This trend poses a tough, soul-searching question for pro-Israel Democrats: Will the party's decision to abandon Israel exact a political cost by driving Israel-supporting Democrats – especially Jews – to abandon it?
Just a few weeks ago, the North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) adopted two anti-Israel resolutions, which are slated to become part of the party's platform coming into the November midterm elections.
The annual Tanakh study conference (oversubscribed every year) was expanded during the pandemic to become a live global event. This summer, top international lecturers will give 100 live shiurim over four days on different Biblical themes, with 40 live-streamed lectures in Hebrew and 10 online shiurim in English, plus a day of Tanakh-themed tiyulim around Israel. For the first time this year there will be online museum tours in English and online evening programs in Hebrew, plus bonus shiurim for Tisha B’Av.
You can see the full program here
Among the lecturers speaking in English are Rabbi Dr. J.J. Schacter of Yeshiva University; HaRav Mosheh Lichtenstein, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion; Rabbi Dr. Katriel (Kenneth) Brander, President of Ohr Torah Stone; Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom from Los Angeles; Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin from the Museum of Biblical Natural History; Rabbi Moshe Shulman from St. Louis; Rabbi David Fohrman of Aleph Beta; Herzog College faculty members Dr. Yael Ziegler and Dr. Yosefa (Fogel) Wruble; Rabbanit Esti Rosenberg of Midreshet Migdal Oz; Rabbanit Shani Taragin; Rabbi Menachem Leibtag, and other favorite Rabbonim from Yeshivat Har Etzion and Herzog College.
“We are providing as much top-quality Tanakh content as possible, using platforms and formats that allow people to experience the excitement of the ‘live’ annual event, and also to watch the lectures at their convenience,” explains Rabbi Dr. Shalom Berger, who coordinates the English-language program.
Click here to see the English program
“Herzog College is respected around the globe as the foremost source of Tanakh teaching,” adds Berger. “We provide pedagogy training Judaic Studies teachers in Israel and in the Diaspora, and we know that they also enjoy hearing Tanakh shiurim from our top lecturers. It was important to us that we offer lectures in English that they can watch at their leisure!”
Israel’s leading Tanakh conference traditionally takes place during the Nine Days of Mourning for the destruction of the Temples, and all participants will receive access to shiurim designed for viewing on Tisha B’Av.
The live event will take place on the Herzog College campus in Alon Shvut, with transportation provided from Jerusalem. The Yemei Iyun B’Tanakh in Gush Etzion traditionally attracts Tanakh teachers and afficionados from around the globe, with a book sale and craft stalls in the town’s main square. Berger says: “Following two years of restrictions, we are excited to reconvene in person and share the buzz of learning Torah and Navi together again.”
Yisrael Yehuda Cohen, a 22-year-old Charedi youth, has been missing for two days and Israel Police is requesting the public's aid in locating him.
According to police, Cohen was last seen on Thursday evening, leaving Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center.
Cohen is described as 1.80 meters (5 feet, 10.87 inches) tall, slender, with light hair and a blond, medium-length beard. He has green eyes and short sidelocks.
As far as is known, Cohen was wearing a button-down white shirt and long black pants.
Anyone with information on Cohen's whereabouts or who knows information that may lead to locating him is asked to call Israel Police's hotline, 100, or the Lev Habira police station, at 972-2-539-1550.
He will have none of that ... in Yiddish!
ollowing President Biden’s trip to Israel this week, his official @POTUS Twitter account posted a tweet, affirming his support for Israel’s security.
Strangely, that tweet has been deleted, for no apparent reason.
The deleted tweet included a video (seen below) with clips from Biden’s trip, including his meeting with Palestinian terror leader Mahmoud Abbas.
An Israeli pop star who caused an outcry in Israel when she refused to shake hands with visiting US President Joe Biden due to her religious beliefs, has defended her actions and called on her critics to apologize.
“Respect and human dignity are values that I was raised on and which I will raise my children on in the future,” Yuval Dayan wrote in a Facebook post on Friday after her actions drew widespread criticism.
