The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to potentially send a second U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, as President Donald Trump intensifies pressure on Iran and makes clear that nuclear negotiations must yield concrete results.
Trump has publicly reiterated that while diplomacy remains his preferred path, military action remains an available option if talks fail.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, defense officials are drafting operational plans that would dispatch another carrier to reinforce the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group currently deployed in the region.
Such a step would substantially increase American naval strength in an area already facing rising tensions.
Earlier this week, Trump signaled that a breakdown in discussions with Tehran would prompt a swift U.S. response, including bolstering American forces in the Middle East.
“We’re not going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters, adding that while discussions are ongoing, “if we don’t make a deal, we’ll handle it the other way.”
He stressed that although he favors a diplomatic resolution, sustained pressure is an essential component of his strategy.
“They understand that,” he said of Iranian leaders. “We want peace, but it has to be real peace.”
The Journal reported that the USS George H.W. Bush is currently being prepared and could be deployed once the president issues a final authorization.
Meanwhile, the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group has shifted from its prior operations in the Indo-Pacific to waters near the Arabian Sea, restoring a continuous U.S. aircraft carrier presence across the broader Middle East.
At the core of a carrier strike group is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that operates as a floating air base capable of conducting extended combat missions.
Each carrier typically carries between 60 and 75 aircraft, including F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, EA-18G Growler electronic warfare planes, E-2D Hawkeye early warning aircraft, and MH-60 Seahawk helicopters.
In addition to the carrier, the strike group includes guided-missile cruisers and destroyers outfitted with the Aegis combat system, enabling both air defense and protection against ballistic missiles. An attack submarine is often attached as well, providing underwater warfare capability.
Together, these assets provide long-range strike capacity, missile interception, maritime security enforcement, and rapid-response capabilities during regional crises.
Deploying a second carrier would represent the largest American naval buildup in the Middle East in recent months and would significantly strengthen the military backing behind U.S. diplomatic efforts.
Indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran resumed on Feb. 6 in Muscat, Oman, marking the first sustained engagement since last year’s confrontation involving Iranian-backed militias and U.S. forces.
American officials have maintained that any future agreement must permanently block Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and include rigorous inspection and verification requirements.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” stressing that enforcement and transparency are non-negotiable elements of any deal.
The Trump administration has also sought to widen the scope of negotiations to cover Iran’s ballistic missile development and its support for proxy groups throughout the region.
Tehran, however, has resisted expanding the framework of talks, insisting its nuclear activities are peaceful and rejecting what it calls unrelated demands.
Iran continues enriching uranium to elevated levels, and Western officials warn that the enrichment process is nearing weapons-grade thresholds, sharply reducing the time Iran would need to produce a nuclear weapon.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said this week that Iran “does not seek nuclear weapons” and is prepared to provide assurances about its nuclear activities, though he did not signal a halt to enrichment.
On Wednesday, Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, with Iran emerging as the central topic of discussion.
Following the meeting, Trump said he “insisted that negotiations continue to see whether or not a deal can be consummated,” but reiterated that “we will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Netanyahu stated that Israel believes any agreement must address not only uranium enrichment but also Iran’s missile arsenal and its backing of armed groups across the Middle East.
Israeli officials have consistently warned that a limited nuclear arrangement would fail to neutralize broader regional threats posed by Tehran.
The Pentagon has not yet made a final determination regarding the additional deployment, though defense officials noted that preparing the strike group ensures the United States can act swiftly if the president gives the order.
{Matzav.com}
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu announced in Washington that Israel will take part in President Donald Trump’s newly formed “Board of Peace,” signing on to the initiative during meetings with Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Following his discussion with Rubio, Netanyahu wrote on X that he “signed Israel’s accession as a member of the “Board of Peace.””
Netanyahu traveled to the U.S. capital primarily for talks with Trump focused on Iran, but the visit also included discussions about the new international body.
The Board of Peace was established under a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in mid-November. The resolution authorized the board, along with participating countries, to organize an international stabilization force in Gaza. A fragile ceasefire there began in October under a Trump-backed proposal approved by both Israel and the Hamas militant group.
According to the original framework of Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was intended to oversee the enclave’s temporary administration. Trump later indicated that, with him serving as chair, the body would broaden its mandate to address conflicts beyond Gaza on a global scale.
The board’s inaugural session is set for Feb. 19 in Washington, where members are expected to focus on plans for rebuilding Gaza.
International reaction to Trump’s invitation to join the initiative, first introduced in late January, has been measured. A number of analysts have expressed concern that the new body could weaken or sideline the United Nations.
Although several U.S. partners in the Middle East have opted to participate, many of America’s longstanding Western allies have declined to join.
The ceasefire in Gaza has been repeatedly tested by renewed violence. Gaza health officials report that at least 580 Palestinians have been killed since the truce began in October, while four Israeli soldiers have also reportedly died during the same period.
