Lech Lecha -Vayeirah - Love Your Kids and Believe in Them ! by Allan Katz

Guest post by Allan Katz

In our parasha , God recognizes Abraham's dedication to the people of the world and bringing them closer to God- Hashem by changing his name. God changes his name – from Abram to Abraham .This change represented his new status, as no longer only being the Father of Aram, but becoming the Father of a multitude of nations. Abraham served God through the characteristic trait of 'chesed', generosity, acts of hospitality and kindness, building caring communities of God fearing people. He ' touched their ' hearts and souls ' and the 'souls he made in Haran ' decided to join him on the journey where God would lead him. Abraham both loved and believed in the potential of people to change, no matter how evil were their ways. He prayed and pleaded on behalf of the people of Sodom who faced destruction. He believed a righteous community of 10 people could impact positively on a whole city whose inhabitants were wicked and evil. By being ' upright in his ways = ya'shar, he showed honor and respect to all people and at the same time 'hated evil'. People would change their ways if he could make a personal connection with them, show that he loved them and cared for them and then help them connect to God and His ways. Abraham's and the other fathers – Isaac and Jacob are called – y'sharim, the upright ones because of their personal interactions = halichot olam with people and for this reason the book of Genesis = Be'reishit is called Sefer ha'yashar – the book of the 'upright '.

In our parasha there are 2 incidents where Abraham is criticized for lacking faith in God. The first incident is the meeting between the king of Sodom and Abraham to deal with the spoils of the war – the booty and prisoners after Abraham's victory in the war between the kings of Canaan. The king of Sodom offers Abraham to take the booty-money and he, the king will get back his subjects. Abraham refuses the offer - he does not want any personal gain – both no booty-money and no prisoners. He does not want the King of Sodom to feel and say that it is he and not God that has made Abraham rich. Because Abraham refused to take the prisoners, he is criticized for preventing them from becoming converts and entering beneath the wings of the Shechinah = Divine presence.

The second incident is Abraham questioning and doubting God's promise that his descendants will inherit the land of Israel. He asked how can I know that my descendants will be worthy of inheriting the land of Israel? As a result, to fix and repair this minute flaw of faith at the 'root and source ' of the nation's faith, the descendants of Abraham would be exiled and be slaves in Egypt.

Abraham's lack of faith seems to be more about a lack of faith in people - the prisoners= subjects of the king of Sodom to connect to God and the descendants of Abraham to repent and do Teshuva and reconnect to God rather than a lack of faith in God. When one lacks faith in man one is limiting the potential belief in God in the world, declaring that God can only connect with certain and a limited amount of people. One also ignores the answer that God gave to Abraham - ' your descendants will be worthy of inheriting the land of Israel because I have given them sacrifices to help them repent and atone for their sins. In fact, the covenant - brit that God made with Abraham included sacrifices similar to ones offered on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement. One is also lacking faith in God if one does not have faith in people - that God created people who have been made in his image that can do Teshuva and repent.

Abraham has proved to be the example and epitome of ' loving man and believing in mankind.' So what went wrong? The Dalai Lama has an insightful saying - people ' Love Money and Use People, instead they should Love People and Use Money. The King of Sodom offered Abraham a deal – take the money and I will take the people. Abraham replied that he did not love money or use people – so he refused, all personal gain - taking no money and no people. Instead he should have answered. I don't love money and don't use people – I love people and believe in their ability to do Teshuva – repent and connect with God. I, as the victor in this war am going to exercise my rights and keep the people so I can invest in them and contribute to their lives by bringing them close to God.

The exile and redemption from Egypt fixed and repaired this flaw. Although Moses initialy showed that he lacked a belief in the Israelites to be deserving of redemption, the redemption process restored a love for man and a belief that man could do Teshuva and repent ' even if they had reached the 49th level of impurity and contamination. It also enabled them also to accept and embrace those Egyptians who wanted to join the Israelites and so give them the opportunity to enter under the wings of the Shechinah- Divine presence and become close to God . The laws of loving converts, inviting non-Jewish residents to participate in the Temple service and the ' Hakhel ' ceremony are examples of ways to make amends and rectifying the minute mistakes and flaws in Abraham's behavior towards the prisoners of war.

