Feed aggregator

Rav Amir Krispel, who served for many years as the personal secretary to Maran Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l, says the late Sephardic Torah leader underwent a significant shift in his views on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process following the Oslo Accords. In a new episode of “Yossi’s Podcast,” Rav Krispel also discusses Rav Ovadia’s ruling on the Hebron agreement, his views on military service for Chareidim who are not learning Torah full time, and offers a glimpse into the Rav’s private life.

Rav Krispel explained that during the Oslo era, Rav Ovadia believed that if a peace agreement could genuinely save Jewish lives, halacha would permit territorial concessions under the principle of pikuach nefesh.

“The value of preserving life takes precedence over the Land of Israel,” Rav Krispel said. “If it were truly possible to save Jewish lives, it would be preferable even at the cost of territorial concessions.”

According to Rav Krispel, however, Rav Ovadia’s outlook changed after witnessing developments following the Oslo Accords.

“After Oslo, he was deeply disappointed,” Rav Krispel said. “He saw that the problem was the Palestinian education system, which teaches hatred.”

Rav Krispel recounted that during one meeting with a Palestinian leader, Rav Ovadia remarked that as long as Palestinian children were being raised to hate Jews, genuine peace would remain unattainable.

He added that those experiences fundamentally altered Rav Ovadia’s approach to future diplomatic initiatives.

“Since Oslo, he was no longer willing to hear about any peace agreement or arrangement with the Palestinians,” Rav Krispel said. “He was fiercely protective of Jewish lives.”

Rav Krispel emphasized that Rav Ovadia based his decisions on careful analysis rather than slogans or political rhetoric.

“He listened to generals, requested maps, asked questions, and examined every detail before reaching a decision,” he said.

One of the most notable accounts shared during the interview concerned the Hebron agreement. Rav Krispel recalled that after meeting with right-wing representatives, Rav Ovadia instructed him to drive him in his private vehicle, with Aryeh Deri joining the trip. During the drive, Rav Ovadia ruled that Hebron should not be relinquished and instructed that if the city were divided, Shas should leave the governing coalition. Rav Krispel said the party ultimately acted accordingly.

Turning to current issues, Rav Krispel said he believes that if Rav Ovadia were alive today, he would rule that a Chareidi man who is not engaged in Torah study should serve in the Israel Defense Forces.

Rav Krispel also addressed the current composition of Shas’ Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, saying that “Aryeh Deri is in a difficult position,” referring to his claim that the Shas chairman has not appointed Rishon L’Tzion Rav Yitzchak Yosef as president of the council.

{Matzav.com}

A routine cash purchase of a vehicle in Israel took an unexpected turn after the sellers discovered handwritten messages on several of the banknotes they had received. The inscriptions, which referenced the controversy surrounding the military draft of bnei yeshivos, quickly drew widespread attention after the story was reported by Israeli media.

According to an N12 report, the buyers were a family from Bnei Brak. It was only after the sale had been completed and the sellers counted the cash that they noticed several bills bearing handwritten slogans. Among the messages were “We will die and not enlist” and “Through the merit of the Torah and those who study it, the world will be saved.”

The sellers said they were surprised by the discovery and described the inscriptions as unsettling.

However, it remains unclear who wrote the messages or when they were added to the bills. The banknotes may have circulated through numerous hands before reaching the family that purchased the vehicle, and there is no evidence that the buyers themselves were responsible for writing the slogans.

The incident comes as tensions continue to mount in Israel over the issue of drafting bnei yeshivos into the military.

{Matzav.com}

Were the Batei Mikdash truly destroyed on Tishah B’Av itself? The pesukim and Chazal appear to point to different dates: the seventh of Av, the tenth of Av, or the days surrounding them. Yet Chazal fixed Tishah B’Av as the single date upon which the churbanos of both Batei Mikdash converge, together with the decree upon the Dor HaMidbar, the fall of Beitar, and the plowing of Yerushalayim. Was this merely a date on the calendar, or did Chazal reveal a deeper pattern woven through Jewish history? At the heart of the shiur stands the unforgettable image of Rabbi Akiva traveling with his chaverim to Rome, seeing what they saw, yet understanding what they could not. In the very place where others heard only the footsteps of destruction, Rabbi Akiva discerned the first sounds of geulah. “Akiva, nichamtanu” was not simply a response to one comforting insight; it was the recognition of a unique Torah vision—the ability to look into the darkest moments of history and perceive, with absolute emunah, the light already forming at the end of the tunnel.

WATCH:

[COMMUNICATED]

By Jamie Geller

I did not expect to hear the word joy so many times while making a film about grief.

In 2025, twenty Jews were murdered in antisemitic attacks outside of Israel. More than 800 severe antisemitic incidents were documented around the world. It was the deadliest year for Jews living outside Israel this century, and so I started working on a film to document it. When I began, I assumed I already understood the shape of that year. I did not. It took sitting across from the people who lived through it to see the pattern that had been there all along. They did not come for us at random moments. They came for us on our holidays.

