What’s So Great About the New Israeli Thriller ‘Tehran’?

The opening scenes of Tehran, the new thriller from the Israeli public broadcast corporation Kan 11, tell the story of two Israeli backpackers who decide to take a cheap flight from Jordan on their way to India, and find themselves in trouble when their plane must make an emergency stop in Iran. 

It is a tight and tense opening, yet it also carries a somewhat unintentional hilarious subtext. An Israeli viewer is likely to giggle at the throwback to the good old days, less than a year ago, when Israelis could actually board an airplane and travel around the world, convinced that the Iranian nuclear program was the biggest threat to their safety. In fact, during the show’s run on Kan 11, reality met fiction when a mysterious explosion occurred in an Iranian facility, attributed to Israel’s secret war against the country’s nuclear program. 

But few Israelis cared: With no end in sight to the COVID-19 crisis, most of them were worried about other, more immediate problems.

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Rare Wedding Video of Rabbi Steinsaltz

Rare footage of the wedding of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz z"l with with his wife Chaya Sarah...

Also seen is Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin.

Video was taken on a 8mm film camera by the Kallah's cousin, R' Zusha Rivkin

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Vatican Marks Life of Jewish-Born Saint, Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, Who Was Murdered at Auschwitz

The Vatican on Sunday marked the life of a Jewish-born saint who was murdered during the Holocaust.

Highlighted as a “Saint of the Day” on the Vatican News website, St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross was born Edith Stein into a Jewish family in 1891, but became an atheist at the age of 14.

Despite being a woman and a Jew in Germany, Stein extensively studied philosophy and hoped to become an academic. After meeting a friend whose husband had recently died, however, she had a mystical experience in which her “unbelief collapsed.”

After reading St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography, Stein converted to Catholicism in 1922 and eventually became a Carmelite nun, but remained involved in Jewish issues. As the Nazis rose to power in Germany, she wrote, “I had heard of severe measures against Jews before. But now it dawned on me that … the destiny of these people would also be mine.”

Realizing that because Nazi antisemitism was racial and not religious, she would be a target of it, Stein decided to present herself as a sacrifice, saying, “Every time I feel my powerlessness … to influence people directly, I become more keenly aware of the necessity of my own holocaust.”

As persecution intensified, she fled to Holland, once writing, “I never knew people could be like this, neither did I know that my brothers and sisters would have to suffer like this.” When the Nazis came for her, Stein told her sister, “Come, we are going for our people.” She was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.

When she was beatified as St. Theresa in 1987, Pope John Paul II said, “We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein … a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds … and also the synthesis of the full truth about man.”

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‘Shtisel’ Shares First Official Photos From Season 3

The production company behind the popular Israeli series “Shtisel” shared on Wednesday the first official photos from the show’s third season, which is currently filming on a set in Jerusalem in accordance with local COVID-19 regulations.

Israel’s Yes Studios posted on Facebook the images, which featured the characters Ruchami, Akiva and Shulem, played by Shira Haas, Michael Aloni and Dov Glickman, respectively.

Also featured in the photo is a baby, revealing a new plot twist that will be in the third season.

“While we are experiencing a second wave of COVID-19 in Israel we are taking every possible precaution with the production of ‘Shtisel,’“ said the show’s producer Dikla Barkai, as reported by Deadline. “This has added both time and expense and includes extensive and consistent testing of the cast and crew, keeping safe distances whenever possible, separated work and rest areas and everyone is, of course, wearing masks other than when ‘action’ is called. It’s certainly an adjustment but we are committed to filming in real locations in order to preserve the authenticity of the series and the world of the show.”

Yes Studios previously shared behind-the-scenes photos showing the “Shtisel” crew and cast in masks during production for season three.

Yes Studios Managing Director Danna Stern said, “We have been in awe of the love showered on ‘Shtisel’ globally, as well as locally, and are thrilled to be working on the new season which is everything viewers have come to expect: touching, gentle storytelling and characters which we all adore.”

The show, which is about a family living in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem, had been scheduled to begin production of its third season in April, but all filming in Israel was postponed in mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Filming finally got underway in July.

The third season will pick up four years after the events of the previous season, and will air on Yes TV in Israel later this year, Deadline reported.

Netflix began in December 2018 streaming the two seasons of “Shtisel” that ran on Israeli television in 2013 and 2015-16. It has not been announced yet when or if Netflix will pick up the show’s third season.

Haas also talked about filming the show’s third season while adhering to COVID-19 regulations in a new interview with Variety.

“To be Ruchami again is amazing. I gave up the idea of a third season, and suddenly it came back,” the Emmy-nominated actress told the publication during a conversation from her home in Tel Aviv. “You’re seeing all the people you know, but you can’t hug them. There aren’t a lot of people on set, and everyone is very careful. Definitely weird; it’s definitely different. But yeah, you know, the things we do for art!”

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Scene from the Next Episode of "shtisel"

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Trump Mocks Media For Complaining About Packed Room With COVID Guidelines: ‘It’s A Peaceful Protest’

President Donald Trump mocked the media during a news conference on Friday evening for complaining about a room packed full of people that they claimed violated New Jersey’s COVID-19 guidelines, saying that it was a “peaceful protest.”