When it comes to our children and students we have to unconditionally love and accept them and believe that they have a place close to God and the ability to connect to God, holiness , the Torah and Mitzvoth. Too often kids get the feeling and impression that it is only the outstanding students, the ones that are well behaved, love to learn and have good concentration and thoughts when praying are the only ones that have a place near God and are able to connect to him. All kids need to feel that they are worthy of God's attention, love and connection. We have to emulate Abraham who believed that people don't need punishment but to experience the beauty of Judaism, feel accepted and appreciated and live in a caring community. Parents and teachers who focus on punishment have essentially given up on their kids and students. What these kids and students need is help and have concerned parents and teachers who care about meeting their needs for their emotional, religious development etc. The lesson of Abraham – love and believe in people means that people and especially children are less interested in how much we know but how much we care about them . If we believe in our children , we will love them and if we truly love them, we will believe in them.

Absorbing the Impossible by Maureen Dowd

NY Times Maureen Dowd

I sat watching in astonishment. The one who couldn’t bear to show up to concede was not, as expected, Donald Trump, but Hillary Clinton.

I thought the hard-core support for Trump had dwindled down to a hardy band of loyalists: Rudy, Newt, Chris, Sarah, Kellyanne, Omarosa, the kids, Melania — the woman who told him “If you run, you’ll win” — Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, Hope Hicks, David Bossie, Alex Jones, Bill Mitchell, Mike Pence and my brother, Kevin.

The Republican establishment couldn’t stand Trump. The Democratic establishment mocked him. The Republican nominee didn’t even really seem to have much of a campaign. He spent more on “Make America Great” hats than on polling. When I visited his campaign headquarters this summer, there were more pictures, paintings and cardboard cutouts of Trump around than Trump advisers. If you don’t count Newt Gingrich — and I don’t — only one major political historian, Allan Lichtman, had predicted that Trump would win.

But then the impossible happened. As Salena Zito had presciently written in The Atlantic: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

“As flawed a candidate as Trump was, he had his finger on the pulse,” Kevin said. “The polls were off because nobody wanted to admit that they were going to vote for him. But it’s a populist revolt and a lot of people believed in Trump’s message: too much regulation, too much government. The whole thing is a bunch of guys getting rich on Capitol Hill and not paying attention to the people who elected them. They stay in Congress a couple years, then move on to K Street and call on the same people who replaced them.”

Kevin had his moments where he wanted to desert Trump, who was not his first, second or third choice in the Republican primary. He was tempted to bail when Trump had his abominable fight with the Kahns, the gold-star family, after the Democratic primary.

My sister did desert Trump in the end, disgusted with his demeaning tweets about women and his inability to focus on issues rather than his own petulance. But she couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either, unable to condone the Clintons’ miasma of financial and ethical cheesiness. She did not understand why the president discouraged Joe Biden — someone she could have supported — from running.

Trump was like Rasputin, being declared dead time after time, but living on. The thought of another President Clinton kept Kevin on board, and yesterday he went to the polls in suburban Maryland and voted for Trump, as did his sons.

“Hillary was the status quo and one of the most flawed candidates in history,” he said. “This is a complete repudiation of President Obama, the man who pushed Hillary and deemed Trump a clown.”

It is unthinkable to imagine the most overtly racist candidate — and head of the offensive birther movement — driving in the limousine to the inauguration with the first African-American president. What would they discuss? How Trump plans to repeal Obamacare? How Trump will appoint Supreme Court justices that will transform America into a drastically more conservative landscape over the next 20 years? How Trump plans to undo the Iran deal? When will Trump begin deporting Hispanics? When will Attorney General Rudy Giuliani pardon Chris Christie and put Hillary in jail?

Hillary’s closing line in the campaign was that she was the only thing standing between her and the abyss. But to my conservative family, Hillary was the abyss while Donald was the baseball bat to smash Washington.[....]

When Trump beat 16 seasoned pols in the Republican primary, Kevin wrote, that should have sent a clear message that the public was fed up with political insiders, including Hillary, who “has been in the public eye for 25 years,” with an image “cast in concrete.”

I was in Europe the night before the Brexit vote and no one thought it could possibly pass. But I woke up the next day and it had. And last night in America, no one ever thought they would see a Times headline “Trump Triumphs” but at about 2:40 a.m. they did. While Democrats were calling it a national disaster and many women were freaking out, Trump came onstage at the Hilton looking subdued — and perhaps terrified? — with a calm and conciliatory speech about dreaming big and bold, about dealing fairly with everyone and avoiding hostility and conflict.

