יום שבת, י״ח אב תשפ״וSaturday, August 1, 2026
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It all seemed way too Orwellian for this country to us – and this was still before Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee the following Wednesday confirmed our worst fears.
The question Why can’t Johnny read? resonates just as loudly today as it did 50 years ago and is just as relevant today as it was then.
We were therefore happy to hear that Elon Musk decided to buy Twitter because of the New York Post ban, which he thought was “obviously incredibly inappropriate,” and that he wanted to promote free speech by leveling the playing field.
Rabbi Wallerstein was best known for founding of the groundbreaking Ohr Naava Institute, which provided an organizational setting for enhancing spiritual guidance and social life to young Jewish women across the religious spectrum.
It is gratifying to see that there is apparently a range of significant issues of mutual concern and the political will to address them collectively.
For almost two decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made no bones about his goal of restoring Russia to the glory days of the Soviet Union, when Russia largely determined what went on in Eastern Europe.
There was a disconcerting dimension to the obituary as well, because for all the extolling and paeans to other-worldliness, Mr. Berger and The Times editors seemingly believed they had license to tinker with the image of the great sage at their will.
Despite his rigorous study schedule, he also somehow found time to accommodate steady streams of visiting Jews, some desperately seeking his advice and blessings.
Under the plan, judges would once again have the discretion to set bail and detain criminal defendants in certain circumstances based on the crime alleged, whether a gun was used, or on past criminal history.
It also includes possible influence peddling involving his father and foreign entities and his failure to register as a foreign agent as he may have been required to do. And therein lies an important tale.
One could also have expected Putin would make an example of Ukraine to other former Soviet states, large and small, not to wander too far off the reservation.
There are also Israeli laws prohibiting any person from knowingly calling for a boycott against Israel or an area under its control.
Just think about it: New York State is about to grant individuals preferential entry into a probable multi-billion dollar industry only because they stand convicted of marijuana-related felonies.
Cunningham is a strong supporter of Israel and an outspoken opponent of the BDS Movement and is backed by the Brooklyn Democratic Party organization and Chabad political leaders.
Israel recently incurred Putin’s wrath when, as it had to, it condemned the invasion of Ukraine in the UN General Assembly and sent significant humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Unfortunately, for their own inappropriate reasons, requests are sometimes arbitrarily denied by these government agencies.
Improvident as it may have been to express it publicly at the time, President Joe Biden was right on the money when he pointed out with characteristic frankness that the U.S. and its allies would “have a fight about what to do and not do” depending on the seriousness of a Russian attack on Ukraine.
I’m concerned about Ukraine because of the people of Ukraine and because of the principles that are at risk, in terms of international law and trying to change boundaries of international law by force, Kerry said in the interview.
Minors are prohibited from purchasing cigarettes, alcohol, or even getting a tattoo before a certain age; they, or even their parents, should not be allowed to make irreversible life-altering decisions about their bodies while they are of minority age.
Surely the mayor appreciates that uppermost on the minds of most New Yorkers is the rampant crime that has virtually taken center stage in our city – particularly in minority neighborhoods.
Apparently, the Biden Administration has established a $30 million grant program, to be administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, which will provide funds to non-profits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts.
If the terms of the apparent new agreement are similar to those of the original JCPOA as the Biden team says, it would seem that the same game plan will be followed since majority support for the measure will still be lacking.
It will be recalled that two weeks before he was to enter office last January 1 as the newly elected New York City comptroller, former city councilman Brad Lander declared war on yeshivas, vowing to use the comptroller’s auditing power to get yeshivas...
The complaint outlines how professors and students have maligned Jews on the basis of race and ethnic identity, advancing age-old antisemitic tropes about Jewish power, conspiracy and control.
Consider also a story in the Wall Street Journal about how lawmakers in at least dozen states are backing bills designed to increase transparency regarding school curricula in an effort to bar teachers from promoting concepts perceived as divisive.
While we can understand the psychology that would impel the Conservative, Reform and women’s movements to seek recognition at the Kotel, from the religious perspective it is counter-intuitive.
We will leave it to others to parse Goldberg’s words and decide whether they are those of an antisemite or someone who simply strayed out of her depth.
He was one of a kind and someone who comes along once in a very long while.
In 2014 he founded the International Beit Din to work on agunot cases by trying to find halachic flaws in the original ceremony that delegitimized the marriage itself.
What drives our thinking is more a matter of the context in which all of this is taking place – that is the even 50-50 split between those caucusing with the Democrats and the Republicans, and the centrality of partisanship to what goes on in Washington these days.
According to Fox News, two Democratic Washington state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would reduce penalties for drive-by shootings, with the aim of promoting racial equity in the criminal legal system.
Is it imaginable that the FBI didn’t at least Google Siddiqui after hearing Akram’s call for her release and, given his own ravings, been able to put two and two together?
