Thursday, July 15, 2021
Solo Performance ... Memories of a Widow
Eichah yashavt badad … (Lamentations, 1)
How did you sit in seclusion, in your apartment, in your neighborhood, in your city Jerusalem. Eichah … How did you sit there widowed, a mother, grandmother, a great grandmother to dozens, sitting for over three months, lonely, although never alone.
You woke in the morning, showered and dressed, applied your make-up, ready for morning prayers, ready for telephone calls, ready for lessons and zoom meetings. And at the end of each week you readied for Shabbat.
Surely the angels are with you, invisible angels standing beside your chair, staring across at the portrait on the wall. Despite the harsh conspicuous wrinkles ingrained in the contours of his skin, his face radiates from the artists painting. Your husband seems happy in the world to come, listening to you sing Sholom Aleichem. You sing each stanza three times, exactly as he did. His balding forehead looks like you could play tic tac toe on the lines etched there, lines that developed on his handsome face, wrinkles that developed not only from age.
The empty armchair at the head of the table is where he once sat. He always seated himself after greeting the angels, and then chanted a page or two of text before Kiddush. You never knew what that text included, but now you know, and you chant as he did, prayers to “Adon HaShalom, King of the Universe for blessing to find peace and good life for you and your family, to find favor and wisdom in the eyes of the Almighty…that I merit to receive Shabbat with joy…and say a blessing at my table that is set.”
He stares at the table, set for his queen, and he doesn’t have to ask, “Who set the table?” Only you set the table, with two small challot positioned on your father’s silver challah tray, a silver knife, European china that you purchased as a young couple over half a century ago, Wallace sterling flatware, a wedding gift from your family sixty years ago, and fresh flowers arranged in a bowl that you buy every erev Shabbat, same as he did.
You fill his silver cup. The cup you purchased as a gift for his 26th birthday after you settled in Jerusalem. You fill it first with a little wine, and then grape juice to keep the drink mild, same as he did. He appears to be listening to your Kiddush, although your voice is not the pleasant voice of the Baal Tfilla; your voice is not his voice, and it never will be. Most disturbing is that you cannot remember his nussach, you cannot make the blessing as he did. You cannot remember his specific melodious kiddush tune. You can’t even be sure that he is still smiling. Your eyes are glued to the blessings in his little booklet. And then the memory of his kiddush suddenly gets stuck in your throat.
Lapid Will Have Last Laugh as Bennet Slowly Becomes a "Footnote" in Jewish History
In the leadup to the 9th of Av, Rabbi Nosson Slifkin recounted in his blog the Talmudic story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza.
In the story, Bar Kamtza had good reason to angry for his humiliation by the party host and the Rabbis who remained silent. But Bar Kamtza’s anger and hatred was so intense and unbridled (sinas chinam) that he pursued a course of action destructive to himself and the Jewish people – involving and inviting in the Romans which ultimately led to Jerusalem’s destruction.
The lesson is that hatred and anger, even if not baseless, should never drive us to pursue a course of action that harms ourselves and our people.
Rabbi Slifkin, a supporter of Naftali Bennett and Yamina, drew a parallel between Bar Kamtza and Bibi. Humiliated and outraged at being forced into opposition despite having secured the most seats, Bibi and Likud, he wrote, responded by withholding support for the Citizenship bill, thereby harming Israel.
Though Rabbi Slifkin’s application of the Bar Kamtza lesson to Bibi and Likud seems fair and well taken, he would have done much better to apply that same lesson to Bennett and Saar.
Bibi’s personality flaws and alleged untrustworthiness may well have given Bennett and Saar every reason in the world to hate and distrust him, and to want nothing to do with him. But politics compels you to make choices and compromises. Bennett and Saar’s hatred of Bibi was so intense and unbridled that rather than forming a right-wing government under Bibi and Likud, they decided to invite an anti-Zionist Arab party and the anti-Zionist leftto join in forming the ruling Israeli coalition.
The ramifications of that decision are enormous. Likud’s lack of support for the Citizenship bill is correctable – the bill can be re-tabled in the future, an alternative bill can be presented, etc. The same cannot be said for Bennett and Saar’s decision.
US Court Holds Iranian Banks Liable For Murder Of US Citizen
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| Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin, h'yd. |
In the first decision of its kind, a federal court in Washington D.C. ruled that Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, three Iranian banks, and Syria are liable for a terror attack perpetrated by Hamas in 2015.