“Just in this room, you have dozens of people who are not following the guidelines in New Jersey which say you should not have more than 25 –,” the reporter stated before being loudly booed by many in the room.

“You’re wrong on that,” Trump shot back, “because it’s a political activity. They have exceptions, political activity, and it’s also a peaceful protest.”

The room erupted in laughter and cheers.

“To me, they look like they all, pretty much all have masks on,” Trump continued. “You have an exclusion in the law, it says ‘peaceful protest or political activity,’ right?”

“You’re wrong on that,” Trump shot back, “because it’s a political activity. They have exceptions, political activity, and it’s also a peaceful protest.”

The room erupted in laughter and cheers.

“To me, they look like they all, pretty much all have masks on,” Trump continued. “You have an exclusion in the law, it says ‘peaceful protest or political activity,’ right?”

Trump looked down at a sheet and said, “In fact, it specifically, yeah, it says exactly, ‘political activity or peaceful protest,’ and you can call it political activity, but I’d call it ‘peaceful protest’ because they heard you were coming up and they know the news is fake, they understand it better than anybody.”

The room again erupted in cheers.

“They asked whether or not they could be here, like the question about Russia,” Trump continued as he pointed at the reporter. 

“He doesn’t mention Iran was in the report, he doesn’t mention, or he mentions very late that China was in the report, because that’s the way they are.”

“If the press in this country were honest – it wasn’t corrupt, if it wasn’t fake – our country would be so much further ahead, but we’re doing really great,” the president said as he ended the news conference.

Trump’s remarks appeared to take a jab at the fact that the media largely gave leftists a pass when they have gone protesting over the last couple of months, which have often spiraled into violent riots.

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Hezbollah wanted Beirut’s ammonium nitrate for Israel war

Hezbollah apparently planned to use the ammonium nitrate stockpile that caused a massive bast at Beirut’s port this week against Israel in a “Third Lebanon War,” according to an unsourced assessment publicized on Israel’s Channel 13 Friday night.

The report was broadcast hours after Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech “categorically” denying that his group had stored any weapons or explosives at Beirut’s port, following the massive explosion there Tuesday that has claimed over 157 lives and wounded thousands. “I would like to absolutely, categorically rule out anything belonging to us at the port. No weapons, no missiles, or bombs or rifles or even a bullet or ammonium nitrate,” Nasrallah said. “No cache, no nothing. Not now, not ever.”

Israel has not formally alleged that Hezbollah was connected to the Tuesday blast.

Ammonium nitrate is used in the manufacture of explosives and is also an ingredient in making fertilizer. It has been blamed for massive industrial accidents in the past, and was also a main ingredient in a bomb that destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Last year, reports in Israel claimed that the Mossad had tipped off European intelligence agencies about Hezbollah storing caches of ammonium nitrate for use in bombs in London, Cyprus and elsewhere.

The Channel 13 report noted that “the material that exploded in the port is not new to Nasrallah and Hezbollah.”

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Not Enough Shuls In Israel ... They Had to Build One in Dubai

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Jews Don't Know It .... But Boro-Park Is Still Galus

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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz passes away at age 83

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, an Israel Prize laureate best known for his translation of the Babylonian Talmud, has passed away, at the age of 83.

Rabbi Steinsaltz had been hospitalized at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, where he was being treated for a lung infection not related to the coronavirus.

Along with his translation of the Talmud into modern Hebrew, Rabbi Steinsaltz was also well-known for his writings and commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and the Tanya.

A member of the Chabad Hasidic movement, Rabbi Steinsaltz was president of Yeshivat Makor Chaim and Yeshivat Tekoa.

Born to a secular Jewish family in 1937, Rabbi Steinsaltz, a native Jerusalemite joined the Chabad Hasidic movement as a teenager. He studied at the Chabad yeshiva Tomchei Temimim in Lod, while also studying math, chemistry, and physics at Hebrew University.

In 1965, Rabbi Steinsaltz began work on what came to be known as the Steinsaltz Edition of the Talmud, translating the entire Babylonian Talmud into modern Hebrew and adding technical notes and explanatory material.

The translation was completed in 2010, and has since been translated in part to a number of other languages, including Russian and English.

Rabbi Steinsaltz cofounded the Mekor Chaim yeshiva in 1984 and Yeshivat Tekoa a decade and a half later.

In 1988, Rabbi Steinsaltz won the Israel Prize for Jewish Studies; in 2012, he won the President's Medal; and in 2017 he was awarded the Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem Prize.

During an attempt to reform the ancient rabbinic court known as the Sanhedrin, Rabbi Steinsaltz was tapped to lead the court.

In 2016, Rabbi Steintsaltz suffered a stroke.

He is survived by his wife, Sarah, their three children, and their eighteen grandchildren.

The Tzohar organization released a statement Friday morning mourning Rabbi Steinsaltz's death.

"Tzohar was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, an exceptional leader of both Torah and love for the land. His life’s work opened countless doors for people to study and helped bridge the diverse communities within the Jewish world. He will be forever remembered as a teacher defined by passionate caring for his people and spreading the beauty of Judaism all across the globe."

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