A terrorist attacked Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, while worshippers prayed and fasted. Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were murdered that morning. Melvin was the first Jewish man killed in the United Kingdom for being Jewish in 80 years. Gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, killing fifteen people, among them a girl who had just turned ten, a Holocaust survivor, and a rabbi. And during the war between Israel and Iran, a ballistic missile struck a residential building in Haifa on the fourth day of Passover, killing four members of the Gershovitz family.

Yom Kippur. Hanukkah. Passover. While we were praying. While we were lighting candles. While we were celebrating. This has been something that has happened in Israel several times: the Yom Kippur War, October 7th, now it is spreading to the Diaspora.

As the person behind Aish’s Tisha B’Av documentary While We Were Celebrating, I traveled to three continents this year to sit with the people who lived through each of these attacks, and with the families they left behind. I went in bracing myself for grief. I have made enough films and sat with enough loss to know what to expect. What I found instead has not left me since.

REGISTER TO WATCH FOR FREE 

Karen Cravitz told me she was the one who encouraged her husband Melvin to leave for synagogue early that Yom Kippur morning, because that is simply what you do on the holiest day of the year. She has spent every day since turning that decision over in her head, a decision made entirely out of love and faith. Yoni Finlay was holding the synagogue doors shut to keep the terrorist out when a police bullet struck him in the chest and passed through his body into his friend Adrian, who was standing right behind him. And Rabbi Daniel Walker described his congregation to me as a reserved, quiet English crowd that does not usually dance on Friday nights. That next Friday, they danced.

In Sydney, Sheina Gutnik told me about her father, Reuven Morrison, who ran toward the gunmen at Bondi Beach and used his own body as a shield, saving dozens of lives before losing his.

Through the grief, through the funeral, through the memorial service that followed, Sheina lit Hanukkah candles. All eight nights. She told me she was not going to be the one to let the light go out. That message really moved me in ways I cannot explain.

Chavi Israel recounted how she threw herself over her baby, Meir, the moment the shooting started, trying to protect him and trying somehow not to suffocate him at the same time. She told me it was Reuven who saved both their lives. 

Yonatan Frank, a soldier who had come to Australia from Gaza days earlier, and wanted to go to the beach, found himself unarmed in the middle of a massacre and ran toward it anyway. Yonatan helped Chavi’s sister-in-law and her baby reach a waiting car that had arrived to rescue them. Eleven people ended up crammed into a car built for five. Chavi, Meir, Yonatan, and eight strangers who were suddenly not strangers at all. Once they were safe, they lit Hanukkah candles to keep the light alive.

In Haifa, Professor Lena Sagi told me about her neighbors, the Gershovitz family, who were found after an eighteen-hour search through what had been their home. Lena had lost everything but her life that night, the Gershovitz family weren’t as lucky. Lena told me that she later danced at her daughter’s bat mitzvah. Alex Gershovitz, Vladimir’s brother, still cannot speak about his family without his voice catching. In the same moment that he described himself to me as a secular Jew, he looked me in the eye and said that he believes God has a plan.

I sat with each of these people separately. Different continents, different languages, different circumstances. None of them knew what the others had said, yet every single one of them told me the same thing, completely unprompted.

They did not want to talk to me about their pain. They wanted to talk to me about joy. Not in spite of what happened to them, but because of it.

They chose to speak now, ahead of Tisha B’Av, because they understand what that day means to the Jewish world. It is our most reflective moment, the day we sit with our losses across history. None of these people are asking to be pitied. They are asking to be heard; they are asking us to understand our mission to live.  

This is nothing new for us. It runs through our history like a current, from the Inquisition to the pogroms to the Holocaust to October 7th, to Manchester, to Bondi, to Haifa. Our enemies have tried to extinguish our flame in every generation, and in every generation, the answer has been the same.

REGISTER TO WATCH FOR FREE 

Live more Jewishly. Live more joyously. Celebrate again. That will be the ultimate victory over our enemies.

This Tisha B’Av, as we sit on the floor and mourn what we have lost, I am sure that I will keep hearing Karen, Sheina, Chavi, and Lena in my head, asking this of me. I did not write their message. I am only carrying it, but now I am not making simple assumptions; I too am listening.

———————–

While We Were Celebrating, the Aish Original Tisha B’Av documentary film, premieres worldwide on July 22. It is free to watch. Register at aish.com/9av. To arrange a community screening, visit 9av.aish.com/groupscreening. For more information email 9avfilm@aish.com

A chance visit to a restaurant in northern Israel led to an emotional reunion for a Chabad emissary, who discovered that years after encouraging the owner to close on Shabbos and become kosher, the business had undergone a dramatic transformation. According to the franchise owner, the move not only brought financial success but was followed by what he described as a deeply personal miracle after more than a decade of waiting for another child.

Rabbi Bentzi Friedman, who today serves as a Chabad emissary working with youth in Beit Shean, recently returned to Rosh Pina for the first time in years. The unexpected visit brought back memories of his days as a yeshiva student in Tzfas, when every Friday he traveled through the Rosh Pina area participating in Chabad’s Mivtza Tefillin, visiting local businesses, helping Jewish men put on tefillin, and encouraging them to strengthen their observance of Torah and mitzvos.

