יום ראשון, כ״ו אב תשפ״וSunday, August 9, 2026
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Rabbi Ovadia Yosef regained consciousness at Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Kerem Wednesday but his condition remains very serious, doctors said. He woke up and recognized family members, who helped him put on tefillin. His physician, Dr. Dan Gilon, said that the rabbi may not have suffered brain damage. The 93-year-old Torah sage and spiritual […]
The Shas Haredi party can’t see past its black hat. Most of 91 Yesha towns now on the national priority list are near dangerous borders. Beitar Illit is not. Obviously, that’s discrimination, says Shas.
Bennett lost the battle for Chief Rabbis but he may have won the war. A Knesset Channel poll shows Jewish Home party as the second largest, only three seats behind the Likud and three ahead of Lapid.
Rav Ovadia Yosef, the same rabbi who last month call national religious Rabbi Stav “evil,” now says he really loves knitted kippa Jews. Well, most of them. Their political leaders still are Amalek. Happy Tu B'Av.
After much jockeying and infighting, it appears that Shas has finally chosen its candidate for Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. Among the candidates were former Chief Rabbi, Rav Ovadia Yosef's two sons, as well as Shas leader Arieh Deri's brother, and the brother of Shas MK Ariel Attias. In the end Shas chose Rav Ovadiah's […]
By JTA
Palestinian political party Fatah, along with other Palestinian political organizations, criticized representatives of the Palestinian Authority for meeting with Israeli politicians sympathetic with the Palestinian Authority.. In a meeting this week set up by the left-wing Geneva Initiative, members of the ruling right-wing Likud Party and opposition Shas Sephardi party met with PLO Secretary-General Yasser […]
There are Haredim and there are Haredim. Some fight for IDF. Others fight against the state and, as on Tuesday, attack Haredi soldiers. Police rescued him and patrolled the streets of Mea Shearim.
By JTA
Shas party’s spiritual leader and former Chief Sephardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is recovering from major back surgery at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem following the procedure on his spine the previous day. Yosef, 93, was scheduled to be transferred out of the intensive care unit on Tuesday. He was admitted to the hospital […]
Statements from various rabbis about the complicity of Haredi parties in the dangerous policies of left-wing governments in Israel.
MK Eli Yishai, the former head of the Shas party has decided he will not be running for mayor of Jerusalem, according to a report in the Israeli, Chareidi La'Daat website. Yishai was the political head of the Shas party until Shas's spiritual leader, Rav Ovadia Yosef, kicked him out and replaced him with Aryeh […]
Yair Lapid’s star is beginning to dim, with his Yesh Atid party losing two seats in the Knesset in a Knesset Channel poll released on Monday. The two-seat drop from its current standing in the Knesset is even more serious when taking into consideration that Lapid was sitting on top of the poll three months […]
If Shas does agree to allow a secular core curriculum in their schools, that will put Ashkenazi Haredi leaders between a rock and a hard place.
On Saturday Night, Rav Ovadiah Yosef, the spiritual head of the Shas party said that he had to return political control of the Shas party back to Aryeh Deri, as it was promised to be returned to him (Deri) when he was sent to prison. Eli Yishai, the successful, but now displaced Shas party head, […]
Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has given his blessing for the charismatic Aryeh Deri to return to his former position as head of the Shas political party at the expense of Knesset Member Eli Yishai. Since the return of Deri to the Knesset after the end of his seven-year banishment as a result of […]
By Yair Lapid
Last week, a few minutes after my stormy exchange with haredi members of Knesset, I went to what we in the Knesset call the "back cafeteria." It is not exactly a cafeteria but rather a lounge area behind the plenum where members of Knesset alone can enter.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
Rather than ask why Minister Baird met with Minister Livny in the eastern Jerusalem office, why not ask why Minister Livny agreed to meet there with Minister Baird?
Why throw years of friendly cooperation into the trashcan?
With just days left until the coalition deadline, any of these rumors and leaks could be true.
Haredi leaders could not care less if Israel retains Judea and Samaria - as long as their Mosdos (religious institutions) get funded.
