Over 85,000 Frum Jews Voted in WZO Elections!

 In an unprecedented show of unity and strategic participation, Orthodox Jewish communities across America mobilized in record numbers for the 39th World Zionist Congress elections, ensuring that a significant portion of the over $1 billion in annual funding will be directed toward Torah institutions rather than organizations promoting secular or anti-Torah agendas.

The election, which saw 230,257 total votes cast between March 10 and May 4, 2025, witnessed extraordinary participation from Torah-observant communities who recognized the critical importance of having a voice in how these substantial funds are allocated, even while maintaining principled positions regarding the secular Zionist enterprise.

This Will Not End Well! The Public feud between Elon Musk and Trump!

In a dramatic escalation of their public feud, Elon Musk alleged on Thursday that former President Donald Trump is named in the sealed Jeffrey Epstein files. 

Posting on social media platform X, Musk declared,

 “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” 

Exchanges between the two, sparked by Musk’s criticism of Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill, which Musk labeled a “disgusting abomination.” In response, Trump expressed disappointment in Musk and suggested terminating federal contracts with Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. 

 

Daughter of famed Noahide archaeologist found dead in her home; son suspected killer

Sarah Richardson and her Father Vendyl Jones 

Sarah Richardson, the daughter of the enigmatic Noahide archaeologist Vendyl Jones, was found dead in her West Bank home last week.

Police suspect that the 73-year-old Jewish convert was killed by her son, Joel — who suffered from mental illness — in her Maale Levona settlement home on May 27.

Richardson moved to Israel as a child on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War with her father, a Christian preacher turned archaeologist who spent the latter part of his life trying to track down lost ritual objects of the First and Second Temples.

“When we came to the apartment, we saw the son digging a hole in the garden with a shovel,” a police officer told Channel 12. “He kept us from going inside, and that immediately raised suspicions that he was trying to bury his mother and hide evidence.”

Police initially detained the 37-year-old son and transferred his mother’s body to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for examination. Forensics experts were unable to determine the cause of her death, leading to his release under restrictive conditions.

Joel was later arrested again after his father called the cops, reporting that he had threatened him with a knife.

During a subsequent conversation with police, Joel confessed to murdering his mother and even reenacted how he killed her at the scene of the crime. The son also told investigators that he “received messages from God” commanding him to kill either his father or their dog, according to Channel 12.

Anat Kirshenberg, the suspect’s lawyer, maintained that police extracted a false confession from him, taking advantage of his psychological distress.

A hearing for Joel was held on Sunday in the Rishon LeZion Magistrate’s Court. He was found fit to stand trial after undergoing two psychiatric evaluations and had his detention extended by six days as police continue their investigation.

Sarah Richardson was one of three women murdered within a single week amid a particularly deadly year for gender-based violence.

In 2008 — two years before Jones passed away from cancer at age 80 — Richardson gave an interview to “Eretz Binyamin,” a publication owned by the Binyamin Regional Council in the West Bank, in which she recounted her family’s move to Israel.

Born in Texas, Jones built his career as a Baptist minister in a small North Carolina town that lived in the shadow of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter.

The preacher angered the white supremacist group with his sermons lauding Jews as the “chosen people” and his repeated attempts to bring black worshipers into the congregation, Richardson told the paper.

“The Ku Klux Klan would come to our house at night and break the windows and car windshields. Sometimes, they would also shoot at the house,” she recalled. Eventually, its leading members were prosecuted and imprisoned, putting an end to the KKK’s hold over the town.

While still in the US, Jones became increasingly fascinated with Jewish tradition. He began to learn Hebrew and study the Torah,  eventually becoming a Noahide — a gentile who takes on the seven Noahide Laws, which are a set of obligations all human beings must adhere to, per Jewish tradition.

Jones also “fell in love” with studying the ancient Jewish temples and came to view the recovery of its ritual objects in the Land of Israel as key to bringing about messianic redemption, his daughter said.