For nearly three years, from the beginning of his yeshiva studies onward, Rabbi Friedman followed the same weekly route. One of the regular stops was a BBB restaurant that, at the time, was neither kosher nor closed on Shabbos. There he developed a warm relationship with Nissim, one of the franchise operators. Each Friday, the two would put on tefillin together and spend time discussing Yiddishkeit. During nearly every conversation, Rabbi Friedman urged him to consider closing the restaurant on Shabbos.

Looking back, Rabbi Friedman recalled that their conversations were always respectful and sincere.

“Every week I spoke to him about keeping Shabbos,” he said. “I told him, ‘Nissim, close the business on Shabbos. Hashem does not bring blessing through work on Shabbos.’”

Nissim never rejected the message. Instead, he explained that he wanted to stop operating on Shabbos but faced resistance from others connected to the business.

“I’m constantly pushing for it, but they won’t agree,” he would tell Rabbi Friedman. Despite hearing the same response week after week, the young yeshiva student continued returning every Friday, putting on tefillin with him and speaking about the importance of Shabbos, never knowing whether those conversations would ultimately make a difference.

Before leaving for a year of study at Chabad’s central yeshiva in New York, Rabbi Friedman witnessed an encouraging development elsewhere in Rosh Pina. Another dairy restaurant he regularly visited during his Friday outreach decided to become kosher and stop operating on Shabbos.

When he entered one Friday, a waiter approached him and said, “You know this happened because of you. Every week you came here and spoke with the management about keeping Shabbos.”

The comment caught him completely by surprise. He had barely interacted with the restaurant’s owners and had no idea his conversations had made such an impression. Inspired by the news, he shared the story with Nissim, hoping it would encourage him.

“You see? That restaurant became kosher and started closing on Shabbos. You can do the same,” he told him.

Nissim again explained that the decision was not entirely his to make.

Not long afterward, Rabbi Friedman left for New York. In the years that followed, he married, established his family, and later accepted a Chabad shlichus in Beit Shean. His weekly visits to the BBB restaurant gradually became a distant memory from his yeshiva years.

Recently, while traveling through the Rosh Pina area with his family, Rabbi Friedman suggested stopping by to see some of the people he had met years earlier. As he approached the BBB location, he was stunned. The restaurant prominently displayed kosher certification, and its posted hours showed that it closed three hours before the start of Shabbos each Friday.

Filled with emotion, he entered the restaurant and asked employees whether Nissim was there. They directed him to the office.

“Nissim, do you remember me?” Rabbi Friedman asked as he walked in.

The owner recognized him immediately, and the two warmly embraced. Rabbi Friedman then asked the question that had been on his mind ever since seeing the new signs.

“What happened here? How did the restaurant become kosher and start closing on Shabbos?”

Rather than answer immediately, Nissim opened a business application on his phone and showed Rabbi Friedman the restaurant’s financial figures. Before the change, he explained, monthly revenue averaged between 300,000 and 350,000 shekels. After becoming kosher and closing on Shabbos, some months produced nearly double that amount.

Nissim explained that the transformation had not come easily.

“You have no idea what battles took place here,” he told Rabbi Friedman.

According to Nissim, the restaurant chain strongly opposed shutting down a successful location on Shabbos. About three months ago, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to persuade management, he decided to issue an ultimatum. He placed the restaurant keys on the table and told senior executives, “I’m leaving. I’m done working on Shabbos. If you’re not willing to close the business on Shabbos, take the keys and find someone else.”

Surprised by the determination of a successful franchise operator willing to walk away, company officials asked for two weeks to consider the matter. They eventually agreed to allow the restaurant to become kosher and close on Shabbos, provided it underwent an extensive renovation.

Nissim accepted the condition, investing approximately 700,000 shekels to bring the restaurant into compliance with kosher standards while hoping the business would remain financially stable.

But the financial success, he said, was only part of the story.

Nissim shared that he and his wife had one daughter and had spent 12 years hoping and praying for another child. During that time, they underwent lengthy and expensive fertility treatments, but nothing had succeeded.

Then, looking directly at Rabbi Friedman, he said, “The moment we started closing the business on Shabbos, my wife became pregnant.”

He once again reached for his phone, this time showing Rabbi Friedman a photograph of his five-month-old baby boy.

“This is because of you. You have no idea what you accomplished here,” he said emotionally.

Rabbi Friedman said he was left speechless by the revelation.

“I was just a simple yeshiva student who went out every Friday to do what needed to be done,” he recalled. “I put tefillin on with another Jew and spoke with him, never realizing what those conversations would eventually accomplish. Seven years later, I was privileged to see the results.”

According to Rabbi Friedman, the impact extended beyond a single restaurant. After the Rosh Pina location became the first in the chain to adopt kashrus and close on Shabbos, additional franchises followed suit. Today, he said, tens of thousands of customers dine at kosher, Shabbos-observant locations throughout the network. For the Chabad emissary, the unexpected reunion served as a powerful reminder that even the smallest act of outreach—a conversation, a pair of tefillin, or a few words about holiness—can bear fruit years later.

{Matzav.com}