By Batya Medad
Bennett's pact with Yair Lapid, is not good for the country and is leading to fraternal hatred.
Talks on a new government coalition have turned into spin after spin and bluff after bluff, with “everyone on first” and no one at home. Everyone is wearing masks to the point that some people, like Livni, already have lost their identities. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s deal with Tzipi Livni to appoint her in charge of […]
There ought to be a process of exempting yeshiva students via bechinos (tests).
Shas and UTJ claim that they're joining the coalition. The question now is, who will be the last party to join?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not discounted the possibility of calling new elections, Likud sources say, according to the Israeli publication, Ma'ariv.
By JoeSettler
No one wants Hareidim moving into their neighborhood. But no one is letting them build all-Hareidi communities either.
Not exactly what Jewish Home voters thought they would get on election day.
Torah will probably flourish more with Shas out of the government and hopefully the Chief Rabbinate will revert back to a Rabbinate for all of Israel.
By Batya Medad
The Israeli media are busy faux negotiating, publishing all sorts of possibilities.
Like Liberman before, Lapid will likely be Netanyahu's major partner as under almost any coalition figuration Yesh Atid can bring down the coalition.
Someone asked me if Israelis were forced to vote or they had a choice...we so have a choice and we choose to vote.
The spot shows a Russian born bride to receive her instant giur-conversion document by fax.
By Tzvi Fishman
The only thing preventing it from becoming a reality is the tragic fact that so many Orthodox Jews prefer living in the Diaspora.
Statements from various rabbis about the complicity of Haredi parties in the dangerous policies of left-wing governments in Israel.
The big question, of course, is where does the Jewish Home get its new votes?
By Naama Klein
As I sit at my home computer typing these words, virtual gale-force winds are blowing through my apartment, filling it with fresh – and free – air. This has not always been the case. In fact the electric bill for the past two months was astronomical, due in large part to our high usage of air conditioning virtually around the clock.
By Tzvi Fishman
Dear Rabbi: With elections approaching in Israel, I am searching for a religious political party for which to vote. When I think about voting for Shas, I remember their support for Oslo, the surrender of parts of Eretz Yisrael, giving rifles to our enemies, and the terrible sea of Jewish blood that was spilled after the Oslo Accords were signed. That is not the Torah I am searching to find.
Jeremy Saltan's combined weekly poll average from Oct 14-20 shows the Likud with 28 seats, down from the prior week's average of 29 seats, Kadima remains at 6, and Yisrael Beitenu is down to just about 13 seats.
The poll also shows that the Likud-Liberman-Haredi bloc would maintain its majority in any possible scenario, no matter what combinations of left and center parties it faces.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Tuesday's announcement of early elections has given new life, among other things, to speculations about former Shas leader Aryeh Deri's return to the top. But Deri associates on Wednesday denied the rumors.
Kikar Shabbat is reporting that Aryeh Deri, the former head of the Shas party will be returning to Shas. A contract is being drawn up stating that both Eli Yishai (the current head of Shas), and Aryeh Deri will agree to work together. Rav Ovadiah Yosef will determine who will gets to be the party […]
By dvora
JERUSALEM – Clandestine photocopying of tucked-away documents in Israel’s National Library, hurried text messages of selected passages verifying their pristine, unpublished condition, and question marks surrounding the editing and possible censorship practices of trusted editors from eighty years ago.
Neither the threat of rain nor heavy traffic prevented the huge throng of enthusiastic participants from attending the 12th Siyum HaShas last Wednesday, August 1 at MetLife Stadium. The event, which attracted more than 90,000 people, was in celebration of the conclusion of the seven-and-a-half year learning cycle of the Babylonian Talmud.
On August 1, the biggest Jewish American event ever took place – the completion of the daily learning of the entire Gemara, which happens once every 7 and a half years, known as Siyum HaShas – filling of 90,000 seats at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium. However, a significantly smaller, but just as intriguing group celebrated the event in skirts, scarves and a spirit of sisterhood in Jerusalem.
The Jewish Press joins in saluting the thousands of lomdei Torah around the world who together, in countless specially designated study groups, have completed the entire Shas over the past seven and a half years in the Daf HaYomi cycle.