The decision marks the first time that an Iranian bank has been held liable for the death of a US citizen.
Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin, h’yd, were killed on Chol Hamoed Sukkos while driving to their home in the Shomron by five Hamas terrorists, who brutally gunned them down in front of their four children in the back seat. The children, ranging in age from 10 months to nine years, survived the attack.
Rabbi Henkin was a US citizen, and his relatives, in the name of the children and the estate of their parents, filed a lawsuit to a US court under the terrorism exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
The plaintiffs claimed that Hamas was funded, trained, and equipped with weapons by Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Syria. Additionally, they placed blame on three Iranian banks, all already sanctioned by the US for financing terror, for funneling funds to Hamas.
None of the defendants responded to the lawsuits.
“Financing is the oxygen needed for terrorism,” said Gavriel Mairone, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers said. “Bank Markazi serves as both the Central Bank of Iran and the Central Bank for financing international terrorism directed against Americans and our allies. The Treasury Department has sanctioned Melli and Saderat as facilitators and financiers of international terrorists such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”
The court has yet to determine damages.
Shmuel Weinberger 6 Killed by car in Chicago
Tragedy hit the Chicago community on Wednesday afternoon, when word spread of a young child struck and R”L killed by a vehicle.
Sources say that Shmuel Hershel Weinberger Z”L (9-years-old) was riding his bicycle when he was R”L struck by a vehicle on N. Sacramento Ave and W. Chase Ave on Wednesday afternoon at around 8:00PM. Chicago Hatzolah rushed to the scene, and was transported to the hospital but unfortunately he was Niftar.
Police are investigating the incident.
He is the son of R’ Shamai and Mrs. Sara Leah of West Rogers Park, Chicago. They are Lubavitcher Chassidim.
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Part of Jerusalem's city wall, encountered by Babylonians on eve of First Bais Hamikdash's destruction 2,600 years ago, uncovered near Old City.
Archaeological excavations in the City of David National Park have uncovered the remains of the city wall, which was built during the Iron Age - the days of the First Temple in the Kingdom of Judah, to protect Jerusalem from the east.
The excavations are conducted at the City of David National Park on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, in collaboration with the City of David Foundation, as part of the development of the National Park.
According to the directors of the excavation, Dr. Filip Vukosavović of the Ancient Jerusalem Research Center and Dr. Joe Uziel and Ortal Chalaf on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority: "The city wall protected Jerusalem from a number of attacks during the reign of the kings of Judah, until the arrival of the Babylonians who managed to break through itand conquer the city. The remains of the ruins can be seen in the archaeological excavations. However, not everything was destroyed, and parts of the walls, which stood and protected the city for decades and more, remain standing to this day. "
The new section that was exposed connects two sections that were previously excavated on the eastern slope. In the 1960s, British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon uncovered a section of the wall in the northern part of the slope and dated it to the days of the Kingdom of Judah.
About a decade later, archaeologist Yigal Shiloh uncovered a long section of the wall, in excavations in the southern part of the slope.
Over the years, claims have been made that despite the impressive nature of the remains, these remnant stone structures should not be seen as wall remains. However, with the uncovering of this new section that connects with these past discoveries, it seems that the debate has been settled, and that this was unequivocally the eastern wall of ancient Jerusalem.
Reconstruction of the sections that were dismantled during previous excavations in the early 20th century, makes it possible to trace almost another 30 meters of the surviving wall to a height of 2.5 meters and a width of up to 5 meters.
In the book of 2 Kings, 25:10, there is a description of the conquest of the city by the Babylonians: “The whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem.”
However it looks like the Babylonians did not destroy the eastern wall, possibly due to the sharp steepness of the eastern slope of the City of David, which slopes towards the Kidron Valley at over 30-degree angle.
The findings of the destruction can be seen in the building that stood next to the wall and were exposed during the previous excavations: inside the building, rows of storage jars were discovered, which were smashed when the building burned and collapsed.
The jars bear "rosette" stamped handles, in the shape of a rose, associated with the final years of the Kingdom of Judah.
Near the wall, a Babylonian stamp seal made of stone was unveiled, depicting a figure standing in front of symbols of the two Babylonian gods Marduk and Nabu.
Not far from there a bulla (a stamp seal impression made in clay) was found bearing a Judaean personal name "Tsafan".
