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An emotional announcement was made this week in Belz, as the chassidus received final authorization to expand its massive bais medrash building at the Belzer center in Yerushalayim, a complex that has long struggled to accommodate the tens of thousands of chassidim who come to spend time in the presence of the belzer Rebbe.

Belz was the first chassidus to establish a massive world center of this scale in Yerushalayim, a model that was later followed by many other chassidic courts. Over the years, the central Beis Medrash has increasingly proven too small for the crowds that gather there from Eretz Yisroel and around the world.

The approval was granted on the Belzer Yom Hatzalah, the day observed in Belz to mark the miraculous rescue after the Holocaust of the brothers, the Belzer Rebbe, Rav Aharon of Belz, and his brother, the Bilgorayer Rav, who arrived in Eretz Yisroel destitute and with nothing but their lives. The day was established by Rav Aharon of Belz himself as a yom tov of thanksgiving and gratitude to Hashem.

After years of effort and persistence by askanim, led by Michel Halberstam, a member of the Yerushalayim city council, and communal activist Zevi Farkash, final approval was granted to allow continued development of the Belzer world center. Construction of the complex began more than four decades ago, built with extraordinary mesirus nefesh by the Belzer Rebbe and his chassidim.

Under the approved plan, the main Beis Medrash will be expanded on its eastern, western, and southern sides. In addition, the “Groyse Shtub,” the main tish hall, will be rebuilt into a vast multi-level space featuring surrounding galleries, significantly increasing capacity for major gatherings, tishen, and Yomim Tovim.

Within the chassidus, special recognition was given to the Beis Medrash’s architect and devoted askan Aharon Ostreicher, who invested years of planning and tireless work with multiple authorities to bring the project forward. Appreciation was also expressed for Elimelech Landman, who provided sustained assistance and support to the askanim throughout the process.

The administration of the Beis Medrash also thanked Yerushalayim Mayor Moshe Lion and his deputy, Eliezer Rauchberger, chairman of Degel HaTorah and head of the city’s Planning and Building Committee, for standing firmly alongside the community and offering meaningful assistance until the long-awaited final approval was granted.

{Matzav.com}

The Slonimer Rebbe is scheduled to depart early Sunday morning for the United States, where he will undertake a chizuk visit with his chassidim, focusing this time on the Slonimer community in Monsey.

The Rebbe, who traditionally visits his American followers once a year, alternates destinations between Boro Park, Monsey, and Lakewood. On this trip, he will remain exclusively in Monsey, where hundreds of chassidim are expected to gather.

The centerpiece of the visit will be a large Shabbos gathering for Parshas Yisro in Monsey, with chassidim traveling in from Boro Park and Lakewood as well. Throughout the visit, the Rebbe will receive individuals for personal counsel and brachah.

It was learned that the Rebbe suffered a fall last week while walking to the mikvah, sustaining injuries to his face along with a strong blow to his leg and arm. Despite the incident, b’siyata d’Shmaya, the 81-year-old Rebbe has continued his regular daily schedule without interruption.

The fall occurred during the early morning hours as the Rebbe was walking alone from his residence on Rechov Rashbam in Bnei Brak to the mikvah, a route he had customarily taken without accompaniment. Since the incident, the Rebbe has been accompanied each morning.

Ahead of his departure to the United States, the Rebbe visited the Kosel this week.

{Matzav.com}

Sen. Chuck Schumer: “I don’t agree very much with Mr. Homan, and he’s certainly not my choice for someone to lower the temperature in Minneapolis, but he’s right in saying the epicenter for change has to be Congress, not the executive branch. And change is desperately needed.”

New York City’s Jewish Council Speaker Julie Menin is set to announce a new City Council task force to combat antisemitism, creating a separate effort from Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pending Office to Combat Antisemitism. The council task force will consist of seven council members and staff, with Jewish Caucus members Inna Vernikov (R-48) and Eric […]

Britain and China signaled improved relations as Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Xi Jinping agreed to deepen cooperation in trade, investment, and technology for shared economic gains.

US private equity firm Carlyle Group has agreed to buy most of Lukoil’s foreign assets, initially valued at $22 billion by analysts, which Russia’s second-largest oil company must sell because of US sanctions.

Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, according to the report. The discussions are ongoing, and no final agreement has been reached. The potential investment would deepen ties between Amazon and OpenAI as competition intensifies in artificial intelligence.