But, I asked my brother, would there be buyer’s remorse, as with Brexit?

Kevin was unconcerned, celebrating quietly at home through the wee hours because, as my colleague Binyamin Appelbaum tweeted: “After months of chatter about the implosion of the Republican Party, we are instead witnessing the obviation of the Democratic Party.”

“With Brexit, the markets went down and bounced right back,” Kevin mused at 3 a.m., sounding serene as Democrats keened and Hillary failed to show up at her party at the Javits Center. “Trump voters did the country a service. Anybody but Clinton.

“The Clintons remind me of the Universal horror movies where you thought the monster was dead and then the monster would show up in a bad sequel. I’m glad now that they’re finally gone.”

Clinton-Trump Election and the Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter: Rav Kaminetsky - the Gadol of America - says to vote for Trump

BHOL

ראש ישיבת פוניבז': הגר"ש קמינצקי הוא ה'מרא דאתרא' בארה"ב

חבר מועצת גדולי התורה הגרי"ג אדלשטיין הורה לתלמידים מארה"ב שבאו לשאול אותו עבור מי להצביע - לפעול כהכרעותיו של ראש ישיבת פילדלפיה, שהורה יחד עם מרבית ראשי הישיבות בארה"ב לתמוך במועמד הרפובליקני דונלד טראמפ עולם התורה האמריקני בעד טראמפ אך בחצרות החסידיות הדעות חלוקות: תלמידי ישיבת פוניבז', תושבי ואזרחי ארצות הברית, פנו לראש הישיבה וחבר מועצת גדולי התורה הגרי"ג אדלשטיין כדי לקבל את הדרכתו באשר לאופן הצבעתם.  הגרי"ג השיב להם כי ה'מרא דאתרא' של ארה"ב הוא ראש ישיבת פילדלפיה הגאון רבי שמואל קמינצקי, חבר מועצת גדולי התורה דאמריקה וכי עליהם להישמע להוראותיו.  ואכן, ראש ישיבת פילדלפיה הגר"ש קמינצקי הורה להצביע עבור המועמד הרפובליקני לנשיאות ארצות הברית דונלד טראמפ, כך גם הורה ראש ישיבת לייקווד הגאון רבי ירוחם אולשין. להוראה זו הצטרפו מרבית ראשי עולם התורה בארצות הברית.  חשוב לציין כי באופן מסורתי החרדים מזוהים תמיד עם המפלגה הרפובליקנית בשל הדגש השמרני שלה, לעומת הרוב היהודי חילוני המזוהה עם הדמוקרטים. עם זאת למפלגה הדמוקרטית בכלל ולהירי קלינטון בפרט קשרים הדוקים מזה שנים ארוכות עם חלק מהחסידויות הגדולות בארצות הברית, כולל חסידות סאטמר.  עם זאת בחלק מהחצרות החסידיות הורו להצביע עבור המועמדת הדמוקרטית הילרי קלינטון. בשתי החסידויות של סאטמר הכריזו על כך לפני מספר ימים והורו להצביע לקלינטון משום שטראמפ ידידותי מדי לישראל. כך גם הוכרז בחסידויות סקווירא ובחסידויות נוספות. לעומת חסידות חב"ד ברובה שתצביע עבור טראמפ דווקא בשל יחסו החיובי לישראל ובשל ציפייה שיגמול בשחרורו של רובשקין.

Anti-Semitism unleashed by Trump followers chills Jewish voters

Times of Israel

Jewish Americans have never been ones to sit out an election, whether it comes to voting, political fundraising or dinner table punditry. But even for a community grown used to the political fray, the 2016 campaign was different.

The stakes are so high, the differences so stark, the language so overwrought that Trump vs. Clinton seems to overwhelm everything else.

But there is also a specific Jewish component to this election that some voters are sensing, one that has them reassessing their view of what it is to be Jewish in America.

Rabbi Daniel Bogard, 33, of Cincinnati, said he had never personally encountered anti-Semitism until this election cycle. He has now been called a Christ killer twice on social media — once each from the right and the left, when he was defending Israel.

“There’s been permission that’s been given to say these things we didn’t used to say,” said Bogard, who with his wife, Rabbi Karen Kriger Bogard, was installed recently as an associate rabbi at Adath Israel, a Conservative synagogue.

That has led him to radically alter a view he once held that the established Jewish community was too quick to charge others with anti-Semitism.[...]