According to the Gaza health ministry, Israel’s military campaign has resulted in more than 72,000 Palestinian deaths and triggered widespread hunger while displacing the territory’s entire population.
Various human rights specialists, academics and a U.N. investigative body have described the campaign as amounting to genocide. Israel rejects that characterization, saying it is acting in self-defense after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 hostages in an attack in late 2023.
{Matzav.com}A legislative proposal by opposition leader Yair Lapid seeking to formally classify Qatar as an enemy state is scheduled to be discussed this Sunday by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.
Under the terms of the bill, Qatar would be officially designated an enemy state, and all existing Israeli legal provisions that apply to such countries would automatically extend to it.
The explanatory section accompanying the proposal asserts that Qatar provides financial backing and support to the Hamas terrorist organization, operates and funds a global propaganda apparatus that amplifies its messaging, consistently incites against Israel, and inflicts significant harm on Israel’s standing internationally.
{Matzav.com}By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
This week’s parsha opens with the words, “Ve’aileh hamishpotim asher tosim lifneihem — These are the laws that you shall place before them.”
Rabi Akiva, in the Mechilta, hears in these words not merely a command to teach, but a lesson in how Torah must be transmitted. Tosim lifneihem, he explains, does not mean to present information in the abstract, but to lay it out like a shulchan aruch, a fully prepared table, arranged with care, clarity, and invitation. Torah is not meant to be delivered as raw data, but as nourishment: accessible, enticing, and alive.
Great teachers exhaust themselves in pursuit of this ideal. They labor not only to know Torah, but to serve it, presenting it with flavor, with structure, with an inner music that allows the student not merely to learn, but to taste and appreciate. A good rebbi does not speak at his talmidim. He sets a table before them and invites them into a feast.
One such rebbi was Rav Mendel Kaplan. His shiur was not simply a classroom. It was an atmosphere. We did not merely absorb Torah from him. We breathed it in. He fed us a wide menu of spiritual food, equipping us not only with knowledge, but with the tools to interpret the world beyond the walls of the bais medrash. Headlines became texts, and world events became commentaries, refracted through the prism of Torah until their deeper meanings emerged.
There is a story told of a villager in the legendary town of Chelm who returned home from shul one Shabbos and repeated the rov’s sermon to his wife.
“The rov says that Moshiach may come very soon,” he told her, “and he will take us all to Eretz Yisroel.”
His wife wrung her hands in distress. “But what will be with our chickens? Who will feed them? How will we live?”
The husband stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You know, life here is hard. The goyim harass us, we are poor, the roof leaks, and our feet freeze all winter. Maybe it will be better there.”
She thought for a moment, and then her face lit up. “I have a solution,” she said. “We’ll ask Hashem to send the goyim to Eretz Yisroel — and we’ll stay here with the chickens.”
We smile at the foolishness of Chelm, but too often, we are no different. We live inside history, yet fail to read it. We experience events, but miss their meaning.
This past weekend, a kind of living commentary was on full display during the annual Rubashkin Alef Bais Gimmel Shabbaton. At a time when headlines scream instability and fear, hundreds gathered not to analyze geopolitics or speculate about what comes next, but to be inspired by a Yid who has lived through the harshest challenges and emerged with unshaken faith. His message was not theoretical. It was not abstract. It was Torah lived, tasted, and tested — tosim lifneihem in its most literal sense.
What resonated with the Shabbos attendees was not only Reb Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin’s story, but his clarity. Instead of anxiety, there was perspective. Instead of bitterness, gratitude. Instead of confusion, trust in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The uplifting Shabbos spent with Reb Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, his family, and so many wonderful Yidden looking to grow as maaminim was a reminder that emunah is not just a slogan, but a lens through which life itself becomes understandable. That, too, is how history is meant to be read.
We often mistake warning signs for noise, and blessings for burdens. We assume we understand the world, when in truth we need teachers — living meforshim — to explain to us what is really happening between the lines of the newspaper.
Chazal tell us: “Why was the mountain called Sinai? Because from it descended sinah — hatred.” From the moment the Torah was given and the Jewish people became a nation with a mission, a new force entered the world, a relentless, irrational hostility that would accompany us until the arrival of Moshiach.
This hatred is not merely a historical artifact. It is not confined to ancient exile or medieval blood libels. It is alive. It breathes. It mutates. It adapts to each generation’s language and technology.
The world recently marked the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Much has changed since those dark years. Entire institutions were built to ensure that such horrors would never return. And yet, the ancient sinah remains intact, resurfacing in new forms, under new banners, with old obsessions. Jews are mocked, judged by double standards, and vilified. The very state created as a refuge from hatred has become a magnet for it.