California Governor Gavin Newsom: This wrecking ball presidency is jaw-dropping in real time.

A radical political campaign in Italy’s Tuscany region against Israel’s honorary consul Marco Carrai has sparked outrage. The controversy erupted after posters appeared across the town of Sesto Fiorentino and on social media on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The posters featured Carrai, Israel’s honorary consul in Tuscany, alongside inflammatory captions such as “Wanted,” “War Criminal,” […]

Staff members at the pediatric ward of the Poriya Medical Center were deeply moved this week after receiving a handwritten letter of brocha from the tzaddik of Tiveriah, Rav Dov Kook.

The letter, sent via the rov’s aide, was addressed to hospital management and the doctors and nurses of the children’s department. In his message, Rav Kook offered words of encouragement and chizuk to the medical staff caring for young patients.

The letter read: “Shevat 5786. To the honorable doctors and nurses of the children’s department at Poriya Hospital, may you receive Heavenly assistance to be good emissaries for the healing of the children of Yisroel. And whoever sustains one soul of Yisroel, it is as if he sustained an entire world.”

Hospital officials expressed great appreciation for the letter and the spirit behind it. It was also learned that over the past winter, families who required treatment at the hospital shared their experiences with Rav Kook, speaking about the care and attention they received. In recent months, representatives close to the rov and the hospital’s leadership have been working cooperatively to bridge gaps and provide a more effective and compassionate response to patients, as well as to additional communities in the city of Tiveriah.

{Matzav.com}

Israel Police issued a harsh statement on Thursday against former Tel Aviv District commander, retired Superintendent Ami Eshed, who was reassigned from his position by National Security Minister Ben Gvir in July 2023 for refusing to heed orders to disperse the Kaplan protests in Tel Aviv. After being reassigned, Eshed resigned from his position, and […]

Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for captives and missing persons, has revealed new and deeply troubling details about Hamas’s strategy regarding the Israeli hostages, saying that arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar ym”sh intended to keep them as a long-term bargaining asset for up to a decade.

Speaking in an interview with Amit Segal in Yisroel Hayom, Hirsch said Sinwar viewed the hostages as an investment designed to generate leverage over “10 years of negotiations.” Hirsch described how Israeli authorities internally categorized the captives based on intelligence assessments and rescue prospects. “We classified the hostages as Ron Arads, those with concern they may never be found; Wachsman cases — hostages in a known location but with low chances of rescue; Regev and Goldwasser — fallen soldiers; or Shalits, those who are returned in a deal,” Hirsch said.

Hirsch recounted the scale of the crisis in the immediate aftermath of October 7. “On the evening of October 8 I realized we were missing 3,200 people. In the second week, 1,060. Later, 400,” he said. During the second week, Israeli officials even considered granting American citizenship to all hostages, after Hamas hinted it might prioritize releasing captives with foreign nationality.

According to Hirsch, there was often an unbearable gap between the quality of intelligence and the slim chances of a successful rescue. “There were cases where one of our units was at the door, but we knew we wouldn’t achieve the vital seconds needed for extraction, so we gave up,” he said.

Hirsch also described how Qatar became the central mediator. He said he called a senior Qatari official, who offered his country’s mediation services. When asked how he could prove he could deliver results, Hirsch recalled replying, “Take out hostages.” The Qatari official then went south to Gaza to supervise a pilot release. The following day, Yehudit and Natalie Raanan were freed, followed later by the release of Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper via Egypt. From that point on, Qatar formally assumed the role of mediator.

Addressing the issue of disarmament in Gaza, Amit Segal wrote that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff noticed skeptical looks during meetings in the Prime Minister’s Office — looks that conveyed doubt over the idea that Hamas would ever disarm voluntarily without direct Israeli military action. “I was born at night,” Kushner told them, “but I wasn’t born last night.” American officials stressed that they had no illusions about Hamas or Gaza’s population, noting that not a single person had called the IDF hotline established for turning in hostages. They added that even in Nazi Germany there were Righteous Among the Nations — and that was without the promise of a $5 million reward.

Still, a senior American official said the most likely outcome remains the destruction of Hamas by Israeli forces. “Still, most chances are that the destruction of Hamas will ultimately be carried out by IDF soldiers,” the official said. “But what do you care if we start the demilitarization peacefully? It’s clear Hamas is stalling, and it’s clear it will want to keep weapons, but what happens if, for example, only 10,000 Kalashnikovs are handed over and only 50 tunnels are destroyed without fighting — how does that hurt? You and we are not in a rush anywhere. It will only save work for the IDF.”