“I ask all those who claimed that I have no respect to take back their words and apologize — not to me — but to my parents,” she wrote.
On Thursday, Dayan and another singer Ran Danker performed at a ceremony marking Biden’s receipt of Israel’s highest civilian honor. Afterward, Biden and Israeli president Isaac Herzog approached the artists to thank them.
Danker took Biden’s outstretched hand, but Dayan bowed instead, clasping her hands together and smiling.
Dayan said she did so because she has committed to refrain from touching members of the opposite sex for reasons of modesty. She is famous in Israel in part for becoming more religiously observant, embracing the principle of shomer negiah, a prohibition on opposite-sex touching that some Orthodox Jews believe is required, as well as not performing on Shabbat or Jewish holidays.
The prohibition is rooted in the idea that any touch can lead to sexual impropriety.
But many said she should have made an exception to avoid embarrassing the US president, pointing to the example of Tzipi Hotovely, currently Israel’s ambassador to the UK.
When Hotovely, who is Orthodox, became deputy Foreign Ministry in 2015 while serving as a Likud lawmaker, she said she would shake hands with men who offered her theirs despite ordinarily refraining from touching. She noted that traditional Jewish law makes allowances for honoring dignitaries.
“It’s not a problem at all,” Hotovely told Israeli media at the time. “When someone meets foreign representatives the Jewish halacha [law] recognizes respect, etiquette and politeness.”
The incident with Biden went viral in Israel Thursday. Dayan, who came to fame as a contestant on Israel’s version of “The Voice,” said she had sought to avoid appearing to slight Biden and had communicated her needs to Herzog’s staff.
“I made sure to notify everyone in the president’s office that I am shomeret negiah,” she said, according to Israeli media. “God forbid, I did not mean to offend.”
She reiterated the claim in her Friday Facebook post, saying she had repeatedly informed multiple officials at Herzog’s residence. “They were joking that even the olive trees at the president’s residence knew that Yuval Dayan was shomeret negiah.”
“Anyone who knows me, from age zero, knows that I did not do this maliciously and that I don’t like being involved in public hysteria,” she wrote.
Biden, himself, had raised handshake etiquette issues on his trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, preferring to fist bump some. The White House indicated it was for COVID protection reasons, while others speculated it was designed to avoid having to shake hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
US President Joe Biden's staff on Friday morning removed the Israeli flag from his armored vehicle, before visiting Jerusalem's Arab areas.
Danny Danon, head of World Likud and a former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, slammed, "It starts with a visit of a US President to a Palestinian institution in east Jerusalem. It continues with the inability of [Prime Minister Yair] Lapid to set a red line, to act as a diplomat and prevent this dangerous precedent. And it ends with the removal of the Israeli flag from Biden's entourage - in the capital of the State of Israel."
"Lapid gets a clear and unequivocal 'fail' on this visit, and it's scary to think what future visits here by diplomats will look, in the coming months. We must replace this awful government."
Earlier on Friday, Biden visited the Augusta Victoria Hospital, and then met in Bethlehem with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, after which the two delivered statements.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman scolded President Biden for America’s past treatment of Iraqi prisoners during their private meeting — minutes after the two leaders fist-bumped for the cameras in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom’s de facto leader, known as MBS, rebuked Biden Friday over the brutal abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison camp in 2004 in response to the president’s mention of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist murdered in 2018, a Saudi official said Saturday.
“His Royal Highness mentioned to the President that mistakes like this happen in other countries,” said Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir. “And we saw a mistake like this being committed by the United States in Abu Ghraib.”
Scores of Iraqi prisoners were tortured and abused by members of the US military at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad under the Bush Administration during the Iraq War. Horrifying pictures of naked and hooded Iraqis, some forced to assume sexual positions, caused international outcry when they emerged in 2004.
MBS has been under fire from human rights advocates ever since Khashoggi, a fierce critic of the prince’s regime, was killed and dismembered in Istanbul in 2018. US intelligence later found that the crown prince personally approved Khashoggi’s murder — leading Biden to vow that, as president, he would make Saudi leaders “the pariah that they are.”