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee who has made broadsides against Muslims, Hispanics and other minorities a part of his campaign — recklessly, say his critics; unintentionally, say his defenders — has drawn into the light racists and anti-Semites who once occupied the margins of American life.

In turn, that has coaxed out of the closet an otherness that some Jews, especially millennials, had never sensed or thought they would experience.

The Anti-Defamation League has warned about anti-Semitic imagery among Trump’s followers throughout the campaign, and implored the candidate to renounce the purveyors, with occasional success. Over the last couple of days, the Trump campaign released a closing television ad about an “international global power structure” that the ADL and other Jewish groups said trafficked in classic anti-Semitic themes.

Jordana Merran, 28, a foreign policy consultant in Washington, DC, said she had been blithe about warnings from her parents’ generation that Jews could again face the privations of what seemed a distant past.[...]

“We are still a minority in this country, and that position of comfort and being at home can’t be taken for granted,” she said. “Seeing that vitriol against Jews is so shocking and disheartening. It makes you wonder, ‘Are we lucky today? What does the future hold?’”

What the future holds is not a theoretical question to some voters raised on stories of their parents or grandparents fleeing persecution.

“My sister and her son didn’t have passports, but I pushed her to get them this summer,” said Suzanne Reisman, 40, a New York City-based writer who has been harassed by anti-Semites on Twitter. “My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. I hope it won’t come to it, but if we have to flee, we are ready.”[...]

But there are also Jewish pundits on the political right who are worrying about the darker forces being unleashed by Trump’s intentional or collateral appeal to anti-Semites.

Jews should not “ignore the rekindling of right-wing anti-Semitism simply because its next-of-kin — left-wing anti-Zionism — remains so potent on college campuses and in progressive political circles,” wrote Bret Stephens, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a critic of Trump. “The GOP’s conversion to being a powerfully pro-Israel and philo-Semitic party is a relatively recent development. No law dictates that it is destined to be a lasting one.”

For its part, the Trump campaign insists that the campaign is neither anti-Semitic nor trying to appeal to the racist far right, as a top aide said Sunday in response to ADL’s criticism of the “global power structure” ad.

“Mr. Trump’s message and all of the behavior that I have witnessed over the two decades that I have known him have consistently been pro-Jewish and pro-Israel and accusations otherwise are completely off-base,” Jason Greenblatt, the top attorney for the Trump Organization and the co-chair of the campaign’s Israel advisory committee said in a statement Sunday to CBS News. “The suggestion that the ad is anything else is completely false and uncalled for.”[...]

Some older Jews said they recognized the patterns from events they had seen fresh in their youths.

The tell for Norman Gelman, 87, a retired consultant on public policy who lives in Potomac, Maryland, was that “white supremacists and neo-Nazis quickly recognized [Trump] as their champion. His demeanor and his narcissism quickly reminded me of Mussolini.”

William Berkson, 72, a writer who lives in Reston, Virginia, said that if anything, Trump posed a greater danger than earlier demagogues because he had as a tool the instant delivery guaranteed by social media.

“Today, leaders can have even more of a catalytic effect on followers because of the magnifying power of social approval,” Berkson said. “When a leader says something is OK, millions of followers can reinforce one another with the same message on social media.”

Micah Nathan, 43, a writer who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, said Trump was shocking only because he was saying plainly what Republicans had been insinuating through code for years on topics like immigration, the Muslim community and the threat from globalization.

“Trump didn’t create his base. He gave them a unified voice, minus the softening rules of public discourse,” Nathan said.[...]

Hillary Clinton - contrary to Trump supporters - has always been involved in helping others

Fox News  by Lanny Davis is a regular weekly columnist for The Hill. In 1996-98, Davis served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton. He attended Yale Law School with Hillary Clinton in 1969-70 and has remained friends with her ever since.

There are three simple facts about Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy that should not be disputable — even by supporters of Donald Trump.

There are undisputed facts about Trump as well — that he has used bigoted words about Mexicans, questioned the integrity of a federal judge because of his Mexican heritage, mocked a disabled reporter, used misogynistic words while bragging on tape about conduct that is the functional equivalent of criminal sexual assault and recommended the spread of nuclear weapons — but these are for another column.

First, Hillary Clinton has spent her life involved in public service and has a public record and voting record that is progressive.