This coming Wednesday evening, August 1, will see the largest convergence ever of American Jewry at a daf yomi Siyum HaShas celebration. The event, the Twelfth Siyum HaShas, to be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford in the New Jersey Meadowlands, is sponsored by the Daf Yomi Commission of Agudath Israel of America.
By Sandy Eller
The birth of Rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv – who died in Jerusalem last week at the age of 102 – is thought by many to be a miracle.
Thousands of Ultra-Orthodox adults and young children are protesting against the universal draft in Kikar Shabbat in Jerusalem. The adults have handcuffed all the children together as part of their protest. United Torah Judaism and Shas have renounced the demonstration and passed the message to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is quite an accomplished personality. The author of over 60 books, Rabbi Steinsaltz has also translated the entire Talmud into Hebrew, a project he started in 1965 at the age of 28 and took 45 years to complete. To date, over two million copies of the Steinsaltz Talmud – in Hebrew, English, French, and Russian – have been sold. No wonder Time magazine once dubbed him a “once-in-a-millennium scholar.”
By Jewish Press Staff Reporter
The Israeli government announced on Tuesday that, for the first time, it will pay the salaries of a small number of Reform and Conservative rabbis who are considered leaders in their communities, and will also recognize them as rabbis.
The day after police arrested four Eritrean and Sudanese men for robbing and raping a 19 year-old woman in south Tel Aviv’s Neve Sha’anan neighborhood, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai said most African illegal immigrants should be rounded up and either deported or arrested.
The intensifying focus on legislating an alternative to the Tal Law has the ultra-Orthodox parties in the Likud-led coalition defensive yet intractable. Shas and UTJ - representing 15 seats in the government - have declared that they will not participate in the coalition committee on finding an alternative.
In our time we must always take advantage of the opportunity for a second chance to revive our identity as Jews in Eretz Yisrael, for without the identity of Israel as a Jewish state, we are truly at a spiritual and physical loss.
In the wake of comments made yesterday by FM Avigdor Liberman, in which he suggested that Yisrael Beytenu may withdraw from the government if it fails to implement an alternative to the Tal Law, PM Binyamin Netanyahu said he refused to be "a victim of extortion by coalition partners."
Vaknin has been a Knesset member representing the ultra-orthodox Shas party since the beginning of Prime Minister Netanyahu's first term in 1996. Considered a maverick, he distinguished himself in his party by holding that the thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who don't learn in Yeshiva but are registered as such should be forced to serve in the military.
In order to fulfill one’s obligation in the mitzvah of matzah, one must eat a k’zayis amount of matzah. This is because the Torah uses the wording of achilah (eating) when it commands the mitzvah of matzah.
On Tuesday afternoon, 26 Adar, March 20, 5772, Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, zt”l, returned his soul to the Creator. He was the rosh yeshiva of Torah Ore in Jerusalem, one of the leading rabbonim in Kiryat Mattersdorf, and a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Israel. The entire yeshiva world deeply mourns his passing.
Dahaf conducted two telephone polls for newspaper Yediot Ahronot on 10 February 2012 with a sample of 500 respondents and a sampling error of 4.5%.
The American Jewish Orthodox community has probably been overwhelmed by the events of the past few weeks in Israel regarding the extremely hostile attacks that have been aimed at the haredi community by the secular press and politicians from across the political spectrum.
By dvora
Chaim Amsalem, a current member of Knesset and former member of Shas, is in the midst of establishing yet another Israeli political party, called Am Shalem.
An index of the Talmud with more than 6,000 topical and 27,000 subtopical entries is a major undertaking and its publication a seminal event in Jewish scholarship.
MK Yisrael Eichler makes comments in response to Livni's condemnation of ultra-orthodox sector.
Shas MK: Torah protected Jews before there was a state, the IDF, and Shin Bet.
Rabbi Amsalem admonishes UTJ MK Gafni for recent comments that Haredim should not serve in the IDF.
According to the poll, Kadima would plummet 17 Knesset seats if elections were held today.
New law passed in a 21-8 vote.
August 7, 2026 