The comment chilled the relationship between the US and the Middle East’s largest oil producer — a state that Biden sought to thaw with his visit.
But the president has faced sharp criticism for his willingness to mend fences.
In their meeting, MBS told Biden that he regretted Khashoggi’s death, al-Jubeir said — but did not take personal responsibility for it.
This year 65 girls were not accepted to high school. It was only 3 years ago that I was one of those “unlucky” ones who didn’t get accepted anywhere. As my friends and neighbors began to talk about where they chose to go and which friends they’d be together with, I felt embarrassed, sad, and very afraid.
My parents supported me constantly by telling me how amazing I was and that not getting accepted had nothing to do with who I was or who I wasn’t. I lay awake at night worrying whether any school would ever change their mind about wanting to accept me.
I struggled academically but I had worked hard and had gotten good grades, albeit with modified tests. I was kind, caring and always followed the rules never causing any problems. I had thought that I was liked by my friends. But suddenly I began to question everything about myself. Maybe it was my personality.. ? Did the girls not like me? Was I different? I guess I just wasn’t enough.
Graduation came and went and as all my classmates walked up proudly to accept their diplomas, I walked up feeling embarrassed and unworthy knowing that I had nowhere to go next year. After the ceremony, I walked around the room with my mother and grandmother talking with friends and family. Many of them asked me where I planned to go for high school. I wanted to sink through the floor. I tried to leave as fast as possible but of course my mother wanted to go thank my principal and teachers, so I walked around with my heart pounding hoping that no one would ask me that horrible question again.
In the meantime my parents made phone call after phone call as well as ran from vaad member to principal to school owner. No one seemed to be able to do anything. There wasn’t a place for me. They didn’t want me. I cried myself to sleep night after night. The jealousy, the fear, the sadness.. it was so overwhelming.
I’m not sure how I pulled through that summer. I went to sleepaway camp not knowing what my future held. Every day I listened with a pit in my stomach as the girls discussed how nervous they were to have so many teachers, which uniform was the nicest, and which knapsack was the best choice. Each time school was mentioned, my heart felt like it was stabbed again and again. I returned from camp feeling empty and hollow. While everyone began packing school supplies and shopping for uniforms, I sat at home listening from the next room as my mother made call after call. I wasn’t supposed to know. I wasn’t supposed to hear. But again and again she locked herself in a room and ran anxiously to get the phone when it rang. What is so wrong with me I wondered. I felt so unwanted and alone.
The day before school began, my mother came into my room and sat down on my bed with a smile. She looked worn out and exhausted. “Mazal tov, “ she said. “You’re gonna be going to Bais Yaakov Pninim (name has been changed). I’d never heard of the school. It was new. And I knew no one going. I began to sob. My mother hugged me and cried with me. The pent up emotions ran wild. Two hours later I had dried my tears and we went to get a uniform, supplies and a knapsack. I was worn out from this war and I had no strength left to fight.
It’s three years later now and bh I have found my place slowly but surely. I have made some new friends and the teachers are nice. But I am deeply scarred by what I have been through. There is a place deep within that still feels unworthy and unwanted. I am angry at the teachers and the principals and I am angry at the rabbanim for allowing this to happen and for not standing up to change the system.
When I sit in class and the teachers speak about middos, about caring, about saving another from embarrassment and about rebuilding the bais hamikdash with love and acceptance, I roll my eyes inwardly. I have slowly accepted that Hashem has a reason for what He did and I have rebuilt my connection with him. But I am still resentful to all those who sat quietly and allowed this to happen. If we stand for Torah, then how can we let this continue on? Each one of us will be asked when it is our time to face the Ribono Shel Olam, why were you quiet when you knew others were being pained and embarrassed? What did you do to protect these hailege yidishe neshamos of these beautiful precious bais yaakov girls, the mothers of the future generation and hopefully moshiach.. and I’m not sure that most of you will have an answer.