Anti-Semitism rises not only in Europe, but in America. Digital platforms amplify it, spread it, and normalize it. What once required mobs now needs only algorithms.
Rashi tells us that Yisro came to join the Jewish people after hearing about Krias Yam Suf and Milchemes Amaleik. The meforshim explain that these events conveyed not only how deeply Hashem loves the Jewish people, but how intensely the nations of the world oppose them. Yisro recognized the paradox at the heart of Jewish existence — to be beloved by Hashem and resisted by history. He understood that truth itself provokes opposition, and that the more transformative the truth, the more violently it is resisted.
When Albert Einstein introduced relativity, the scientific world initially mocked him. A book titled One Hundred Scientists Against Einstein appeared. When asked about it, Einstein reportedly shrugged and said, “If I were really wrong, why would one not be enough?” He understood what Jews have always known: Truth does not generate mild disagreement. It generates disproportionate fury.
From Har Sinai onward, the Jewish people have lived inside that fury.
After World War I, the League of Nations was created to ensure peace. After World War II, the United Nations rose from the ashes of Auschwitz, pledging that tyranny would never again be allowed to flourish. After 9/11, world leaders announced a new era with a global war on terror, a united front against evil.
And yet, history keeps repeating itself, not because of a lack of institutions, but because of a surplus of illusion. They did not factor in apathy. They did not factor in corruption. They did not factor in moral exhaustion. They did not factor in hatred.
Everything now moves at a blistering pace. Wars begin, fade, and are replaced before their consequences are understood. Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Iran — each crisis dissolves into the next.
The world feels unstable, yet we continue our routines as though nothing is hanging above us.
The sword is suspended — and we discuss the wallpaper.
As anti-Semitism intensifies and the old sinah resurfaces, we argue over trivialities, chase distractions, and obsess over matters of little weight. We scroll while history groans.
Perhaps, a place to begin is with what we allow into our minds and homes. Since the invention of print, ideas have traveled disguised as information. Newspapers and books have always been vehicles for more than news. They are carriers of values, assumptions, and worldviews. The Maskilim mastered this art, writing heresy in poetic Hebrew, quoting Chazal while emptying their teachings of meaning, as they mocked gedolim, rabbonim, lomdei Torah, and shomrei Torah umitzvos. Generations were torn away not by open rebellion, but by subtle infiltration.
Words are never neutral. They shape taste. They train perception. They define what feels normal.
That is why those who write, teach, and speak bear responsibility under the same command: “Aileh hamishpotim asher tosim lifneihem.” What we place before others must be honest, just, and true — a table that nourishes, not poisons.
The Alter of Kelm taught that tosim lifneihem k’shulchan aruch means that real intelligence emerges only when learning has flavor. Depth is not dryness. Wisdom is not sterile. A melamed who teaches with clarity, elegance, and taste awakens in his students not only understanding, but desire and a hunger for more.
The difference between superficial knowledge and deep understanding is the difference between eating and tasting. One sustains life. The other transforms it.
The task of man, the Alter concludes, is to become truly intelligent — not clever, not informed, but wise.
That wisdom begins with refusing to settle for shallow readings of Torah or of life. It demands that we study more deeply, interpret more honestly, and live more consciously. It requires that we understand not only what is happening around us, but also what it is asking of us.
We must speak more truthfully, treat people more carefully, and live in a way that creates kiddush Hashem rather than its opposite.
The Meshech Chochmah, in one of his classic elucidations, writes in his sefer on last week’s parsha that the Jews merited the many miracles Hakadosh Boruch Hu performed for them upon leaving Mitzrayim even though they were still entangled with avodah zorah because their middos and interpersonal conduct were refined. But in generations whose people speak lashon hora, quarrel, and act without derech eretz and sensitivity, Hashem removes His Shechinah from their midst, as He did at the time of the Second Bais Hamikdosh. Even though the people were engaged in Torah study and observance, nevertheless, because there was sinas chinom — hatred — among them, the Bais Hamikdosh was destroyed.
I saw in a new sefer by Rav Yitzchok Kolodetsky something both amazing and frightening that Rav Chaim Greineman would relate from his father, Rav Shmuel Greineman, brother-in-law of the Chazon Ish. He would say that the Chazon Ish taught that the Holocaust came about as a result of sins bein adam lachaveiro, failures in how Jews treated each other.
When we look around us, when we contemplate what is happening in the world and wonder what we can do, what is demanded of us, and how we can help draw Moshiach closer, it would do us well to ponder the message the Chazon Ish and the Meshech Chochmah sent.
Parshas Yisro, in which the Torah discusses how Klal Yisroel was presented with the gift of the Aseres Hadibros and the Torah, is followed by Parshas Mishpotim, which we study this week. By arranging the parshiyos in this way, the Torah teaches us that to maintain the lofty levels reached at Har Sinai, we must properly follow the laws of Mishpotim, which deal with interpersonal conduct.