I first met Hillary at Yale when I was in my third year at Yale Law School in September 1969, and she was an incoming first-year student. I was standing in line to register for classes, and I turned around and saw her right behind me. I recognized her from her photo in a national news magazine that I had seen the night before about a highly regarded speech she had given at her Wellesley College commencement the previous June.

I introduced myself and asked her whether there was any advice I could offer her about Yale Law School — what courses to take, what professors were best, how to read cases and study, etc. Her response: “You could help me — where is the nearest legal services clinic that I could volunteer for?”

When I questioned whether she would have the time, she responded:

“The reason I came to law school is to help me do public service.”

Wow, I thought. This person is unusual — she is going places. The more I got to know her that year, the more I thought she would someday be president. I kid you not.

Hillary’s life’s work has been devoted to public service and helping others, especially helping children and healthcare policy — that is a fact. Through the years as first lady of Arkansas and in the White House, as well as her eight years in the U.S. Senate, her position on all the major issues has been as a progressive Democrat with a reputation of working well with Republicans.

Her one mistake — shared by 26 other progressive U.S. Democratic senators and many others — was supporting the Iraq War resolution in October 2003. She has since said she made a mistake - as she also said she made a mistake and apologized for using a server for her emails while Secretary of State. This contrasts with Trump, who never admits to a mistake even when he challenged the sincerity of a Gold Star Muslim mother.

Fact two is Hillary’s unquestioned superior experience and qualifications to be president. As President Obama said at the Democratic National Convention and has reiterated many times since then, there is no one who has ever — ever — been as qualified to be president of the United States in the history of our country, and he included himself and President Clinton on that list. Trump says his lack of experience in government and his experience as a businessman — including bankrupting four companies in two years — is an advantage.

Fact three is her compassion and empathy for those who are less fortunate than she. Hillary is a person who has spent her life helping children, the poor, those less fortunate, and those who are the object of discrimination suffering an absence of equal opportunity. In other words, she meets the definition of a moral leader eloquently defined by former Senator and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey:

“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

That is the Hillary Clinton I have known for 47 years. That is the Hillary Clinton who I know — who I am certain — will make a great president of the United States.

How the FBI might have processed 650,000 emails in Clinton probe

CBS News

Donald Trump and his aides are expressing skepticism at how quickly the FBI was able to review hundreds of thousands of emails in the latest probe in the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

The FBI revealed Sunday that it had found nothing new in the emails from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop belonging to her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. In a letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill,

During a rally Sunday, however, Trump said it’s not possible that the FBI was able to review so many emails in just nine days.

“You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days,” He continued. “You can’t do it, folks.”

A report from Wired, however, said that Trump is wrong and that the FBI can review that amount in just a week, if not sooner.

“This is not rocket science,” Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensics expert who’s consulted for law enforcement, told Wired. “Eight days is more than enough time to pull this off in a responsible way.”

The technology news outlet also interviewed an anonymous former FBI forensics experts who said the agent reviewed larger collections of data even faster than the current case.

“You can triage a dataset like this in a much shorter amount of time,” the agent told Wired, according to the report. “We’d routinely collect terabytes of data in a search. I’d know what was important before I left the guy’s house.”

The former agent also said that the FBI has tools that can sift out classified documents, which the agent said is similar to software used to detect plagiarism.

Both sources told Wired that investigations can filter out emails by targeting “to” and “from” as well as filtering out duplicates.

The review of the emails found in the new batch found that most were duplicates, CBS News confirmed Sunday.

“The Department of Justice and the FBI dedicated all necessary resources to conduct this review expeditiously,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement [...]

Convicted pedophile Stefan Colmer arrives in Ramot Gimmel- greeted with posters warning parents to watch their children