“We packed up and sailed to Israel by ship. The journey took two weeks,” Richardson recalled in the interview. “From a distance, we saw Haifa; and to us, it looked like a city of gold.”

Jones conducted eight separate digs at Qumran, a West Bank site near the Dead Sea where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. He believed that the archaeological site is also the location of several Temple artifacts, including the Ark of the Covenant.

Jones travelled back and forth between Texas and Israel until his death in 2010.

Richardson took up her father’s profession before his passing. She aided him in his archaeological digs, but broke from her father’s Noahidism. She converted to Judaism and moved to Maale Levona, a small West Bank settlement south of Ariel, where she resided until her sudden murder.

“I love the land, I love Judaism and I love working with my father. And even though today we come from two ends — he from Noahidism and me from Judaism — we complement each other, like one flame burning in honor of the Temple,” Richardson said.

 

“There’s Nothing Waiting for the Chareidim in the Opposition

 In a candid interview with Arutz Sheva in Hebrew, veteran chareidi political analyst Yisroel Cohen unpacked the growing tensions between the chareidi parties and the Netanyahu-led government, explaining why, despite knowing they have little to gain from the opposition, chareidi MKs may still choose to walk out.

“There’s nothing for them outside,” Cohen stated unequivocally. “In realpolitik terms, the chareidim have nothing to look forward to on the other side. The days when Gantz said, ‘Bring me a blank paper and write whatever you want and I’ll sign it,’ are over — and that’s because of October 7 and the close alignment between the chareidi parties and the right-wing bloc. The messaging coming from Gantz, Lapid, and Yair Golan makes it clear: there’s nothing waiting for the chareidim in a different coalition.”

Still, Cohen acknowledges that the threat of leaving the coalition is not empty rhetoric. “There’s a deeply held chareidi belief that they cannot be part of a government that brands lomdei Torah as criminals or draft dodgers,” he said. While expressing his own sorrow over the widening cracks within the religious bloc — a bloc he says still agrees on 80 percent of the issues and shares the same beliefs — Cohen lamented that, since the horrors of October 7, the relationship between the chareidim and the religious Zionist camp has become increasingly strained, especially around the issue of the draft.

He recalled how, in past decades, the political left would talk about donning a shtreimel if it meant achieving peace. Today, however, Cohen observed, the left has shifted sharply in a progressive and anti-religious direction. Against that backdrop, he invoked the words of Maran Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach zt”l, who spoke of the enduring alliance between the chareidi world and the traditional and peripheral communities of Israel.

Yet even as the chareidim feel they have remained loyal to Netanyahu through repeated elections, they now question whether that loyalty was a mistake. “The Likud, Religious Zionism, and Ben Gvir’s party all got what they wanted. The chareidim? They were pushed aside by Netanyahu — again and again.”

Pressed on whether going to the opposition wouldn’t itself harm Torah study — given that Gantz, Lapid, Golan, and Liberman are unlikely to be better partners for chareidi interests — Cohen responded by quoting the Gerrer Rebbe, who said, “We’re not in charge of Heaven’s calculations. Hashem has His own ways to protect the chareidi public, even if it’s in the opposition.” Beyond that, Cohen added, there’s a fundamental red line: “We cannot accept being part of a government that defines Torah learners as criminals.”

Looking ahead, Cohen said there’s also a strategic recalibration taking place. “Some in the chareidi leadership believe that their alliance with the political right has eroded their deterrent power. Maybe, by stepping out — if not now, then in the long term — they can reestablish themselves as a decisive swing vote.”

Asked whether chareidi leaders are concerned about how they’ll be perceived by the broader Israeli public if they bring down a government during wartime, Cohen acknowledged that some rabbanim do worry about that perception and would prefer to avoid such a move — especially during a war. “But,” he added, “they see limud haTorah as non-negotiable. It’s their core demand. And they didn’t get it, even after handing Netanyahu the 61 seats he needed to form a government.”

As for the financial and political achievements the chareidi parties have secured until now, Cohen admitted there were many. “But the sanctions imposed in the draft issue scared them — deeply. If Yuli Edelstein had been more flexible, there might have been room for a different kind of conversation, built on shared values.”