The proposed new plaza is being supported by Women of the Wall and the Reform and Conservative movements.
comments a judge made at the arraignment of an alleged career criminal other day expressing his frustration with the new Bragg policies soon went viral and will likely mean that the embattled DA will be unable to turn things around.
Menashe Shapiro will serve as deputy chief of staff, while Fred Kreizman will be the commissioner of the mayor’s community affairs unit.
To us, this all amounts to turning the common understanding of law enforcement on its head. That is, the rule that you do the crime, you do the time.
We drilled down on the definition of “insurrection” and found among the listed synonyms the words “rebellion,” “revolution,” and “revolt.”
Even before the federal and state “guidance,” New York City, under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, had jumped the gun and routinely used race as a key determiner for allocating COVID-19 resources.
In particular, he has declared war on New York City yeshivas, vowing to do everything in his power to get Orthodox yeshivas to teach a secular curriculum.
We were even more dismayed by the news report we came across that there appears to be a systematic Palestinian takeover of land in so-called Area C in Judea and Samaria through illegal construction, which is being ignored by the Israeli government.
As we remarked here several months ago, the New York court system’s administrative board had announced that in order to save approximately $55 million it had decided to do away with the services of 46 of New York’s most senior judges.
On rare occasion he has also alluded to Israel’s right to exist as a state, and called upon the Arab world to recognize it as such.
The problem with what the president had to say is that the pending legislation does not involve the core right to vote, which was guaranteed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
He was celebrated for having moved with his family – together with Rabbi Moshe Levenger and his family – into an IDF administrative building in Hebron just before Pesach in 1968 and refusing to leave permission was granted them to restore a significant Jewish presence there.
New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams also railed against New York’s recently enacted woke bail reform law requiring judges to cut many criminals loose without cash bail, including those facing some serious charges.
The students argued that the religious exemption does not apply to their particular seminary because the school operates independently, and not under the umbrella of any external organization.
Are we really lurching towards a military confrontation with Iran, or is this uncertain saber rattling?
There are even those that are simply on the lookout for anything that will make a dogmatic point and will seize on anything to make that point – however good or bad the fit.
For our mayor, whether a health risk is posed by a large gathering depends on the purpose of the gathering.
As Lewin has noted, “It is difficult to imagine any comparable pressure in American law. When is someone who complies with a legal mandate punished for doing so in a manner that complies with his or her religious observance?”
We are at a loss to understand the official administration reaction to last Thursday’s breakup of the negotiations due to Iran’s continuing to make patently unacceptable, irrational demands and even walking back on things it had already agreed to.
Seems to us like the clearest case of police doing their job, particularly by making sure that the assailant could cause no further harm.
To be a non-citizen resident means you are a guest. Does a guest have the right to decide what color the guest room should be painted?
Apparently, the Biden team knew which buttons to press to persuade Bennett, a heretofore ardent supporter of settlement expansion.
Why the focus on the Jews? We now have a theory that seems to fit. Hyperbole about Jews usually works, and Cuomo was looking for a readily available scapegoat.
We have been slowly conditioned to expect this sort of ideological assault. But it was still disconcerting to hear a president of the United States buying into it.
Judges, as a matter of ruling in with the best interests of the child in mind, have typically directed non-custodial parents exercising their visitation rights not to undercut efforts of the custodial parent to raise the child in a particular lifestyle.
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.
It was the kind of thinking that got rid of cash bail because members of certain groups couldn’t make bail, no matter that it predictably spawned turnstile justice and the wholesale release of criminals to the street.
The case went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, which declined to review the decision of the three-judge court upholding shechitah.
No matter what one’s views on the vaccination debate, there is a separate and distinct issue in play. And that is how to ensure that Americans get to enjoy the freest and most robust right to practice their faith consistent with the commonweal.
After the Embassy was relocated, a special department was set up to handle the consular needs of Palestinians. So what purpose would be served by reopening the old consulate?
Adams’s 22 years of service as a member of the NYPD – in several high-ranking positions – has uniquely equipped him to deal with what most polls say is the first order of business in the minds of most New Yorkers: runaway crime.
No one has ever explained how so many judges suddenly became incompetent or physically impaired or unnecessary.
Did he not realize that he would immediately be accused of being a soldier in the culture wars mounted by his boss, the President?
Even when indicating support for the Abraham Accords as a promising enterprise, from President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken on down members of the Biden team never fail to pay homage to “two states,” however much it is in passing.
Giving Gaza dollars for rebuilding is tantamount to addressing damage done to Gaza by its own rulers, while funding for Israel is for its efforts to defend against an outside enemy.
The problem is that the claims of violence are only accusations made by the National School Boards Association – a notoriously left-leaning group.
How this blather explains away the comments of the Pope, which were of the flat out variety, escapes us.
He was a major scholar in both disciplines, publishing scholarly articles in Jewish religious journals as well as in professional scientific journals, a combination that made for a rare and widely sought-after perspective on the application of halachic standards to halachic and ethical questions posed by advances in medicine and technology.
