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In honor of its historic 50th anniversary, ArtScroll is celebrating with something truly extraordinary: a once-in-50-years sale featuring 50 sefarim and books each week for 5 weeks at their lowest prices ever! 50% off list price! Plus, FREE SHIPPING in the USA on orders over $79. No gimmicks!

For five weeks only — July 6 through August 9 — ArtScroll will feature a new group of 50 titles on sale each week. That’s 250 books and sefarim over the course of the celebration, all at an unprecedented 50% off list price!

These are not ordinary sale prices. They are the lowest prices ever offered on these titles — and they won’t last. Each weekly sale runs for that week only. Once a title sells out, or once the week ends, those prices are gone.

It’s a rare opportunity to build your library, stock up on gifts, purchase that set or title you have always wanted, and bring more Torah learning into your home — at savings that may never return.

AND THAT’S ONLY THE BEGINNING!

Throughout the five-week celebration, ArtScroll is giving away more than $50,000 in prizes!

Each week, one winner will receive a $10,000 ArtScroll list-price gift card. Thousands of dollars in additional prizes will be awarded weekly as well, including digital libraries, one-of-a-kind book sets, exclusive ArtScroll items, and special prizes that can’t be purchased anywhere.

Best of all, entry is free — no purchase necessary! Enter just once, and your entry counts toward all five weekly giveaways.

Fifty years. Five weeks. Fifty titles each week. Fifty percent off. And more than $50,000 in prizes!

This is ArtScroll’s biggest celebration — and its biggest savings ever.

Shop this week’s 50% off sale today!

Enter the $50,000+ giveaway now!

Don’t delay — this week’s titles are only here for a week!

{Matzav.com}

More than eight decades after vanishing during a dangerous World War II reconnaissance mission, the remains of a young U.S. Army Air Forces pilot have finally been identified, bringing long-awaited closure to a case that remained unsolved for generations.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced on July 1 that 1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney, who was just 21 years old when he disappeared, was officially identified on May 15 through forensic testing, ending an 80-year search for the missing aviator.

McKinney disappeared on Nov. 5, 1944, while piloting an unarmed F-5E-2-LO Lightning reconnaissance aircraft. Assigned to the 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron of the 14th Air Force, he had departed from Yunnanyi, China, on a mission to photograph targets in Thailand and Burma but never returned.

Following his disappearance, personnel from the American Graves Registration Service searched along the aircraft’s expected route near the Chinese-Thai border. Despite their efforts, they found no trace of the plane or its pilot.

With no evidence of the crash ever discovered, McKinney’s remains were not recovered after the war, and he was officially declared dead in March 1946.

The case was revived in 2010 when Daniel Jackson, then a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, began researching McKinney’s disappearance.

Jackson joined forces with Sakpinit Promthep of the Royal Thai Air Force Museum and American researcher Richard Hakanson. Their combined research uncovered new clues that pointed investigators toward a possible crash site in Thailand.

Among their discoveries was a wartime report preserved by the Royal Thai Air Force Museum describing an aircraft believed to have been struck by lightning before crashing in what is now Lampang Province. Investigators also located a witness whose recollections helped narrow the search area.

A major breakthrough came in 2017 when 94-year-old Fong Inma told researchers she had personally witnessed the aircraft crash into an area that later became a rice field near Mae Kua village. Her testimony convinced U.S. officials to launch a formal investigation of the site.

Survey teams examined the location in both 2019 and 2021 before a full-scale excavation was carried out in 2022.

During the recovery effort, investigators located aircraft debris along with possible human remains. The materials were transported to a forensic laboratory, where modern scientific testing ultimately confirmed that the remains belonged to McKinney.

Before his return home, McKinney was honored during a repatriation ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Thailand.

He will now receive a burial with full military honors in the United States. A bronze rosette will also be added beside his name on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery, marking that he has now been officially accounted for.

Reflecting on the years-long effort, Jackson wrote, “After almost 82 years, Frank McKinney is home again. America has kept its promise.”

McKinney served with the famed 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, known as the “Redhawks,” whose pilots flew hazardous, unarmed reconnaissance missions over Japanese-controlled territory, gathering aerial intelligence that enabled Allied commanders to monitor enemy movements and plan operations across China, Burma, and Thailand.

Military historians have long credited the squadron’s intelligence-gathering missions with making an important contribution to the Allied war effort in the China theater.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues its worldwide mission to locate and identify missing American service members through archival research, archaeological excavations, DNA analysis, and other advanced forensic methods.

According to the agency, more than 81,000 Americans who went missing during World War II have still not been accounted for.

{Matzav.com}

Israeli Defense Minister Yisroel Katz warned Monday that any Iranian leader who seeks to destroy the Jewish state would be eliminated, as the funeral procession for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei got underway in Tehran.

“Khamenei, whose funeral is taking place now, was eliminated by Israel because he initiated and led the plan to destroy Israel in Iran and across the region,” Katz said in a Hebrew-language statement.

“The destroyer has been destroyed. Any Iranian leader who again tries to advance plans for Israel’s destruction will likewise be eliminated,” he vowed.

Katz said chants of “Death to Trump” during the funeral reflected “the true nature of the ayatollahs’ regime, beyond its campaign of smiles and deception.

“The powerful attack on Iran, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, removed the immediate existential threats hanging over Israel and severely damaged Iran’s strategic capabilities,” he continued. “Israel is prepared to once again defend itself, by its own forces, at any time and against any threat.”