“We’re now closer than ever to the collapse of the government,” Cohen warned, “but there’s still a week. If Netanyahu rolls up his sleeves and dives headfirst into the issue, a resolution is possible. Most of the chareidi leadership isn’t looking to dismantle the coalition just for the sake of it. They just want a law that they can live with. They know the ‘dream bill’ from two years ago is no longer realistic — they understand that October 7 changed the landscape. But they’re still waiting for something.”

And what of the rumors that United Torah Judaism leader Moshe Gafni might be quietly negotiating with Gantz or Lapid? Cohen doubts it. “Given how committed the opposition leaders are to the draft issue, it’s hard to believe. Still,” he allowed, “some may feel that it can’t get worse than this — and perhaps, under a different government, the attorney general and the Supreme Court would provide more room to maneuver.”

Dog Celebrates Win in Volley Ball

 

The dog even realizes when they win the point and celebrates! I love it 😍🥰

- Mr.E

Read on Substack

Mother in Modiin Murders Her 13-Year-Old and Kills Herself Erev Yom Tov

 

הותר לפרסום: איתי שמאי הוא הנער שנרצח לפי החשד בידי אימו בערב החג

איתי שמאי הוא הילד בן ה-13 שעל פי החשד נרצח בידי אימו בערב חג השבועות במודיעין - כך הותר היום (רביעי) לפרסום. הלווייתו צפויה להתקיים היום בשעה 16:00 בבית העלמין בגבעת שאול.

בבית הספר העל-יסודי הקהילתי משלב יחד מודיעין, שבו למד הנער, ספדו לו 

"איתי היה נער רגיש, אכפתי ואהוב על חבריו ועל צוות בית הספר. חיוכו השקט,

נדיבותו וליבו הפתוח נגעו בכל מי שהכיר אותו" 

בבית הספר ציינו כי "בלכתו הפתאומית מעימנו הניח חלל עמוק בלב כולנו. אנו מחבקים את כל מי שאהב אותו בשעה קשה זו".

Judy Weinstein-Hagi’s last call to a Magen David Adom

 Listen to Judy Weinstein-Hagi’s last call to a Magen David Adom emergency operator after her husband was murdered in front of her eyes on October 7th 2023.

 May their memory be blessed.
 

Dead Sea Scrolls much older than previously thought

Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are much older than academics previously thought, with some dating back to the time of their ancient authorship, a new study claims.

Scientists from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands utilized artificial intelligence to examine the handwriting of the ancient fragments and claim they derived more accurate dates for some writings, including the Book of Daniel, according to a paper published in Plos One.

The aptly named AI program “Enoch” was fed a plethora of already dated ancient texts from modern-day Israel and the West Bank that also had radiocarbon dates — then used machine learning to study the handwriting progressions of 135 Dead Sea Scroll fragments.

The study claimed that the fragment of the Book of Daniel 8-11, which was thought to be dated to 160s BC, could be as old as 230 BC, which overlaps with the period in which the biblical book was authored.

“With the Enoch tool we have opened a new door into the ancient world, like a time machine, that allows us to study the hands that wrote the Bible,” the study’s authors wrote in a statement, Eureka Alert reported. 

“Especially now that we have established, for the first time, that two biblical scroll fragments come from the time of their presumed authors,” the statement continued.

Researchers also claim that fragments written in Herodian Aramaic and Hasmonaean Hebrew — considered to have emerged in the First and Second centuries BC — are actually older than initially thought and provide a new lens for the presumed proliferation of writing during that era.

These new dating claims result in “a new chronology of the scrolls and the re-dating of ancient Jewish key texts that contribute to current debates on Jewish and Christian origins,” the study stated.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in 1943 by two Bedouin shepherds who found them secreted in caves in the Qumran section of Israel near the Dead Sea and are the oldest known fragments of Jewish manuscripts written in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Aramaic dating back to the Third and Second century BC.

