2,500-year-old seals may show Jews rebuilding Jerusalem after 1st Temple exile

Rare evidence of when and how Jerusalem was resettled after the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE has been discovered in an excavation in the City of David, just outside the Old City walls.

The two recent discoveries in an ongoing excavation in the Givati parking lot — a clay “official” seal impression and a strange DIY pottery sherd seal with fake writing — help illuminate the enigma that is 6th century BCE Jerusalem history. There are only 10 other similar artifacts discovered in Israel that date to the Persian period (circa 536 BCE-333 BCE).

“The Persian period is a black hole in archaeology,” Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dr. Yiftah Shalev told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “Every time we find something, it’s like lighting a new candle — it gives a new light.”

Whereas the seal impression is made in an official imperial style, perhaps depicting a god, the crude clay seal is locally made, presumably by an illiterate underling. Combined, said Shalev, the seal and seal impression illustrate all levels of officialdom in the reviving city. They indicate, he added, that after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews, Jerusalemites were rebuilding the city, including its bureaucracy, as told in the Bible.

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Victory For Yeshivas as Supreme Court strikes down state ban on taxpayer funding for religious schools

I know that in some States and cities ... parents practically no tuition... For example, Milwaukee and I believe in Cleveland parents pay very little in tuition, since those states have "free choice" for all students....

Since New York State has Charter Schools which they fund, they will have to fund Yeshivas as well, as I understand it ......... I wonder how much parents will need to pay in tuition if this is implemented? I really hope that works out so all Jewish children will be able to afford a Jewish education.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a ban on taxpayer funding for religious schools, in a narrow but significant win for the school choice movement.

In the 5-4 ruling, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court essentially backed a Montana tax-credit scholarship program that gave residents up to a $150 credit for donating to private scholarship organizations, helping students pay for their choice of private schools. The state's revenue department made a rule banning those tax-credit scholarships from going to religious schools before the state's supreme court later struck down the entire program.

“A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious," Roberts wrote in the court's opinion.

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Carl Reiner Dead at 98 .....

Carl Reiner’s legendary, seven-decade-long career in television, film, books and Broadway came to an end Monday when he died at his home in Beverly Hills.

But the Bronx-born 98-year-old’s legacy will live on forever.

Born on March 20, 1922, to Jewish immigrants from Austria and Romania, Reiner, a true Renaissance man, made a permanent imprint on American comedy.

The entertainment icon won nine Emmys, a Grammy and a place in the Recording Academy’s Hall of Fame, acted in over 40 films, held countless TV roles — including variety-show host Alan Brady on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” — directed 15 movies and wrote more than 20 books, among them memoirs and children’s stories.

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De Blasio slicing $1 billion from NYPD Despite 38 Murders & 55 Shootings in June Alone

A total of 74 people were wounded in the 55 shootings, at least 19 of them injured in more than a dozen shootings across the five boroughs on Saturday alone. 

Over the last month, burglaries have sharply increased, with 1,691 incidents as compared to 759 the year before. 
For the year, burglaries are up 47% compared to this point last year, from 4,480 to 6,595.

Yet there was a 32% decrease in arrests so far this year as compared to last year, all according to CNN....

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Gerer Civil War Spills Over to New York ...

This holy battle started last year and it's about the Gerer Camp up in Monticello....

I'm not even sure what it is about ..... suffice it to say, it wound up in secular courts! 

If a regular Joe Shmo takes his pal to secular court, you can be sure that Joe Shmo's name will be plastered all over the bulletin boards of the "Non-Talking" Shuls.... but Rebbes like Satmar, Bobov and Ger completely ignore the 3rd Rashi in Parshas Mishpatim that explicitly writes that this is a "Chillul Hashem" and compares taking your fellow Jew to a secular court to worshipping Idols.

I see that one of the plaintiffs is none other than Dovid Olewski, and I'm really happy about that, because as far as I know he died on April 4 of this year, which means that Moshiach is already here and he had "Tchiyas Hameisim" but that didn't stop the Gerer Chassidim from shlepping him to court; refusing to give the poor guy a break, who was trying to recuperate from the ordeal of being 3 months underground!

I see one of the defendants calls himself "Abraham Abramovitz"

that's like calling a shmuck ... "Schmuck Schmuckovitz."

I wish both sides "Hatzlacha"

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The headline screamed: 50 Jewish Organizations Oppose Annexation!

Fifty Jewish organizations signed a statement against Israeli annexation (the better term is reunification - and it is really simply the application of Israeli law instead of the current IDF military law on the region) of any part of Judea-Samaria.

Wow, that’s a lot of organizations. It sounded serious.

Practically a revolt by Diaspora Jewry! I can understand why Israel’s leaders might have been concerned.