BHOL

ההורים בחרדה: תוקף ילדים מארה"ב הגיע לשכונה

תוקף ילדים מארה"ב, שסיים לרצות את ענשו, עשה עליה והגיע להתגורר בשכונת רמות בירושלים. בימים האחרונים הופצו מודעות אזהרה ברחבי השכונה, ותמונותיו הופצו • ההורים חוששים • כל הפרטים תוקף ילדים מארה"ב, שסיים לרצות את ענשו, עשה עליה והגיע להתגורר בשכונת רמות בירושלים. בימים האחרונים הופצו מודעות אזהרה ברחבי השכונה, ותמונותיו, בו הוא מופיע עורך קניות בקניון רמות ומתהלך סמוך לבית הכנסת זכרון אברהם, הופצו בשכונה.  המודעות מגיעות לאחר שבשבוע שעבר שיגר הארגון האמריקני - J C W - ארגון שהוקם למיגור תופעת תקיפות הילדים במגזר החרדי, מכתבי אזהרה לרבני הקהילה ולרשויות בארץ. במכתב שכותרתו "אזהרה לתושבי ישראל", נמסר כי הארגון קיבל מידע ממקור אמין שהתוקף המוכר מתכנן לחזור לארץ בתחילת נובמבר ובכוונתו לגור בשכונת רמות בירושלים.  כאמור, ל"בחדרי חרדים" נודע כי התוקף המוכר כבר מתגורר בשכונה ובימים האחרונים הוא נצפה עורך קניות בחנויות באזור. [...] ממידע שהגיע לידי "בחדרי חרדים" מתברר כי האיש התמקם באזור רמות ג', זאת למרות שמודעות נגדו עם תמונתו, שמו ופירוט מעשיו הופצו בכל בתי הכנסת בשכונה ובמרכזים המסחריים ותחנות האוטובוסים.

More bad news for Trump: FBI: Review of new emails doesn't change conclusion on Clinton

CNN

FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers Sunday the agency hasn't changed its opinion that Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges after a review of new emails.

"Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July," Comey wrote in the new letter to congressional committee chairmen.

Comey dropped a bombshell on the presidential race last month when he sent a letter to Congress saying the FBI had discovered emails in a separate investigation that could be connected to the now-closed probe of whether Clinton mishandled classified information. The move infuriated Democrats and emboldened Republican nominee Donald Trump.

It's impossible to know before results are tallied what impact Comey's actions -- first raising a vaguely worded red flag 11 days out, and then lowering it two days from the election -- will have on the contest. But the news could help Clinton put to rest a controversy that has dogged her in the 2016 race's closing days, helping Trump narrow a polling gap nationally and in key battleground states. [...]

Man falsely accused of having a gun at Trump rally - is an anti-Trump Republican and was man handled because of it

CNN Trump has falsely claimed it was an assassination attempt

CNN   Donald Trump was rushed off a stage here Saturday by Secret Service agents during a campaign speech after an incident in the crowd near the front of the stage.

A Secret Service spokesperson said in a statement there was a commotion in the crowd and an "unidentified individual" shouted "gun," though no weapon was found after a "thorough search."

A man, who later identified himself to reporters as Austyn Crites, was then immediately detained and led out by a throng of police officers, Secret Service agents and SWAT officers armed with assault rifles to a side room.

A law enforcement official later told CNN no charges were filed against Crites.

After he was released from custody, Crites told reporters the incident started off when he raised a "Republicans Against Trump" sign.

Crites said he was then assaulted by a group of people around him before anyone shouted anything about a gun.

"All of a sudden, because they couldn't grab the sign, or whatever happened, bam, I get tackled by all these people who were just, like, kicking me and grabbing me in the crotch and just, just beating the crap out of me," Crites said, according to KTNV. "And somebody yells something about a gun, and so that's when things really got out of hand."

The alleged assault against Crites is just the latest such incident to occur at a Trump rally, where other protesters have previously been roughed up.

Trump was unharmed and returned to the stage minutes later to finish his speech.

"Nobody said it was going to be easy for us, but we will never be stopped. We will never be stopped. I want to thank the Secret Service. These guys are fantastic," Trump said, before returning to his stump speech. [...]

Ivanka visits grave of Lubavitcher Rebbe

Arutz 7

As the elections to determine the next US President quickly approach, Ivanka Trump, the daughter of Republican nominee Donald Trump, could be seen last night with her husband visiting the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York.

According to Kikar Shabbat, there was no press accompanying the couple; their visit was documented by others who had come to pray by the grave of the Rebbe.

Satmar: Vote for Hillary

Arutz 7

According to those Satmar leaders, Republican candidate Donald Trump is pro-Israel and works to strengthen the Jewish state, and it is therefore forbidden to vote for him. Satmar believes that it was forbidden to create a Jewish state until the coming of the Messiah as the Talmud says that Jews in exile must not antagonize the non-Jews.

In the notice sent to thousands of hasidim, the group justified their decision on other grounds as well, stating that Clinton "has stood with the haredi sects for several years, when she was First Lady, New York Senator, and Foreign Minister."