Scholars attribute the trove of religious manuscripts to the Essens, who were Jewish sectarians at the turn of the first millennium.

USA Today piece drums up sympathy for Boulder terrorist's daughter

 

USA Today is facing criticism for its recent feature on Habiba Soliman, the daughter of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who has been charged with federal hate crimes and 16 counts of attempted murder following a violent attack on a pro-Israel demonstration in Boulder, Colorado. Twelve people were injured in the assault, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor. The incident is under investigation as a hate crime by federal authorities.

The article begins by highlighting Habiba Soliman’s personal aspirations, stating, "She moved to the United States with a dream of studying medicine to transform lives." It notes that she recently graduated from high school and was preparing for a medical career when her father's arrest disrupted her plans. USA Today reports that the Soliman family, originally from Egypt and living in the US after moving from Kuwait, now faces potential deportation.

According to a federal affidavit cited in the piece, Mohamed Soliman planned the attack for a year and deliberately waited until after his daughter’s graduation to carry it out. Despite this detail, the article extensively covers Habiba’s academic background, her scholarship from the Colorado Springs Gazette’s “Best and Brightest” program, and her volunteer work at a local hospital. She is quoted as writing in her scholarship essay: "Most importantly, I came to appreciate that family is the unchanging support."

The profile recounts how Habiba Soliman struggled after arriving in the US, learning English and adjusting to a new environment. It notes her efforts to establish an Arabic club at her school and describes her academic progress and community involvement.

The decision to focus on the daughter of the accused rather than the victims has been widely criticized. The White House posted on X: "Any blame for the illegal immigrant terrorist who lit Jewish Americans on fire? She is not the victim here."

The advocacy group Stop Antisemitism commented: "Why are you romanticizing the illegal daughter of a terrorist who tried to kill Jews on American soil?"

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote: "A dozen people, including a Holocaust survivor, were injured in this attack. But the mainstream media profiles the terrorist’s family. Despicable."

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer added: "Waiting for your profile piece on the victims of this heinous terrorist attack…oh wait, there is none. This is disgusting, USA Today. Do better."

USA Today’s article also details the family’s immigration status, noting that Mohamed Soliman entered the country on a tourist visa in late 2022 and later sought asylum. His wife and five children are now in custody and may be deported, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

As public reaction continues to unfold, critics are questioning the media’s approach in covering individuals related to suspects of violent acts. The USA Today feature, intended to profile a scholarship recipient, has instead sparked a broader debate over editorial judgment and narrative focus.

Two victims of the Boulder attack remain hospitalized. Federal and local investigations into the incident are ongoing.

Going to Columbia? You Degree May Be Worthless!

 

The Trump administration has launched a significant effort to strip Columbia University of its accreditation, citing the institution's alleged failure to adequately protect Jewish students from harassment, The New York Daily News reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the US Education Department formally notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Columbia's accrediting body, that the university was in breach of federal anti-discrimination statutes and consequently did not meet the commission's standards. This finding was issued on May 22.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon emphasized the government's stance, stating, "Just as the Department of Education has an obligation to uphold federal anti-discrimination law, university accreditors have an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards."

A representative for the accreditor confirmed receipt of the letter but declined further comment. Columbia University did not immediately respond to inquiries.

The threat to Columbia's accreditation carries severe implications, as most federal funding, including crucial financial aid, is contingent upon a school maintaining accredited status. While only accrediting entities can formally revoke a school's status, these entities themselves must be recognized by the Education Department.

The move comes two months after the Trump administration announced it would withhold $400 million in federal funding from Columbia following criticism of the university’s handling of anti-Israel student protests on campus.

Weeks after the Trump administration announced the funding cut to Columbia, the university announced a series of reforms, including placing the university’s Middle East studies department under new oversight, revising protest and student discipline policies, and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.

Columbia also pledged to promote “intellectual diversity” by expanding its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.

After the university rolled out the changes, McMahon said Columbia was “on the right track,” though she declined to commit to a timeline for restoring the federal funding.