The findings of the excavation will be presented this coming October at the Israel Antiquities Authority's conference "New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region".
Biden’s petty, foolish push to undermine the Abraham Accords
Team Biden seems determined to dismantle all its predecessor’s policies — even those that promised to transform the dysfunctional Middle East for the better.
The White House “suspended the Abraham Fund indefinitely,” Israeli financial paper Globes reported last week, citing US and Israeli sources. The public-private partnership was established last year after Israel signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the first peace deals between the Jewish state and Arab nations in decades.
The Trump administration called the Abraham Fund “an integral part” of the peace deals; it would “mobilize more than $3 billion in private-sector-led investment” to demonstrate “the benefits of peace by improving the lives of the region’s peoples.” It was opened to Morocco and Sudan when they joined the accords too.
It was smart diplomacy: The fund would nurture more peace deals as it showed how Arab-Israeli cooperation brought prosperity all over the Middle East.
Fund officials had approved more than a dozen projects in the energy, financial and food-technology sectors and were reviewing hundreds of others when President Donald Trump left office. But the day President Joe Biden succeeded him, the fund’s head, Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, stepped down, and Biden never replaced him. Worse, administration officials made it clear to the Israelis that he had no interest in continuing the fund’s work.
Why? Team Biden says it wants to keep the cash to spend in this country. Funny: This has to be the only area (besides wall construction) where the new administration is pinching pennies.
Then again, Biden quickly started moving to undermine the accords themselves. He froze for months, for example, a weapons deal with the UAE as an incentive to bring it on board.
It seems the administration won’t even permit use of the name “Abraham Accords.” In April, State Department spokesman Ned Price went through contortions as he tried not to use the term, instead calling them simply “normalization agreements.” An ex-Trump official tells The Post a friend in the Energy Department was told to avoid the term.
Yet the Abraham Accords enjoy wide bipartisan support: Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a bill, cosponsored by more than half the Senate, to “build on the success of the Abraham Accords.”
It’s pretty low for the White House to choose petty politics at the expense of the most positive Middle East development in decades.
Brooklyn Journalist Was targeted by Iran in Twisted Kidnapping Plot
Four Iranian intelligence operatives schemed to kidnap a Brooklyn-based journalist and smuggle her to Iran in a bid to silence her criticism of human-rights abuses in the Islamic republic, federal authorities said Tuesday.
In an interview with The Post, writer and activist Masih Alinejad acknowledged she was the target, and she did the same in a series of tweets.
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| Mahmoud Khazein and Alireza Shahvarohi Farahani were charged in the alleged plot. |
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| Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori were also charged. |
A source familiar with the matter also confirmed Alinejad was the target.
Manhattan US Attorney Audrey Strauss, who didn’t identify Alinejad by name, said she would have faced a fate that’s “uncertain at best” if the plan hadn’t been foiled by the FBI.
On Monday night, Alinejad told The Post that she was approached 8 months ago by about a dozen FBI agents who alerted her to the plot and later put her family up in three safe houses across New York.
“‘You are not safe here,’” Alinejad said the feds told her in their initial meeting.
FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said, “This is not some far-fetched movie plot.”
“We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a US-based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch,” he said.
The ring, led by Iranian intelligence official Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, allegedly began conspiring to kidnap Alinejad inside the US since as least as early as June 2020.
Second Jewish Player Drafted In Two Days Elie Kligman Drafted To MLB Will Not Play On Shabbos
For decades, Jewish baseball fans have looked to Sandy Koufax as a role model for refusing to pitch in game one of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. While that stood out as an example for Jews everywhere, one Nevada teen is hoping to take it a step further and become the first Shomer Shabbos, kosher-food-eating professional baseball player.
In the final round of the MLB draft, the Washington Nationals selected Elie Kligman, from Nevada, who has said he won’t play on Shabbos.
On Monday, Jacob Steinmetz was drafted to the Arizona Diamondbacks. As DIN reported, Steinmetz recently told the New York Post he keeps Shabbos and eats only Kosher food, but plays during the Shabbos and on Jewish holidays – although he walks to games rather than taking transportation.
Guiding him in his life and career has been his father, Marc Kligman, an attorney and professional sports agent who has coached Elie and younger brother Ari in the finer points of baseball over the years. He has also worked hard to provide his boys with opportunities to compete at a high level.
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