It is not sufficient to be on a high spiritual level intellectually and theoretically. We must match that with our actions and conduct. If we cut corners financially, if we are careless with another person’s dignity, and if we are not scrupulous in ensuring that we do not harm others financially, then we are lacking in fulfilling the obligations we accepted upon ourselves at Har Sinai.
In Parshas Mishpotim, Klal Yisroel reaches its highest moment when it declares, “Na’aseh v’nishma — We will do, and later we will hear and understand.” Action before comprehension. Commitment before clarity. A nation stepping into destiny with certainty, armed and motivated by faith.
May we merit to return to that summit, to toil in Torah, taste its depth, refine our character, and hear in the background of all we do the sounds of Sinai, so that we can raise ourselves and our people and bring us closer to the geulah sheleimah bekarov b’yomeinu. Amein.
Two members of Iran’s Jewish community have been released from detention following intervention by senior communal leaders, while a third Jewish detainee remains behind bars, according to a report aired on Kan Reshet Bet.
The two men, one from Tehran and the other from Shiraz, had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in protests against the regime of the Ayatollahs. Their release came after prominent figures within Iran’s Jewish community engaged with government authorities on their behalf.
All three were reportedly detained as part of a broader sweep carried out by Iranian security forces in recent weeks, during which numerous individuals were taken into custody. While two of the Jewish detainees have now been freed, efforts are continuing to secure the release of the third individual, with senior community members said to be actively pressing the matter with officials.
At the same time, members of the Jewish community took part over the past day in official events commemorating the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Their participation was widely viewed as a public demonstration of solidarity with the ruling regime.
Homayoun Sameh, the Jewish representative in Iran’s parliament, together with Rabbi Younes Hammami, one of the community’s rabbinic leaders, spoke favorably about the government and what they described as its positive treatment of religious minorities.
Both Sameh and Hammami also granted interviews to Iranian media outlets in which they voiced support for the Islamic Revolution. In one widely circulated image, Shamkh was seen standing alongside Rabbi Hammami while holding a placard that read: “The Islamic Revolution Day is the day of light overcoming darkness.
{Matzav.com}
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In an emotional and uplifting moment for his family and תלמידים, Rav Yitzchak Hacker, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Grodna in Be’er Yaakov and a member of the Degel Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, attended his grandson’s wedding this evening after having been in serious condition for several months.
The chasunah took place at the Heichalei Malchus Hall in Bnei Brak. This marked the first time the Rosh Yeshiva has appeared publicly since his health crisis, bringing great excitement and gratitude among his talmidim.
Rav Hacker arrived for the chuppah and was honored with reciting brachah acharita. Following the chuppah, he remained at the chasunah and joined in the dancing.
The chosson is a grandson of Rav Yitzchak Hacker and also a grandson of Rav Tzvi Rotberg, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Beis Meir. He is a son of Rav Tuvia Rotberg, a ram at Yeshivas Beis Meir. The kallah is the daughter of Rav Yaakov Sokolovsky of Yerushalayim.
The Rosh Yeshiva’s presence at the simchah, after a prolonged period of serious illness, was seen as a moving and hopeful moment for his family, talmidim, and the broader Torah community.
{Matzav.com}New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday defended his push to raise taxes on the city’s highest earners, arguing before state lawmakers that the soaring cost of living in the five boroughs justifies the increase.
Appearing in Albany, Mamdani was asked to explain why he is urging the state legislature to approve a 2% income tax increase for residents earning more than $1 million annually. The mayor framed the proposal as a response to the financial pressures facing the city.
“I think the why comes from the fact that we are the most expensive city in the United States,” Mamdani said, answering a question from Assembly member Amanda Septimo (D-Bronx).
“There simply isn’t enough money that we wish there could be,” he added.
Mamdani cautioned that failing to address the city’s fiscal needs could accelerate an ongoing population shift.
“If we take that approach year after year, what happens is we do see the exodus that’s happening right now for working middle-class people leave the city, leave the state, trying to find a place where their ends can be a little bit easier to meet.”
Since launching his mayoral campaign, Mamdani has advocated for multiple tax increases, including the proposed 2% hike on personal income for top earners and a 4% increase in the corporate tax rate.
After assuming office in January, he pointed to what he described as a looming multibillion-dollar budget deficit in the current and upcoming fiscal years as a key reason for seeking additional revenue.
However, that projected shortfall has narrowed considerably in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, Mamdani’s budget director, Sherif Soliman, disclosed that the previously cited $12 billion deficit estimate did not factor in $7.2 billion in tax revenue collected at the close of the year.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has consistently resisted calls to raise state income taxes, maintaining that New York already ranks among the highest-taxed states in the nation.
{Matzav.com}