{Matzav.com}

A heated confrontation erupted overnight Wednesday in the Knesset after Labor MK Naama Lazimi demanded that coalition members condemn right-wing activist Mordechai David, who blocked the car of former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening. The incident occurred as Barak left the “First Liberal Congress” organized by the left-wing provocative […]

An atzeres chizuk for yungeleit was held this week at Bais Medrash Govoha’s Bais Medrash Ateres Esther in Lakewood, NJ, focused on encouraging yungeleit to consider moving out of town to help build and enhance kollelim, mekomos haTorah and communities there.

The gathering featured divrei chizuk from Rav Yisroel Neuman, rosh yeshiva of Bais Medrash Govoha, and Rav Elya Chaim Swerdloff, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Gedolah of Paterson.

WATCH:

President Trump said Thursday that it appears Hamas is preparing to disarm, despite Hamas officials continuing to publicly reject the idea. Speaking during a Cabinet meeting, Trump said, “It looks like Hamas is going to disarm,” without providing details or citing any agreements. Hamas officials as recently as several hours earlier had insisted they would […]

A man claiming to be an FBI agent showed up to a federal jail in New York City on Wednesday night and told officers he had a court order to release Luigi Mangione, authorities said. Mark Anderson, a 36-year-old Minnesota native who has a history of drug and other arrests and disclosed last year in court […]

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration is preparing to launch a statewide online system that would allow residents to submit reports, videos, and other documentation of encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, an initiative modeled on similar efforts used by activists to monitor federal immigration activity.

Sherrill, a Democrat who was sworn into office earlier this month, revealed the plan Wednesday during an interview on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

“We are also going to be standing up a portal so people can upload all their cellphone videos and alert people,” Sherrill said. “If you see an ICE agent in the street, get your phone out. We want to know.”

ICE did not immediately provide a response when asked to comment on the governor’s remarks.

In addition to the reporting system, Sherrill said her administration intends to bar ICE from conducting operations on state-owned property. Several local governments, including Jersey City, have already enacted similar prohibitions at the municipal level.

“They have not been forthcoming,” Sherrill said of ICE operations. “They will pick people up. They will not tell us who they are.”

The governor, who has frequently clashed with Republican President Donald Trump, argued that ICE routinely withholds information about arrests and conducts itself in a manner comparable to a clandestine law enforcement agency.

“They’ll pick up American citizens. They picked up a 5-year-old child. We want documentation, and we’re going to make sure we get it,” Sherrill said.

Following her television appearance, the governor’s office said more information about the reporting portal would be released soon. The administration said the rollout is being coordinated with Jennifer Davenport, who was recently appointed acting attorney general of New Jersey.

“Keeping New Jerseyans safe is Gov. Sherrill’s top priority, and in the coming days she and Acting Attorney General Davenport will announce additional actions to protect New Jerseyans from federal overreach,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

New Jersey’s plan comes after comparable action in New York, where Attorney General Letitia James announced a program in October to gather photos and videos of ICE activity following a widely publicized enforcement operation on Canal Street in New York City, a neighborhood with a large immigrant population.

State officials said any submissions to New Jersey’s system would be reviewed by the Office of the Attorney General to determine whether there were potential violations of state law.

Officials elsewhere have also signaled a willingness to challenge ICE through the courts. In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has said he is prepared to pursue state-level charges against ICE agents in certain situations.

At the federal level, members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation said this week that they are organizing legal observer training sessions to teach the public how to document immigration enforcement actions.

U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey said continued scrutiny of ICE is necessary.

“Their crimes must be recorded for the day when those who have violated our rights face justice,” Watson Coleman, D-12th Dist., said. “It’s up to us to serve as witnesses now.”

{Matzav.com}

Iranian authorities are converting metro stations and underground parking facilities across Tehran into public war shelters, signaling growing concern among Iranian leaders over the possibility of a major military confrontation involving the United States and Israel. Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani announced Thursday that underground infrastructure would be repurposed as shelters, according to Open Source Intelligence […]

Venezuela is overhauling its long-standing nationalist oil policy in an effort to attract investment, with changes aimed at making the country’s vast oil reserves more appealing to outside capital and support the industry’s recovery. The reforms are part of broader moves by the government and reflect a shift toward easing restrictions that had limited foreign […]