on Saturday, including a "free speech" rally organized by some right-leaning groups. These groups were reportedly far outnumbered by groups of counter-protesters.

Bannon: Mahmoud Abbas is a terrorist, I'd never meet with him

Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News editor-turned-White House strategist may be out of the Trump administration, but he has far from given up on influencing President Trump’s policies.

Last week, the White House announced that Bannon was leaving the administration, after just seven months as White House Chief Strategist.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a statement quoted by The Hill.

There are conflicting reports over who was ultimately behind the push to oust Bannon, with the Daily Mail claiming Sunday that it was President Trump’s daughter Ivanka who led the effort to remove the firebrand whose support for populism and economic nationalist frustrated Washington insiders. Breitbart News, however, cited a White House aide who said the claim was “totally false”.

Inside the Trump White House, Bannon clashed with the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, leading the president to order the two down to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting to iron out their differences.

Following his ouster, Bannon remained defiant, saying that he would be “going to war” for President Trump.

Sources close to Bannon told Vanity Fair that the 63-year-old former naval officer planned to continue his struggle with Kushner and other administration foes from the outside, looking to influence President Trump externally – perhaps via Breitbart News.

Bannon allies cited both personal disagreements as well as a series of substantive policy differences between Bannon and Kushner.

According to the Vanity Fair report, Bannon, among other things, advocated strongly for a pro-Israel approach in the Trump White House, pushing for the president to make good on his campaign promise to relocate the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and to take a tougher line on the Palestinian Authority’s support for terrorists jailed in Israel.

In May, a photograph of Bannon’s agendadrawn up on a white board in the White House also suggested his support for the embassy move.

Sources cited by Vanity Fair claimed that while Bannon pushed the embassy issue, it was Kushner who blocked the relocation.

No fewer than three sources close to the former White House senior strategist also said it was Bannon who pushed for a hardline against the PA, including PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, while Kushner and other White House officials opted for a maintaining a more cordial relationship with the PA leader.

The three sources claimed Bannon refused to attend the White House meeting with Abbas this past May, saying he preferred to stay home rather than meet with “that terrorist”.

“I’m not going to breathe the same air as that terrorist,” Bannon reportedly texted a friend.