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid Party) told JNS on Monday that Israel reserves the right to act independently.

“Israel has always said that we’re going to retain the possibility of acting separately if any threat is being held against the security of the people of Israel,” Lapid said, speaking in English after his faction meeting at the Knesset in Yerushalayim.

“The United States is our greatest ally; we work with them, we have conducted this war, we’re engaged in this war with them, but if needs to be, Israel will act on its own in order to protect the people of Israel against this regime that is out for the total destruction and obliteration of the State of Israel,” he added.

A funeral procession for Khamenei kicked off the fourth day of week-long burial ceremonies on Monday morning.

Khamenei’s remains are set to be taken through the streets of Tehran on their way to Mehrabad International Airport in the western part of the capital.

The funeral cortege will last some 10 to 12 hours, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Brig. Gen. Hassan Hassanzadeh, who is overseeing the event, told state media.

Hassanzadeh said preparations for the procession began at 4 a.m. local time and that the procession would move from east to west.

Regime supporters lined the streets of Tehran early Monday, many carrying red flags symbolizing revenge, the IRGC-linked Fars News Agency reported.

Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies have been marked by repeated calls from Iranian officials, state media and regime supporters for the deaths of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Akraminia, spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, said on Monday that Tehran had used the ceasefire with the United States to rebuild its military capabilities, according to Iran International.

“We are fully prepared and have used the ceasefire opportunity to improve our combat capability,” he said, warning that any attack on Iran would be met with a response “more crushing and more regret-inducing than before.”

The funeral ceremonies are scheduled to run through Thursday, when Khamenei is to be buried at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad.

Mojtaba Khamenei, who was appointed as the Islamic Republic’s third supreme leader following his father’s death, had not been seen at the ceremonies.

Three of Ali Khamenei’s other sons—Mostafa, Masoud and Meysam Hosseini Khamenei—appeared in public on Sunday for the first time since the war began on Feb. 28, offering prayers over their father’s body at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla of Tehran mosque, Iran International reported.

The New York Times, citing two members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a source involved in planning the funeral, reported that Mojtaba Khamenei told officials he wants to attend the burial ceremony in Mashhad and lead the traditional prayer for the dead.

The newspaper cited the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the funeral preparations, as saying security officials had rejected the proposal over concerns Israel could attempt to assassinate the supreme leader at the ceremony or use it to track his whereabouts.

The younger Khamenei was injured in the airstrike that killed his father. While it is generally believed that Mojtaba is still alive, he has not appeared in public since the start of the war, and no images or audio recordings of him have been released. JNS

{Matzav.com}

Of the 4,384 offenses in 3,750 hate crime incidents from Jan. 1 until this month, Jews have been targets of 15% of incidents, according to FBI data. The 566 anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents so far this year include 613 offenses—a number that in other circumstances Jews happily note corresponds to the number of commandments in the Torah.

Overall, hate-crime offenses are down 43%, and incidents have decreased 41.5% compared to last year, although the FBI’s 2025 data came from self-reported state statistics covering between 95% and 96% of the U.S. population. At the beginning of this year, the January data covered about 88% of the country. By April, it was about 75%, 55% by May, and by June, it had only covered nearly 19.5% of the nation.

Last year, there were 1,062 anti-Jewish offenses in 957 incidents, according to the bureau’s data.

Jews make up about 2.4% of American adults, according to data from the Pew Research Center. That means that so far this year, Jews are 525% likelier hate crime targets than their population share suggests, according to the FBI data.

The 978 religion-based incidents recorded this year made up 25.1% of all incidents. After the 15% of religion-based incidents targeting Jews, the next most likely targets were Sikhs and Muslims (2% each) and Arabs (1%).

The majority (55%) of anti-Jewish incidents involved destruction, damage or vandalism of property, followed by intimidation (31%), simple assault (8%), and aggravated assault and all other larcenies (2% each).

The largest amount (17%) took place on the highway, a road, alley, street or sidewalk, followed by an elementary or secondary school (16%), home (15%), and college or university (9%).

A smaller number of anti-Jewish incidents have occurred so far this year at a park or playground or house of worship (6% each) or commercial or office building, parking lot or garage, government or public building or online (3% each). And 1% each of incidents have taken place at an air or bus or train terminal, drug store or medical facility, construction site, field or woods, restaurant, grocery or supermarket, shopping mall, specialty store, abandoned or condemned structure or department or discount store.

New York state had only reported 88 anti-Jewish hate crimes to the FBI so far this year, even though New York City alone recorded 26 anti-Jewish hate crimes last month, and there were 178 confirmed anti-Jewish hate crimes in the Big Apple from Jan. 1 to June 30, per New York City Police Department data.

The FBI data suggests that the NYPD reported 74 anti-Jewish hate crimes to the bureau so far this year.

California has reported 158 offenses from 142 anti-Jewish hate crime incidents to the FBI so far this year.

Florida has reported 9, Illinois 17 (16 incidents), Maryland 10 (9 incidents), Massachusetts 5, Michigan 29 (26 incidents), Minnesota 6, New Jersey 102 (92 incidents), Pennsylvania 22 (18 incidents), Texas 13, Virginia 24 (23 incidents) and Washington state 15 (12 incidents). JNS

{Matzav.com}