Until they looked a little closer at the list of signatories.

It turns out that the “fifty organizations” were nothing of the sort, and the “Jewish opposition to annexation” is a myth. A crumbling myth.

Let’s have a look at the “Big Fifty.”

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Lithuanian nationalist accused of murdering Jews touted as hero

A memorial at the site of the Lietukis Garage massacre of Jewish Men in Kaunas,

Lithuanian lawmakers want to make 2021 the year of Juozas Luksa-Daumantas — a nationalist accused of participating in a Holocaust-era massacre of Jews.

Juozas Luksa-Daumantas

The parliament’s Committee on Education and Science submitted the proposal June 23 in a draft resolution titled “The Announcement of the Year 2021 as the year of Juozas Luksa-Daumantas.”

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Supreme Court rules Trump has unfettered power to fire officials

The Supreme Court on Monday put the brakes on Congress’ attempt to limit the president’s power to remove executive branch officials in a win for President Trump.

The justices ruled, 5-4, that the Constitution requires the president have unfettered discretion to fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

However, the high court rejected arguments that the entire agency should be shut down.

All of the Republican appointees on the high court backed the decision eliminating the restrictions on the firing of leaders of so-called single-member agencies, while all the Democrat-appointed justices said they would have left those limitations in place.

The board was the brainchild of Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren before her days in elected office, and enacted into law by Congress in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse.

The White House hailed the ruling.

“Today’s decision represents an important victory for the fundamental principle that government officials should be accountable to the American people,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement.

“Today’s decision helps restore to Americans power over their government that the Dodd-Frank Act took away to protect entrenched and unelected bureaucrats in Washington,” she said, referring to the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a series of federal regulations passed in an attempt to prevent a future financial crisis after the economic collapse of 2008.

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These high-end NYC hotels not changing sheets, wiping down surfaces

Some high-end Manhattan hotels aren’t thoroughly cleaning rooms between guests amid the coronavirus pandemic, a new report found.

Three different Midtown hotels didn’t even bother to change pillowcases or wipe down commonly used surfaces, according to an investigation by Inside Edition set to air Monday night.

Producers with the TV program booked rooms at each of the hotels and used a washable spray to apply an Inside Edition logo — only visible under UV light — to the pillows, bed sheets and bath towels.

They also doused commonly touched surfaces, like the TV remote, thermostat and desk with a special washable gel.

The next day, using a new reservation under a different name, they checked-in to the same room to see if the linens had been changed and surfaces wiped down.

At the Hyatt Place Times Square, the logo was still visible on the bedsheets and pillowcase under UV light — indicating they hadn’t been replaced, the report found.

While the desk had been wiped down and the towel replaced, the gel was visible on the remote control when placed under UV light.

A few blocks away at the Hampton Inn Times Square Central, the sheets and a pillowcase weren’t changed either and neither the remote control nor thermostat were wiped down, according to the report.

At the Trump International Hotel overlooking Central Park, the sheets and towels were changed. But the pillowcase wasn’t and the desk and the remote control weren’t wiped down.

A Hyatt spokesperson told the program they were “deeply concerned” about the situation.

“We are working with the hotel’s owner to ensure the hotel is implementing proper cleaning protocols that are consistent with Hyatt’s commitment to cleanliness for the safety and wellbeing of our guests,” the statement said.

A spokesperson for Hampton Inn said it had conducted an investigation of their own and found that “our housekeeping team relied on a visual inspection of the room’s cleanliness to determine which areas received attention, deviating from our protocols.”

“This is a violation of our standards to thoroughly clean each room,” the statement said. “Both our housekeeping team and management apologize for this mistake and we are retraining our team members to reinforce our procedures.”

A rep for the Trump International Hotel denied Inside Edition’s findings.

“Following an internal review, we have concluded that the claims made by Inside Edition are categorically false,” the spokesperson said.

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After 76 Years, A DNA Test Revealed To David Reicher Where His Father Was Murdered

David Reicher was just 3 months old when his father disappeared, never to be seen again by his family. David, who was born Daniel Reicher in Rome, survived the Holocaust together with his mother Ethel and his sister Rosetta but never knew anything about the fate of his father, according to a Walla news report.

David’s mother, who he terms “the great survivor”, took her two infant children on a legitimate ship to Palestine in March 1945, before the war in Europe had even ended. 

Wishing to give them a new lease on life after the tumultuous childhood they had suffered, she changed their names to David (in memory of his grandfather who was murdered in the Holocaust as well) and Shoshana. She worked hard to support her children and rarely spoke about the war years. David only knew that his parents escaped during the war from Poland to Italy, that his father was a dentist named Moshe and that one day he had left the house and disappeared.

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