Is she unaware that Israeli security policies are driven by their experiences in defending against several Arab wars of liquidation, of Palestinian terrorists aiming to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea?
Yet the final vote on the Iron Dome funding bill was strongly bipartisan at 420-9 in favor. That’s a 97 percent margin, folks.
The allegation that B&H committed “fraud” seems way beyond the pale and unnecessarily inflammatory. At worst, B&H – and others in the same business – acted out of a particular interpretation of the applicable laws. But fraud? Hardly.
Could she actually believe her flip-flop would change people’s mind’s about her views on Israel? The founding member of “The Squad?”
The U.S. firmly believes, with good reason – as evidenced by the post-2015 experience – that without subjecting Iran to enhanced restrictions over an extended period of time frame, any new deal would be worthless.
”Many of us feel this is the biggest opportunity we will have in our careers to do something deeply structural and transformational to our economy and we should not miss it,” said Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr., Democrat of Virginia.
But, if President Trump moved the consulate into the Embassy now located in Jerusalem, why should the Palestinians desire the reopening, since they still have an official place in Jerusalem to be in contact with the Americans just as before the Trump relocation?
Last week, Arizona’s state treasurer Kimberly Yee announced that Arizona will be completing its divestment from Unilever by September 21, 2021. On June 30, Arizona reduced its investment in Unilever from $143 million to $50 million.
In the Lemon case, the Court ruled that state statutes that provide public funding for even secular instruction in religious schools – including salaries for teachers of secular subjects – violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Although it wasn’t widely reported at the time, already in February of this year Iran ended IAEA inspector access to a range of nuclear facilities. A deal was struck under the radar for installing cameras and other monitoring equipment that could continue to function.
As we read the reports, besides Iran, the only other substantive issue discussed – and much less so – was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Biden vaguely expressing support for a two-state solution and a settlement freeze and Bennett reiterating his opposition to both notions.
We are not unmindful that a good part of Biden’s slide is doubtless a function of old-fashioned politics.
The Soviet Union largely failed in its ostensible mission, and never came close to pacifying large parts of the country. To the contrary, though, the U.S. mission was designed primarily to deny terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks against U.S. interests.
The Pope appears to be reverting back to the pre-Second Vatican Council reforms of 1965 which supposedly repudiated the “teaching of contempt” toward Jews and Judaism.
Robert Malley noted that Iranians are learning so much from the work now underway that the near future it may be impossible to return to the old accords.
It also seems clear that President Biden and most Democrats are fixated on the enactment of their domestic wish list and the unprecedented spending required to fund it.
It is unfathomable that he should be taken from us by five meaningless miscreants who represent the emptiness and detached cruelty that drives much of today’s world.
If one were to review the official declaration marking the conclusion of the Durban Conference, there is virtually nothing there that would suggest what really happened in Durban.
By definition, discrimination is visited upon those who are different or who act differently from the way the majority of people do. Laws exist to bar employers from acting on some of those differences.
Biden is under attack all over the world because of his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the appearance of abandoning U.S. allies, and is therefore in a very weakened position politically – both domestically and internationally.
Indeed, the distinction drawn between the Trump and Biden approach is not an easy one to get one’s arms around.
It is not for nothing that Poland remains the only European Union country that has not enacted a comprehensive restitution law, urging claimants to pursue their remedies in courts.
The Biden Administration is offering all sorts of sweeteners to get Iran to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal, which was supposed to restrict Iran’s nuclear program. Yet Iran continues to dilly-dally and make wild demands seemingly without any realistic hope of achieving them, in order to buy more time.
It should also be noted that the NYCLU”s argument conflicts with, and if accepted would destroy, an important precedent that Lewin achieved in another case – that an agreement or court order directing that the child of divorcing parents be raised in an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle is enforceable.
The ADL vociferously opposed the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh because his views on “reproductive freedom” were not as accommodating as theirs – despite that Kavanaugh’s views were hardly based on any notion of animus on his part or on the part of the millions of Americans who shared his position.
We suspect that many shared our initial concern that Arab countries that signed onto the 2020 Abraham Accords could still be peeled away in the face of criticism from their erstwhile colleagues in the anti-Israel front.
The vehemence of the outrage both countries, joined by the UK, directed at Iran over the bombing last Friday of an oil tanker managed by an Israeli-owned company, had an almost non-sequitur air about it.
In fact, it has been Palestinian recalcitrance that has thwarted any agreement, even according to President Bill Clinton – who was notorious for demanding unilateral and non-reciprocal concessions from Israel.
We are seldom surprised at the double standard applied to things Jewish, but there was something especially irksome about the tortuous path to last week’s welcome development.
Typical policies on the books in these jurisdictions would preclude a state from doing business with Ben &Jerry’s, including purchasing any of its products for public purposes and investing public pension funds in the company. The states would also be required to end already existing contractual relationships and investments.
July 31, 2026 
